Day Two Hundred and Twenty-nine

Feest Isolation Days – 29 October

We have had a doorbell that makes a sound that goes with the house for the past twenty nine years. And then it stopped.  The replacement doorbell goes ding dong and just isn’t the sound of this house.  Today, John the electrician arrived and with some clever pre-work from Terry, got our old doorbell back in action.  It took John months to get back to us, but we could hardly say our doorbell needing attention was an emergency.  So we waited.  And now, when the key workers deliver our many parcels, the ring sounds like it should.  It is strange to have the electrician wandering around inside with a mask on.  But he totally complied without a fuss or a moment’s hesitation when we suggested it might be a good idea.  The windows are open in every room he enters and the wind gusts through the house. 

We are being even more careful than we were.   In Bristol our Covid numbers are up. Apparently, there are now 300 cases a day.  This is huge.  We were used to single digits not that many weeks ago.  It is strange to think that so many more people are infected.  The source of infections, according to those that are researching this, seems to be infections passed on inside homes. Social gatherings indoors, not Covid secure venues, seem to be where the spread is occurring.  We can’t understand why the city isn’t moved to Tier Two.  That would mean no mixing inside and people would stop the transmission sooner.

Who knows why we aren’t there but we aren’t….yet.

But some good news for a change!  More and more books are being sold and presumably read.   According to Bloomsbury, “people have rediscovered the pleasure of reading”. The company has reported half year profits bigger than any time since 2008. Profits were up 60% to £4m from February to August. After feasting on streamed programmes, it would appear that the constant screen time lost some of its appeal.  Or perhaps people just had more free time on their hands and needed something “new” to turn to. 

The titles that sold well were largely feel good books with ‘Humankind’ by Rutger Bregman, a best seller with its positive view of we humans.  The other books that did very well were cookbooks.  With most of the country eating in, that makes a great deal of sense.  We have been reading cookbooks for ages and have a kitchen packed with them, and extras on a shelf downstairs.  Nevertheless, there are several recipes that come round again and again and would feature in any cookbooks we may eventually write. 

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With a name like Feest and a cook like my husband, I keep encouraging him to write down some of his favourites.  Like the trout we had this week.  He tied the fly, caught it, cleaned it and cooked it.  It was delicious.  I for one am certain that recipe ought to make it into a book.  We shall see.

The one thing our key workers don’t deliver is take-away.  We cook everything from scratch.  Rinnnngggggg!  Hardly surprising I wanted the old fashioned doorbell back.  We live an old fashioned sort of life these days.

Keep wearing those masks, distance and wash your hands.  And when they are clean and you are ready to discover a pleasure that has no equal, pick up a book. They’ll never let you down.

Enjoy!

With Love,

Kathy x