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.