As a child, we always went on family walks looking for conkers to play the game; conkers. Sometimes the conkers would still be in their shell and they’d have to be broken open to get to them. I remembered one year a conker, still in its shell, fell from the tree above and hit me on the top of my head!

It took me a bit longer than I'd hoped to post again because the readjustment of going back to work at the beginning of August was more difficult than I expected. A few staff went in the week before the shop reopened on August 10 to implement all the new COVID-19 guidelines, move the clothing stock so we could open with the summer season layout as we closed in spring, along with putting the summer sale on.

I realised this week while looking back through some of my previous posts on here, that I missed my second blogaversary! With all the crazy that's been going on the last few months especially, I guess it was understandable for it to slip my mind. I know I've not been very good at posting regularly for the majority of this year, and I actually can't remember the last time I did post before lockdown.

I noted in my journal this morning that it's going to be really strange once we are allowed out more. In the last four weeks of the lockdown, the only people I've talked to in real life are; my housemate who's been away since the first week of the lockdown, a couple of my neighbours, the people on the till at the supermarket each time I've been, a couple of delivery drivers and I think that's it. Usually, I speak to dozens of people during my day at work, so the drastic drop of in-real-life human interaction has been hitting me hard.

We are heading officially into week five of the UK lockdown, but it's my week six as I had the week off work the week preseeding it. The new lockdown ends May 10th and that week the government under advise from the specialists studying the virus and its path etc. will assess if it needs to carry on any longer or what steps need to be taken.

Last night I had an even worse night sleep! I woke at about 2.40 am and I was up and restless for about the next hour. I eventually managed to get back to sleep waking at about 6.50 am and having had around eight hours sleep. I had a leisurely breakfast, made my lunch for the day, washed up the pots and then headed for a shower.

I've been having problems sleeping the past few days and I've also been struggling with the side effects of the antidepressants the doctor put me on. I've had the loss of appetite, feeling more anxious, heart palpitations and attention difficulties in the week leading up to my holiday. Great ... I know it's all a temporary though and that these meds always make things a bit worse before they start to make things better and that they're a means to an end. They help to regulate the chemistry in my brain until I'm able to do that again myself.

I have been back from my holiday Shrewsbury in Shropshire for about a week now, so it's about time I wrote some blog posts about it. So they aren't too long I will split them up into few, so each day will most likely have a blog post of its own. Starting with the travel day.

I have been off work this week just taking some of my holiday days and what a week it's been! The weekend before my mum texts me to say that she had damaged some ligaments in her foot and so I offered to go up and help her for a couple of mornings. I was going to head up and have lunch with her one day as it was but now I was needing to help her out as well which is fine.