Thank you Jane for your lovely diary report yesterday and not a spreadsheet in sight, just beautifully collated comments and news.
Normally at this time 17.30ish, I am collecting my father so that the pair of us can go to Mass at the church at Chivenor. Two weeks with no church and it feels as though one of the constants in my life has been knocked away. All my life under the orders of my mother in my early years, a good Irish/Manchester Catholic, then every day for seven years at a convent boarding school and then because of my own needs I have gone to Mass every weekend. It is very strange not going.
Another glorious day although somewhat windy. Here on the little hillock (Knockbeg means little hillock in Gaelic) we get the full blast of the wind from any direction. “Sod 70” is the exercise programme for himself and myself. I bought Patrick the book for Christmas thinking it was going to be a wry look on life at seventy. Wrong. Written by a gerontologist it is a treatise on how to keep moving at our advanced age. In short, for every year of your age you do a minute of exercise per week, seventy for him and sixty- six for me. So we do ten minutes per day, mostly of stuff I have spent my whole life avoiding. After two months of hard work I am finding tummy muscles and can get both feet six inches off the ground, while lying flat on my back, and hold it. (Still not found my pelvic floor muscles though) Interestingly Patrick has only just achieved sitting back on his haunches; obviously not spent enough time scrubbing the kitchen floor or playing with small children. More fitness was done today chasing Bridget’s laundry around the garden as all the pegs kept popping in the gale. There were nearly a few cows wearing very fetching items of underwear, which might have given Farmer Dibble, at ninety-three, a minor heart attack. Keep up with all the fitness training girls, I am truly impressed.
Patrick and I did tolerable well this morning splitting logs, much to Bridget’s horror, who kept telling us that she did not want us as casualties in A and E as they had more important work to do there than attend to self inflicted injuries. Tomorrow the plan is to empty the compost bays into the veg. patch.
Our garden news section grows as do all the plants with advice from Jenny on Charlotte’s sunflower and a guess the plant from Estelle. I join with the majority, it is definitely a pumpkin.
Recipes abound and I think when this is all over we need to have an appendix to our diary of coronavirus recipes. A small question from a technophobe; will I still be able to go back through the facebook entries and retrieve the recipes or do they need to be saved now? I imagine I will still be typing in a couple of months time as this virus is not going away anytime soon. If it is the latter please would someone do it for me?
Lovely to hear the gossip from the families as well. George and Tom are doing their bit stacking shelves in Tesco. Andy and my son in law are both in flying jobs with no PPE. A real worry for their families.
Patrick and I have listened to Anne’s post with a rendition of “Bohemian Rhapsody” to coronovirus words and hope that it carries the message. Are you back from New Zealand yet?
Grim news, over a thousand dead, 260 in the last twenty-four hours, and many ill who are running our country. However, as I walked over Saunton Down, from our house, to my father in Braunton there were scenes to gladden my heart. A family just sitting on a grassy bank at the top of Lobb Fields chatting and enjoying the sun, a couple out for a walk with their dog, a father and his children out on their pushbikes.
It reminded me of the poem I included on Day 4 called ‘Lockdown’:
“All over the world people are slowing down and reflecting
All over the world people are looking at their neighbours in a new way
All over the world people are waking up to a new reality
To how big we really are
To how little control we really have
To what really matters
To love”
Here is a thought. I have just telephoned my granddaughter to ask her if she would write a paragraph about coronavirus and her life with it.
The answer was, “Boring, boring, boring.” Anyway never one to give up I have tasked both grandchildren to give me a paragraph for our diary. Any more children up to it? Does not matter how young.
So tomorrow I would like our diary to be from the children. If I do not get any response you will have to put up with me.
Sarah
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