Covid-19 Diaries 29th April 2020

29 April 20

Posted at 4:39

Mid way through another week of lockdown the days merge into each other. There is now some weekly routine, Wednesday evenings we have a zoom meeting with some good friends and family, generally a quiz and the associated debates. On Friday evenings the 'lads' who usually meet down the pub do a zoom meet to have a few drinks together. Initially it was a beer, a chat, and an attempt at the bizarre card game that usually rounds off Friday evenings. After week one it was clear that the card game was not going to work so Friday nights have also fallen into a format of a quiz and then a kind of potted putting the world to rights conversation although having a conversation over a few drinks on zoom is more difficult and less enjoyable that the same thing in the pub. The upside of these zoom meets is actually seeing friends, many of whom especially on a Friday are just a mile or so away!! Marilyn and I try to keep the weekends as weekends which is becoming increasingly difficult as the weeks roll by but I feel it is important.

It is weird at the moment, in many ways I am really fortunate and it is that thought that I hang on to if I begin to feel down. To begin with I am not a key worker out there on what is called nowadays the 'front line', battling with the impact of the Covid-19 virus on society. Many especially in densely populated communities have lost their lives be they NHS workers, care workers or those providing public transport.

As I don't work for a living I am neither furloughed, working from home or redundant. At the same time I am not of an age or suffering from health conditions that would have required me to be quarantined for 12 weeks. Ten years ago I made the decision to give up my career and follow my passion for photography. We calculated that with a change of 'lifestyle' we could reap some pleasure from the forty plus years that we had worked rather than continue with nose to the grindstone until one health problem or another meant all that would be left was an end of life strategy. So spent four years at university studying photography and then embarked on a life of documentary photography projects, interspersed with travel and socialising. The change of lifestyle didn't prove as difficult as we had expected and although I didn't and still haven't chosen to use the term that I've retired I am now in a position that our current 'lifestyle' does now depend on my pensions.

So I suspect I am unusual in the current climate, no real health or financial worries, fit enough and with enough time on my hands to take up volunteering roles in the community and not quite old enough for the government to consider that I should be 'shielded' for mine and the NHS's good.

Having to be at home except for daily exercise, shopping and in my case volunteering duties has meant that I have, like many, tackled some of those jobs that is is usually preferable to put off. The corner of our garden pictured above was a real mess six weeks ago. It was a quagmire of mud, a dilapidated chicken run and a broken and twisted wire netting fence all hidden under a massive palm tree. Having made a new chicken run early in the lockdown some finishing touches were added last week.

The first twenty eights days of lockdown saw me spend a few minutes or more on a jig saw puzzle a friend gave me in early March. It is many years since I had the inclination or time to do a jigsaw but I ave to now admit that it offered some periods of calm and pleasure during initial lockdown

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