Several of my friends have been “self-isolating” since before the lockdown as they are vulnerable for one reason or another, so there has been more than a week of non-normal activity. We are having to work out how to cope.
There seem to be a few important areas to consider: social contact, exercise, keeping busy in body and mind.
Social contact
If we are not supposed to meet or be closer than 2 metres we still need to keep in contact.
There are still the usual texts, but my credit will run out…. So I have been turning to email more often, but this is becoming a bit of a problem too, as my internet is so slow that I (too often) can’t get into my emails. There are telephone calls of course. Having a “BT anytime” rate I can talk landline to landline for up to an hour without it costing me anything extra. Maybe I will get full benefit of this for once?! I am making sure that I speak to at least one person every day.
When I delivered shopping to a friend, I left it on her door step and stepped a longish distance away and we were able to have a bit of a chat before she took the shopping in.
One neighbour called (and stepped 2m away) having left a bird-of-paradise plant on the doorstep – he said he had accidentally bought two?! Another neighbour also rang the doorbell, stepped back and suggested we could talk across the road or door-to-door.
Exercise
I have found a rope and re-taken up skipping! It is exhausting, as well as getting tangled in the rope. I am improving – was managing 3 at first and increased it to about 17 but now mostly managing 20 to 30, with the record being 56.
Walking is mostly to the shops and back for food – which has the added advantage of doing weights as I carry the shopping home! On Tuesday I also took the car to the New Forest and went for a long walk there. This is apparently now disapproved of, but I don’t think I would have stopped if there had been more than the 5 or 6 cars that there were in the car park.
The other exercise has been cutting the lawn! The back hardly needed it – well, it is mostly holes where the squirrels have dug up the peanuts from next door that they buried previously. The front was another matter and has needed it since the autumn when I failed to do the last cut before it started raining. Fortunately it is quite small.
Keeping busy
As well as all the exercise there is shopping, cooking, washing etc just to keep going. We have been very fortunate to have lovely weather so washing could be hung outside. Then there are all the telephone calls and the time wasted trying to get on the internet. I even did some (not very good) cleaning! Does that count as exercise? I have also filled in a bit of time with sudoku and codewords and even managed to finish the book-group book – “The Secret Barrister” – rather hard going!
I have been working on a 1000 piece jigsaw of a garden and I have 5 more 1000 piece jigsaws to do when this is finished.
As the weather has been so lovely I have done some gardening, starting by sieving the last of the compost from the old bin. Then cutting the lawn, of course and some tidying and weeding.
I had started a FutureLearn course before this week so I have been continuing with that – “Working Lives in the Coal Mines” at the moment. I think it has another week to run, but because of internet problems I have got a bit behind. We are told that learning new things is good for us and Future Learn has a lot of (free) interesting courses. I have been doing them for years.
What have others been doing?
A common activity seems to have been cleaning. I meant to do more of this but somehow other things are more interesting! One friend tells me she cleaned out a kitchen cupboard and found stuff from 2012….
Other interesting things I have heard about are re-building a ferret house and run (!) and someone who dug out their wii-fit, which told her it was one thousand nine hundred and something (was it 99?) days since she had last used it! It is as good a way as any of having exercise while staying at home. Another friend says she washed everything in sight as the weather was so good.
People have been talking on skype and WhatsApp and Facebook, but I don’t do any of those – and my internet is on go-slow anyway. There was a housegroup “hangout” on Thursday which I couldn’t do, even on the phone, as I couldn’t get onto my emails to get the phone number and pin code. I also couldn’t view the “church service” on Sunday as the internet was too slow.
A good one was the person who said she went and sat in her sunny garden and listened to worship music on her headphones. She reports that it gave her a real feeling of peace.
As far as I can gather most people are ok, although several had a bit of a “meltdown” on Wednesday. Why Wednesday? I have been fine but I do, on the whole, like my own company. I was very sad to not be able to get to the burial of my niece, as I would have liked to say goodbye. There should be a memorial service at some later date, but it doesn’t feel quite the same. The other thing has been frustration over the internet – but I am even getting used to that. Put the computer to do a task and go and make a cup of tea while it decides if it will or not.
I think there could be a temptation to not bother to wash or wash my hair or put on clean clothes because no-one will see (or smell!) me anyway. I am making sure I resist that one. Save it for a VERY bad day?
Lets see how week 2 goes….