Lockdown Diaries- Opening Entry

So the world is on fire with itty bitty flames and I'm fighting by staying at home with a 4yr old princess, the twin monkeys of CAMHS chaos, a bolshy pre teen, a (obviously) wonderful wife, 2 ducks 5 chickens and 3 rats.
It a been emotional folk's.
What's a man to do? I started like most fathers by tidying the shed:

 Following that I installed a pull up bar in the kids bedroom, as the ancient and Chalk free fingerboard in the kitchen is crap for actual pull ups :

Then I went crazy.

Being without climbing, especially outside, although with the wall where I work closing inside too, I was without means of release. Feeding the rat, blowing off steam, call it what you want. I have lived for the last 33 years with adventure on tap, and was now cold turkey. It isn't just a case of addiction, as addicts can get clean. This was a need. N Jurassic Park, the dinosaurs were engineered without the ability to produce lysine so they were dependent on their captors. Well like those plucky dino's I was determined to find a way around it. I made a decision to comply with the no climbing request from the BMC, despite my Esoteric tastes and such blocs being 40 minutes walk away. It would be sneaky, and even though nobody else would touch the same holds, there were thousands of us not so lucky, and we're all in this together aren't we? 

My first attempt to get past this was a pull up challenge. 100 a day for 5 days. As my 45yr old body protested, I included 100 press ups and squats to balance it all out. 

This didn't hit the spot though, if I enjoyed exercise I would have become a sport climber. 

Ethan, one of my chaos monkeys provided the solution. He wanted to search for a bomb crater from ww2 that was purportedly on the other side of the conifer plantation on the corner of our lane. He also decided that the best approach was through the plantation... 

This is not a well maintained plantation. Its about 400m square, or 16k hectares. 

I'm not as small as Ethan.. 

We went about 50m without touching the ground, indeed we we often a couple of meters off it. 

Sometimes we were quite close.. 

However, this mini adventure was just what we ( oth) needed. You can see Ethans grin, mainly because of the scratches and twigs in my hair.. 

A more open section, wandering over the pile of grubbed up tree roots. 

We did make it out eventually, even though actually finding the bomb crater is an adventure for another day.. 

Other dad jobs include making bows and teaching them not to stab their legs with knives.. 

Even surprised myself with a not totally rubbish flight for the arrows.. 

Another way for me to improve my serenity has been to start painting again. Before marriage and kids I did loads (even sold a couple) and it seemed to click with my climbing head space. I'd recently started again as I found an unfinished painting, and resolved to complete it in my lunch breaks at work. This was as an alternative to candy crush. That one completed, I started a fresh one of the stone wall outside my kitchen. Come lockdown I retrieved it from work.. 

Obviously with my house full of chaos, there wasn't going to be much painting time. My wife and I needed to a) not kill each other and b) have some down time. So we arranged that once a week, each of us could escape to a room for an evening and not deal with kids or each other. Tonight is my night (hence the blog) and I've taken a fresh pic of one of the stones.. 

It's getting there by baby steps.. 

I'll report next week whether I'm still keeping it together. 

Stay safe! And adventure will still be out there..