Day 76: Over and out

Day 21: The great and the good*

Funny day yesterday. I had been up all night trying to book a slot for a home delivery which was as usual impossible. Just who are these people who manage to get slots? Do they live on their computer? Is there an alarm you can put on to let you know when a slot pops up? Answers by carrier pigeon please to save the postman's bowling arm as he tries to hit our letterbox from 22 yards.

My patience is running very thin especially as Mike (Sainsbury's CEO), whose virtues I previously extolled, has now locked me out of my account and to get access to it – yes you guessed it - I have to ring the number that is permanently engaged. Well done Mike!! Send me just one more email telling me how you’re so keen to help all we oldies and I may just be forced to break curfew to come and find you to explain a few home truths.

All I know is that I may be over 70, I may be classed as vulnerable (although still not silver), but as sure as eggs is eggs I am going to have to go and mix with the hoi polloi this week once again to buy my “essentials". The list currently comprises fruit (I am pleased to report we are not yet plumbing the depths of forgoing lemon in G&Ts), bread (the sliced variety was invented for a reason and I am too old and wise to wait around for 'proving' that says otherwise), deodorant (social distancing is no excuse and I'm sorry but yes I will be buying an aerosol if they're out of roll-on), and lastly eggs and loo roll, not for the usual reason of joining mass hysteria but rather my upcoming visit to Mike Sainsbury (YouTube really is quite marvellous).

I am rather enjoying getting to know all of our Cabinet ministers who I previously would have struggled to pick out of a line up.   The weekend's briefing was brought to us via the Square Window, the letters S-T-A-Y-I-N (alive) and the number 99 (empty bottles of wine - I do hope the bin men come again soon or the neighbours will start to talk).  As my Cobra Zoom invites (where they helpfully tell you who they are) are still unforthcoming, I am relying on nicknames.  So standing in for the hospitalised Bungle was Zippy (you may know him as Matt Hancock), who despite professing to care deeply about us oldies hasn't yet written me a personal email (unlike out-of-favour Mike Sainsbury). 

Disappointingly the Health Secretary made it quite clear that I couldn’t, as planned, go to the beach and sunbathe. His own quarantine has obviously left him grumpy and intent for us all to share his enforced loneliness.  So I decided to take a stroll and bumped into Silver Streak (well not literally, obviously).  But as we found ourselves by a couple of benches some 12 feet apart we decided to sit and chat.  All manner of local people were out and about and stopped all around us to compare notes from isolation. This was all most pleasant until some passing wag said he was going to report us to the police as it was clearly a public gathering. We had to virtually use megaphones to chat as we were so far apart (and of course at our age also have hearing problems). His comments didn’t phase us in the slightest and we just carried on our nattering. 

I had forgotten what talking to other people was like, having spent the last three weeks talking to myself. These conversations are becoming louder and longer, and open discussions with myself have now turned into arguments where I don’t know who’s right or wrong. Yesterday therefore was a lovely break and frankly if the police had turned up I would have welcomed him/her as yet another person to talk to. A gentleman who passed us by was asked how he was coping and he said his life hadn’t changed a bit. He still doesn't go out much and doesn’t see or speak to anyone and says he’s fine. The Corona obviously suits some people more than others.

The Queen didn’t quite follow my advice regarding her address to the nation. She thanked the NHS for their work but then she seemed to digress slightly. She was saying things like we’d see friends again and family again. If that wasn’t a dig at Harry and Meghan I don’t know what it was, but of course they have an 8 hour time change so were probably still doing their yoga and didn’t record it. She also failed to mention that she was outside Windsor Castle on Thursday banging a pan with a wooden spoon but perhaps she had someone do it for her – the perks of being Queen evidently mean you can retain your staff and she must still have people to do these chores for her. She finished by saying ‘we’ll meet again’. Well I had suggested she sing the Vera Lynn song and frankly I think just saying that sentence didn’t really have the same impact. And as she's averaging 14 years between her 'special addresses' I'm not entirely sure this is as reassuring as it was meant to sound. But seeing as everyone has already binge watched The Crown on Netflix I suppose it will do.   I did however love her frock, pearls and brooch.  She'd obviously splashed out on a new outfit having backed the winner in the Virtual Grand National.  Although I did tell her that blue may have been the better choice to capture the mood of the nation.  I must say though, the thing I envied most of all was the fact that she still clearly has a hairdresser on hand. I bet she even still has her cleaner, and highly doubt Mike has locked 'Liz' out of her online shopping account. 

I have been waiting for weeks for this and finally it appeared in yesterday’s paper. A 27 year old woman in India gave birth to twins after a near impossible journey to hospital under lockdown. Their names? Corona and Covid of course.

Finally a question for you all. If we now have Covid-19 how exactly did Covid 1 through 18 pass us by? Were they just failed attempts to bring the world to a standstill?  All I'm saying is it only took 10 dry runs to land man on the moon. I'm blaming the dumbing down of GCSEs. God only knows where this extended 'home learning' experiment will leave us.

*Day 20 being another rest day - Daughter smugly told me she spent it cleaning her windows. Cow.