Isolation Day 53

We have switched off our functioning brains and set them to idle. With astonishing frequency, one or other of us in the household fails to compute what another has said. May have heard it, but not processed it. Sometimes, it causes us all great hilarity and we are amused at ourselves, and sometimes it causes a little irritation because, of course, the person who spoke can’t believe that the importance of their words could have been so overlooked.

I am putting my own malaise of brain-idling down to lack of chocolate. The shops are bare. “Can you order me a large bar of Cadbury’s fruit and nut chocolate, please.” I glibly asked John as he did the Ocado order yesterday, not realising the horror that was about to be revealed. They are out of stock!!

An hour later, Jane, next door, texted to say she was going shopping today and did I want anything? Yes!! Chocolate!! And the gods smiled on me because mid-morning today, what should be posted through the letter box? A large bar of Cadbury’s fruit and nut chocolate……mmmmm…..mmmm…..

I was galvanised by the thought of eating chocolate later on today, and therefore spurred on to prep for the VE day celebrations, climbing the mountain up to the loft to liberate the bunting. We planned to decorate our house with it and offer some to a couple of neighbours. Excitedly, I took first one bundle, then another, then another – only to find that, inexplicably, whilst in the loft and all by itself doing nothing, it had got all tangled up. So we spent a good deal of time fiddling about with bits of string, pieces of card and broken holes before finally putting a great swathe of it from the front door to the gate and back again, and then dropping the spare, untangled bundles in to the neighbours.

It wasn’t exactly red, white and blue – more pink, white and turquoise, with a bit of yellow thrown in for luck – but I liked it and I thought it had a festive feel to it. Coupled with the little table and chairs we’d set out on the drive, laid with the best gold china, a cake stand laden with goodies, and a couple of teapots each filled with tea and coffee, it felt good to be out in the warm sunshine among friendly faces. We spent a blissful couple of hours out there, catching up on the local news, and hailing people as they walked by – each of us, ultra-cautious, backing off until we were probably ten feet away from each other rather than the recommended six.

We retired into the house (which is currently trailing an acrid, smoky smell) to watch Katherine Jenkins on YouTube, singing her tribute to VE Day in an empty Albert Hall. I found it very poignant and it gave me food for thought.

But back to the house. Despite the windows and doors being open all day, the smoky smell has not gone away since the lunchtime burning of the toast. Quite hilarious really. I was getting the lunch ready and John was sous chef. He’d dropped a couple of slices of bread into the toaster for Mum but wasn’t satisfied that they were golden enough, so popped them back in again. In the meantime, the doorbell rang, and I spent a few minutes chatting to one of the women from church when, all of a sudden, I could smell burning, the smoke alarm was going off and all hell was let loose!! Heaven knows what the toaster thought it was doing, but it certainly didn’t pop up when the toast reached a certain temperature. I think the toast was actually on fire as John pulled it from the toaster and plopped it into the sink. Lunch will be delayed by a few minutes, Mum…..

It was a good day. Mum joined in with whatever we were doing, John didn’t feel too bad and had a good old chinwag with the locals and I felt content that we had ‘normalised’ a little bit. Naturally, being a worry-guts, I am now wondering if we did the right thing sitting outside and hoping we didn’t get too near to anybody, after I overheard the next-but-one neighbour telling my next door neighbour, just before we said goodbye for the evening, that her husband was in bed with a temperature and he probably has (formally un-diagnosed) the virus. Whaaaat??? You’re telling me this now? Eeeesh……

Ah, well, too late to do anything about it now.

Take care everyone – one slip-up could make us one of the statistics with yesterday’s official figures, as at 9 a.m. this morning, being 4,649 infectees and 626 dead. Still sobering numbers.