Day Forty - Home Sweet Home!

 I do not have the full details. But I have been told via a round robin email that Auntie Pat is back in the care home!  I wasn't anticipating this. And I have loads of questions but I'm absolutely delighted and relieved.  My gratitude is boundless.

 I didn't go for a walk today. Everything seemed to be hurting. I had a dreadful night.  And I was expecting my friends who go shopping very early on a Saturday to turn up on my doorstep with strawberries and cheese as they did last week, well cheese and pineapple to be precise which viewers of my blog will have been quick to spot. 😉 It's got to be something of a habit this, the Saturday visit.  The expectation is quite high. But it just goes to show that you can so easily start to take things for granted. There was absolutely no sign of them. I felt quite disheartened.

However my friend did WhatsApp me later asking me to download Zoom and join in a quiz night  which they are going to do every Friday. But I still have so many concerns about Zoom so I declined. It hasn't gone down well.

 I think we've reached a strange kind of halfway house in this lockdown fiasco. All the time now I'm observing people behaving much more normally than they were. I'm not sure if that's because there is an adjustment to the lockdown or whether the people really are bored with it all and are just going to go back to normal regardless. Just watching the traffic and the people in my road, markedly different from a few weeks ago.  I think people are moving about in a more relaxed manner, less concerned about keeping the distance clearly less concerned about being out at all. My neighbours either side are much more receptive to callers now. It's all very noticeable.

 I've not looked at any news stories today. I've lost the motivation. A lot of it is beginning to be very repetitive and not particularly uplifting reading.  But more than that I suppose there's nothing new to be said. There don't appear to be any new developments in the scientists' understanding of the virus. It's been pretty clear that an effective vaccine won't be available till at least the end of the year. And the continual debates and questions about when will lockdown end, how will it end et cetera are beginning to annoy me. The death rate continues to rise.

I had a further message from my friend. She didn't go shopping today but her partner did and he got me some cheese. That was very kind of him. She said they were going to bring it along this afternoon. But some news has completely thrown her. The girl she job shares with. The girl she shares an office with. The girl -  has coronavirus. I think it's made my friend very uneasy. I'm not sure whether I shall see her today or not. I've prepared a little bag of goodies for them. Every time they buy me something they won't take any money for it so I've tried to do this kind of exchange thing. I kinda like it.

I continue to be and feel quite reclusive. It's almost like a rehearsal for if I get to be a  very old lady who can't go out and can't go to the shops. This is how it will be. Maybe it's a good exercise for me to see how I get on.

People in various locations have started hanging bunting across the street. I think it's supposed to represent the rainbow symbol that's being used to support the NHS. I've noticed dribs and drabs of it on my walk in the morning. But one of the girls ( I say girl, we're all women in our mid sixties) on the old schoolgirls WhatsApp group posted a picture of her street and it seems like every house is involved. Something kinda nice about it but it strikes me as being incredibly paradoxical. Bunting is associated as a celebratory thing, street parties -  it just doesn't seem to work when the whole country is in the midst of a pandemic lockdown. Or am I just a miserable git?