I did this back in May and this is the winter version: what I do between work finishing at 5pm and starting again the next morning at 9am. The summer version had a festival and kayaking and camping and archery and a trip to London. No watersports or festivals in January, alas. A proper 5-9 post should feature micro-adventures, wild camping, swimming, and whatever else you feel like doing in a wet January but my winter 5-9 is pretty indoors-based. I documented it with 1SE
Week 1: Thursday 1st to Wednesday 7th
Thursday to Sunday were days off, because Christmas break. I did very little with them: my car needed some urgent work and I didn’t like to take it out. I spent the 1st making a pair of wings to attach to my sandals, spent the long weekend eating all the Christmas food, having baths, reading, watching Gilmore Girls, catching up on my blog and trying to get into a good habit of working on the book that I’ve been trying to write for at least a year and a half and then it was Monday.
Monday evening I just had a bath. First day back at work for a week and a half, there was stuff going on already (a colleague was taking a longer break and I had his work to cover too and it all broke after not having been touched for a week and a half!) so after work, I went for my daily 2.3km walk around town, which is pretty uninspiring but does at least get me outside every day, and then I just flopped in the bath.
We had a Brownie planning meeting on the Tuesday, so that meant driving the long way because the short way is closed for a year and spending two hours putting the term’s programme together – I’m probably going to do an entire blog post on that, actually. On the bright side, my car’s engine management light went out, after I’d not driven it since the weekend before Christmas because I didn’t trust that it might not do something dramatic.
On Wednesday, the car had to go in to get everything fixed and make sure that light didn’t come back on but £630 later, they weren’t quite ready to return it that night. Not that I had any plans to use it. Somehow having that Tuesday evening taken out by the planning meeting meant that by Wednesday I was too exhausted to do anything. There’s no real reason to be so tired so early in the year, especially after having the long Christmas break where I did almost nothing, but work being trickier than usual, the car misbehaving and the longer drive to Brownies on the second day back just seemed to take it out of me for the time being.
Week 2: Thursday 8th to Wednesday 14th
Thursday night was our first night back at Brownies. We had two new girls with similar enough names that the second one’s little friends all piped up “that’s not how it’s pronounced!” when Brown Owl read out the first one on the register. We also had a Guide in with us for her Duke of Edinburgh volunteering hours and we weren’t expecting that and didn’t really know what to do with her. We already have 3 adult leaders, a very capable Young Leader and a parent helper, so we’re not desperately short on hands.
On Friday, I was up in the middle of the night to go to Switzerland, and then Saturday and Sunday were spent on the shores of Lac Leman. I blogged all that and you can find it under the Cheese & Chocolate (2026) tag so I won’t repeat it all here but in short, I explored Lausanne, Chateau de Chillon, went snowshoeing in the dark and did a chocolate workshop at an actual Swiss chocolate factory.
Monday night was the first night back at Rangers and we did some glass painting – or actually, some plastic painting. I had some baubles and they demonstrated their creativity and fine art skills.
Tuesday was Trefoil Guild, Guiding for adults. It was the AGM and we had the briefest most disinterest talk from a representative of our 2025 charity that I have ever heard anyone give in my entire life. We re-elected the current chair, secretary and treasurer and I declined to join the committee because I just don’t have time, although it did flicker briefly across my mind “how hard can it be?”. No! I already do enough!
Wednesday was a night off, so that was nice. Well, it was a night to get a Swiss blog and a half written and scheduled, so not exactly a night off but at least I wasn’t required to put on a uniform or leave the house, other than for my daily walk. I’m not going to mention the daily walk in every line but it happens at some point between about 5pm and 6.30pm depending on how much into Pointless or House of Games I get. Except Thursdays, when I need to rush straight out to Brownies as soon as I’ve changed into uniform, so I do my walk at lunchtime on Thursdays.
Week 3: Thursday 15th – Wednesday 21st
On Thursday I was at Brownies again and we were doing an activity called Trash Fashion, which required them to make an outfit out of binbags, newspapers and whatever other rubbish they’d brought with them. Our DofE volunteer, after standing around kind of awkwardly last week suddenly developed initiative and spent the evening helping one of the groups that particularly needed extra help, without anyone pointing that out to her. For some reason, no one at Brownies is actually her mentor but I’m already thinking that actually, I can probably give her a good write-up at the end, after a slightly rough beginning.
I don’t want to say “I was so tired after Brownies, Rangers and a weekend in Switzerland” but I was, so I had a spa afternoon on Friday and then the weekend was getting ahead with the Switzerland blog posts for the next couple of weeks and that was about all. Those kind of weekends, where I don’t do much, should be good for me but I kind of feel like sitting at my laptop all weekend as well as all week isn’t terribly good for me.
Back at Rangers on Monday evening and we were making brownies, which is something they’d specifically requested before Christmas. I’d expected them to have forgotten but they hadn’t – I’d warned them last week that I hadn’t forgotten but I hadn’t had time to plan it or get the ingredients or the cookware (out of the drawers at home; I’m not buying them cookware!) and that we’d do it next week and we did!
On Tuesday evening I went swimming because I swim semi-regularly in the summer, when the boathouse allows, and I want to get into the habit of swimming more regularly in the winter, even though I hate the pool. We have a competitive club-slash-team and they monopolise both the medium and fast lanes. The slow lane is occupied by the people who don’t really know how to swim and I don’t fit in any of them. At the outdoor pool, I’m a textbook medium swimmer but here, I’m far too fast for the slow lane and don’t have enough stamina to keep up with the medium lane. It’s also horribly over-chlorinated, so I come home with red eyes. The best indoor option is a good drive away and if I can use the local pool, I’d rather do that.
On Wednesday, I could feel the discomfort in my ear that tells me I got water in it swimming the night before and it doesn’t like it. Wednesday was an unusual day in that my boss came down from London and we hired a room and worked from there together instead of sitting at home at my desk. But it was also an unusual day because it was the first day of my 10-week Norwegian course! It’s on Zoom, it’s an hour and a half and because I was getting home from the office about 5.20pm instead of coming downstairs at 5pm on the dot, I didn’t have time to do my daily walk and eat before it, so Norwegian lesson 6 – 7.30pm and then walk and then probably fall in the bath, because it was pouring with rain that day and I was cold and wet.
Week 4: Thursday 22nd – Wednesday 28th
Guess what I did on Thursday evening? Brownies! Our DofE volunteer remains excellent! Actually, I mostly did badgemin because our Young Leader ran the entire evening so she could tick off a ton of stuff in her Young Leader Development Programme, so I cleaned out oily bowls and marked up badges and updated GO and then we signed off her books and had a look at what else she needs to do to finish all twelve modules.
On Friday I went shopping, which is something I haven’t done in a while. I had something specific to buy but I also wanted to look into a new bag to serve as my budget airline personal item, since my one is from Lidl, has been sewn up once and is now splitting at the seams in three more places. I didn’t find anything but I have some better ideas now.
On Saturday I was mostly lazy. I did a bit of blogging and a lot of sitting at my desk while Loki or Gilmore Girls prattled in the background and I battled the dizziness that resulted from getting water in my ear. This happens regularly enough that I’m used to just “it’ll go away in a few days” and it’s only been going since Thursday, so I’ve got a couple more days to put up with it. It just makes me feel slightly lopsided and like I don’t really want to do anything.
On Sunday, my sister had her baby shower, so we went over early to set up. It has the best village hall kitchen I’ve ever seen – all the drawers and cupboards are labelled with little pictograms, everything contains what it claims to contain and I’m pretty sure it’s got everything you could possibly want, including an apron with the hall’s logo embroidered on it. Come to that, how many village halls even have a logo?
Then on Monday I was at Brownies and Rangers. I do Brownies and Rangers in two different districts and the Brownies in my Ranger district are temporarily down a leader. Because we’re really short on leaders and especially short on leaders with enough capacity to help out, I found myself volunteering. They actually have four adult leaders even without their main one but one doesn’t come in winter because of driving conditions and one is a Young Leader who only turned 18 in December and is swamped by A Levels, so on the two weeks in February when one of the two who can almost definitely make it every week can’t make it, I’m booked in. But then the ex-Young Leader couldn’t come this week so they asked if I could. So I’m doing triple duty for the next three weeks! We mostly made bird feeders.
Rangers immediately afterwards was quiet – I’d planned to do some badge work but then only one of the four Rangers turned up so we looked at badges but mostly just talked about her life.
On Tuesday, I walked in the pouring rain, the remains of a storm that flooded the town for the first time in 50 years, did my Norwegian homework and then caught up with the Night Manager in the bath. The dizziness is still lingering – not as bad as it was on Thursday and Friday but noticeable around the edges.
And then on Wednesday, I did my daily walk at lunchtime so I had time to eat and settle before my Norwegian lesson at 6. Last week was just introductions and I’ve covered all that over the last decade of Duolingo and Teach Yourself, so I was hoping we’d be getting into new territory soon.
Week 5: Thursday 29th to Saturday 31st
For once, I actually wasn’t at Brownies on Thursday but I was still doing Girlguiding – the boathouse was having its planning meeting for the summer term, figuring out what nights would work for the boat club and what requests we had for individual units to come down for taster sessions. We actually only have three or four unit nights this year and it seems our own internal instructor can at least do the boat club nights, give or take the one we may or may not run at half term.
Friday was supposed to be a day of catching up on blog and book writing but I woke up with the sudden heavy realisation of something I’d done wrong at work that entire week so I spent a chunk of the day absolutely not at work while definitely sitting at my desk trying to untangle it. In the afternoon, my mum had an appointment and decided it would be nice if we all went to the pub afterwards, so I walked around in the rain while her appointment took half the time we all expected it to and then we all had pudding as well as a very early dinner.
By Saturday, I was still a bit behind on my monthly walking target so I went for a walk first thing and then we took the Brownies to the pantomime in the afternoon, so I parked further away than planned and managed to hit my target. I popped into my favourite bookshop on the way and then panto time! I know it’s traditional to do it before Christmas but our town does it after Christmas and no one has time to take half a Saturday out of their calendar in December, so we’re very happy with that.
And then I probably saw the longest January ever out with a bath.
I Am A Polar Bear 