We managed to have a wonderful three weeks in South Africa, almost oblivious to what was happening back home in the UK. Then the president of South Africa announced that they were going to follow the same steps as Europe in order to stop the spread of Coronvirus, just after we managed to fly back home.
On arrival at Heathrow we were met by our taxi driver who explained how the world had changed during our three week absence. The M&S shop at Heathrow had been decimated by shoppers but fortunately our children had managed to get us enough milk, eggs and bread to get going.
Driving from Heathrow to my home in Godalming was a very strange experience with so few cars on the M25 and A3. My daughters had volunteered to help the elderly and vulnerable in our area and that included me. When she delivered my dog Thandi who had been boarding with her during my holiday, I couldn’t hug her as she was social distancing, it broke my heart. She made sure I knew that as I was classified as ‘elderly’ that I would have to remain at home and that she would do my shopping and keep me alive. Suddenly my carefree holiday bubble had been popped and I knew I was back in the real but very different world.
Then the government announced much stricter rules and isolated the whole country and what was strange became even stranger. After muddling through the first week living in our two homes, my partner and I decided that I (and Thandi of course) would move to her home. She lives slightly out of town on a small holding, so plenty of room for dog walking, exercising and gardening.
Now we are learning to survive and have fun in isolation. Will it be three weeks or three months? We think that it will be more like June before we will be able to introduce some of the changes back to our old life. However we will continue to be wary of exposing ourselves to risk, until we are vaccinated or test positive for having had the virus.
So far we are having a lot of fun:-
On arrival at Heathrow we were met by our taxi driver who explained how the world had changed during our three week absence. The M&S shop at Heathrow had been decimated by shoppers but fortunately our children had managed to get us enough milk, eggs and bread to get going.
Driving from Heathrow to my home in Godalming was a very strange experience with so few cars on the M25 and A3. My daughters had volunteered to help the elderly and vulnerable in our area and that included me. When she delivered my dog Thandi who had been boarding with her during my holiday, I couldn’t hug her as she was social distancing, it broke my heart. She made sure I knew that as I was classified as ‘elderly’ that I would have to remain at home and that she would do my shopping and keep me alive. Suddenly my carefree holiday bubble had been popped and I knew I was back in the real but very different world.
Then the government announced much stricter rules and isolated the whole country and what was strange became even stranger. After muddling through the first week living in our two homes, my partner and I decided that I (and Thandi of course) would move to her home. She lives slightly out of town on a small holding, so plenty of room for dog walking, exercising and gardening.
Now we are learning to survive and have fun in isolation. Will it be three weeks or three months? We think that it will be more like June before we will be able to introduce some of the changes back to our old life. However we will continue to be wary of exposing ourselves to risk, until we are vaccinated or test positive for having had the virus.
So far we are having a lot of fun:-
- We have lots of FaceTime conversations with our family near and far, in fact we are far more connected than we have ever been. It’s almost as if we are all living in a big virtual house and we can have a face to face chat whenever we want to.
- When you want to chat to a friend you know that they will be at home and they will be very keen to have a conversation with someone outside the home
- We started following Joe Wicks on YouTube which was very good but my daughter felt Davina’s 30 free course would better suit our needs. So we are on to day 2 of the intermediate programme, but we think we will start on the beginners tomorrow, mainly for me as I am a novice to many of the Pilates inspired exercises. I ache in places I never knew existed, so 30 days of hell may well do me a lot of good. I do miss my three days a week of Pickleball and can’t wait for that to restart!
- Finally with a pressing need (Davina) to be able to stream video from an iPhone to a Samsung tv I solved the problem this morning by downloading the same app onto tv and iPhone. Investment £4.99 and happiness all round.
- Every day we have a good long walk in the countryside and where we are we see very few people which makes isolating very easy
- Most evening when we have our sundowner, we have a video link up with someone and so we can say cheers and have a chat
- We are aware that at times like this eating food is just so easy, so we are making sure we cook ourselves decent meals using lots of veggies which we have been able to get from the local farm shop
- We have not so far found the time to overdose on tv, but as we have Sky Q, Netflix and Amazon Prime we are spoiled for choice
- I planned to upgrade my ageing iPad this year and thanks to John Lewis click and collect I now have my 2020 iPad Pro and love it!!!!
- Thanks to Amazon I now have a low cost Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, so have set up my office which I‘m using to type my blog. It works very well and will certainly be good enough until the new Apple Magic Keyboard comes out in May. Although that’s an awful price so my current set up might be good enough.
- We have a theatre date to see Louise Dearman in May and a cruise on the River Douro booked for June. The companies concerned have already indicated that these are likely to be cancelled, so we now look to take advantage of some of the online offering that are becoming available.
- We had good and bad news from Wimbledon. The championship has been cancelled but we will receive a full refund, plus keep our ballot allocation of day 3 centre court which we felt was very fair.
It’s early days I know with the next two weeks said to become devastating with the number of deaths. Against the enormity of this, the inconvenience of isolation is perhaps a small price to pay. We dread anything happening to our children, grandchildren and friends and don’t allow ourselves to be dragged into despondency. It’s a case of BBC news once a day and avoid other news flashes from dubious sources as fake news is all around us.
So we are totally committed to keeping safe, protecting the NHS and saving lives.
