Category: About Me

The New Way of Life

It’s getting really tiresome now. Every day we wake up and have to remind each other what day it is. We don’t seem to be able to summon up the motivation to do all the jobs around the house that we have talked about. It’s as if we’re in strange sort of limbo waiting for something to change, or something to happen.

I don’t think the weather is helping. It’s still wet and dull and today it was really windy. It made the bike ride really hard work.

But, nothing dramatic is going to happen. We could be waiting like this for many months more.

I worked on my biography in the mornng. Three or four more chapters and the first draft should be done.

Had a late lunch and then went on our bike ride.

I think I’ve mentioned my, age inappropriate, PlayStation guilty pleasure before. In 2013 I completed the best game I have ever played called “The Last of Us”. Today, seven years later, my pre-ordered copy of “The Last of Us II” arrived. I wasn’t expecting it. It was due in May but delayed because of the pandemic.

When I came down for lunch, an Amazon package had arrived. Inside was a really old karaoke game for the Wii. I was totally confused. Was it a mistake? Was it a scam? Had my account been hacked? Was it for someone else? What was going on?

I picked up my phone and was about to check my Amazon Account, when I heard M sniggering. He got me! Got me good! He took my real game out of the cupboard where he had hidden it and handed it to me. Poor thing. He knows he’s lost me to the PlayStation for a while now. I need to try and limit the time I spend on it. It can be a very unhealthy obsession.

M was cooking so I had a couple of hours to load it up and try it out while he made dinner.

At least it solves my problem of running out of things I want to watch on TV. I’m sure he’ll be able to find a few shoot’em ups that he can watch while I am otherwise engaged.

The News

Today the government announced that we have moved down to the next Covid alert level.

We were at 4 and we are now at 3.

This coincided with the WHO stating that the world is entering a new and dangerous phase of the pandemic. They feel that easing lockdown and entering the Track and Trace phase could lead to a dangerous and uncontrollable second wave. We will see.

A new £1 billion fund has been announced to help disadvantaged children to “catch-up” with their education.

The Numbers

173 new deaths bringing the total to 42,461.

1,346 new cases.

The New Way of Life

I’m tempted to start winding this Self Isolation journal down now, alongside the easing of lockdown. We’re waiting for the daily infection rates to drop below 500 before we make any significant changes to our lives. Perhaps I’ll stop writing every day at that point, and just write when I have something interesting or important to say. I’d love to end this with us getting on the plane to Barbados!

Lockdown life is so dull, especially when the weather is bad. It’s more and more difficult to find something to write about. I’m hating my hair. It’s so thick and long that I can’t seem to get it to look nice whatever I do!

Today, We have done very little again. The weather is dreadful again. I didn’t go out for a bike ride for the second day in a row.

We slept in and pottered about the house all day. M did a bit of cleaning. I did a bit of writing, cross-stitch and watched some TV. I even had a doze on the sofa in the afternoon. M went for a bike ride in the rain. I couldn’t face it to be honest. Partly because of the rain and partly because I’m tired and a tiny bit hungover after yesterday. An alcohol free day today should get me back on track for tomorrow.

Talking to different people, is revealing a split in society between people who are still taking care, socially distancing and following government guidelines, and people who are doing whatever they want, as if it is all over. This split is apparent even within our own family.

It’s not all over though. You just have to look at the number of new cases which are still running at over 1000 per day. Back in March, when we went into isolation, there were only 1,500 or so active cases in total.

The News

Vera Lynne has died aged 103.

The Government has abandoned their plans to use their own Contact Tracing App, that they piloted in the Isle of White, in yet another U-turn. They are going to use the Google Apple App that other countries have gone for instead. I suppose its good that they are prepared to be flexible if it is in the best interests of everyone. The government App works well on Android phones and provides accurate estimates of distance, but it doesn’t work on Apple phones as their systems are not compatible. The Google Apple App is not as good at estimating distance as the government App. They say that they are going to share their own distance algorithm with Apple to enable them to improve the accuracy of their App. I seem to recall Dominic Cummings sister owns the company that was developing the government App.

The Oxford vaccine is being manufactured by Astra Zeneca, and stockpiled in advance of it being approved. The government has announced that it will prioritise high risk individuals and healthcare workers as soon as it becomes available. This would be a godsend for us. It would be the only thing that would allow to us to get our lives properly back to normal.

The Bank of England is going to pump £100 billion into the UK economy to help fight the anticipated depression due to the virus.

500 doctors have died from Covid-19 in Russia! This terrible death toll is believed to be related to a lack of PPE.

Peru is the latest country to be badly hit by the virus.

The German outbreak has centred around an abattoir and thousands of people are back in quarantine. I wonder if we will see any increase in cases as a result of people crowding onto the beaches in the good weather a few weeks ago, and all the recent BLM related demonstrations.

The Numbers

135 new deaths. Total 42,288.

1,218 new cases.

 

 

The New Way of Life.

We had an unusual day today! I had to set the alarm for 7.30 as I was hosting a local business network meeting on Zoom at 09.00. We are still sleeping in so late these days, it has become our new normal.

The meeting finished at 10.00 and I did a little bit of writing until my Ocado grocery delivery arrived at 11.00.

After I had put it all away, I had a long shower and tried to something with my horribly overgrown hair, before a virtual Song Contest with a friend in the afternoon.

Every Wednesday, one of our friends, A, a single man who has been furloughed and in lockdown on his own, has a Song Contest, with another couple, S&S. S&S are in Brussels visiting their family this week so we said we would do it with him instead. We were pre-warned that it was a prolonged business and so decided to start at 2pm rather than sitting up until 2am, as they usually do. I think we also flirted with the idea of doing it in the garden, but the weather put paid to that. We have had dramatic thunderstorms in the afternoon for several days in a row now.

The Song Content consists of each player, preselecting 29 songs from a list of criteria such as: makes you happy, makes you sad, has a number in the title, has a name in the title, from the year of your birth, makes you want to dance etc. etc. Then we play them all and each player gives the others a score for each song: 1 if you love it, 1/2 if you like it and 0 if your hate it.

29 songs, at an average of 3 minutes per song, for 3 people takes about 4.5 hours to get through. When you add in chats, loo breaks and topping up drinks and snacks etc. its a very long game! We started at 2 and finished at 8.30pm! I drank the best part of 2 bottles of wine over the 6.5 hours and fell into bed not long after 9pm!

So, I’m actually writing this blog on Thursday!

The News

The premier league football started up again today with no spectators. After a minutes silence for the victims of Covid-19, and the whistle was blown, the players all “took the knee” in a gesture of support for #blacklivesmatter.

China and India have been “clashing” on the border – something to do with sovereignty. Reports suggest that about 20 soldiers have died!

The Numbers

184 new deaths taking the total to 42,153.

1,115 new cases.

Germany seems to be experiencing the start of a second wave!

2 days ago they had 338 new cases and yesterday they had 1,797! The isolated outbreak has been in Berlin and affected over 300 households who live in close proximity to each other.

The New Way of Life

Another busy day! Worked on my biography project for most of the day. Really making good progress now with the first draft. I think I only have a handful of chapters left to write.

I stopped for lunch and a break about 2.30 pm and then went out for my bike ride. It’s a humid day, overcast but warm.

M seems to be relaxing a bit! There is a fresh fish van that visits the village every Tuesday. Every Tuesday, without fail, we pass it on our bike ride and promise ourselves that we’ll remember to get some fish the following week. Today, it was there on our way home, but I needed to have shower before I could go out, so he went instead! On the way back he went into the chemist to pick up his prescription. Well! He must be feeling that things are getting safer out there. It’s the first time he’s gone into anywhere at all since the 15th of March!

He has also made an appointment in Birmingham city centre for us to take his Apple watch in to be repaired next week! Our local Apple shop was fully booked for months and he’s desperate to get it fixed so that he can monitor how his athletic prowess is coming along. So we’ll be driving into the city and going to the Apple shop in the centre of town! Wow! What an adventure!

Talking of adventures, Europe opened its borders today and our friends, whose daughter and granddaughter lives there, went to visit them on the Eurostar! They took the train to London, then the Eurostar to Brussels, where their son-in-law picked them up. They are staying in a hotel and just messaged us to say that, after a lovely day with their family, they are sitting on the hotel terrace enjoying a bottle of wine. I can’t imagine what it must feel like. They must feel as though they are in a dream.

The News

As said, Europe has opened its borders today but, apart from Belgium, most countries are excluding people from the UK, citing our poor control of the virus.

In New Zealand, only a few days after they declared themselves Covid free, two British women have introduced the virus into the country again. They travelled on a flight via Doha and Brisbane and were half way a two week quarantine, when they were allowed to leave early to visit a dying relative. They drove 400 miles across New Zealand in a car with another family member before testing positive. Now everyone they came into contact with on their journey will have to be contacted and asked, along with anyone they have been in contact with, to self-isolate for 14 days.

I do hope that this does not force other countries (yes, I do mean Barbados!) to restrict visitors from the UK!

The government has done another U-turn on providing child meal vouchers for families in need through the school holidays, after an appeal by Marcus Rashford, a young England footballer who experienced poverty and hardship as a child. Many families are in terrible financial difficulties at the moment. Many children who normally get free school meals and have been attending school through lockdown as “vulnerable” children, were going to miss out on this during the school holidays and the government, until today, were refusing to introduce the scheme over the summer.

This is a situation that is only going to get worse. We haven’t seen the half of it yet! It is estimated that 600,000 people have lost their jobs as a result of the pandemic, and that by the summer 3 million will be unemployed.

An old medicine, Dexamethazone, has been shown to be effective in reducing mortality from Covid-19. It is widely available as a generic across the world and is cheap to manufacture. It could be a significant development!

Indian hospitals are currently being overwhelmed by people with the virus

The Numbers

233 new deaths taking the total to 41,969.

1279 new cases.

It’s a very slow process.

The New Way of Life

Feeling tired today and achy for some reason. Can’t imagine why, I’ve hardly done anything over the weekend.

Busy day. Started out by clearing my emails and finishing my weekend blog posts. Took a silly amount of time to create a mailing list from scratch for a local business network as the document I was sent was a “screenshot”! Sorted out an invoice for a public sector client. Had a Zoo and then had a long conversation with my sister about the big family quiz on Saturday. I updated my shopping order for Wednesday then went for a bike ride.

M has had 5,000 views of his video on Facebook. I think he thinks he’s going to be the next internet celebrity!

The News

Shops have reopened today. Queues outside shops like Primark and Sports Direct since 4.30 am. Some crowds ignoring social distancing to get bargains. I don’t know anyone who has gone shopping and we certainly won’t be for a while at least. M needs his Apple Watch repairing so I may take that in for him when things settle down.

It is now permitted to go to a church for private prayer.

A US fighter plane on a training mission has crashed into the North Sea.

Barbados has eased their quarantine rules a teeny weeny bit for people coming into the country from other low-risk countries (not us then!). Actually, it seems to be other Caribbean  countries and the change is that some people, who meet certain criteria, will be allowed to self-isolate at home.

The Numbers

Numbers are always low on a Monday after the weekend.

38 deaths taking the total to 41,736.

1,056 new cases.

The New Way of Life

We decided to take the car out for a run today and so we drove over to the Lickey Hills for a walk. It was lovely. The car park seemed busy but, because it is such a big space, once we were out of the car and walking, there was plenty of space to have a peaceful walk. It was a funny day weather wise. Rain was predicted at 50-60% chance for the whole day but it didn’t actually rain at all. It was humid. I noticed that walking up hills felt easier than usual. All the cycling seems to have improved my fitness. I might not be losing weight by if I’m improving my fitness that’s something!

I coked fish pie for Sunday lunch.

We’re running out of things to watch on TV. Today we binged on Afterlife with Ricky Gervais. It was actually very good. Funny and poignant. We don’t really like Ricky Gervais but had to admit that he was really good in this.

The News

The news was all about the violence in London on Saturday.

France are starting to ease their lockdown now.  They had 28 death and 726 new cases over the past 24 hours.

The virus is raging through Latin America and India at the moment.

The Numbers

202 new deaths, total 41,481.

1,541, new cases. New cases in Spain and Italy were 396 and 346 respectively.

We have the highest death rate per million by a log way now, after Belgium, at 614 with Belgium at 833.

The New Way of Life

I went out for a walk today with my daughter and granddaughter, little A. It meant so much. Little A was so forgiving. We picked up exactly where we left off 3 months ago. She was so excited to see us. Didn’t bear a grudge about the fact that we’ve dropped her like a hot potato since March. It made me think about how time doesn’t really mean anything to toddlers. M greeted her from a distance and behind the front gate. She ran to him waving and squealing in delight. “Dopsy! Dopsy!” She calls him Dopsy as she struggle with Popsy, his preferred grandparent diminutive.

Also, had a  lovely long time with son and his partner in Sweden. Most of the conversation was about #blacklivesmatter and about when we might all be able to get away again. Sweden and the UK are two countries that others are least likely to welcome back over their borders. The UK because of our persistently high numbers of infections and Sweden because of their laisse faire attitude to lock down and social distancing.

We had a bit of thunder today. A bit, but not enough for me. I love a good thunderstorm.

I cooked our weekly curry tonight instead of Friday this week. Lamb Dopiaza, Chana Masala and Naan stuffed with garlic, chili and paneer.

The News

Rugby restarted in New Zealand today. We’re really missing rugby and sport in general. This week we should have been at the cricket (West Indies v England) and the Nature Valley Tennis Tournament in Edgbaston. This year we had tickets for the final day. Football is due to start soon – we don’t like football – I would go so far as to say I hate it, largely because of the fans – but we’re seriously thinking about watching it – just to be able to watch live sport.

The far-right hooligans have crawled out from under their stones in London for their version of “protecting British monuments and statues, which essentially consisted of rioting, attacking the police and peaceful BLM protestors.

Similar scenes played out in Paris.

A fresh outbreak in a market in Beijing has triggered fears of a second wave in China.

The Numbers

151 deaths, total 41,279.

1,266 new cases.

 

 

The New Way of Life

We’ve both admitted to feeling a bit fed up with it all again. Lots of other people seem to be picking their lives up again. Meeting up, going back to work and so on. All except us. The government are announcing little things that people can do again but many people seem to be already doing them!

We went for our bike ride early yesterday as the weather forecast for the afternoon was bad. This week was supposed to be national bike week. Cars were supposed to be making a special effort to give cyclists a car width’s space when overtaking them. Honestly, I didn’t see much evidence of that. There were a few occasions when I could have touched cars as they brushed past me! We’re beginning to think that it may be better just to drive in the middle of the lane and be damned!

I didn’t open my computer yesterday! Had a day off from writing, emails etc. I watched some TV and did my cross-stitch. I’ve got two on the go now. A small London sky-line and an enormous Japanese Cherry Blossom scene. The Japanese kit came from China. The pattern is stamped on the canvas, which is helpful but you can see the stamping ink beneath the stitches. I’ve never done one like this before. I had to do  a bit of “googling” to find out how to use it. Its’s a massive piece. I don’t want to get through and find the dye doesn’t wash out easily – it could take me years to finish it!

M recorded a video on his personal experience of racism throughout his life, as his part of #blacklivesmatter. He posted it on social media. It’s very powerful and lots of people have commented on it.

It was writers group and quiz night. I didn’t make our usual curry – we had Pizza instead. I’ll do the curry tomorrow.

The News

Anti-racism protests continue. Far-right groups are coming out now in opposition which usually results in violence. We’ve had a couple of time when we’ve got caught up in this type of thing. Horrible. Once in London with the so-called Football Lads Alliance and once in Birmingham with the English Defence League. Vile people.

The Numbers

202 New Deaths, Total 31,481 – it just keeps going up and up.

1,541 New Cases

 

 

 

The New Way of Life

I was determined to finish Chapter 5 of Wait for Me so that I can hit all my targets for Friday and have a day off tomorrow. I did it but it took until 3pm and by the time I’d had a shower and a bike ride it was 5pm!

So, its a short one today!

Other than that, didn’t do very much today. Looking forward to having a day to myself tomorrow.

Another blustery, cool day but we managed to dodge the showers while we were out on our bikes.

Naughty, naughty, easy peasy, pie and chips for dinner!

The News

Test and trace figures suggest that only 1/3 of people contacted gave no, or incorrect, contact details, or refused to participate. Shouldn’t there be a fine for people who don’t cooperate or refuse to self-isolate if were going to prevent a second wave?

Out of 200 who were repatriated by air to Barbados from the US a couple of days ago, 4 have tested positive for the virus.

Pubs and schools say they can’t re-open successfully unless the government reduce the social distancing distance from 2 metres to 1 metre. The government are sticking to their guns for now. We will see.

British Gas owner, Centrika, has cut 5,000 jobs.

People are pulling down statues of imperialists slave traders all over the world!

The Numbers

1,266 new cases. Still not going down significantly.

151 new deaths taking the total to 41,279.

 

 

The New Way of Life

My bike is back and raring to go and try out it’s serviced gears and brakes, and new peddles! So, I took it out for a spin at lunch-time with M.

It’s a dull day but not cold or wet, so perfect for cycling.

Got on with organising our family quiz. 19 people taking part with one son and his partner joining us from Sweden and eldest granddaughter dialing in from Greece.

Cracking on nicely with editing Chapter 5 of Wait for Me. Should finish it tomorrow.

A grocery delivery arrived this morning and I put it all away. I’m not being quite as obsessive about sanitising it all now. Still careful, but it’s not such a major operation. I’m getting into a good routine now to avoid having such long gaps in between deliveries. I’m pretty much getting them weekly now. I always have 3 delivery slots booked and when one shop arrives I book the next one. That means the orders are smaller and easier to deal with and we don’t run out of so much stuff, necessitating trips to our local Tesco, where social distancing standards are slipping a little.

I made a batch of Carluccio’s Bolognese sauce in the afternoon. It’s a simple recipe but a long cooking time so I always make double and freeze half. It’s just onions, minced beef and pork fried in butter and olive oil them simmered for 3 hours with passata, tomato puree and white wine. Simple but the long slow simmer makes it really tasty.

Before dinner I had a long bath and read my book in there for a while. Lovely. In my PJ’s by 6pm!

The News

Zoos, Safari Parks and outdoor attractions can open from Monday. At first I thought – so what? But then I learned that animals were going to be put down because businesses were failing and I did a double take. I’m not the world’s biggest animal lover, (I always say I’ll start worrying about animals when all the people in the world are safe and fed) but I’d never want the poor creatures to be killed.

Surprise, surprise the UK economy has been hit the worst out of all of the worlds leading economies. It’s an interesting one. We have been devastated by the virus but many people believe that if the government had locked down just a week or two before they did, it wouldn’t have been so bad.

It also seems that countries who care more about their people than their economies and locked down early, like New Zealand have fared better than those that locked down late.  New Zealand have declared themselves virus-free over the past couple of days, and are really getting back to normal.

Even, rugby is re-starting in New Zealand. No sign of that happening here any time soon. We’re thinking of finding someone we know to sell our tickets and flights for the European Rugby Union Finals in Marseille. We’re not going to be going now. If we can get out of the country we’ll be heading straight for Barbados.

The NHS is struggling to get back to normal. Waiting are really long. Estimates suggest that 10 million people are waiting for treatment. My gallstones appointment that was in March, and then pushed back to June by me, has been pushed back again to late July.

In the daily briefing, led by Boris today, they announced that single people (including single parents and their children) can join another household and stay over if they want to. Not really sure what this means in practice. They are a calling it a support bubble.

The Numbers

245 new deaths.

Total “official” deaths 41,128.

New cases 1,419. This is going up again.