Change is in the air

The change in the weather was probably brought about by the prayers of the people who were horrified at the madness seen in the hoards on the beaches, who in the few lovely days were seen wandering about with beer bellies hanging over their shorts they had had since they were a size or two smaller. These strange members of the population seem to be unaware that there has been a national emergency. It must be a very large rock for so many of them to hide under. They seem to have changed nothing in their everyday lives during these times, and maybe it will dawn on them more slowly that our life and times will have changed permanently in the long term. Maybe I am the odd one out but I don’t see things returning to the old idea of normal, not soon, not later, not ever.

For a start we know for sure that there are a multitude of things that we took for granted a while back. We may have missed some luxuries for a while but then the penny dropped and we saw that we didn’t need those things after all. Mind you, it has always been a mystery to me that so many people actually like to just go out shopping. They leave home not needing anything new in their wardrobe or their sitting room; yet when the weekend comes, they go shopping most of them don’t even know what a shopping list is. Shopping is a social thing to them not a necessity.

In our home we make a shopping list as the week progresses and before all this lockdown, (that seems to have drifted right our of the window) we would then have gone to the one or two shops and bought those item only or are we the only people on earth who do that?

We did go out today for a while. It was my first time out of the house not wearing sports clothes and intending to go for a run. Today was a mild panic excursion due to that fact that it was the birthday of a young friend who has swum with us in our club sessions for thirty years and we could not miss sending her a card. The funny thing was that we did not have her address in our book because we have always handed things like birthday and Christmas cards over by hand at swim sessions, never posted them in all the years.

So having made the effort to drive round and pop a card through our Katie’s door we drove to my daughter Jacqueline’s house in the same area and had a little chat with her and her husband Martin who is the saint who has brought us shopping when we could not get a delivery slot. We didn’t go inside their home but instead we had a few moments in their garden which was a pleasure that we have missed these past four months. 

We have missed them, that’s for sure. Loving embraces are something we have had to train ourselves to do without. We all have longer hair, apart from Steve due to the fact that I cut his hair for him. Jacqueline and I have lost touch with our hair colour. I have also lost my long artistically manicured nails and I don’t feel that I will resume that habit any time soon.

It was strange to me to be out and about at that time of day, lunchtime more or less, and I was not impressed with the general public's idea of social distancing at all, even though we were in our vehicle, it looked like times had not changed. My life and values have shifted to a more firm place that I think I prefer.

Having got home again its a little late to start writing my diary page but I had better quickly include that it was raining heavily first thing today and so we opted to run around the block a half dozen times rather than go out in mud and dripping trees in the woods. The run didn’t amount to much but everything is something as we say. We got in the hot tub to warm up as soon as we got back and then had a warm drink before going on to the indoor exercise. Briefly that was 15 minutes Tai Chi, 30 minutes of Qigong, and hour of ballet workout which is more workout than ballet actually and finally an hour turbo training up in our little box room.

I have started a new embroidery project and I added to that. My embroidery is a bit of a mad thing, free hand stitching that usually works; I rarely get to a point when I am not happy with it because although it is pattern free I think about it carefully.