The blog titles are going a little more upbeat as I am no longer focusing on having Covid 19 come to stay as thankfully it has now left the building. Matt is still very very tired but no longer has a temperature or persistent cough. He is a bit wheezy but not as bad as at the weekend. Anna, Elliott and I are completely back to normal - taste and smell restored, no cough or temperature, no aches and pains….
Going out into the limited new world is a strange place since I was last “out” is quite bewildering. Yesterday whilst walking the dogs I wondered why there was such a huge queue outside the chocolate shop before I realised it was the very spaced out queue to get into to the chemist….. Nobody smiles or says hello anymore, everyone looks suspiciously at each other questioning why they are out……
We received a lovely bookbinding package from Sal Broadhurst for Anna and I to make some mini books…. so far we have been so busy we haven’t had time to make them which must be a positive….. “something to look forward to” has become my mantra for anything that looks vaguely fun….
Bookbinding fun….
Yesterday Matt managed a day without going back to bed. He did this by watching back to back programmes about Liverpool football club… A curious quirk of this virus is that Matt hasn’t picked up a book once. Normally Matt reads all the time, he can’t wait to go to bed in the evening to read and if a spare hour comes his way in the day he will happily disappear into a book. But with cv19 he has become addicted to twitter and Liverpool FC programmes. He was a huge Liverpool FC fan before cv19 so I can’t guarantee your husband or son will react with the same enthusiasm for Liverpool FC but for Matt this has certainly helped him on the road to recovery.
Yesterday afternoon we discovered the delightful television adaptation of Malory Towers the much loved Enid Blyton books about a girls boarding school in Cornwall. We limited ourself to two episodes last night but got completely carried away and high on life and watched three today. Tomorrow we are going to have to impose stricter rations I can tell…..
Yesterday I was in charge of tea as Matt has completely lost his appetite and has no energy to cook so it will be a miracle if we all survive until he gets better with my cooking repetoire…… Yesterday was tuna pasta bake which the kids loved and Matt nibbled a mouthful or two cautiously before retiring to bed again.
Exhausted from back to back Steven Gerrard and friends……
This morning I woke up about 6.30am. We had run out of milk and had barely anything to make a meal with left in the fridge so I thought I would be super organised and get round to Waitrose when it opened at 7. I actually made it for 7.30 and there was a huge spaced out ( physically, not on drugs) queue going down the hill. The lady on the door explained that Waitrose was letting 39 people in at a time. She did not explain about the first hour of the shop opening being for NHS workers, over 70’s and vulnerable people, something which had apparently been in the press and on tv a lot. We rarely watch actual tv and don’t receive a regular paper, we just get a free Guardian if we go to Waitrose which of course we hadn’t for over a week. I can at this point of writing hear my Mothers voice say “Well darling, if you had a Daily Mail delivered every day like I do you would know this was the case…”
So I queued for about 15 minutes in a very jolly queue and then when I reached the front at 7.45am the lady who had advised me about the 39 shoppers allowed informed me that I couldn’t come in because it wasn’t 8am. I felt really stupid that I hadn’t heard this piece of information anywhere and embarrassed joined the end of the queue at the bottom of the hill again hoping it would take another 15 minutes. I hadn’t taken my phone with me and so was unable to tell anyone in my family that I was still valiantly trying to buy milk and essential items……..
This queue was quicker and I reached the front at 7.50am. I had ended up with some of my neighbours from our street behind me so I let them go in front and then I explained to the now man on the door that I really didn’t want to queue again and could I stand and wait until it was 8am. He looked a bit fed up that his system was being disrupted so early in the day but when I explained I didn’t know about the first hour rule because I had actually been coping with cv19 he let me stay and pretty quickly I was allowed in.
The shelves were pretty empty but not as bad as I had heard they had been in previous days. I bought my essential shopping and scampered home for some reason feeling a bit emotional about the whole experience. Going out to so many changes that everyone else has already adapted to is really bewildering. I felt like I was going to get something wrong or get told off at every turn. My hands were actually shaking when I went to touch the touch screen to checkout with my self service scanner. I wondered if I should still be touching a touch screen, surely that sort of outlandish behaviour was now forbidden. I wasn’t wearing blue latex gloves like nearly every other shopper in there. I have no idea where one even gets such gloves. I felt like I ought to tell the shop assistant I would definitely be washing my hands when I got home and apologising for my ungloved hands. I didn’t tell her, but I did nearly get knocked over by her in her rush to hand sanitise the hand held scanner and screen I had touched with my ungloved hand as I turned to leave.
I did thoroughly wash my hands when I got home and then put away my shopping and realised, as we always do, when we come back from Waitrose that I had forgotten a couple of items. In a normal world these would quickly be procured by sending a child round and bribing them with a chocolate bar for their trouble but not today! No way was I sending one of my children to run the gauntlet of the spaced out queue and then the complicated black lines you have to stand behind if not using self service. Plus I had already been the person in the house to do our essential shop and so more fool me if I was too stupid to remember some of the items. We would have to go without, probably until Matt is better ……..
I didn’t really want to go out again at all after that experience and felt so relieved to be home where I know the rules. But I had to walk the dogs. So off we went with me half expecting all the way to be stopped by the police and questioned as to why I was out. “A daily exercise outing. A daily exercise outing.” I kept muttering under my breath like a fugitive on the run trying to get their story straight. We saw a few people, mostly without dogs which always confuses me and most said hello and all nearly fell off the verge into the field or road to keep the 2 metre distance.
We managed half the distance of our usual walk before I headed home somehow convinced there was a time limit on being outside ( there isn’t I heard on the 10 O clock news this evening) and I was going to break it and like Cinderella my wellies would turn into pumpkins or some such inconvenient fate.
We got home and I was relieved that was the last of my going out for the day. Funny how I was so desperate to get back to normal last week only to find there is no normal anymore and I don’t know how to play the new game.
I then made some coffee and took lots of pieces I had made before cv19 out into the garden to glaze. Anna was doing her school work, there was washing in the washing machine, Matt was on the sofa looking at Liverpools greatest goals and improving by the minute. Elliott was still trying to sleep his way out of lockdown. All was well.
I listened to yesterdays Womans Hour podcast and glazed a few houses. Matt came out with some coffee and said he was feeling better. Not well but improving. He still needs to take it slowly and I think he may run out of Liverpool FC programmes and matches to watch but as he has watched the corner taken by Trent Alexander Arnold in the game against Barcelona last year every day since I don’t think he will mind some repeats.
Recovery dog.
Matt then went and made us all egg mayonnaise sandwiches for lunch which we all devoured. That was obviously one exertion too far and he went back to bed and to sleep for the rest of the day until about 6.30pm.
Anna and I decided to tackle the playroom and sort out all the toys she had grown out of and what might go in the loft ( for potential grandchildren) and what might reignite a spark of imagination……. I have no idea when the last time was anyone went in the playroom. It’s a funny shaped attic room above our bedroom with very awkward jutting out ceilings that one can’t fail to hit their head on at least once whilst up there. For many years it was Elliotts bedroom but when Henry moved out Elliott was able to command his old bedroom and this became the playroom. Anyway it’s basically home to lego which was the boys favourite toy forever but not something Anna has ever really got into. We will hold on to the lego for any grandchildren that might come along although I’m not entirely sure Henry has grown out of it…….
Apart from lego there are a few dolls, a marble run and Sylvanians galore. I barely invested in anything Sylvanian myself Anna was extremely fortunate to be given two big boxes of them and their homes and cars and clinics and fish and chip vans and hospitals and nurseries by two friends of mine who had grown tired of stepping on their spiky limbs and hoovering up all their microscopic accessories. So we have Sylvania upstairs now. It’s a Cv19 free utopia where this afternoon they were all roaming their streets freely and going on picnics and to the shops and parks. We talked about how we take all those things for granted and how we won’t ever again ( except I expect we will!) It was a delicious few hours of just playing and I hope Anna does more of it during this isolation. She did mention about 500 times how the experience would be improved if Emily ( her best friend) or Lyra ( her cousin) were there but she made do with me for today….
At about 5pm we went downstairs and made a cup of tea and watched three episodes of Malory Towers, again pure escapism. Elliott came back from his daily exercise which was a dog walk. The dogs looked highly suspicious as to why they are suddenly in demand but not ones to look a gift horse in the mouth went along with it…..
I cooked tea, left overs from the chicken dinner we had on Sunday with extra veg and chopped up bits of chorizo. We listened to some catch up episodes of The Archers …… I can’t help but wonder what has happened to me, never have I had to catch up on Woman’ s Hour or the Archers their timings are so ingrained in my everyday timetable…. How do I seem to have less hours in the day when I am barely leaving the house! The Archers is intriguing at the moment as they aren’t yet experiencing cv19 in the script and this evening we heard the disturbing news that there are to be fewer episodes broadcast per week as I suspect they are running out and I suppose can’t record more due to social distancing. I really will feel the world has collapsed if The Archers stops……… I had also showered and changed as I was “going out” later to meet some friends for wine and darning and a catch up on a Zoom date….
As I am so inexpert at cooking and timing I ended up taking my dinner with me to the Zoom date in my studio where we all logged on to our computers and got very excited waving at each other and just being so happy to see each others faces. We cheersed our wine or beers and showed each other our darning projects and had a jolly good catch up. It was so lovely to see everyone and to be able to chat about what we had all been going through lately. Most of us are self employed so how we would all survive was a hot topic for discussion. The meet up lasted for about an hour and left me feeling very energised and happy and I am looking forward to next Tuesdays one. Tuesdays are the new Friday in isolation land.
All in all a good day. I am happy I don’t need to go to Waitrose tomorrow but am happy to be taking the dogs out, working and watching some more Malory Towers. Hopefully we will see some more improvement to Matts health too…..