Fronting It Up

I feel I have done quite well so far in avoiding much mention of the new daily routine we find ourselves living with. But as we're now into the third week of it, it might be time to put down how it's going and how it feels. This is partly because I have spent sometime over the last few days re-reading years of my life as related by the blog and it's been an interesting exercise. It will be good perhaps in a year, or two years, to revisit this particular time and remind myself about how we got through it. 

It was easy at first. I got quite used to telling friends from south that actually it hadn't made much difference to the way we live because the OH works from home and we don't have the most scintillating of social lives as it is. We live very quietly when we are here. I am ware that we go away quite a lot, but in Orkney our lives are bounded by work, a Sunday trip to the Cathedral and the  supermarket, walks on the beach and the occasional excitement of an exhibition opening or a trip to the cinema. 

So to begin with it was fine. Things started to go a bit pear shaped when I heard that the local police were stopping people who were gong out in their cars to scenic places to have their daily walk. I was astounded by this. In Orkney? Where there were no recorded cases of C19 and most places are empty most of the time. To be honest I was particularly narked as the police put this particular procedure into place the day before we had thought we would drive down to Burwick and do one of our favourite walks. We never see anyone else there except the very occasional visitor at the heigt of summer, so it seemed hard that we were now forbidden from going there, especially as the road that goes past this house, which I was very bored with walking along before this all started, is now the busiest I have ever seen it, as every man woman and dog who lives on it now has to use it for their daily exercise. 

Then I realised that we weren't gong to be able to get the presents we wanted to buy for our younger grandson's birthday at the end of April, or indeed any present at all.. We knew what we were going to get, and if only instead of staying 'we'll get it next time we're in town' we had turned into the appropriate shop, things would have been different. Now we shouldn't even go into town because it's not a necessity, and even if we did the shop, along with most others in Kirkwall is closed. And I also realised yesterday that we couldn't just decide to go out for a cup of coffee and a piece of cake. Now you can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times we actually do that in a year. But the difference is that when you can it's easy to choose not to, but when you can't it's hard to accept that it's impossible. 

Now I know we are fortunate. Roof, food supplies, finances, all in place. We don't need to worry about those, and thousands of others do. We are not, as I am reminded about ten tmes a day on Facebook, at war. I swear if I see one more of those coloured posts in block capitals that say 'your fathers were called to go and fight; you are just called to sit on a sofa and watch Netflix' I shall scream. Because a) I know. b) I appreciate the fact. c) I don't have Netflix. 

On the upside we've sponsored a reindeer. Photo tomorrow.