Hard to believe what’s happening and it’s extraordinary how or lives have changed. That’s pretty much everyone in the UK and beyond. Here in little Dunstable we are quite enjoying our adaptations so far.
On Monday we celebrated our 24th wedding anniversary – yay! As usual we weren’t going to waste money on some extravagant restaurant, why should we with local car parks having such nice views? Besides, we had some out of date Christmas cake and it needed using up. No doubt this will add further to my ridiculous reputation amongst my Facebook friends; they expect nothing less.
While we were being very respectful of the social distancing going on, we weren’t entirely surprised when the Prime Minister firmly said we should all stay at home – our lockdown.
At the moment Rachel and I are quite positive about this. We have 24 years worth of clutter to clear out and this is a good a time as any. Actually it’s not too bad, though the attic is a bit choc-a-bloc.
I think we are being ultra sensitive to our health. Rachel and I both have the occasional cough. I’d like to think it’s possibly a cold type of cough.
Monday and yesterday has seen the annual tidy up in the garage. I love pulling all the bikes out and having a good sweep out. I also manage to throw a few things away and Rachel always inspects the wheelie bin to have the final say on what really is rubbish as opposed to “but it might come in handy one day”.
The garage is looking tidy but I’d still like to go further. Do we really need that skateboard, those toys, all those tins of paint? Apparently we do. We have a collection of tents and camping gear, all needs sorting.
Hannah has been brilliant. As a distraction from her college work, she has discovered the jet washer. She has been jet washing the driveway (never done that before), the garage wall (would never have dreamt of doing that before) and the neighbour’s dividing wall (never in a million years…..).
Yesterday I went for a run, the first time this year wearing shorts. This is so good, such an amazingly welcome milestone in the year. While I was running over Blows Downs I recognised my friend Malcolm and his wife Heather. I yelled “hiya Malcolm” and waved from quite a distance. They clocked it was me.
I generally say “hi” to people when I’m out running. Just seems the right thing to do. People generally respond in a positive way. However, yesterday was different. Though the handful of people I encountered were mostly positive, a few glared at me. How dare I speak to them, was I a madman or something? Come on people, we shouldn’t give up on a little courtesy towards each other, especially at a time like this.
And then our church home group. So you know, we are a church of 300-400 people and we divide ourselves into many smaller groups called ‘home groups’. The idea is we meet informally during the week.
Our group is a mostly older group and it was decided we should use Zoom as a way of keeping in touch at regular times. Now this was never going to be straight forward with everyone but, credit where it’s due, it wasn’t bad at all. Gradually we all logged on last night and figured out what button did what. We heard the amazement in people’s voices “oh look there’s Margaret” “I can hear Alan” “but where have I gone?” and “isn’t this amazing, we can all see and chat to each other like we’re in the same room”. Jos read Psalm 2 to us and said a prayer. We all said Amen and enjoyed each other’s virtual company.
So without wanting to belittle the seriousness of the Coronavirus situation, we are pretty positive about our lockdown. It’s going to take a while to really get used to this “house arrest” and the novelty will be wearing off before too long. We do need to continue visiting my mother-in-law each day, so that continues but it seems strange – will we be stopped by the Police? Of course not, but we are still a bit jumpy about it. There’s no harm in slowing life down for us, to reflect on things, to reassess life, to declutter, enjoy improving the home and garden and so on.
It does make me think about our resilience – as individuals and as a country – it’s all too easy to think we can muddle along without planning for these unexpected things.
Money helps but it’s not really the answer.