Content, No regrets.

If the world ended today I'd be happy with how I spent my time on it. But I hope it doesn't... I'm excited for what the future may bring.

16) Cut my own hair [COVID-19 edition]

At the moment the world is pretty crazy. We are coming up to the third week of isolation because of covid-19, the global pandemic. And to be honest... I'm loving it.

I am getting to stay in all day with the family, play games, get work done around the house, and not only do I guitlessly not go out, I'm doing my bit to save the world by staying in. I'm saving a load of money (which is great, since I'm not earning any), and keep building up the new business ready for the impending launch.

And best of all... it provided a perfect excuse to cut my own hair, and cross off number 16 on my list.

Covid-19

This has been bubbling since January. I spent part of January and most of Feburary biting my tongue, and occasionally keyboard-warrioring at people who posted things like "I don't see why people care, it's just a flu", dispite all the worlds experts saying it isn't a flu. Another one that annoyed me was "people only care about this because it's affecting rich white people". Nope. It's (at the time "going to be") a global pandemic, and if anything it's the poor people that are going to suffer the worst.

And then it hits. Life changed very quickly. Each evening the prime minister went on TV to update on where we are, but it was pretty clear the path we were going. China had been putting people in forced isolation for a while. Back when it started it felt like "China can do that, because it's China, but this could never happen in UK". But it would happen, and surprisingly fast, and with wide support. Finally, two weeks ago, on Monday evening it was announced that there would be isolation through the country. For two weeks before I had said school would close on the Friday before, with isolation happening at the same time, but I was a couple of days out. But seeing it coming meant I could go over to visit mom and dad for the last time in a while on the Monday afternoon.

Currently pretty much everything is closed still. Logan has finished school for good, 4 months early, and without doing GCSEs. I think I'd have bloody loved that. Many people in my new industry are massively struggling, but I think ultimately it will not harm (perhaps even help) the new venture. The only place you can really go is the supermarket.

Life feels different too. During the first few days there were a lot of shortages, which get you thinking about how you use your resources, food, etc. It makes you thankful that we have been able to get food that we want whenever we could before. It makes you want to meal plan and not waste.

The kids have taken it really well. They've enjoyed our one-walk-per-day, and we've gone back to discovering good things around the area. They miss their friends, but they all get on so well together that they get to play with their "sibling-friends" every day.

Nobody really knows what will happen from now... but my prediction is that by August things will be quickly returning back to normal, and the economy will bounce back really fast. I've said for years that it feels like the world needs a crisis to bring people back together again, and to make people realise what matters. Perhaps this is the coma the world needed to be put in to to allow it to be reborn?

Anyway... where was I?

The Isolation-Cut

To be honest, I don't even really know why this is on my list. I guess I just wanted to do it. I remember doing it once when I was young (four, but then I say everything was when I was four... arguably the most active year I've ever had). I used some blue scissors with a person on them. For some reason I thought it was a good idea to cut some of my hair... I remember doing it, but not why. Maybe my annoyance from my mom has made me feel like I needed another shot, and to do it right.

Fast forward 28 years. I needed my hair cut anyway, so when lockdown started and it would be at least 3 weeks before the hairdressers can run (I think it's probably going to be 8 weeks) I new something would have to happen. First of all I shaved the sides of my head to make it look a little neater (I'm as good as bald on top, so it's the sides that matter). But then I ran my hands through hair with wax and it stuck up and I looked like a flower.. so I needed to go nuclear.

So on Thursday 26th March 2020, I got the scissors and the razer, and got to work.

I gave a few snips (which was surprisingly hard to use scissors in the mirror). Then I let each of the kids have a snip with the scissors and a go with the razor. I wanted to do that because one of the few memories I have about my grandad (Simmonds) was being three or four, and him letting me and my sisters draw hair on his bald spot. Whilst I'm bitter that I've inherited this bald spot, that memory stuck with me for now 28 years. I wanted to try to give the kids a memory like that.

Cato went absolutely HAM on my hair with the scissors

I haven't had short hair like this since I was very young, maybe 8 or under. I was hoping it could look okay. But I wasn't very pleased. I think it needed to be shorter, but I was worried it would never come back. I also still somehow looked bald.

It's been a week now and I'm used to it. I dry faster coming out of the shower. When all this blows over I'm hoping to book a flight to Turkey and get new hair. 

86) Make jam

When I added "make jam" to the list a long, long time ago it was at a time when stuff like that seemed out of reach for me. In my mind it would have taken going strawberry picking and spending a load of money, then wasting fresh fruit and inevitably messing up. Meeting and marrying Brandi changed a lot of those assumptions, for one I started picking wild-growing fruit. It seems stupid now to think I ever didn't. Though I still often have people ask whether it's okay to eat (one man was in shock that the cherries on a tree were okay to eat).

One afternoon my neighbours stopped by with a jar of jam they had made themselves... from blackberries! I was amazed that they did it. I haven't known many people to make jam. I hadn't even really considered it doing it myself yet. And I love blackberries. So on Sunday 22nd September 2019, as the blackberries were getting ready to fall, I decided to make jam.

With my wife and army of kids we went around the paths near us with a few baskets and bowls and collected berries, but I was too "in the zone" to take any pictures.

I don't like following recipes to the word. I never have. What I instead like to do is find a few recipes and figure out the main steps and do something along those lines. I couldn't find many recipes that specifically talked about blackberry jam, which turned out to be a problem because of something called pectin which occurs naturally in fruit. Depending on the fruit it's in different quantities - and it is pectin that makes it "jammy". Recipes for specific fruit would know about how much pectin there was naturally.

I (or a twinny) mashed the fruit, and then we boiled it and added sugar. It had to be boiled at a specific temperature for only a few minutes or risks losing the flavour. At that point you take a spoon of jam, put it on a plate and put it in the fridge. If after a few minutes it seems jelly-like it is done.

The first one didn't... boo. It either meant I didn't have enough pectin or I didn't boil it hot enough and for long enough. I tried the boiling again, but it still wasn't great.

I looked for alternatives to pectin, assuming that was the problem, and found that you can add lemon juice. So I added a load of that, and it seemed to work fine. After a celebration dance that the jam hardened up a little, I put the jam in glass jars I had collected over the months. It went much more jam-like in the jars over night too.

The following weekend I decided to have another go, but this time buy pectin. Funnily enough, the first batch was actually better.

Now, many months on, we still have some left (and that's after giving a few jars away). I've decided that I'll be doing this every year, partly to be frugal and save on jam, and partly because it tastes way nicer than store-bought jam.