Some things were only a little different from usual; ordering on-line gifts required a little more planning in case delivery times were extended, ingredients for making a cake had to be planned rather more in advance than usual to fit in with our volunteer shoppers delivery times (still waiting for our first on-line delivery).
Socialising was very different. We started with a zoom coffee morning with 9 households on the screen. These chats are improving as we get used to allowing little gaps in conversation to let people in. This was followed by family calls on the telephone landline (they still exist) and a face-time call from the grandchildren in mid-afternoon. Throughout the day John’s phone kept up a constant pinging with notifications of banter on his WhatsAp groups and we finished the day with a final zoom chat with our longest standing friends, the ‘hairdressing’ group. Why the hairdressing group is a story for another blog.
A Birthday is not a Birthday without a cake. Having completed 3 months on a no-added-sugar diet I had decided that long term I would eat birthday cake even if I didn’t have other cakes and biscuits, but birthday cakes are meant for sharing. Of course our volunteer shoppers had slices waiting for them when they arrived with their deliveries. Then I remembered party bags and hit on the plan of taking our permitted exercise for the day walking round the village leaving cake on the doorsteps of our closest friends. Only after people had said it was delicious did I tell them that the recipe included almond flour and soya flour to reduce the GI index.
