Smell The Fresh Coffee

One thing I’ve discovered in Lockdown is that I actually much prefer working from home to going into work. For a start you end up with a longer day when the commute takes less than a minute rather than an hour each way and I actually feel I’m getting more work done.

We’re missing going out in the evenings but some of our favourite pubs and some of our favourite restaurants\takeaways are delivering. Some takeaways have been closed but are now back open and we return to the Park Tandoori this week.

There are some advantages to no longer having a social life. I'm cooking every night (bar takeaway night) which means I can buy more fresh ingredients as things don't go off. I'm also really enjoying experimenting with my cooking and I’m also doing a pot of fresh coffee every day because I’ve got time to do so.

Meanwhile I’m playing more music which is actually costing me a fortune because I’m not only buying new music but also buying digital versions of stuff I’d previously only got on vinyl.

On the film front I watch The Secretary which is a 'classic' of sorts from 2002 and is about a young woman Lee (Maggie Gyllenhaal) who is into self-mutilation and has only recently been released from a mental institution. She gets a job as secretary to the original Mr Grey (James Spader). He’s a lawyer who is demanding in many ways and their relationship takes a sadomasochistic turn but after a while it becomes unclear who is the demanding one.

My TV consumption has rather worryingly gone up during Lockdown. This is partly due to L and I getting slightly addicted to reruns of ‘Who Wants To Be A Millionaire’ on the Sony Channel and we also watched Quiz, the series about Charles Ingram’s Millionaire ‘win’.

At least with all that and the various other quizzes we’re doing we may come out of lockdown more intelligent. We’re still enjoying Jay’s Quiz on a Thursday but his ‘Celebrity’ one at the weekend was a bit of a let-down.

Then there’s my Tour de France reruns. 1997 was fairly straightforward. Chris Boardman won the Prologue while Jan Ullrich won the whole thing by a massive nine minutes. 1997 was the calm before the storm of the 1998 Tour although the cycling authorities had already, sort of, admitted they had a drugs problem with EPO use by introducing a test for a rider's Hematocrit level because riders were starting to drop dead because their blood was like treacle.

No rider was allowed to race with a red blood cell count of over 50% and this rule probably explained why Bjarne Riss failed to defend his title in 1997 as he was rumoured to be mad enough to ride at levels well in excess of this when he won the previous year.

There was, at this point, no test for EPO so there was little else the cycling authorities could do but in 1998 the French Police were about to take matters into their own hands.

(Saturday 18^th April)

Panic Buying After All

This working from home business is actually quite good. Not having to commute to work is actually two hours of my life that I do get back, five times a week.

Then there’s the girl in the office just down the corridor from me. Her office is the only one with coffee making facilities so I get to pop in quite frequently for a chat. She’s quite friendly but she does she keeps asking me for ‘IT Support’ which I hope is a euphemism for something.

I risk a trip to my usual Sainsbury's at lunch time wearing gloves. I figure going round a shop I know will be quicker than one I don’t. Again there are plenty of empty shelves but this week I manage to grab the very last pack of chicken. Apparently supermarkets experienced an additional 15 million visits last week alone but here’s me sticking to our one shop a week. I’m just not cut out for this panic buying lark.

While I’m in the area I pick up my wine delivery from work because the wine company decided to deliver to where they usually deliver to despite me asking them not to.

The Olympics are postponed to 2021. Which I’m sure will please Laura Kenny, as she can now get her shoulder fixed, but perhaps not her husband. Jason may now hang up his cleats.

The other big news is that Son’s wedding is sadly delayed until September.

L sets up a home gym while along with Daughter she does a Joe Wicks workout session online. I’d never heard of Joe Wicks until now. He’s been doing workouts for kids but apparently a lot of women reckon he’s good for getting their heart rate going.

While they’re doing that I order a couple of beer kegs from Shipstones and some bottles from Swannay in Orkney. So perhaps I am panic buying after all.

(Wednesday 25^th March)

Working From Home

Wednesday is my first day of working from home. L is doing the same having arrived home last night with a wheelbarrow's worth of files. She only got her new ‘very pretty’ computer at work last week and now she’s been parted from it. That said the annoying Cortana, who she hasn’t had chance to dismember (I mean disable) yet, will have to self-isolate.

L warns me that I’ll need to get used to working with the back door open and only actually working in between ball chucks. Sounds idyllic. It doesn’t appear that the dogs have any intention of spending all day asleep in their beds like they do on Dog TV.

Our morning dog walk hasn’t really changed much. People are doing social distancing, as they’ve been told to do, but we’re well used to people shouting 'Good Morning' to us from a safe distance for years. Usually from the safety of whichever car they’re hiding behind. The joys of being part of the dog walking fraternity.

On Thursday I shop for my Mum and Dad in Asda which is a traumatic experience. Shopping in an unfamiliar supermarket is like wearing someone else’s shoes and that’s before you presented with a confusing list from my Father. Not least because most of it is from the frozen and confectionery isles, both of which are alien territory to me.

Italy’s daily death toll seems to go up by 100 every day, reaching nearly 800 per day by the end of the week. UK figures are now 150 a day but rising and it is announced that all schools will close on Friday. Despite Donald Trump saying that the ‘Chinese Virus’ was not welcome in the US, it seems to have its feet (sadly) well under the table in New York City.

I am surprised to see that most of the pubs around Nottingham still seem to be open. Largely, I suppose, because they haven’t been ordered to close and many people who were told to avoid pubs and restaurants clearly aren’t. By Friday that changes as the Government instructs all pubs, restaurants, gyms and other social venues across the country to close their doors.

The weekend arrives, looking very much like the rest of the week. Parkrun is replaced by a quiz while Frank Turner’s gig at Rock City is replaced by a screening of his 2000^th gig which was at Rock City in 2016 and I was there of course. It’s rather good to experience it again.

(Saturday 21^st March)

Supervision Duties

We have plumbers in this week finally converting our antiquated one pipe plumbing system into something that can work with a modern boiler. Sadly this means losing our wonderfully retro radiators.

They were due on Monday but have now deferred to Tuesday due to overrunning on a previous job which isn’t a promising start. L and I have split the supervision duties between us. I will do the first two days having been given permission to work from home.

What supervision duties turns out to mean is repeatedly shifting our ‘too much’ stuff from room to room to enable them to work.

The dogs love it. They have two extra people to kick balls for them and the Lad has all manner of new toys that he can run off with. He finds the material they use for pipe lagging particularly to his liking but he is also not adverse to running around with a screwdriver in his mouth.

Meanwhile I enjoy joining the ranks of WFH and actually get quite a lot of work done. The weather is nice enough to sit in garden on my laptop and I can take the boys on the park in the middle of the day.

Which goes something like this. I throw the ball for MD, MD gets the ball, MD drops the ball, the Lad picks up the ball, the Lad does laps of park with the ball, eventually I get the Lad to come to me, without the ball, pick up the Lad to stop him going back to the ball and walk to the ball, MD picks up the ball before I get there and moves it, I walk to the new location, I repeat this until MD stops moving the ball, then I pick up the ball, put down the Lad, throw the ball for MD. Repeat.

I surmise that there must be an easier way and find that having two balls is better because the Lad, despite trying, can't get both in his mouth at once. This worked fine until we lost one of the balls. At which point we went for strong coffee at Café 508. As I have my laptop with me, I can then also do some work while sitting outside the café. This is the life... sort of.

Back at home, both the boys fall asleep on the lawn, by their balls, and now I daren’t move. Problem is my laptop is almost flat and I need to put it on charge. Then the plumbers tell me that there will be no hot water tonight.

In the evening on Wednesday L is back at the Book Festival again, this time seeing Alison Weir and again I meet her afterwards in the Exeter.

(Wednesday 6^th June)

No Real Hope Of Success

While L is having problems with the City Council’s Leisure App misbehaving and forgetting her login details mine seems to be having a good day. It even seems to have the Monday morning swim sessions on, which is a rarity.

My swim goes well despite the slow backstroker in my lane. Lane 2 of 3 as well, I ask you.

We have a poorly dog, Doggo. Although both looked a bit off colour this morning only one of them has the squits. Perhaps last night’s curried rice has disagreed with him. L decides to go home at lunchtime to see what's what and perhaps to clear up the mess. It’s a dirty job but someone’s got to do it.

When she gets home… well let’s such say she’s decided to scrap the mat in the kitchen. She stays with him and works from home.

They have tried to deliver my new phone to home but sadly it wasn't the Royal Mail, so I don’t have the option of picking it up from the local sorting office. It's DPD, who have taken it back to their depot in Outer Mongolia. Not that it matters where they are because they will insist on attempting to redeliver to an empty house again tomorrow. I try and dissuade them through their website but there is no option for that and when I ring their phone line I find it is totally automated with no way of speaking to a real person. I drop them an email with no real hope of success.

O2, who the phone was ordered from, are no help either when I webchat with them. Just to get me off the call they tell me to go and see if my local O2 shop can help. I know this will be a waste of time but I go anyway and walk all the way in to Derby after work. It is a waste of time.

When I get home Doggo seems to be improving, so we head off dogging at Hilton. 

(Monday 5^th June)

Raise The Alarm

L announces she is going to move the alarm clock ten minutes earlier. I’m not totally sure what the plan is for these extra ten minutes and we do already put our existing alarm call to good use but I’m happy to go with the flow.

My lady of leisure pops into work for an hour, then heads off for a haircut before working from home for the rest of the day and chucking balls, of course. Ball chucking has actually entered a new realm since most of the trees went. You can chuck the ball an impressively long way now. MD seems up to the challenge though.  

The new hairdo turns out to be a bit on the short side, even for L. I can see I’ll be doing my Christmas shopping at the clip-on ponytail shop this year. She says you don't look at the mantelpiece while you're stoking the fire or so the saying goes. I have a saying too, never underestimate the effect of a good quality mantelpiece.

As I’m out again tonight, continuing to celebrate Cask Ale Week, this time with the ex-University guys in Bingham, L is treating herself (and the dogs) to a roast chicken. Naturally a Sunday roast on a Friday night is a no no but I do pinch some and dunk it in the leftover Madras sauce from our takeaway on Sunday. It’s an excellent improvised meal to fortify myself before the night ahead.

(Friday 2^nd October)

Macabre Fascination

L is working from home again as the seamless changeover of the phone line at work hasn’t happened yet. The dogs are coping in their own separate ways. One is sprawled across the bed, the other is sulking by the door waiting for someone to chuck his ball.

If my knee ever stops hurting I will consider entering this year’s Nottingham Grand Prix series of races. Oddly it does have some sort of macabre fascination for me this year because they’ve changed the order, the 10k is now last and also because two of them aren’t at Rushcliffe.

(Thursday 5^th June)

Ominous Feeling

L is working from home because the boiler repairman is due again. The dogs quickly take up their usual positions, asleep, but they do need to conserve their energy. They have a busy day, what with so many visitors coming. First the boiler repairman, then L’s folks are coming round later.

L has an ominous feeling about this repairman. It’s probably the same ominous feeling I have. Normally they email and text us, continually reminding us about the appointment. This time, nothing.

I check their website, we are actually on there, so perhaps we are big unnecessarily ‘ominous’.

I take it all back, he arrives and does the job. We now seem to have hot water and heat, at the same time, until the next time of course. 

As L entertains her folks, I’m at the match. Another ridiculous Friday night fixture that no one wants to go to. It results in a rather, lifeless crowd and another defeat. Perhaps next season they might wish to stick to Saturdays? I doubt it.

(Friday 1^st March)