The Numbers
As we enter Week 6, I can’t even be bothered to talk about all the numbers any more, they are so meaningless.
The only ones that are real are the numbers of reported deaths and those are probably a massive underestimation.
For what it’s worth, only 596 people died yesterday bringing the total to 16,060. I say only, not because its a small number, but because its the smallest number we’ve seen for a while now. Then again, it was a Sunday and they have been low all along until we catch up with ourselves on Monday or Tuesday. Let’s see what happens today. We could be over the hump!
The News
The schools are not going back anytime soon!
Germany are lifting some shopping restrictions. Australia are opening some beaches. There have been no new cases in Barbados for a day or two.
Richard Branson has asked the government for a bail-out of £500 million for Virgin Atlantic or they will collapse. Eh? Hang on. This is a guy who is worth £4.7 billion and lives on his own island in the Caribbean where he doesn’t pay tax in the UK. This is what he says in his defence:
The New Way of Life
I can hardly remember what we did yesterday. I made a few calls. Had a doorstep chat with a friend as he passed on his daily walk. Got up late. Read my book. Wrote my blog.
We did a 10 mile bike ride in the afternoon. It was bright and sunny but actually quite cold.
I went to our local Tesco for some tomatoes. Always an adventure in The Time of Covid.
M cooked a pork meatball pasta bake for a late Sunday lunch and we watched a new (for us) science fiction BBC series called DEVS. Quite intriguing so far.
I watched a bit of the big concert Together at Home before bed, while M was looking for pictures of his old rugby days and sharing them with his old (literally) rugby mates. He’s been doing that a lot over the past few days! I have lost count of the number of times he has thrust his phone in my face to show me yet another, usually black and white, picture of them all lined up in their kit in the days when they had hair, muscles and all their own teeth.
Together at Home was an international event with the aim of paying tribute to key workers all over the world. A bit like a Time of Covid Band Aid. It was coordinated in America by Lady Gaga, where they raised millions. But, in the UK we just got to enjoy the highlights without dipping our hands into our pockets.
Basically, lots of musicians performed from their homes across the internet. Performers included The Rolling Stones, Stevie Wonder, Elton John, Cheryl Crow Little Mix and many, many more. In our UK highlights version, the music was interspersed with lots of soppy (in a good way) tributes to key workers across the country.
The most interesting thing about it was seeing inside the houses of the rich and famous. A bit like a musical version of Through the Keyhole, except that you knew whose house it was from the start. Maybe more like Cribs then, except that you only got to see a small part of the room they were recording in. The best one was Charlie Watts from the Rolling Stones, who pretended to drum his way through You cant always get what you want, in a corner of his sitting room, using some battered suitcases and an old armchair. Brilliant!
Thought for The Day
I’ve been thinking about my house in The Time of Covid. Most of our homes are set up for how they look, and not really for how they function. And, if we’re honest, its about how they look to others, and not really about how they look to us.
No-one has set foot in our house for 6 weeks and probably won’t for months, and maybe even years. I haven’t bothered cleaning or tidying the spare bedroom. It’s become a dumping ground for clean laundry and other items that have been displaced to make room for something more functional.
We live mostly in our ground floor, open plan kitchen, dining and sitting area. That is relatively unchanged apart from the fact that we are keeping our trainers and cycling gear at the front door. Normally, I like them put away.
The decking area outside the bifold doors has become a mini-gym area for M. Normally, I’d be nagging at him to put the equipment away because its supposed to be a nice summer sitting area.
We have an upstairs lounge which is usually the tidiest room in the house. All we really do in there is watch TV sometimes after dinner. Now it has become an indoor workout area with furniture permantly pushed back to make room for M’s yoga mat and the exercise bike has permanently moved in.
It has made me think that, after this, if there ever is an after, we should try to continue to keep our house how we want it, and how it works for us in terms of how we use it and how we live in it. Why shouldn’t we keep an exercise bike in the lounge if that’s where it works best for us. Why should we have to move furniture back and forth every time we excersise? What can’t the outside space be a workout space and a sitting space?
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