Day Seventy-one

Feest Isolation Days – 24 May

He’s got to go!  Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson’s unelected Special Advisor features in all the papers this weekend as he breeched lockdown rules. When he became ill instead of staying at home in isolation he and his wife and family drove 250 miles to his parents in Durham. That’s a long way from staying in your own home!  It will be very interesting to see if he stays or if he goes. I’m betting on the former but truly would prefer the latter. We shall see. How is it that people who are making rules think they don’t apply to them?  The mind boggles. I have coronavirus- I know!  I’ll visit my elderly parents! Really Dominic? 

Apparently it’s a Bank Holiday tomorrow. There won’t be anything different to distinguish this particular Monday for us from others since coronavirus arrived. Nevertheless, our key working fish and meat delivery man Peter tells us the queues are around the block at our local Waitrose.  Why?  Again the mind boggles. What difference in food terms does this Bank Holiday make to families?

Food has become an important component of the lockdown experience. All of our friends share our experience. Three meals a day are coming out of home kitchens.  There are no restaurant meals, no snacks out at cafes with that long black. Cappuccinos and lattes are no longer indulged with a slice of some yummy morsel from the counter. 

For those working parents it just means more work.  Working from home with kids means more, not less, work for parents. Besides home schooling, there’s the cooking and cleaning as well. It takes more time to do everything as there are no helping hands.

We retired folks once again have it easy.  We may not be able to dine at our favourite restaurant, but we aren’t home-schooling and trying to work. 

We zoomed with a difference on Saturday night.  Friends who are working got a break as I made the main course and delivered it to their door. They have two adult kids living with them at the moment and the kids indulged in a take-away. The first home cooked by somebody else meal the parents have enjoyed! 

We started our zoom evening talking about a play, a solo performance, both couples watched – Fleabag.  Highly recommend this amazing play. I wish I had seen this before the television series as I couldn’t get the characters I had seen out of my head. But an outstanding performance by Phoebe.  It’s a National Theatre production, put on the Soho Theatre website amongst other places, it’s worth the four pounds!

Our friends that zoomed with us are our theatre pals and we so enjoyed the evening, and won’t it be nice when we do this sort of thing in person and we don’t spend the lion’s share of the evening discussing the damn virus!

 Eventually… it will happen for us all…eventually!

In the meantime three hours pass as they normally would and we find ourselves offering our “guests” more wine! 

Try it if you haven’t. It’s a great way to meet up friends!

With love

Kathy x