Had a pretty busy day of classes today, unfortunately the hot water is still not working so went without a shower today. Will hopefully start working again tomorrow as I am starting to smell. Had a go at doing a 20 minute exercise video on Youtube in the evening but gave up after 5 minuter when my housemate announced that she had made a big ‘Budin’ (pudding in English) for everybody. I decided that was far more interesting than excercising.
Hours Worked: 6
Albums listened to: George Harrison – Dark Horse
Netflix Summary: The Righteous Gemstons (3 Episodes)
Mum update: still making good progress, able to walk to the loo on her own and eating toast for breakfast when I phoned this morning. Her heart rate is still a bit raised but lower than before.
The village is filling up with rainbows. The ones in windows are drawn by the children who are off school.
My favourite is draped over the wall of Lea school. I imagine it’s been drawn by the children of key workers and vulnerable families. I saw a handful in the playground this morning while out with Lottie.
Dad is relatively ok. We met for a sundowner again yesterday evening and I was able to take him a selection of food from the local shops. We need to organise a few ready meal deliveries and fill up his freezer.
He tripped over one of Chloe’s dog toys a couple of days ago when hurrying to pick the phone. I’ve ordered him a special mobile phone for people with heating loss. Here’s hoping he’ll use it. This will be about the fourth attempt to introduce mobile technology into the senior Haydock household. It would be very useful for contacting Mum in hospital too.
Didn’t have much work today so spent the day largely lazing around watching Netflix. To make matters just slightly worse the hot water is out. I’ve decided it’s not worth going through the hassle of a cold shower at the moment especially as I am not going to be leaving the house until at least the 12th April. That said, hopefully the hot water will get fixed before I get too smelly!
Heard some goodish news from Italy, apparently they are starting to see a decline in the number of people infected. Although many people are still dying over there this is good news as it indicates that these quarantine measures work. I am hoping that it won’t be too long before Spain begins to see a downward trend in infections as well.
In other news it looks like Boris Johnson has finally bowed to pressure and done the right thing in enforcing a mandatory quarantine for the UK. I’ve arranged an online video beer with my London friends for Saturday night as we’ll all be stuck indoors, hopefully they wont be too shocked by the haircut.
Hours Worked: 2
Netflix Summary: Crashing (2 episodes) On My Block (8 episodes) The Righteous Gemstones (1 Episode)
Albums Listened to: Marianne Faithful – Dangerous Acquaintances
Mum update: Covid-19 swab came back negative and she’s still making good progress. When I phoned at 8 am she was eating breakfast and her temperature was normal. Phoned again at 5 pm and she was fine, back on the ward out of isolation and making good progress. She even managed to phone Dad earlier in the day with the aid of a nurse.
Today’s the first day of lockdown. I’ve decided to get as much as I can from the two village stores. We’re lucky to have a top-class butcher who also sells homemade ready meals and some groceries. We have a post office and village shop with a good range of staples too.
Robin Maycock’s. Pic was taken before the lockdown. Most are phoning through orders for delivery nowMaycock’s store and post office
I’m worried about contamination and am going to try to copy advice from an ex-nurse and fellow translator, Emma Goldsmith, who’s locked down in Spain: remove shoes at the front door; spray soles with homemade bleach solution (1 tablespoon bleach to 1 litre of water); leave shopping bags on kitchen floor; remove outer clothes into “contaminated” bag on terrace along with bagged bank card and shoes; wash reusable gloves for 20 secs and leave them to dry on top of contaminated bag; open shopping bags, taking out food and unpacking everything possible; take shopping bags off to “contaminated” terrace; wash hands.
Also: keep phone on silent mode in a zipped inner pocket and don’t touch it.
A note of my own: our local shop says reusable bags are a bad source of contamination so we might have to go back to accepting new plastic bags temporarily.
Dad is fine. We’ve agreed to meet for a sundowner in his back garden once a day while the weather’s fine, sitting 6 feet apart. I can get into the garden through a side gate and it’s actually very pleasant watching the sun set with the birds twittering.
I picked up a couple of translating jobs yesterday, so won’t get bored over the next few weeks. I’ve ordered a portable second screen for my laptop to make life easier. We’ve also ordered a recumbent exercise bike for Dad. Should be interesting!
A week done! Nice of the Spanish government to wait until we were just over the halfway point before adding another 2 week extension so looks like we’ll be stuck indoors until 12th April. Oh well, it wasn’t like this wasn’t expected.
Today has been another fairly chilled uneventful day, I have spent most of the day in my room watching Netflix along with Sky on Demand (thanks for the login details mum!).
In the queue for the supermarket I noticed that somebody had taken advantage of the quiet streets and put up a bunch of anti-gentrification in a variety of different posters around the neighborhood. Over the past few years my area has seen a huge influx of ‘hipsters’ which has driven up the rents of this once working class neighborhood. All I could think was “one problem at a time lads!”
In the evening we had the first of our ‘cultural exchange nights.’ Looks like the plan here going forward is to choose a historical or cultural topic and discuss it. Tonight’s topic was WW1 and WW2, it was actually pretty interesting hearing about how other nationalities study this topic at school. It also came as a stark reminder that I need to improve my Spanish past tense!
Netflix Summary: The Shield (3 episodes) White Gold (5 episodes) Catastrophe (3 episodes)
Albums Listened to: David Bowie – Black Star, Average White Band – Cut the Cake
2022 and all that 