This time of year (still)

At the end of December, I wrote about how difficult it is to get things done this time of year. I was talking specifically about the time between the Christmas and New Year’s holidays, but it turns out there’s been unexpected weirdness this week, too.

Last month, I said:

… finding a food place that’s open is kind of hit and miss. Yesterday I picked up some lunch at one of our local bakeries, and on the way home I noticed that the other local bakery was closed and so was the nearby sushi shop, both of which are normally open on Saturdays. Several local takeaway shops close until after New Year’s, and one local café always used to close until the second week of January (they’ve since cut that back a bit).

On New Year’s Day evening, Nigel and I decided to get some takeaways for dinner for us and his mother, who was staying with us. However, everything was shut. We finally found a (mostly) Malaysian takeaways place that was open.

The photo above is the first photo of the year of Jake and Sunny as they and I waited in the car. I hadn’t intended on publishing it, or I would’ve taken a better one of Sunny, who was in the back seat.

The next day, all the places I mentioned last month were closed, as was the then-open bakery I mentioned. They remained closed over the weekend, but on Monday the local sushi shop was open (and the nearby takeaways opened again yesterday)—but none of the bakeries were. And when I say “none”, I mean NONE that we saw anywhere, from New Year's Day onward, until yesterday when we were in Albany and happened to see one open.

Bakeries are small shops that make things like bread, meat pies, filled rolls/sandwiches, cookies—those sorts of things. Nearly all of them are owned by Asians, usually Chinese people, and every single one was closed (apart from the one in Albany). I can’t remember this happening before, though it could be that I simply don’t remember.

Now, obviously, the fact that all the bakeries in our area have shut down for the week is weird, maybe a little inconvenient, but it’s absolutely not the end of the world. It was unexpected, however, and a little disappointing because since we’re on summer holiday, we don’t really want to cook and be brought back to real life. Not quite yet.

When one goes away on holiday, it’s not surprising that things are different than at home. Maybe it’s just as well when things are different for a holiday at home. Maybe it makes us appreciate both normality and the holiday just a little bit more.

But, a steak and cheese pie would have been nice…