The New Routine

My company furloughs five members of staff. Personally, I wouldn’t mind doing nothing for 80% and then perhaps volunteering to do something useful. Instead they’ve asked me to work for 90% of my salary plus using my own electricity, printer ink, paper and paying for a memory upgrade for my computer to get it up to scratch but... happy to do so.

The Lad is getting the hang of our new routine, hereby to be known as ‘his’ routine. Which includes his breakfast at 7am prompt and his tea at 6pm prompt. He’s not being terribly flexible about this I must say.

On Monday we hold the Dog Club’s Committee Meeting as a Facebook Group Video call, which seems to go well.

Our hoodies from Ashby arrive and although L says she won’t wear hers for a race she hasn’t done, I love mine. As well as the hoodies, they have returned £10 each to us. I was minded to let them keep the money until they said that after they’d paid all their bills they’ll donate any remaining funds to charity. Personally, I’d rather they pay all their bills and then give me the rest back or keep it themselves to ensure we have a race next year.

Food sales are up 20% since lockdown but alcohol sales are up by 22%. This probably isn’t too surprising as none of us are eating and drinking out.

The problem with drinking is that being locked down is rather like being in a holiday cottage albeit with your own back garden. So we’ve started out drinking as we would on holiday e.g. every day. That’s probably not advisable long term but having a drink has sort of become a crucial end-of-the-work-day marking point.

On the food front people stockpiling the cheap stuff has driven us up market e.g. I couldn’t get any chicken, so I bought duck. I couldn’t get any beef mince, so I had to buy fillet steak. That said I couldn’t get brown rice and had to slum it with white. Does Duck even go with white rice?

Still no eggs nor pitta bread.  

Thursday is the second NHS clap but we miss Jay’s quiz and watch it on Friday instead as the Parkrun quiz moves back to Saturday.

Friday is our ‘keep the economy going' day but to our horror we find both the Park Tandoori and the Savera now shut. In fact the options to get a curry delivered are very slim. One name does stand out and that’s Anoki who are offering 20% off and free delivery. Better than that our order arrives with complementary poppadums and a pickle tray. Such acts of kindness will not be forgotten once the world is back spinning.

(Saturday 4^th April)