Simone Reddington

Hello and welcome to my second monthly round-up of everything that I’ve been enjoying recently. February is obviously a lot shorter month than January, and I’ve been spending most of this month looking after my new puppy, so I have had less time to think of other things that have entertained me over the last few weeks.

February is never the most exciting month, as it is still always dark and cold and to me, it just feels like an extension of January. This feels especially true during the lockdown as nobody has had the chance to properly leave the house this year yet, which is crazy to think about! However, now that we are approaching the end of this short month, the lights are getting a lot lighter and it definitely feels that spring is in the air. Hopefully better things are coming, so in the meantime feel free to make yourself a lovely cup of tea and read about what my favourite things were in February 2021.

1. Paddy- I know that I’ve already wrote a full blog post about him, but he is my baby and requires all of my attention. We’ve had him for four weeks now and he is has grown a lot bigger. He’s making progress with his toilet training but he is now in the naughty biting stage that all puppies go through! He has also had his second vaccination as well, so I’ve started to take him for walks. He had his first stroll along the sea front, where he got lots of attention and met some other lovely doggies.

2. Cooking- I’ve recently had a sudden urge to experiment in the kitchen more, which is very unusual for me. I have a very complicated relationship with cooking as I love food and trying new recipes, but I have never had much confidence in my own culinary skills. I had so many food disasters in my student kitchen at university that I soon gave up and mainly lived on frozen food and simple stir fries for the rest of the time that I lived alone.  However, now that life is feeling very repetitive and I’m spending the majority of my time indoors (especially before Paddy was vaccinated), I now find going into the kitchen and taking the time to make a delicious meal very therapeutic.  This month I have particularly enjoyed cooking a delicious crispy duck ‘fake-away for Chinese New Year and this amazing white chocolate cheesecake topped with strawberries and blueberries.

3. It’s A Sin– I’m currently catching up with Russell T. Davies’ drama, It’s A Sin, after seeing praise for it all over social media and I can confirm thatit’s absolutely fantastic.  It follows a group of young gay men who have moved to London in the early 1980s and are enjoying the freedom and exuberant nightlife of the city, before the AIDS epidemic hit Britain.  It’s a very powerful piece of television and portrays the devastating impact that the disease had on the queer community. It is very poignant as it pays tribute to the people who lost their lives and unfortunately received very little understanding and compassion from society.  As a young person in 2020 with many friends in the LGBT community, I find the homophobic newspaper articles from the 80s, which blamed the victims’ sexuality for their untimely deaths absolutely disgusting, and I find it shocking that they were allowed to printed less than 40 years ago.

4. Keith Richards’ autobiography- I haven’t had a lot of time to read at all recently but I started reading Keith Richards’ autobiography, Life, just before Paddy came home and I’m enjoying reading it whenever I get a spare moment. I grew up listening to the Rolling Stones’ hits as they’re one of my dad’s favourite bands, but I didn’t know much at all about the band’s personal lives.  Keith comes across as such an interesting character and his dry, witty sense of humour is conveyed in the tone of his memoir. Reading about the Rolling Stones’ rock’n’roll lifestyle in the swinging 60s is the perfect escapism from lockdown life.