Staying Home: Day 15

I'm feeling much more cheerful tonight than I was yesterday. I still spent much of the day working, but felt as though I was being more productive and it didn't drag on the way it did yesterday. Our washing machine is now repaired - the drain pipe had become detached (probably due to me pulling it too hard - oops!) and was an easy fix. It was good to have a chat and a catch up with our lovely repair man, who we have known for years, while still observing strict social distancing.

Teen Girl did an exercise video this morning, then a dance class this afternoon. I presume she did some schoolwork, but forgot to ask. She is very self-motivated and often likes to work when her sister does, so we tend to just leave her to get on with it unless she asks for help with something. H had a feedback session with a tutor this afternoon, then went for a run and when she got back did things in the garden with an exercise band and the newly acquired kettle bell. M and I stuck to our walk - we did 20 minutes together, then I came home and left M to carry on a bit longer on his own. Lots of signs of spring now, like the weeping willow in the photo which has turned green since I last noticed it.

We ordered a hammock for the garden at Teen Girl's request. It arrived today and she managed to assemble it herself, though needed a bit of help from H to attach the hammock to the frame. This afternoon M and I watched a long You Tube review of the Nissan Leaf. Before the lockdown we had been discussing the possibility of trading in our car in the summer and going electric, so we are doing a bit of homework. From what we have seen it looks as though it will be a good option for us. The range should comfortably cover what we normally do in a day, then we can plug it in overnight to charge.

H cooked chilli and home made roti bread for dinner, which we ate while watching today's Disney move, The Incredibles.



 

Staying Home: Day 14

Yesterday evening I spiralled down into a tired, frustrated grump, so didn't get round to writing this blog. Why? I started work at 8.40 and finished at 6.30, admittedly with a three hour break in the middle, but it made it me feel that my whole day had being dominated by work. There are so many things I would like to do while I'm at home, and it seems I just don't have either the time or energy left for them.  I am ring fencing the daily Disney movie and making myself go out for a short walk, but by the evening I don't have the energy to do anything except slump on the sofa and watch TV for a while before going to bed. I'm not sure what the solution is - maybe not to work in split shifts? Yesterday I did archive work in the morning, then freelance work in the late afternoon, and I think that is why it felt such a long work day.

The positive bits of yesterday ... the Disney movie was Tangled, which I had actually never watched before. Teen Girl had it on DVD, but found it too scary (she was a very, very timid small girl!) and I think only watched it once or twice, either when I wasn't around or wasn't paying attention. After watching Tangled M and I went for a 20 minute walk, then came home and had afternoon tea with a proper tea pot and Victoria sponge cake I had made for his birthday. Teen Girl managed to score some self raising flour at Tesco Express yesterday - flour seems to be the current shortage item locally - so we will be able to bake more cakes when this one is gone. Dinner was Keralan fish curry for myself and H, made with some whiting from the fish box, while Teen Girl and M had breaded fish and oven chips.

I took this photo on our walk yesterday of the queuing system at Tesco Express (our local convenience store, which is a branch of one of the major UK supermarkets), carefully laid out on the path with tape and bags of salt to make sure everyone keeps the regulation socially distant 2 metres apart. It looks kind of odd when there is no queue! According to Teen Girl, they are only allowing four people in at a time.

Another problem yesterday was that the washing machine broke. Firstly clothes came out sopping wet, then I tried to check the drain and water came out of the bottom. After mopping that up, we tried a test run and more water leaked out. This all happened while I was trying to watch Tangled, so my relaxing time out became stressful. (I have only just now twigged that this was also a factor in my poor mood. Duh!) Fortunately our lovely washing machine repair man, who has been fixing them for us for well over twenty years, is able to come out today and will hopefully come up with a socially distant fix. Otherwise ... eek! 

So, onwards and upwards. Today will be better! 

Staying Home: Day 13

The clocks went forward last night, which made no difference to us whatsoever. It will be nice though to have the extra hour of daylight in the evening. Today is M's birthday, so once the girls surfaced he opened his cards and presents. These included two sets of theatre tickets - the tickets for early May will almost certainly have to be exchanged, but we are hoping for better luck with the others, which are for July.

This morning I tackled various financial jobs. The little car is now insured and has breakdown cover, even though it is stuck in the garage waiting to be fixed. I checked bank and card statements, updated the spreadsheet we use to keep track of spending,  and finished updating our new annual budget  - we run our personal financial year from April, to tie in with the tax year. We are very fortunate that coronavirus and the lockdown aren't likely to have any significant effect on our income.

H was happy because after much effort she had managed to order a 10 kilogram kettlebell which arrived today. She misses working out at the gym, but reasonably priced home weights have become almost unobtainable. Both girls have been relaxing with adult colouring books, and H decided today to do some painting. She is a good artist, but hadn't painted since she finished GCSE Art six years ago. After a bit of digging around we managed to find a decent number of acrylic paints which hadn't dried up, two watercolour paint boxes which were both short on white, and an unused set of oils. She finished a small picture of the Disneyland castle in acrylics, and has ordered a canvas so she can tackle something larger. She also finished an essay on Italian crime fiction she has been working on. Teen Girl has acquired a new Sims 4 expansion pack, so spent quite a bit of time on that. Disney movie of the day was Big Hero Six, another one new to all of us.

This evening to celebrate M's birthday we had a virtual dinner with our former neighbours. Obviously we couldn't actually share the food, only the company, but it was lovely to catch up. We intended to use Zoom, but for some reason the microphone on my laptop wasn't working with it, so ended up using FaceTime on an iPad. To give the meal an international flavour, which is always a feature of our real life dinners, I cooked Catalonian braised hake with Spanish potatoes and broccoli (there is fish somewhere under that sauce!), followed by a Swedish style berry crumble.

Staying Home: Day 12

For all of us the days are beginning to take on a pattern of their own with work, exercise and relaxation. Some of us socialise (virtually) more than others - M in particular spends a lot of time messaging and has regular video calls with groups of friends. I am largely happy in my own little bubble though have a couple of ongoing group chats - one with four close friends where we check in with (and on) each other off and on every day. The girls I think mostly WhatsApp their friends.

I woke up still fatigued and fuzzy brained. This morning I worked on the new freelance job, but only getting things set up on an online system as my brain didn't want to think. I went for a gentle 15 minute stroll this afternoon and walked past this magnolia. The flowers were getting past their best, but still strikingly lovely. The cold breeze blew my cobwebs away a bit and since then I have been feeling less tired so hoping I'm on the up again.

I haven't been reading much this year, I think because my concentration has been so erratic, but I don't want to waste the time I now have so I am now trying to make sure I spend at least some time reading every day. I'm nearly at the end of my current book, Surfacing by Scottish poet Kathleen Jamie. I hadn't come across her before, but am loving this beautifully written collection of essays. Some are short, others much longer, including two about archaeological digs in Alaska and the Orkney Islands. I think I stumbled across it on Amazon's Kindle recommendations. I also have a couple of Audible books on the go. When I wake up in the morning I like to listen to a book or podcast and do jigsaw puzzles on my iPad to ease into the day (I'm not a morning person). I have just started Bill Bryson's Neither Here or There as I wanted something that M might enjoy too.

Disney Movie tonight is going to be Avatar, which none of us have seen before. Dinner is going to be pizza, and I'm looking forward to a large gin and tonic!

Staying Home: Day 11

Thanks to the little car being off the road, this morning I spent over three hours in the other car as chauffeur, most of it stationary. H had a medical appointment (minor, but they had confirmed she should keep it) in a nearby town, so I drove her there and sat in the car park while she went in. Then I spent over an hour sitting in another car park while H did grocery shopping. She went into Aldi, which had a fairly short queue but which she said was quite busy inside, then into Marks and Spencers Food, which had a long, slow moving queue. At least we are pretty well stocked up now, and shouldn't need to go to a larger supermarket for a while.

I didn't need to do any work today, but M started a new job that came in yesterday. H made a bit of progress with an essay and Teen Girl did some schoolwork. Annoyingly I seem to be going downhill with my wretched virus thing again. M and I went for what was supposed to be a short walk this afternoon, but somehow ended up being two miles as we went round a larger loop than I intended. By the time we got back I was exhausted. Brain fog has started to descend again and my throat is feeling sore. No CV19 symptoms, fortunately. I'm hoping it is just a bad day and I'll feel better again tomorrow. It's been three months of this off-and-on thing now. The blood tests I had recently all came back clear, so I guess it is just a case of being patient.

I finished January on my weather scarf today. I'm pleased with how it is looking. The very gold looking stripes are sunny, sub-zero (centigrade) days, where the thin gold yarn dominates the thicker light blue. Most of the very cold days in January were sunny, so the light blue doesn't get much of a look in. It is going to be a very long scarf (think Tom Baker as Doctor Who!) but it can't be helped. I think it needs two rows for each day so the colour shows on both sides of the scarf, and if I only did a single row the scarf would come out too short. I'm being very good and tucking ends in as I go, though I must admit that I tucked the ends of the last few lines underneath for the sake of the photo.

Disney Movie of the day was Aladdin - the live version from last year, which Teen Girl had seen, but H and I hadn't. Dinner was chicken and mushroom pie, using up some left over roast chicken, with mashed potatoes and broccoli. Teen Girl cooked, with instruction from H. She did a great job and it was very tasty. She likes cooking and is hoping to take a hospitality and catering course at school next year.

Staying Home: Day 10

Not only is H a good cook but she has worked in a cafe for six years both as a waitress and a barista. I highly recommend barista skills in someone to stay home with, as I am enjoying lots of good coffee.

I got a fair amount of work done this morning but the girls didn't really get into gear today. A new freelance job came in this afternoon, so that will keep both M and myself busy next week. M and I went for our daily walk across nearby fields. It was intended to be a circular walk, but I took the wrong path so it ended up as shorter "there and back again". The Disney movie for the day was Mary Poppins Returns, which we enjoyed for the second time (we saw it at the cinema when it was first released).

We ran out of bread this morning so Teen Girl walked to our local Tesco Express to buy some. She had to queue for a little while to get in as they were only allowing four people inside the shop at a time, but she said they had plenty of bread and seemed generally well stocked. Restaurants are closed but takeaways and food deliveries are still allowed, so we ordered Chinese tonight for dinner. The delivery was "drop and go" with no personal contact, so hopefully that means we were safely supporting a local business. We finished eating just in time to join the "cheer for the NHS". The idea that people should open their doors or windows at 8pm tonight to clap and cheer to show our appreciation for all the dedicated health care workers of the National Health Service had taken off on social media, and there was plenty of clapping, a bit of whooping and some distant car horns.

Our small car, the only one H is insured to drive, was booked into the garage today for its MoT (annual Ministry of Transport test of roadworthiness, without which a car can't be legally driven in the UK). Although it has now been announced that MoTs are to be extended for six months, as the garage was still open and we had a flat tyre last week which had been damaged by a loose spring we thought we had better get the car serviced as planned. It was just as well we did, as there is a serious crack in a bracket holding the engine. The garage say it is far too dangerous to drive, but due to the lockdown they can't get a replacement part, so the car is now stuck at the garage until everything starts to function again. As H will only really need a car for occasional trips to the supermarket it doesn't seem worth paying to add her to the insurance on our other car. One of us will act as chauffeur and wait in the car while she shops. It's an inconvenience, but only a minor one. I'm just grateful the bracket didn't break while one of us was driving.

Staying Home: Day 9

Today was a much better one. The sun shone, everyone was on an even keel, lots of constructive things got done, and fun happened.

I have decided that working two full days on my archive work is a bad plan, and that if I work four mornings it will mean I get into a much better routine. Freelance work can then be fitted around those four mornings as necessary. In any case we got the job we were working on submitted today and don't have anything else lined up so will get a bit of a break - in theory it shouldn't be affected by coronavirus, but the work never comes in evenly; sometimes we are crazy busy, sometimes we get quiet spells. Today M and I worked together to get the job finished, and I then moved on to archives, spending most of my time working on web pages. H had to give an online presentation this morning as part of the assessment for her Italian language course. Teen Girl did some school work.

We continued our Disney Plus binge with two movies today - Coco (which we hadn't seen before) after lunch, and the original Mary Poppins this evening. M, H and I went for a walk this afternoon, while Teen Girl stayed home and did a contemporary dance class which was  live streamed by one of her teachers. This evening our eldest daughter called for a family FaceTime chat which degenerated into hysterical laughter thanks to some interesting Animoji and people attempting to lick their own noses (one daughter was successful!). The Brass Band replaced its cancelled concert for tonight by getting people to send in video or audio clips of themselves playing something, on whatever instrument. I don't have much puff for the trombone still, so played Be Our Guest on the flute (on which I am very out of practice!)

While watching the films I made progress on my new knitting project - a weather scarf. The idea is that for each day I will knit two rows with the colour chosen according to the temperature. I am also mixing in a second, thinner yarn, which represents the weather - blue for rain, grey for cloud, yellow for sun, white for snow. It is my contribution to a project we are running at work, encouraging people to use archives to inspire textile art. My scarf is based on historic weather records from the 1980s that were recently deposited with us. I ran across a weather scarf on Twitter just after the records arrived, and had a lightbulb moment. Apparently weather blankets are also a thing. Time permitting, I want to do a second scarf based on last year's weather as a comparison to see if it comes out warmer. The picture above shows the scarf six days in, but by the time Mary Poppins finished I was half way through January. The blue and grey threads don't show up very much, but the yellow sunny days definitely give a different tone, as does the one snow day I've had so far. This is my colour chart - nine shades of double knitting for the temperatures (I am using units of 5 degrees centigrade) and four of fluffy lace weight for the weather.

Staying Home: Day 8

I panicked myself first thing this morning by looking at the Asthma UK website. It now has a list of medications which indicate that people are considered to be at such high risk of complications from coronavirus that they are being recommended to stay shielded at home for the next three months. The inhaler I use was on the list and I started to melt down at the prospect of having to live under so many restrictions for so long, mainly I think because it was an unexpected shock. Once I calmed down and looked again I realised that although my inhaler was indeed on the list, it was only at a higher dose, or if used as part of a heavier regime. Much relieved, I am now grateful to be just on the 'vulnerable' list, which means I can at least go out for a walk so long as I keep my distance from other people and don't have to keep everyone else in the house at arm's length. Despite the relief I still felt quite down, and I wasn't the only family member who had a moment today - I think a week in the situation was hitting us.

I spent most of today checking a batch of exam questions. I wanted to get to the end rather than leave part of the job until Thursday, so ended up finishing them off after dinner. Too long a day really, and there was no real reason for it as there isn't a tight deadline - I just wanted to get the job done and free up the back end of the week to do other things. The girls are still keeping up their study routine, and H had an online lecture this afternoon. Later on Teen Girl did an online workout, and H went for a run. M and I went for a mid-afternoon walk, quite a short one today as I was tired.

Part of the reason my work dragged on was because I took a break early in the afternoon to watch a movie with the girls. Today was the launch date for Disney Plus in the UK. I had bought a pre-launch subscription because we have a long list of movies we want to watch before we go to DisneyWorld in August - we hope! Our plan for the time being is to watch one a day, and we made a list at the weekend of our first ten. Today was supposed to be Finding Dory, but they changed their minds and wanted Monsters University instead. So much for the list.  While we watched I started a new knitting project. More on that tomorrow.

It was my turn to cook dinner, which was fresh fish from today's fish box - tusk, shallow fried in breadcrumbs with poppy seeds mixed in, with sweet potato fries, roasted courgettes (left from last weeks veg box) and peas, followed by watermelon. I am loving our fish box which I started ordering because M and I decided we should really eat more fish. It comes from Scotland, with fish caught sustainably by independent fishermen, all pre-prepared and ready to freeze. My order is for a medium sized box every two weeks. Now H is home I changed my settings to add an extra person, so they pack the fish in sets of four portions rather than three. The contents vary according to what has been caught and includes a much wider variety of fish than the supermarkets stock, which has successfully pushed us out of our comfort zone. You can mark on the website which fish you are happy to try and which you don't want. Today we got two packs of mackerel, salmon, and the tusk. 

Staying Home: Day 7

A week already, although it feels as though this has just been a training session for what is ahead. It looks likely tighter restrictions will be introduced from tonight. As we are already socially distancing ourselves pretty strictly the only thing that would now make a dramatic difference for us is if there are restrictions on going out for a walk. Today our eldest daughter had a day off work (she is working from home, as is her partner) so those of us who were studying or working took an hour off and we met her and her dog in a village a couple of miles away for a walk along a bridle path. We were very careful to keep the required two metres distance from her and walked in a straggle rather than a group. Depending on how things evolve it may be a long time before we see her again.

We passed one girl on a horse, and an old couple also out for a walk. As we all exaggeratedly kept our distance we empathised about the current state of things across the path; they told us to KBO - Keep Buggering On, to quote Churchill. 

At the beginning of the track we passed this lovely thatched house. 

I particularly like the roof detail, especially the thatched bird - a duck, I think.

The girls spent much of the day in the dining room studying. Teen Girl woke up to the Show My Homework app pinging through a load of school tasks which she started working through. Both of them are being super organised and giving themselves a daily to do list to work through. I split my work day between doing tasks on the laptop and sorting the brass band archives. I don't have the energy yet to spend too long at a time shuffling files and boxes. After they finished working the girls exercised and then H cooked burgers for dinner - served in brioche buns with home made guacamole, coleslaw and potato wedges, bean or beef burgers according to preference. 

Now I am enjoying some rhubarb gin and about to watch the third place play off of Only Connect. M and I watch this complicated quiz every week but rarely get any questions right. Love the challenge though.

Staying Home: Day 6

Mother's Day today here in the UK, so H and her sister cooked a roast dinner for me. I go through spells of eating almost completely plant-based, then others when I eat fish and a little meat, which is where I am now. I try to stick to ethically produced, environmentally friendly meat from farmers with high standards of animal welfare. Dinner was roast beef with roasted potatoes, roasted carrots and parsnips, cauliflower (all from this week's veg box), and yorkshire puddings. I am definitely appreciating having H's cooking skills at home. 

Today was bright and sunny, which is always good for my mood, and M and I went for a walk this afternoon which was a bit longer than I intended it to be as I was still feeling under par. I think it did me good though. When we got back I played Mega Monopoly with the girls. I bought it for Christmas based on a friend's recommendation - he was right, it is an excellent version of the game. The property sets are larger (4 rather than 3 for most of them) and if you get a full set you can build skyscrapers; if you have all but one in a set you can build houses and hotels. There are also some extra tweaks which make the game more interesting and help it to move faster than the standard Monopoly. Definitely worth getting if you are a board game fan.

Nobody did any work or studying today, so it felt properly weekend-ish.

Staying Home: Day 5

Not such a good day today thanks to my viral / post-viral thingy. Some days I have a reasonable amount of energy, others I don't. After two good days this was a bad one, with accompanying brain fog. I also had to finish off a freelance job - nothing that required thinking about, just tedious loading of work into the appropriate format and software. I would have had it done yesterday, but took the day off on Thursday to collect H from uni so had to play catch up.

The girls went out early this morning to get some groceries. After recent reports about panic buying and empty supermarket shelves they were pleasantly surprised that everything they wanted was available. Maybe the frantic shoppers are calming down and the supermarkets are moving up a gear. They bought me some flowers for Mother's Day (which is tomorrow in the UK), so more cheerful colour to go with my daffodils.

This morning M did a freezer inventory to make sure we don't end up wasting stuff. Then this afternoon H and I worked out a menu plan for next week. I have an online grocery delivery booked for Monday, so I updated that with other bits we decided we needed. We spent a bit of time re-watching the Gilmore Girls on Netflix, and I dragged myself out for a short walk with M. I'm determined to get out everyday even if I'm tired and don't feel like it, unless we are put onto a complete lockdown. H made a prawn ramen for dinner. It was lovely having a meal made for me, and she is an excellent cook. Better than I am.

I have been mostly avoiding Twitter for the sake of morale and have deleted it from my phone, but I spent longer on it than I should on my laptop today which didn't help my mood. I started using Twitter a lot during the Brexit ups and downs of the last year or so, finding lots of good and informative stuff and managing to avoid the worst of it. However, I know it did suck me in to focusing too much on what was going on politically. Now it is full of dire warnings and grumbling about everything everyone is doing wrong, which are outweighing the genuinely useful links and information. I need to turn it off completely.

Staying Home: Day 4

I have now finished preparing to stay home for however long this takes. While the rest of the country has been stripping the supermarket shelves bare this week I have:

• Sorted out enough work to keep me going for at least three months, including collecting the brass band archives
• Collected H from university
• Had the bath drain unblocked
• Had my very neglected piano tuned for the first time in many years
• Bought sunbeds
• Bought a hair cutting set (clippers for M, scissors for the rest of us)

I'm not sure that is the most logical way to prepare, but it works for me. We were already pretty well stocked with food (and toilet paper!), and I get both a veg box and a fish box delivered regularly. 

Today was a full work-at-home day. Freelance work this morning, then archive work this afternoon - I did various oddments, including organising the assortment of digital files and images I brought home with me and uploading them to  Dropbox. I am now all set to get properly stuck into things on Monday. All staff with underlying medical conditions have now been formally instructed not to go into work and to work from home if at all possible, for an initial period of twelve weeks.  I filled in the relevant "social distancing" form online and had that approved, which means I am now officially staying home. 

H unpacked and had a clear out in her room, then had a two hour online class this afternoon. M cleaned the car, did some tidying up in the garden, went for a couple of short walks (one on his own and one with me) and picked up Teen Girl from school for the last time for a while. She came home loaded down with exercise books, and with a log in to a GCSE Pod website and the promise that they will be set work through a homework platform. Technically she has two weeks of this term left, so we shall wait and see how much work materialises. 

Staying Home: Day 3

Our lovely neighbours know we are keeping away from people as much as possible, so when they went out to the supermarket yesterday picked up a few things we needed. They also gave us a bunch of daffodils which are now brightening the table next to my chair. This morning another set of neighbours also got some bits for us when they went shopping. We are very lucky to live in a small road where all the neighbours look out for each other even when we aren't living through a major crisis.

Daughter H and most of her stuff are now home. I set off soon after eight this morning and we were back by three. We were both surprised that the motorway didn't seem much quieter than normal for a weekday. The usual number of lorries was to be expected, but that many cars? So much for only travelling if essential. We took a slight detour to pick up a box of donuts before heading home. There is a coffee and donut shop on a small industrial estate in her university city which sells the best donuts - huge, lots of flavours, and all vegan. Their cafe is closed but they are still selling takeaways.

In a burst of optimism I bought two cheap sunbeds from Argos. We are going to be spending a lot of time cooped up inside over the next few months, and anything that encourages us to be out in the garden if there is half way decent weather has to be a good thing. Usually everyone fights over our single deckchair. My logic for buying them now is that if we do get nice weather, chances are either we won't be able to get out and buy any, or they will all sell out. H went into town to collect them, causing the counter staff a certain amount of amusement when they realised what she was getting. The optimistic side of me pictures sitting outside in the fresh air working with my feet up; the pessimistic side now expects it to rain for the next three months. When she got back to the car H noticed a rear tyre was looking flat. Fortunately she was just round the corner from the garage we usually use and they were able to change it on the spot for her.

As I drove home from collecting the band archives last night I passed a Toad Patrol - several people in hi-vis jackets with buckets and torches, picking up toads and taking them across the road. Apparently at this time of year common toads head to their ancestral breeding ponds. This particular road is between the toads and their pond and lots of them get squashed, so the Toad Patrol steps in to help. I found it incredibly cheering that with all the coronavirus misery going on, people were still out rescuing toads.

Staying Home: Day 2

It took me all of one morning to learn lesson number one of working two separate jobs at home. Compartmentalise! I settled down to do some freelance work (we write exam questions for various financial services organisations), and then kept getting distracted by my nice shiny new archives webmail. Having half my mind on two different jobs at the same time was not a success, particularly as (1) I was having nasty formatting issues with a file which were making it barely readable, and (2) I  was having a brain-fog day thanks to the wretched non-corona virus that won't shift. By lunchtime I had achieved very little and was not in the best of moods when we went out for the twenty minute walk we are trying to do every day - at the moment that is as much as I can manage, and on bad days like today even that is a struggle. The fresh air did help my mood a bit, even though I came back very tired.

From now on, it is going to be one thing at a time (I just mistyped that as one "think" at a time, which is very apt). I am also going to stick to working my standard two full days a week on my archives work, rather than allow myself to spread out my hours over the week. I am not naturally self-disciplined and I think it would be sensible to impose that discipline on myself. I have also now turned off notifications on my laptop, so that I don't get distracted by messages while I am working.

I forgot to say yesterday that we are trying to get a few things which involve a certain amount of social contact sorted this week in case everything gets locked down for a while and before the virus risk rises. One of these was a  badly blocked bath drain - water was running out, but only just - and our friendly local unblocker man came round within a couple of hours of us calling him and did his stuff. Last time this happened he advised us to tip soda crystals down the plug hole followed by boiling water. Unfortunately two long haired daughters had caused havoc way beyond what soda crystals could deal with. At least now we will be able to enjoy soaking in an unblocked bath while we are staying home.

Today's job was work related. The brass band I play for wanted to recover storage space by donating boxes of its old records to the archives where I work. In the circumstances, it made sense to shift them from the outside (clean and dry!) barn they were stored in and bring them home with me. I met a couple of friends there tonight, boxed everything up, and they are now sitting in our dining room. The plan is for me to properly package and catalogue them while I am working from home, and then deposit them all done and finished when things eventually get back to normal.

We have changed plans slightly and I will be going up to Yorkshire tomorrow to collect middle daughter from university. The original plan was for her boyfriend to collect her on Saturday, but things are moving so fast now that she is a bit worried that a lockdown will be put in place and she will get stuck up there. I think it is unlikely but possible, so for everyone's peace of mind it will be better to bring her home now. I will take our small car so that she can drive back and it isn't too tiring for me. 

Today's major, but unsurprising,  announcement was that schools will be closing from the end of this week. Provision will still be made for the children of essential workers and vulnerable children, who will continue to go to school. I was glad to see that there is also going to be a scheme to ensure that children eligible for free school meals still get fed. Public exams for 16 and 18 year olds are being cancelled, which is a big deal as grades in these exams are the main qualification needed for university places, college places, apprenticeships and so on. The announcement said that these students would still get the grades they deserve but gave no detail - presumably grades will be based on school marks and predictions, but who knows. Very tough on the kids who have been working for these exams for two years. Teen Girl is quite happy to have some time off school, but would rather it isn't too long. She looked a bit glum at the idea that school might be out until after the summer, mainly I think because she will not be seeing her friends. 

Staying Home: Day 1

Until yesterday, although coronavirus was a growing threat, the UK had largely carried on as normal. Last night new measures and recommendations for social distancing were announced, including working from home where possible and avoiding as much social interaction as possible. People over the age of 70 and those with certain underlying health conditions have been advised to be particularly strict in following the guidelines, and it seems probable that from the end of this week they will be expected to stay at home for up to twelve weeks. I have been asthmatic for ten years and have been struggling with something viral / post-viral since the beginning of the year; M was recently diagnosed with asthma and has compromised breathing due to scoliosis. That means both of us will be staying home.

Twelve weeks (or more, or less - who knows!) without any of our usual activities or social events will be quite a change. The extent of the change will vary for each of us. I went into work this morning to collect some stuff that will allow me to work at home for the duration (so in truth not quite a staying home day). As an archivist working at home isn't easy, as I can't bring actual documents home with me, but I have managed to sort out enough constructive and useful things to do to keep me busy for the two days a week I normally spend there. Over the last couple of years the freelance work M does at home has taken off, and I work with him on it for probably a day to a day and a half a week on average. That isn’t likely to be significantly affected by the coronavirus shutdown, so we will both have at least some work to do while we are home.

M will be taking leave of absence from his work with the NHS 111 service. That simply cant be done at home, and being in a busy call centre with lots of other people for several hours at a time wouldn't be sensible for someone in his 60s with slightly dodgy lungs. He feels a bit guilty given the pressure the service is now under, but it is what it is. Currently schools are still open, so teen daughter will be in school until either the Easter break or when they decide to close, whichever comes first. Student daughter will be home on Saturday, as universities are switching to online classes. She is very close to the end of her course and it seems likely she won't need to go back much if at all, except to collect her stuff. Having her home means we can rely on her to do errands and shopping for us, so keeping away from other people will be easier.

To "celebrate" Day 1 of the new regime we bought dinner from the mobile fish and chip van that comes to our estate every Tuesday, thinking it may well be the last time it would be here for a while. In fact, being outdoors makes it much easier for customers to keep their distance and they hope to keep running. I hope they can. M and Teen Girl went and he waited in the car while she bought the food and ran into the local shop for milk.