In light of current guidance about not going outside, I have added a very important tracker to my website..
(/where)
Week in review: 30 March - 5 April
- Albanian government introduced a system of asking for a permit by SMS 24 hours in advance of going outside, only for important reasons. Curfew still 5am to 1pm. I didn't leave the flat at all.
- Worked on memorious crawlers for UK politician declarations of interest.
- And some DID spec stuff.
- And some of my own website stuff!
- Finished the poncho, so cosy.
- Cooked and baked loads of good stuff.
- Finished rewatching Avatar: the last airbender, and started Stargate SG1.
- Read on the balcony (True Names and Old Music & the Slave Woman).
Booking.com auto emails saying "[destination] is calling your name!" that used to come at least once a day have now stopped, which is good of them.
Week in review: 23 - 29 March
- Curfew update: outside hours 5am to 1pm.
- Went outside via balcony, to the beach in front of the building, and into town for a SIM card and byrek on Saturday.
- Started thinking about declarations of interests of UK politicians, and getting back into memorious.
- Got stuck into figuring out the DID Registries stuff better.
- Binged Avatar: the last airbender.
- Cooked some very delicious meals and cakes.
Some pressure to 'take advantage' of the non-curfew hours to go out and take a walk, but I don't need to and wouldn't on a normal day, so why now when going outside should be restricted to essential trips? Stop projecting restlessness onto me, I can sit still in my chair all week no problem.
I really want ramen but I don't want to buy individually packaged single-portions of noodles. What do?
I know it's not the isolation olympics, but wild to see UK people freaking out about 'lockdown' when they can still go out at any time, ride trains and buses and drive cars between cities..
if anyone wants to airdrop a crate of baked beans to Sarande that would be super cool. Supermarket own brand acceptable. Heinz, whatever, I'm pretty desperate. Branston, however, unacceptable.
Sometimes you just need spicy rice for breakfast.
(Sticky rice cooked with vegetable stock and tumeric. Tofu fried in olive oil with garlic, paprika and black pepper, then veggies thrown in: mushrooms, red peppers, peas, sweetcorn, green beans (last 3 from the freezer). When the water has reduced from the rice, mixed all the veggies in to cook together for a couple more minutes. Drizzled soy sauce and hot sauce. Coffee is balkan/turkish style.)
The problem with the new curfew (outside hours 5am to 1pm), besides the obvious, is that most days it takes me hours to psyche up to go outside to get groceries or whatever. No way I'm gonna be able to do this by lunchtime.
It's overcast today, very still, and eerily quiet. No cars, no people, barely the sound of waves breaking. A couple of lively nests of swallows live in the building across from me, and sometimes I hear a cockeral crow or a dog bark.
Last week the curfew changed to going outside between 6 and 10am and 4 and 6pm only. On Friday evening, another update was issued, cancelling most of the weekend: From 1pm Saturday to 5am Monday, nobody is to go outside at all. Nobody seems to know what Monday will bring.
Having trouble to stay focused even when I'm not working. Doing some crochet while I'm taking a TV break occupies my hands so I'm not constantly tabbing over to twitter or the news.
It's totally normal for me to not go out for days at a time, and have no meatspace contact with people. I usually have good control over the compulsion to constantly rotate through all online communication channels, but the last few days this has gone out of the window. Some wisdom from coworkers about this yesterday; perhaps it's because the world is changing so fast in the background. It's hard to just carry on in default mode right now because when you check back in on the world it's more vastly different the longer you leave it. Will adjust to this eventually, I guess.
I wish I was one of those people who gets more productive during a crisis. Like, distract myself by burying my head in work. But I'm not. So you know. Sorry coworkers.
My office, for at least the rest of the month and probably longer depending on how things go. Not the worst. I can see two islands today I've never seen before. I think fewer cars around must mean the air is clearer.
I am become Best Man, Best of All the Men
This is another in the series of very occasional posts about clothes and shopping because I do this stuff so rarely as to be a novelty worth writing about.
My good friend KitB got married in February, and asked me to be his Best Man. Which was a really good way to make me come to a wedding in winter in the UK when I would rather be in Turkey. KitB also decided we should wear matching suits. The thing about that is, KitB has a well-fed, average-height, broad-shouldered sort of figure, and I am petite, short, with hips and boobs. It turns out your average - or even high end - highstreet suit maker does not account for this scenario.
We took advantage of me being in Edinburgh last October to go suit shopping together to get this sorted out... and we couldn't find anywhere that makes their suits in a range of sizes and shapes. The whole affair is gendered bullshit, that can't conceptualise of a world where people with different body shapes might want to wear the same clothes, because of some arbitrary divide based on genitals. We quickly had to face the reality that we wouldn't find exactly matching suits from the same place. Particularly not in-person, at short notice. But what we did manage to do was get Kit to try on a bunch of things so he could narrow down what he actually wanted to wear at his wedding, which until previously had been pretty much completely up in the air.
At some places, the assistant in the shop put a "men's" small on me and pinned it in a few places to show how it could be adjusted to fit. But in all cases it still looked like I was wearing poorly fitting clothes. There was nothing to be done.
But Kit decided on navy blue and a waistcoat, and I committed the details to memory as best I could. We figured, somewhat dejectedly, that if I could get a navy suit that was close enough and we wore matching ties, that would have to do.
The next day, alone, I hit the charity shops. Secretly I was a bit pleased we didn't figure this out from a proper suit shop, because I hate buying things new, and I also hated all the prices. In one morning I wrapped up the bulk of the outfit from charity shops on the Edinburgh bridges:
- I bought a totally rad shirt with lightning bolds on for £3.50 from Cat's Protection, although this was subsequently been overruled by my mother in favour of a normal better-fitting white shirt from Matalan (£7).
- I tried on a few navy blazers, and splashed out a whole £15 in Cancer Research for one branded "Hobb's London", after double checking I could return it if the colour wasn't right.
- I picked up almost matching and well-fitting (unusual cos I have traditionally had an awkward shaped butt) navy trousers from Save The Children for £3.99. They are M&S trousers, and even have pockets! Real ones!
While I was out, I couldn't help but notice just how many Kit-sized navy suite jackets, trousers, and even waistcoats were around in the charity shops..
That felt like a success, and now all I needed was a waistcoat. I checked out some non-second-hand highstreet stores, but nobody has navy waistcoats apparently.
I was also determined to have totally awesome shoes, since I wasn't allowed to express myself through any other aspect of the attire. I suddenly wanted smart shoes with brogueing (I learnt this word after I knew what kind of shoe I wanted) - I've never had a reason to wear them, and can't justify them for fun due to the limits of my backpack lifestyle. I have tiny feet and incredible luck at secondhand awesome shoes. I've seen the kind I want everywhere, so I had zero concerns about finding some. On the first day of trying I found some I loved in the British Heart Foundation in Boston, but they were a light brown and kind of scruffy and my mother said they wouldn't work. I found some absolutely gorgeous shiny dark burgundy ones somewhere else, but they were a full size too big.
The following week, I visited family in Brighton and dropped into every charity shop and vintage shop I passed. My Mum dug out a navy waistcoat in a vintage store. It wasn't perfect but was as close as I could imagine getting. It has a round neckline, and we wanted a V, but my mother is a miracle worker with clothes so that didn't deter us. It was £12.
Mere days later while teh fam were flying kites on the beach, I ran off for 10 minutes to look in charity shops on Skegness high street. The first place I looked - British Heart Foundation again - were shiny grey size 3 Oxford brogues (I don't know anything about shoes, this is what I have been told they are). They were on the large side - I reckon they're really a 3.5 or 4 - but they fit well enough. They were £4.99.
Kit was in charge of buying matching ties, which thankfully only come in one size and shape for all genders, with the only caveat that they can't be silk (because they are made by BOILING little BABY worms ALIVE). In the end, he got them from Etsy, but handmade in Cornwall.
I was really glad to get that wrapped up before leaving the country, and left all this stuff at my Mum's house. She turned up the trousers and jacket sleeves, and adjusted the waistcoat so the necklines matched, and added darts so it fit around my boobs properly. And she covered the buttons in the waistcoat so they matched the jacket. When the tie and pocketsquare arrived, she turned part of the pocketsquare into a matching hair scrunchie too! Thanks Mum <3
Total cost (including extraneous lightning bolt shirt): £46.48 (and some of my Mum's time, which is priceless).
When the day itself came, nobody noticed that Kit and I weren't wearing exactly the same shades of blue. I was in charge of making sure Kit got dressed on time, and successfully ironed both of our pocketsquares.
I did my important wedding duties, which involved not losing the rings, and putting on a good social face whilst holding a champagne glass of fizzy elderflower juice.
We had a good time photoshooting on the beach under an appropriately dreary sky.
All of the good, high resolution photos are by the official photographers, Sea & Salt Photography Co., though I've scaled them down and cropped them a bit.
Weather on the Albanian Riviera seems to be scheduled around my work/days off. Aka it's hot and sunny when I need to stay inside on my laptop and forecast rain and storms when I'm free to go hiking or to the beach.