My hands are rough, like a washerwoman’s whose whole life has been spent washing clothes by hand. F says to moisturise but I really don’t like the way they feel afterwards, so I don’t. That’s probably wrong.
I’ve always been a bit nerdy about washing my hands. V use to remark on it often. I really hate having hands that don’t feel clean. Now, I’m washing them more. Every time I go out, I have to touch the lift doors, the front gate and, if I’m shopping, money, since here, we still do things mostly with cash. And, obviously, that’s wrong.
The restrictions regarding going out have not really affected me much. We were never ones for going out for a walk (except for the dogs) or visiting places. The most we would do is go for a beer or go to a restaurant and we always complain if we have to go outside our area. But now we can’t even do that. I can imagine we, like most of the others, will be going for a beer and a pizza as soon as we can! And I’m sure that will actually be the wrong thing to do.
So being at home is OK. I have films to watch, F has deep cleaning to do. I am lucky, at the moment, that I can work from home so the day is quite busy. I am trying to stick to a routine – start work at 8 (as normal), work through until sometime after 12.30, take the dogs for a walk for an hour, then work until 5 ish – when I stop because by then, I’ve had enough. We have the occasional teleconference with colleagues or customers to break it up a bit. But, at least I can smoke when I want whilst working and don’t have to take a break as I normally do. Of course, not taking a break and smoking non stop are wrong.
Even with work, I can’t help but look at the news often and see what everyone is doing (or not doing) and checking on the latest decrees which tell us, for example, that all the parks (with fences round them) are closed for the foreseeable future. Today I remembered that there is a park without fences that has at least two good sized dog areas – so we went there for our lunchtime walk – we do these lunchtime walks at the weekend anyway. There aren’t that many people about. The most people we saw in any one place was the queue to get into the supermarket, everyone duly staying at least 1 metre away from each other (but often more) and on the edge of the pavement – except one woman with a dog, who stood more or less in the middle of the pavement and made it difficult to get past with my two dogs, me giving her a Paddington stare and shaking me head. Not that it did any good. But she was wrong to do that.
We had the singing on the balconies bit the other night. Well, except for our street. Some people came out and tried but there weren’t enough and, anyway, it was hampered by the trees in the street, just coming into leaf and deadening the sounds. Not that I knew any of the stuff people were trying to sing anyway. So, when the following day, people were supposed to come out and give applause for the medics, it didn’t happen here. Which is certainly wrong.
The dogs are happy (if exhausted) that we are with them almost all day. There is a part of me that doesn’t mind all this. After all, I’ve never been much for socialising and now, with not seeing many people and staying your distance from them, there’s no need to be sociable – and I have to admit I quite like it. Which is wrong of me.
The only problem I have is the problem with coughing. Being quite a heavy smoker I have a cough. Not all of the time but sometimes. And now, when I’m out on the street, the need to cough is extreme and the knowledge that people will get worried about it means I suppress the cough but then it makes it harder – so I do a half-cough when no one is near, just in case they get the wrong idea!
And we’re eating at home, much like we normally do at a weekend. F made brodo the other day and we had brodo with pasta for a couple of days. Then I did cottage pie and we finish that tonight. And then we’ll have a sandwich around the middle of the day. And then other snacks from time to time. So, instead of getting “beach ready”, we’ll be getting fatter. And added to everything else, that’s not really good (although I wouldn’t go so far as to say that it’s wrong.)
But, the main thing about this is that we’re OK (as far as I know) AND we haven’t killed each other yet by being stuck together. And that can’t be wrong, can it?