2022 and all that

Doing the RSBP Great Garden Bird Watch and all I’ve seen so far are five squabbling goldfinches and a great tit.

Last week someone in the next street called the council, claiming that gangs of huge rats were running amok in our adjoining Preswylfa St gardens. We all got letters advising us to take down bird feeders, among other measures.

After some consternation, sanity has prevailed. None of us has seen the rats (ok, maybe the odd one every few months) and it turns out the council letter writer has murophobia (had to look that up) so maybe not the best person to get things in proportion.

My bird feeders are staying up. One of the few solaces in lockdown is garden birdwatching. And, oh I’ve just seen a magpie.’

Last Monday I had my first Covid-19 jab. I got a phone call mid morning and the first appointment offered was the same evening, so I jumped at the chance. I was delighted to hear I’d be getting the Pfizer.

I had to do a bit of queueing outside the mass vaccination centre in Splott.

Then I was ushered inside, showed my photo-ID and was taken down a corridor by a soldier in fatigues.

Inside the vaccination hall, we sat on chairs until called into a booth for the shot.

I was fascinated by the amount of walking the vaccinators were doing: across the hall to pick up their patient, back to the booth to do the shot, right across the hall again to drop off the empty vial and pick up a new one, and then repeat. The girl who vaccinated me said she’d lost 15 kg since she started and people were regularly doing 20,000 steps a day. Who knew that vaccinating would be the ultimate workout?

I missed the chance to get a vaxxie (vaccination selfie). It never seemed to be quite the moment…

Leon’s been tracking the vaccination targets. He reckons he’ll be done by May as he has mild asthma, which counts as an underlying condition.

In the meantime, his and Lily’s cooking skills are coming on apace. They made delicious crab ravioli from scratch last night and Leon’s spent all his birthday and Christmas money on Le Creuset.

Yesterday I saw this post on FaceBook

If this is the way forward, my vaccination certificate is going to be a very precious piece of paper.

I’m longing to break for the border and get to Italy again, but content with my routine as well, now that the alarms and excursions of last year are over. I suspect I’ll look back to this restful period of limited horizons and small domestic pleasures with some nostalgia. But Procida does look lovely…

Today I read yet another inspirational FaceBook post about dealing with lockdown. Turns out I’m doing about half the suggested things already, viz having quite long conversations with the dog and referring to ourselves as “we” (that last bit wasn’t on the list, actually), along with moisturising and self care.

I’m doing well on the latter score too, because one of my Christmas presents to myself was a parcel of Liz Earle unguents and creams, so now we always emerge from the house with a fragrant trail of essential oils, feeling – if not looking – fabulous.

Today, as a special treat, I’ve bought a cappuccino from the little cafe Bloc on Victoria Park. It tastes like the most deliciously sensual thing in the world after a few months without. We’re sitting on a bench watching the other dogs go by and it’s a treat despite the drizzle.

Work has more or less dried up again after an intense few weeks before Christmas. Most of the contracts I worked on during that period were for the Translation Centre for the Bodies of the EU (bit of a long-winded title, I know) under “negotiated procedures”. Negotiated procedures allow some “derogations” (EU-speak for exemptions to normal rules), but not that of being a non-EU citizen, it turns out.

Paradoxically, nearly all the translations I did at the end of last year were for DG Growth, which gives EU citizens information on living, working and setting up companies in other EU countries. A bitter irony indeed.

Anyway, the Translation Centre has just published a call for tenders. My UK company is barred from tendering or working for the EU as of the end of 2020 because Boris somehow neglected to arrange any deal for service providers in his haste to keep fisherfolk and goods traders happy. He didn’t even manage that very well, because M&S in Ireland can’t import Percy Pigs and certain doughty Leave voters can’t export their eels to the continent. Shame.

Not to be deterred, I’ve gone ahead with a plan that I started hatching after the 2016 referendum, which is to set up an Estonian company as an e-Resident. It’s what digital nomads do, and as I spend four months a year away from Wales in Italy or elsewhere in Europe and work almost exclusively for EU companies, it feels like the right thing to do.

So, welcome Juliet Haydock Translations OÜ (that stands for “osaühing” in Estonian).