Corona Diary: Day 7

Saturday morning is the hardest day to get out of bed. This was always true, even when you could convince yourself there were places to go. There’s always things to do though, so up I got, after a brief play on some online games, a browse of news websites, and a crossword.

I’ve always been surprised when people tell me they don’t know what they’d do if they retired. Whenever I’ve had breaks from work, I’ve never been so busy. The same is true now. It’s as though, when you have further to roam, you see things more from a distance. When your vista is limited, however, everything seems to grow in size and scope and colour. Perhaps that’s why, when you were a child, your own backyard could keep you occupied for hours. A trip on your bike to the local woods was like an expedition to the Amazon jungle. Full of unknown life, unexplored and suffused with adventure.

Since the world became socially confined, life at home has become equally crowded and full of opportunity and excitement. For a start, there was the business of my beard. After several weeks of not going into the office, I was sprouting some undergrowth that probably merited an expedition in its own right. This was going to take more than a quick trim with a beard clipper, so I took out the machete that is my stainless steel razor and attempted deforestation with the minimum of nicks to the face that might consume that precious toilet paper.

Next on the agenda was to make some corn bread. I happened upon a little local shop the other day full to the brim with flour and rice. Not, admittedly, wheat flour, but given the scarcity of rice and flour of any description I felt I had to buy it. As a result, I had been scouring the internet looking for bread recipes involving corn meal, and I had found a particularly delicious looking Portuguese loaf. All it would take would be a mere twenty minutes of mixing, half an hour of initial fermentation, 2 hours of rising, 10 minutes of kneading, another hour of proving and a quick half an hour in the over. Almost as quick as just going to Tescos.

Also on the agenda, I had promised the children a game of tennis. Now, I am not entirely sure about the details of this one bout of exercise a day. I know we are supposed to keep at least 2 meters away from other people. Sue and I went out running yesterday and this turned out to be nigh on impossible: there were a surprising number of people out for a zombie apocalypse. All seeming to self-organize into a bizarre obstacle course as well, so that to stay away from a group of power joggers you have to approach a young couple walking their Schnauzer and vice versa. You find yourself trying to work out which set of people has the lowest probability of sneezing at you.

The other thing that is confusing me is what constitutes social isolation. Not walking in the Peak District, apparently. Despite rambling in the Peaks being as socially isolated as you can get, Derbyshire police have been filming hikers on drones and suggesting the travel is non-essential and they should be getting their exercise closer to home. Gathering in the local park, it would appear, is a much more appropriate way to distance yourself, which is why everyone has ended up going there.

Nevertheless, we made out way to the tennis courts unscathed. Whatever the drone police might believe, daily exercise is essential and condoned and, providing distance is maintained, perfectly acceptable. I even stopped for a chat with a neighbour although it was slightly difficult to hear each other as we were shouting at each other from opposite sides of the road and she was wearing a facemask.

Now, we are preparing for the evening. We have a pub quiz planned with a group of friends from the local park run. Given the issues we had with the last online quiz we tried, we have opted to use a pre-recorded one from previous weeks, and possibly Houseparty for the person to person communication.

Of course, worse comes to worse, we’ll probably just end up missing half the questions, arguing over which answer to write down, and chatting about some hilarious anecdote just as the answers are being read out.

Just like a real pub quiz then. It’s nice to see some things will always be normal.