That was the challenge of our first lockdown 2 Sunday. We devote part of most Sundays, when we’re at home, to a family dinner.
Usually the shopping, meal cooking and being with the kids takes up most of the afternoon and early evening. We love it but it takes time, particularly for Mrs Jones, so it was nice to just do as we pleased and have a truly lazy Sunday.
We forced ourselves out of bed for our weekend 5k run but then after that spent a good 40 minutes or so in our hot-tub before heading back to bed until lunchtime! Fearing the day would be just too boring and lazy I’d got some tickets to visit a nearby National Trust property – Baddesley Clinton (pictured).
Not entirely convinced our trip out was allowed under the new Lockdown rules, we drove the short distance to rural Warwickshire to find the estate nestling in the heart of the Forest of Arden.
We took the mercifully short walk around the grounds – first alongside the rather modestly proportioned but very beautiful moated 16th century house before trudging round their private woodland which offered lovely views of the inevitable lake.
The rain just about held off while we queued socially distant for a hot chocolate, mocha with a buttered fruit scone.
Bizarrely, in the public car park, a lady in her fifties who looked so very National Trust had whipped out her fiddle and was jigging jauntily to her own rendition of ‘Raindrops keep falling on my head’.
We visitors pretended to be cheered by this surreal performance in a very British Covid 2020 socially distant sort of way. Polite toe tapping was the order of the day as we all glided back to our cars, keen to not engage the woman in anything as direct as actually standing and watching.
Exhausted from our trip out we slumped back to bed until it was time for a roast beef dinner for two.
The evening was equally lazy, to commemorate Remembrance Sunday we watched the excellent Sam Mendes movie, 1917. Set in the trenches of World War One it tells the story of two British lance corporals who are given the seemingly impossible task of going across enemy lines to deliver a message to save another regiment from walking into a German trap that could lead to the deaths of 1,600 men.
One extraordinary scene, in the ruins of the abandoned French town Ecoust-Saint-Mein, with its surreal lighting and haunting musical score, will live with me for the rest of my days.
That’s two memorable events on this very pleasant nothing to do sort of day.