Week 1:
I’ll start with the obvious: shopping. I’ve always done a weekly shop at a supermarket. But corona has shown me that I don’t need to do this. Did you know you could buy 24 toilet rolls in one pack?! I didn’t.
I set out to the supermarket earlier this week and saw cars queuing to get onto Aldi’s car park, and I thought ‘oh bugger, are Aldi selling a new blow up kayak, or has that Chunky Burger Sauce the husband rhapsodised about last summer come back into stock?’ The answer was no: they’d just restocked the loo roll. I drove past and, I’ll be honest with you here, this wasn’t because of social distancing. Social distancing isn’t a hardship for me. I just couldn’t be arsed with it. So I drove fifteen minutes out of town to the caravan and camping shop where I discovered that a 24 pack of toilet roll was a thing. This is going to keep us going for the foreseeable; but if it doesn’t (say I manage to get hold of some Chunky Burger Sauce, have an early barbecue and someone eats a dodgy sausage), I picked up some Imodium, too. I feel like I’ve got all eventualities covered on the loo roll front.
Now comes the realisation that I never actually had to run the supermarket gauntlet which, let’s be honest, has seriously raised its game since the rise of the Mighty Aldi. So off I, and my two year old, skipped to the local farm shop, fuelled by worthiness and a need for blue top milk.
I was excited: here I was, Supermum, supporting a local and smaller business whilst sharing a novel experience with my toddler, during which I envisaged reinforcing the names, colours and numbers of all of the fresh produce. Why hadn’t I done this sooner? As if my halo wasn’t already visible from space, the metaphorical glow must have been incandescent when I considered the fact that I was even reducing on plastic packaging.
How wrong I was.
The key thing to consider here was the absence of a trolley and with that, the trolley seat: the difference between civilised equilibrium and anarchy. For Seb, we might as well have been entering Pat Sharp’s Fun House (side note: I heard this was making a comeback?)
To the left as we entered was the vessel in which Seb chose to travel - the wicker basket; upon understanding that the stack of baskets was not a climbing frame, Seb grabbed one and climbed in. He wasn’t moving and, given the current corona-climate, it didn’t seem fair to expose the sophisticated-two-metres-apart customers of Greenfields to the detonation of noise I know he’s capable of. So off Seb sailed to the raised ball pool of apples and oranges. If you’ve ever wondered, apples are best for throwing and oranges are superb for dropping on the floor and jumping on. Look to the positive: the basket had now been vacated and was fit for purpose. On we proceeded to the veg. It’s true that when your toddler is silent for any length of time, albeit 20 seconds in this case, you should be suspicious. I was scrutinising a tray of similarly sized and coloured potatoes for the ‘best’ ones when I heard ‘hat’. Oh the many functions of a shopping basket. Montessori would be fucking enraptured with my child. Back to level one.
Given that we still had to get past eggs and wine bottles, I carried him the rest of the way. I’ve recently discovered Arnold Schwarzenegger on Instagram and he’s been telling us all how important it is to exercise; well Arnie, workout done.
On a more serious note, I haven’t seen my Grandma for a couple of weeks; she’s in a home and has dementia. She’s 96. I know what she’ll be saying about all of this: I’ve lived a wonderful life; we lived through a war; if it’s my time, it’s my time. Imagine using the words ‘wonderful’ and ‘war’ in the same sentence. Something those dickheads outside Aldi won’t be able to comprehend. But my Grandma is, and my Granddad was, representative of their generation. If any toilet roll hoarders are reading this, you might want to read this paragraph again - but I expect you’ll still furrow your eyebrows in confusion at this point.
Coming back to what I know my Grandma, and I’m guessing many others of that generation, will be saying, ‘if it’s my time...’, a week ago, my attitude was similar. But then I saw the footage coming out of Italian hospitals and I changed my mind.
What type of selfish, mindless moron would knowingly risk the potential of passing on a disease to an elderly relative that would result in a painful and lonely death?
And it is painful, and it will be lonely.
Seb emptied heel cream all over my head the other day. He was playing with his doctor’s kit and whilst I thought he was using his pretend (and empty!) tube of cream, it turns out he’d got hold of a tube of heel cream. I realised when thick globules started oozing down my neck like that runny glue we had at school back in the 80s/90s. Had I not have been scanning my newsfeed to see what the latest armchair expert’s opinion was on corona, I might have noticed. The lesson: put your phone down, or whatever screen it is you’re looking at, and engage.
On armchair experts: what wonderful conspiracy theories we’ve seen go viral. Who knows what the 1% of the 1% know that we do not? The point is, we’re never going to know. What we do know is that the corona virus is serious. The expectation is that if we’re able to keep deaths in this country to less than 20,000 then we’re doing well. Today death figures stand at 177.
I’m getting emails from every shop I’ve ever spent money in even though I can’t get a delivery, every hotel I’ve ever stayed in despite the fact they’re all closed, even the car garages are at it and I couldn’t afford a new car before jobs were on the line never mind now, and it’s not as if I can go anywhere anyway. But it’s nice that all of these emails open by asking me how I am; maybe when the boredom really sets in I’ll respond to some of these people and ask them how they are.
A large and noticeable shift is that the house is cleaner and tidier than ever. It’s a shame nobody will witness it.
I mentioned I’ve discovered Arnold Schwarzenegger’s videos on Instagram and they’re brilliant. I love him; not as much as Crocodile Dundee (which is now on Netflix - hurrah!) but a close second.
I’ve heard more from friends and family this week than I have done all year. Thanks to my brilliant friends who dropped nappies and wipes on the doorstep when I couldn’t find any; thanks to those who have got in touch just to see how we are; thanks to the staff at my Grandma’s care home who are still turning up everyday to take care of her; thanks to my teacher friends who I have no doubt will be showing up next week for our vulnerable and key worker children, and thanks to the NHS staff who really are on the frontline - my best friend is one of them.
If you’re lonely or struggling, for whatever reason, reach out. The irony of self isolation is that we’re not isolated at all.
