Full Diary

It’s strange how time seems to be so fluid, changing from the time when we used to think we were cash rich and time poor to now, where many of us are time rich and unfortunately for lots of people, cash poor. I used to plan my day around 1/2 hour blocks of time with each activity being allocated a number of blocks..... so as an example; a shopping trip to Reading was 1 block to get there, 2 blocks to buy what I needed and then 1 block to get home, 2 hours in total.Sometimes adding a couple of blocks for some lunch.

Having a birthday during the shutdown

As unplanned Easter breaks go, I had a really good one. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the Easter bunny was deemed a key worker and had delivered mini-eggs and a creme egg through my sanitised letterbox - and also left some bunnies at my front door. Unfortunately, the weather was extremely hot, and the bunnies weren't tall enough to reach the doorbell for me to let them in....and so they were casualties of the heat by the time I found them. Mad dogs and English men and all that.....

It’s strange that over the past couple of weeks the one word that so often comes to mind is “beautiful”. This seems all the more strange since we are in the grips of one of the worlds ugliest diseases and we see the horror played out nightly on the TV news programmes.

Of course, I am lucky to have a garden, and we are lucky to live in Mortimer...and we are all lucky, in the UK, to be enjoying some amazing good weather..... but the sky seems so blue, the hedgerows and trees are bursting into life, the bird song rings in our ears.

One positive thing I've noticed about the lock-down is the dog poo. Or should I say, the lack of it. Since we’ve all being squirrelled away at home, we aren't getting a chance to step in any.    

Larry David, the co-creator of Seinfeld, suggested last week that anyone going out and breaking the rules is not only selfish and inconsiderate but possibly a bit stupid. Why else, he argued, would anyone pass up the opportunity to lounge around watching boxed sets? 

So, I thought I'd do my bit for the community and go back to watching Bargain Hunt..

I have never kept a diary, in fact, I'm not a really a book person either... back in the day I blagged my Senior School English exams by reading only the Exam Revision Guide. The family joke is that I have only ever read one book; it's not true, but nearly. By the way that book was "Pillars of the Earth" by Ken Follett about 20 years ago, a gripping read. Now I think about it, I read the follow up too "World Without End", so that has crushed the family joke straight away.

 When the coronavirus became global, I spent much of my time with my friends, working out how close we were to closing the schools. We’d compare the number of people known to be infected in England in comparison to the number in Italy.   Every time Boris Johnson did a live speech, my friends and I would watch it, just to see if schools were going to close. When he did announce it, I was talking to a few of my friends on the Xbox and we were all so happy! But now I feel like going back to school might be better (much less boring).

When the lockdown was announced, our eldest daughter decided she wanted to be locked down with her boyfriend. That meant them choosing between lockdown with us, here, or with his parents at their house thirty miles away. She was very logical about it, figuring that if she chose here there'd be six in our house and only three in theirs whereas the other way around it would be more balanced with four and five respectively.

Today I'm stepping back to look at all of the things that are going on within the village to make this lockdown bearable. We really are a lucky village to have so many residents that are willing to get stuck in. I'm not talking about the NHS staff and essential personnel such as firemen, it goes without saying that we are all so proud of our key workers and the clapping on Thursday nights demonstrates that. I'm talking about the local volunteers who have stepped up to support their neighbours in a variety of roles.

Three weeks (I think) into lockdown and the days are rolling altogether. Its Easter weekend and it seems just the same as every other day in the past three weeks. I am very relieved that I am able to work at home to give some structure to the day, my two daughters do not have that luxury as both worked in retail and are climbing the walls.