England calling Florida……Happy Monday to you all! It is the most beautiful morning here and set to be record temperatures for a long time here, it is wonderful and the seafront is looking fabulous, the water is so still. Of course our seafront has suffered hugely during this very weird and trying period of lockdown. Our beaches are now open which is great but it really needs for everyone to be careful so that they can stay open end thrive.We have the usual cafes and bars and ice cream stands as well as what is called Adventure Island, a huge park next to the sea with rides and roller coasters and other such fun stuff, this is really popular with families and the young thrill seekers. This particular park is not yet open again but I hope it won’t be long before it is because it is huge fun. A lot of our schools are now open which is a good thing and although they are not back full time at least they are back which gives them a new routine. The difficulty is the social distancing in schools, in junior schools the children have to be watched very closely as they forget about social distancing and act spontaneously (as kids do) and with space being limited they cannot do a whole week. In our Secondary Schools (high schools) it has meant a huge amount of work in creating new routine, signage instructing where to go and what to do but the schools have been amazing. The students have the usual 100 minute lessons in my school with break in between which means there is only movement around the school 3 times a day! Again, with the social distancing rules, space is at a premium so classes are staggered.

The big problem will be next years exams and how or if, they will go ahead. Our students have missed chunks of time which will have hugely impeded their learning. We will see what happens, with no exams going ahead this year teachers used mock exam grades to assess which is a fair way of doing it, I think.

We are hoping this week to hear that the two metre distancing will be lowered to one metre, not quite sure how I feel about that, life will be easier for restaurants and pubs and bars but is it the right time???? What are the rules in WPB??

We have a lot of allotments here in England, areas of land which can be rented at a very low rate on a yearly basis and people grow their own vegetables and fruit. I went to my sister’s allotment yesterday to have a cup of tea and a natter, the whole allotment  looks amazing because everyone has had time to work even harder on their plots and the fruit and vegetables are thriving. They are generally quite large, divided into about 50 plots and can be found all over the country. Here in this area we have a great many of them which is great. Allotments were started up in 1908, then as a way of assisting returning service men ease back into civilian life. In 1925 an act was passed allowing the land used for allotments to be protected so local councils could not sell off the land. Then they were made accessible and available for everyone in the communities. These gardens are very popular and you will always find long waiting lists for them. The food grown really does have a different taste, we picked peas yesterday and sat eating the peas out of the pod….gorgeous! I also have to visit my marrows which are being fostered by her, thought to be cucumbers at the beginning, turned out to be marrows which need  a lot of space which we do not have in our flower filled garden. It is thriving under her care and I think it will be read to eat in a few weeks time.

And, our shops have opened!!! Not sure how busy it all is yet as I have not been to the High Street yet but I hope that business starts to boom once more for our traders. We have to kickstart the economy somehow…

I am continuing with the daily ‘Thought for the Day’ Board, Day 90 today, I will go to day 100 and take it from there…it has been huge fun and much photographed and read. I often hear people outside laughing or talking about a snippet of information or a joke and it makes me smile. People drop notes through my letterbox with jokes to use or things they would like to see, some I can’t use but most of them I make sure I do.

I listened to your WPB update (supplied live by AnnaMaria), it was both interesting and worrying that your numbers of people with the virus is rising again, one of the problems of lifting lockdown which have been encountered by so many countries. I hope that this gets back under control quickly without having to  make more restrictions!!! Please stay safe. We still hold a reserve of scrubs at the local community hub in case more are needed. I have a group of machinists concentrating on making masks at the moment which have already been delivered to lots of different groups of people who have requested them for their members. It is now mandatory to wear masks on public transport which is a good move I think. I always wear mine in shops and enclosed spaces particularly as there are some people who just cannot follow directions and walk anywhere, in any direction that they want and a simple ‘I  think you are going the wrong way’ can be met with disdain…

I am going to try to talk about anything but COVID 19 next week as I have plans to visit places I have not been to for a long time. We are going to make plans for a trip around England to visit all the wonderful places that there are in our beautiful country which we have neglected to visit. We will be ready when hotels and bed and breakfasts are open again. It’s fun to plan and exciting to think about getting out and about. We have had several trips cancelled including one to Lake Worth, trips to see Queen in what was to be their last concert (now to be rescheduled) along with other trips which we may not be able to rebook.

So, we start another week, I hope it is amazing for you if somewhat quiet…..as long as you stay safe and healthy and of course happy, always stay happy!!!

Speak to you next week…

Hello Lake Worth from England…….where the weather is glorious and we have just X days until we move into Summertime and all that it brings in terms of flowers and trees, fruit and vegetables, blossom and hopefully wall to wall sunshine. During the last couple of weeks we have had a huge amount of rain, great for the gardens after what was a record March, April and May with the sun being out more than usual. Then we get rain which in a few days was greater than usual in all 3 months put together!!! We can not control the weather and it is never boring here in England weather wise. It has been a good week which has seen our lockdown being eased even further, we can now meet up with friends or family, up to six people in the open. We made use of that and immediately made plans to visit friends in their garden, it was lovely and just like old times except that we sat 2 metres apart from each other and did not greet each other with a hug……we ordered food from a local company called ‘Lucy Love Leaves’…she supplies the most amazing vegan (not that anyone in the party is  vegan) food. The presentation as you can see from the photos is amazing and she presents each box with as much care as if it were a gift. Always adorned with a sprig of fresh flowers and herbs and tied with hessian string which gives it all a very rustic look. The food is to die for with tastes and textures that delight and surprise with each mouthful…….home made cake of course, no afternoon tea is complete without cake, we drank red wine and gin, not together, and it was a perfect afternoon.

It has been great to get out in the garden and bring it all back to life although we try to incorporate plants and flowers that give us colour all year, even when it is cold!!! English gardens are in general, well looked after and people are always to be seen in the front gardens digging and mowing, in fact next week I will show you a selection of the gardens around and about in our neighbourhood. I was so happy after Yoga this morning to discover that our tomato plants are starting to bear fruit, I was getting worried that they would never flower, we will have tomatoes in abundance, along with lettuce and peppers and cucumbers……..salad days here we come!I love to watch the fruit grow, at this time of the year it almost gets bigger as you look at it. At the moment, it is good to grow as much of your own food that you can as it saves trips to the shops. It was funny with my first attempt at cucumbers, I nurtured it carefully watching it grow bigger and bigger, it turned out to be a marrow!! I had to foster it out with my sister who has an allotment and my new cucumber is most definitely a cucumber….

Speaking of shops, today the High Street will be slowly coming back to life with the non-essential shops opening again. It will be different of course, but we will get used to it and it will soon become the new normal to follow arrows and signs around rather than meander through the various departments at will. How ever we have all done without clothes shops I have no idea but it will be interesting to see how it works out. I think I will leave my first trip to the High Street later in the week as I have a feeling it will be crowded today…..not sure about you but I am not spending as much money as I normally would, no nail salon, no hairdressers, no facials or waxes!!!!! Can you imagine the rush when they all open as we try to make appointments to get ourselves beautified.

I have been delivering masks to various community organisations here as everyone needs them as from today….you must wear a mask when you are in public places. The team that are making these are amazing and so dedicated, they keep going on and on as we need more and more as requests come in. I had a little meeting in the garden of one of the ladies and tried to show thanks for all they do, it was lovely.

Zooms are carrying on and we are becoming more and more inventive with our on line entertainment…bingo, quizzes by the score and lots of tv programmes that have been adapted for tv, all good fun.

Not sure about USA but we are having interesting conversations here about becoming a cashless society sooner rather than later, most of our shops are only accepting card payments for obvious reasons and this has brought the conversation to the fore again. I think I might relish the change but am acutely aware of people without credit cards and who are not good with technology. In fact, we got caught out with this very thing last year when we travelled  to Copenhagen and took a trip to Sweden for the day only to find no one took actual cash. We had even changed money into Swedish Krona as well to avoid having our credit  cards on us……  we could not buy a cup of coffee or snack ….we were so hungry when we arrived back in Copenhagen, a valuable lesson learned.

My daily thought for the day board is still going outside, I will go to 100 days and then put it out every other day or weekends……the board has suffered for being out in all weathers and is now in two halves, makes it easier for me actually as I can have one out and the other completed earlier ready to go out the next day, at the moment it doesn’t come in until 6ish and I have to redo it in the evening….happy days!!!

I am hoping in the next couple of weeks to have more exciting blogs coming your way as life gets back and freedom allows us to travel……meanwhile, take care and stay happy, always stay happy!!

Had a few false starts to this blog. You don’t want to read my “wow is me”. i will just start into what I’ve found in the art community. There was this call out to artists while in lockdown to share and boy did they. Some are spot on, others clever. Here it goes.

This was started on Instagram and thousands have participated with their own version. I’ve yet to find a work of art I can do. Many years ago there was a portrait at the Uffizi gallery that looked just like me. It was of a young prince and I wore my hair with Eisenhower bangs and I was 15 LOL. tussenkunstquarentaine is on Instagram and started out w artists using toilet paper hence the shortage, not.

Also I follow Muse D’Orsay and love arteneuveau and my Instagram is annamaria33460. I share Mail Art that I send and receive. have a fab day.

Hello from England…….

Where we are still in lockdown after all this time  but things are easing up. On June 15 non essential shops will be open…..clothes, furniture, car showrooms and others, how exciting that will be, it is certain to be different though, I imagine there will be no time for browsing at our leisure, knowing someone is waiting to follow behind; but it is a step forward. The other big change is that it will be mandatory from 15 June to wear face coverings in public places and on public transport which I think is a very good idea.

I have some really good people making masks from the material left over from making scrubs for the key workers in hospitals and care homes. The masks will be used for a variety of people – those in sheltered housing who are elderly and are frightened to go out, the masks will hopefully give them confidence to go out now. For special needs students to help them develop a tolerance to the masks before returning to school…there are many other vulnerable groups that will benefit from masks so we will keep making them until  they are no longer needed. What about in Florida…..have you been given more freedom????

There is a German word ‘Fernweh’ which means ….’An ache to get away and travel to a distant place, a feeling even stronger than wanderlust…..’ which describes perfectly how I am currently feeling. I keep looking through brochures to see what is available, which is actually not a lot!!!!! I think it is probably better to see how it all pans out, we are desperate to rebook our trip to Lake Worth but have to wait until the ban is lifted!!!!

And here in England it is National Friends Day, definitely something to celebrate, where would we be without friends????

Something I have wanted for a long time is a good news forum and now we have one in England, it puts together all the positive things that are happening which makes better reading than the usual dose of negativity. There are always good things happening and you really do not have to look far to find them…the following are my favourites this week……This one of course, is most important, and long overdue but nevertheless is happening now, really happy to see this is going to be a reality….

This is GREAT news, bicycle shops have seen sales rocket, I hope that all our new cyclists continue to use their bikes after this virus has gone, our cycle lanes are being made much wider as well, good news!

This particular  piece of good news is very important, we have noticed huge changes since people have not been using their cars, flights have been grounded and emissions have been much reduced. We notice that the sky is bluer, there is without doubt, more birdsong and the air is cleaner…….I would love to see this continue and although we now have evidence of just how quickly our environment repairs itself, I feel we are still a long way off making the difference we really need!

I for one, love the good news rather than the negative news and it is proven to help our state of mind which can be very fragile at the moment.

I hope the coming week gives you lots of good news and makes you smile, enjoy it all, speak to you next week, until then, be happy!