Pinged

 We were both pinged by the NHS app on Thursday. Doh!  That meant we both had to self isolate, the kids could still have went to school as we didn't have any symptoms but as chance would have it there were two teacher training days at the nursery that week so April already had the days booked off.  This of course meant that the whole family was locked down for the duration.

Luckily we only had to survive until midnight on Sunday, at times I wasn't sure if we would make it...

Doing a little digging it looks like we were flagged last Thursday about possibly coming into contact with someone had had since tested positive for Covid-19.  You get pinged if you spend 15 mins or more and within 2 meters.  Not sure if we ever were, but there you go.  There were only two places we went together and that was the Curlew (£220 meal with only April drinking) and the Westerham Brewery (April drinking again) and that was outside.  

We had to cancel Swimming, rugby tots, play date, dog walk and spend the whole time within the confines of our house and garden.  Despite it being a fairly big house it certainly felt small at times.  To top it off before the pinging we agreed to dog sit a friend's dog who was taking his family to Lords to watch cricket.  We couldn't really say no at such short notice so at 9:30 we had a new addition to the family.

Play nicely girls

With the rain off and on it meant the kitchen was filthy within 5 minutes

Anyway, we all survived and i'm glad to be able to shove the kids back into nursery and get back to work.  I certainly don't feel like i've had a weekend break.

Recognition at last

https://youtu.be/a_ui46zxNQ8 (12:30 mins in)

Loki Doki is probably my favourite Youtuber and i'm finally famous on his latest football manager save.  I've been following him for years and think he helped keep me more or less sane during my 6 months in Chicago looking after my 6 month year old daughter.  

In his latest save he started out with Basingstoke Town FC in a very lowly division, he officially linked with the real club (he did a similar thing with Fort William the previous year) and set up a just giving page to help them out financially (£11k).

https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/basingstoke

As part of your donation, if you paid £50 or more you'd get a regen named after you.  A regen is a regenerated player in the youth team that's created within the game to take into account player retirements and to mirror real life scouting and youth team set up in clubs.  The only other rule was that the player had to have 4 star or more potential.  

It's now 2034 in his save and has managed to get the side up into the Championship.  Miraculously these are the first three players that have had 4 star or more potential, I guess it's taken him that long to get the clubs facilities inline with the rest of his constantly improving side (promotion after promotion).  I think there were 70+ people who were in the draw I was the lucky winner of the best new player!

He's only 15 and has a lot of learning to do but I could potentially be a proper player in his save game in years to come, that's if I don't get poached by one of the big boys.  Determination is one of the big factors here and at 15 / 20 there is a big chance.  Being Panamanian, I may even get some international caps!

Week off

Just had a week off from work.

Shaheen and Kate came down and stayed over with their kids on Saturday, where we went to a Turkish restaurant for an early dinner followed by ice cream near by.  The kids surprisingly slept well considering how excited they were to share a room.

The next day we went to one of our favourite village pubs for sunday roast.  It involved leaving the cars and having a 3 mile walk which is fairly long for little legs.

Then the official holiday started.  We took the kids to Kent Life, Mereworth tap room, went swimming, and went to a zoo.  After 3 days with the kids we decided we needed a break too so off they went back to nursery.  We were paying for it anyway so thought may as well.  

On Thursday we went to the Curlew, a sister restaurant of the Small Holding in Kildown.  £220 later (lighter) and with only one of us drinking (April), we left.  We had a little trip around Westerham, after getting lost trying to find the Westerham Brewery.  

On Friday we went for a long dog walk in the sun with a pub lunch in the middle.  The day ended with an improptu trip to the castle lawn for a couple of beers with some potential new friends and their kid Louy who Flo's taken quite a shine to.

Saturday we had Steve and his family over where we took Arwen and his dog Bobla for a walk followed by a nearby pub lunch.  We then went round friends late afternoon for wine and pizza whilst Flo and their daughter played in the paddling pool.

Sunday we went round Bedgebury park, with the kids and the dog but it was a bit too hot, we set up the paddling pool in the garden when we got back but I mostly stayed inside.  It was a bit much for some and there were some frayed tempers but we survived...

500k page views of my blog

 Just spotted that the page view counter on my blog says that it's been viewed over half a million times!

So far so good

 I was a little tired last night so ended up just having a bath and an early night, but other than that feel fine.  I feel cold today but I think that's just because the house is cold and am still wearing shorts.  Looks like i'm in the clear.

Second Jab

 Just had my second dose of Astra Zenica.  Fingers crossed I don't get the night sweats this time!

 Made a couple of Ramens this week, one was a test run for board game night.

Chicken Ramen

Was supposed to be beef but the cat got at the fillet we were defrosting.  She ate a whole one raw.  The dog got the other fried up.  Lucky git.

Broth

Toppings

It was very succesful.

Boardgame night!

 After what must have been an age we had a boardgame night on Friday.  It's been ages and was good fun.  Here's a Game of Cat and Mouth.

In other news, Tonbridge now has it's own boardgame cafe and cakery.  We'll have to try that at some point.

Saturday

 Spotted a heron in Tonbridge on Saturday

Heron

Arthur trying to climb the ladder, shortly after I took him up and went down with him.  Turn out my bum was too big to do it properly.

Sand pit fun

Stressful afternoon

We were due to have friends over in the garden to watch the football on Saturday.  I spent a good hour and a half trying to get the BBC on a TV out there.  There's the big (old) one that I usually use but couldn't get the screen sharing from my surface pro to it using hdmi cables to work (had previously).  I also couldn't get high enough quality casting from google chrome to my chromecast.  In the end I moved the front room TV up and directly connected it to the internet with an ethernet cable.  It already had iplayer installed so worked in beautiful UHD.  That was until the game started and we heard a big cheer from next door's house.  2 minutes later we saw the goal!  There was a massive delay.  Even my friend Jono's friend based in the Dominican Republic of Congo got the goal before we did!  We tried restarting the programme but then it would only go to HD.  The result was the same we had a 2 minute delay.

It was still a good night.  Including de-pootubing 5,000 prawns for the salt and chilli prawn dish we served before the game.

We're going to watch the semi either from a roof top aerial or from a digital box.