This February I have been mostly...

Watching:

I loved the new series of The Mallorca Files, but it's a pity there were only 6 new episodes! I've been watching them all twice over. I finished watching The Serpent, and only realised afterwards that it was the same guy in it as in The Looming Tower!

I signed up to watch a couple of Mischief Movie Nights, which are improv shows by the same team as The Goes Wrong Show on tv. I'm amazed by their ability to come up with a storyline, characters, and songs on the hoof!

I watched a fascinating online talk about modernist architecture in Edinburgh by the C20 society, and had an online tour of an exhibition of typography-based protest art.

Reading:

I was still reading lots in the first half of the month. I fired through a couple of the Karen Pirie books by Val McDermid, and they really made me hanker for a trip to Edinburgh, because all the restaurants and cafes I want to visit kept getting mentioned! I've now moved on to her Kate Brannigan series, and am keeping back the latest Karen Pirie as a special treat once I've finished those! I did the same with the Tony Hill and Carol Jordan series, keeping one back to read once I'd finished the Karen Pirie books, which I think I eventually ended up loving even more than the Tony Hill ones!

I read The Little Grey Men, and Down the Bright Stream, by BB, in preparation for reading Melissa Harrison's By Ash, Oak and Thorn which is somewhat inspired by them and is coming out soon (and I'm reading her At Hawthorn Time at the moment). The BB books are the last ones I remember getting out of our little local library as a child, before we started going to the main branch library because I'd exhausted the children's shelves at the small library!

I also read Lessons by Jenny Colgan (this series of grown-up Malory Towers style books was what got me into reading her books), The Psychology of Time Travel by Kate Mascarenhas, and Daisy on the Outer Line by Ross Sayers (really weird reading a book written in Scots language, when it's something I usually only hear rather than read!).

Making:

I've done a couple of online art workshops this month. I loved the sweary typography one with Typetasting, and I also did one called Shape & Symmetry through the Northern Ireland Science Festival, about using geometry to create designs. I was particularly amused that, when I used Siri to create a reminder on my phone for this, she called it Sheep & Cemetery!

I made a face mask with 50 on it, to wear on my 50th birthday next month. And, when I posted a photo of this on my Instagram stories, someone who's been following me for ages said he thought I was about 33!

Eating:

I made myself a Chinese New Year meal, and pancake breakfasts for Valentine's Day and Pancake Day (it was lovely to have so many events to celebrate in the space of one week!).

I've also been discovering the wonders of Just Eat, ordering noodles for lunch from a local healthy food place called Savage Kitchen.

Buying:

I don't remember ever having a pair of wellies in my life, so I finally bought myself a pair of yellow Hunter wellies! Of course, as soon as I bought them, the snow melted, and I haven't had a chance to wear them yet!

Doing:

I went for a walk to see the local snowdrops, and found the gate to the gardens of Leslie House open - I used to explore the gardens there almost every week, but since there was a fire some years ago it's been closed off.

We had the best snowfall in years, leading to a complete closure of the school where I work (it's only open to vulnerable children and children of keyworkers during lockdown, and I'm in half of each day on a rota). I had fun doing some snowflake photography, found a local igloo, and made a snow ammonite in my garden!

Mum and Dad got their first vaccinations, I finished a couple of jigsaws, and I went to the bank for the first time in about a year (I still had my birthday money from last year in my purse, along with grocery money from shopping for my parents, and Christmas money, so I thought I'd pay all that in before my birthday this year!).

I did a zoom workout with my colleagues, and had an impromptu video call with three of my friends who I've known since primary school!