Diary of a self-isolator – Week 8

A lighthearted look at the situation over the last seven days in our house.

Sunday 03/05/2020 – Day 48

And so we come to the end of week 7 and I am having a really lazy day, I just got out of bed and literally thought ‘sod it’ I can’t be assed to do anything today. So, I sat down with wife No2 (my computer) and first of all posted my diary from last week. I am still totally amazed at how many read it and more amazed at how many people follow me on various sites, my only bugbear is that my 2 favourite sites where I can post a poem and get around four or five hundred likes will not allow my diary on, they are both run by the same admin and I have to honour their opinion, but Diary No1 got past them for a few hours and had over a thousand likes in those few hours, I just feel that my blogs would have been popular, but we mustn’t grumble.

Anyway, now that I’ve had a good whinge let’s get back to today, I decided I would use my newfound free time to search online for some four -foot fence panels – big mistake! Mrs H is in the kitchen preparing one of her excellent Sunday lunches whilst I am propped up at the breakfast bar, Gold radio is on courtesy of Alexa, the only reason gold is on the radio is because I have been trying unsuccessfully for 3 months to get her to play my downloaded Spotify music from my phone, does she take any notice, of course not! She just says in that mundane voice ‘Sorry, I cannot find Eric’s Spotify’ or she plays something from Eric Clapton lol. That’s two women I have no control over in this house.

Did I tell you Mrs H has ordered me to start wearing a mask around the house, nothing to do with the fact that she sick of my ugly mug or coronavirus it’s to stop me eating everything that doesn’t move?

I digress, I thought I’d try the newly re-opened B & Q first, they do delivery – at a price, well I  found the four-foot panels and nearly dropped through the floor, £40 for one! Do they come covered in gold leaf? I needed eight of them, so with the posts it would have been over £400.  I then decided to make my own with feather edge boards, for those of you not converse with fencing these are boards that go straight up and down and not vertically. I didn’t fare too well their either, that was well over £330, I tried E Bay, Amazon and lots more sites until I finally gave up the ghost at about 3.00pm and ordered stuff to repair our outdoor living roof (I know, don’t ask). Then to cap it all Gold radio played ‘Don’t Fence me In’ by Gene Autrey.

A further 315 people lost their lives to this terrible virus in the last 24 hours, but we are of course in weekend figures, hence the low number.

Monday 04/05/2020 – Day 49

I was laying in bed wondering, how many woke up thinking they were on a bank holiday? For anyone that didn’t know that has been moved to Friday to coincide with VE Day, sadly all our military parades have had to be cancelled, but we can still be aware of the terrific sacrifices made by many and remember them this coming week.

On the news front – gob of Good Morning Britain is stepping down albeit temporarily, Piers Morgan has caught a very mild version of a suspected coronavirus and will get his results next Monday, until then he has taken himself off hot air (see what I did there). Seriously, I do wish him well. He is sometimes very controversial but does do good as well.

I have one of those fanciful wrist gadgets, it looks like a watch but also tells you how your heart rate is, how many steps a day you take, how your body is performing, it’s a bit like carrying Mrs H around on your wrist, only quieter! The thing is that when at work I average 10,000 + steps, but since I’ve been at home drinking tea all day this total has dropped dramatically to just over a 1000 and I suspect at least half of those involve trips to the toilet to get rid of all that tea!

My son came up with the goods today, I had a phone call from him this morning, he informed me that he was going to B & Q and did I need anything – big mistake! I was like a kid in a sweet shop, I had to use a toilet roll to get everything on that I needed. Within minutes I had reeled off my list of items and needs, poor lad thought he was at one of those American auctions, you know, the ones where they talk really fast. He managed to calm me down and reduce my list down to two tins of garden paint, and for Mrs H a big bag of compost and a bottle of tomato food. Poor lad stood in a queue for nearly an hour just to get in to get his stuff, he finally got to the checkout and produced his Trade card only to be told by the operator that he needn’t have queued, because he was Trade he could have walked straight in through that entrance, I tried really hard to suppress my snigger whilst practicing social distance of course. He has now re-named it B in a Queue!

Mrs H and myself had a few minutes silence at tea-time, not for the NHS or the keyworkers, we were watching Eastenders (yes I know, we are the two from Kidderminster that actually watch it)  and grouchy Phil was having a sobering conversation with fellow alcoholic Linda, landlady of the Queen Vic pub (you couldn’t make it up could you lol) Linda asked Phil to be her sponsor, I had all sorts of visions going through my tiny mind, things like ‘the yard of ale’ 18 – 30’s booze cruises, even though both of them are well past that stage, anyway our conversation went like this —

Me         What’s a sponsor do?

Mrs H  They help other alcoholics at meetings etc

Me        Really! Who’s yours?

Well, as soon as those words left my lips I regretted it, after I removed the cushion from my face Mrs H carried on drinking her White Zinfandel Rose in silence.

Another very low death figure today, 288  deaths were reported, this is the lowest figure for what seems like an eternity, but sadly,  we know well enough that it will spike tomorrow.

Tuesday 05/05/2020 – Day 50

Well, here we are at day 50, it seems a bit of a non-plus day really, considering we have reached our Golden anniversary of lockdown, I’d have thought at least a telegram from her majesty would have been in order.

Piers Morgan has announced that he does not in fact have coronavirus, I always thought this the case, his body, so he says  – is a temple, and I sincerely believe that the entrance around his own backside where he often visits and talks out of, (look, if he’s no longer ill then he is fair game again)’

Been enjoying the sun all day, well, when I say enjoying it,  I did have a drill in one hand and a paintbrush in the other, Mrs H informed me that she would like a picket gate to separate her Greenhouse from the rest of the garden, and seeing as I was desperate to get into her good books after the alcohol incident, I readily agreed.

I’d already got the gate made from a previous whim of Mrs H so, all I had to do was make a panel on the side to match it, Do you think I could find any decent wood, I had more chance of finding Shergar or Lord Lucan! I even had to use an old post with a badly chewed bottom to hang the gate on, I know that I am going to be looking at that in the next few months and regretting it, anyway, to cut a long story short, I finished the job and even put her a nice brick pathway leading to it. Well, to say she was over the moon would be an understatement, she threw her arms around me and covered my cheek (face) with kisses, the Eric and Lynn loving relationship was definitely back on course. That’s what I love about Mrs H, she’s easily pleased and she isn’t too fussy, she couldn’t be – she married me!

Just listened to the depressing report from Downing street at 5.00pm, The number of deaths in the last 24 hours were 693, this sadly means that with 29427 deaths overall we have now taken over Italy in the total of people lost, only America is ahead of the UK in the number of lives lost. This of course brings out all the anti-government accusations about being too slow. Me? I think that now is not the time for recriminations which are spurred on by the need for different news and to sell newspapers.

Wednesday 06/05/2020 – Day 51

Forgot to tell you yesterday that the spaceman called with our parcel, we were getting a little worried as he was very late, but he turned up at mid-afternoon bless him.

I am definitely piling on the pounds, it’s got to the stage when the scales whimper as I step on them, in fact to use scientific terms – I need to social distance myself from my refrigerator so I can flatten my curve.

My first job of the day is to clean out the filters in my pond, I just love messing around in the water (it’s a man thing, trust me). It reminds me of my youth where – if there was water – you’d find gangs of boys, the exception of course, being bathtime! We would go over the local tip and gather discarded oil drums, and a few pieces of wood, then, armed with some poor mothers washing line it was down to the cut (canal) to make a raft, within an hour we were on the water with bits of old wood for paddles, happy days.

Back to the pond, I have to put nets over mine because we have the ugliest heron in our area, our turkey looked in better condition on Christmas day! you know when it’s about because all the pigeons disappear, he, or one like him, emptied my pond a few years back, hence the nets. One day I was sat in the house early morning when I heard an almighty splashing coming from the pond down the garden, I ran down to find the nets had parted after the heron had landed on them, this caused the bird to fall in and it was flapping its wings frantically trying to get out. Now I have to be honest, the thought did cross my mind that this would be a good opportunity to rid myself of the pest, but even I couldn’t bring myself to do that, Jaws (our 15 inch long Coy Carp)  was at this time swimming up to the distressed bird and actually butting it as it struggled, Jaws would then turn and go back for another go (this is true) as if he were telling it to get out. I was wondering how I was going to get it out of there, I removed the nets and got our broom under the bird and lifted it out of the water, it ran off toward the summer house and hid behind it, presumably to get dry. The Heron left a greasy slick on my pond that looked like an oil tanker had overturned and spilled its cargo, it took me an age to clear the water and I have never seen that heron since.

I cut my lawns after cleaning the pond and then needed to rest a while, I hate this old age thing, my head says I am still 15 years old but my body says otherwise, I’ve found that as I get older all I need is Spec savers, Boots chemist and a Greggs or to put it in a more simple way, Specs, Drugs and a sausage roll lol!

The Government are under great pressure to explain why our death number is so high, all sorts of blame is being apportioned to the Health Secretary and Boris Johnson, They are all taking this opportunity because the death toll in the UK was 649 and went above 30,000 in the last 24 hours. Perhaps it’s me, but I just imagined thousands of eager reporters and editors waiting anxiously for that ‘magic’ figure to happen, questions ready to ask and reports already written and just that number needed for the go-ahead, but, as I said, perhaps it’s just me.

Thursday 07/05/2020 – Day 52

Another wonderful sunny day ahead, Mrs H and myself love days like these, lockdown isn’t too bad if you can relax in the garden, in fact, Mrs H said to me last night that I was like one of her precious plants, I thought, that’s nice, I know how much she loves her plants and her garden, then she added “ Because you planted yourself on that sofa seven weeks ago and you’ve grown considerably”, stunned silence. Mrs H continued “I was only joking, keep your chins up” this was followed by raucous laughter,

That damn video doorbell we had installed last week is driving me to distraction, I messaged satellite man and said that we weren’t getting notifications when anyone came up the drive, “Oh” he said “ have you turned on so and so in settings”, all gobbledygook to me but fortunately Mrs H knew where he was coming from and within minutes we heard ‘ You have an amber alert at your door’, but, there was no-one there. We put it down to first time alert, so you’ll know what to expect. Half an hour later it went off again, went to the front door – no-one there, this has now been going on for a few days, I wouldn’t mind so much but that damn woman has an American accent and sounds like Marge from the cartoon show The Simpsons, and at 3.30 in the morning that is not good, trust me! No wonder satellite man didn’t switch it on while he was here.

Anyway, the good news is that we had an upgrade to our Internet so BT had to switch it off for a few seconds, this meant (praise be to God) that the whole doorbell thing went off Mrs H’s phone and neither of us are savvy enough to put it back on, I messaged satellite man and he replied (praise be to Allah) that he can’t get here until next week to reset it, so peace has once more descended upon the Harvey household, except for Mrs H’s snoring, mmm I wonder if there’s an app online for that?

At the start of our lockdown I decided to put a £1 coin in a jar every time I got irritated, In the first couple of weeks there was nothing, I counted it yesterday and had over £60 lol!

Friday 08/05/2020 – Day 53

Today as most of you will know is a very auspicious day for many all around the world, it marks the 75^th anniversary of VE day or Victory in Europe as it was known,

AS Winston Churchill announced the surrender of Germany and the end of the war in Europe in May 1945, people in every town, every street and every home took to the streets to celebrate.

On May 8, the Prime Minister told the nation: “My dear friends, this is your hour. This is not victory of a party or of any class.

“It’s a victory of the great British nation as a whole… I rejoice we can all take a night off today and another day tomorrow… celebrating victory.”

It has taken a worldwide virus to eventually stop the nation celebrating today, but, there are still those who refuse to surrender and are hanging bunting and Union Jack flags all around their homes. A sort of unofficial itinerary has been put together for today, starting with a two- minute silence at

11.00am, for this we are asked to stand at our front doors, at

3.00pm they will revive Winston Churchill’s memorable speech,

4.00pm and after listening you are asked to take your picnic blanket or bench and spread out in the front of your garden for Tea and scones at

6.00pm to raise a glass to your neighbours and finally

9.00pm The queen’s speech followed by a rousing version of ‘We’ll Meet Again with

Royal British Legion.

It’s not much for those millions of men, women and children who sacrificed their lives but under the circumstances it is the best we can offer.

The death toll today has reached 30,076 in the UK a rise of  539, Boris Johnson will address the nation at 7.00pm on Sunday, a lot of people are expecting a big ease on lockdown, I think a lot of people are going to be very disappointed.

Saturday 09/05/2020 – Day 54

It was a wonderful day yesterday, very emotional and I think everyone enjoyed it to the best of their ability.

I had a few Guinness just to show my respect of course, this meant numerous visits to the little boy’s room throughout the night. A few months ago, long before these despairing days of lockdown, Mrs H had obviously been watching Mrs Hinch on her phone and came up with another ‘must have’ idea. The latest ‘must have’ was lighting in the bathroom, not that we haven’t got a light,  ‘er indoors’ reckoned it was too bright in the dark wee hours (excuse the pun) but Mrs H is so clever that she made it look like my idea (do you get that as well lads?), ‘Doesn’t it hurt your eyes when you switch the light on darling?’ this was what I called an Exocet, I lovingly called the Mother in Law ‘Exocet’ when she was visiting, because you knew she was coming but there was nothing you could do about it!

Anyway, the upshot was that one week later half a dozen silver round light were delivered, each one took 3 AA batteries (not included of course, this is the UK) so my first job was to find 18 AA batteries which almost doubled the initial cost of the lights, These lights are designed to come on when motion is detected, I placed them around the bathroom in strategic places stood back and thought ‘That’ll do nicely’. In walks Mrs H with a ‘oh no, I didn’t want them there’ and placed them all around the walls three inches (75mm to you youngsters) from the floor, I am old enough and wise enough not to argue with a woman that has a vision in her mind.

That night I visited the bathroom and sure enough – no bright lights just a nice soft ambiance in the room, I went about my business and was humming ‘Moody River’ by Pat Boone (I have no idea why)when suddenly all the lights went out, I was left dangling – so to speak – in complete darkness! What could I do? I looked down to see what was going on with the lighting and one came back on, so I moved my foot, then my backside and they all came back on, it turns out that they all go off after 20 seconds, so now whenever I have to go I have to have a little wiggle!

Quite proud of myself actually, When I was young my mum used to be very frugal, with 4 brothers and 5 sisters she had to be, anyway, she would keep all the stale bread in a covered bucket, then, at the end of the month she would mix it all up, add currants, sultanas and raisins, put it in two big trays and into the oven, there was nothing like walking down the entry and smelling freshly cooked Bread pudding when you came home from school, one slice and that was enough for tea. When mum died my sister Carol started making the bread pudding exactly how mum used to make it, Carol being one of the most selfless people I’ve ever known brought me a whacking great slice while it was still warm, sadly, we lost Carol five years ago and that was the end of my bread pudding line.

Until yesterday, I had all the ingredients including a loaf of stale bread (must be stale), so I thought – why not. I mixed all the loaf with water until it formed a thick paste, added the raisins, sultanas and currants, placed it in a glass tray about 2” thick and shoved it in the heated oven at 180. After an hour- the time recommended – Mrs H opened the oven door to check it out, it wasn’t anywhere near cooked! She looked up, “what temperature is it supposed to be on?” I told her 180, Mrs H has never been one to mince her words “It’s on 80 you idiot”. Ooops!

After it had finally cooked, we tried it, “Ooh, it’s a bit bland” said Mrs H. I tried it and decided we should wait until it had cooled, which I did next morning at breakfast, it tasted a lot better but on my next attempt perhaps I should use milk instead of water to soften the stale bread, the final result is that most of it has gone and I am seven pounds heavier.

Another 346 deaths registered yesterday, that is well down but we are at the weekend, Everyone is looking forward to watching Boris at 7.00pm on Sunday night, hopefully at least it’ll put a stop to the many rumours and guesses going around.

See you all next week – with God’s grace.