Diary of a self-isolator – week 30

 A lighthearted look at a few memories and the situation over the last seven days in our house.

Sunday 04/10/2020 – Day 203

Up bright and early this morning and guess what – yes, it is still raining! There is just no logical pattern to the weather these days, it either rains or it is sunny and that’s it, Unlike my childhood there are no more nice crispy frosty mornings, and we hardly ever have snow.

Remember yesterday I told you that my granddaughter Alisha had passed her driving Theory test, well, the little darling decided to have a go on our local lottery again, if you recall I won £200 two weeks ago, and Alisha won £200 a week later, the upshot is that she won £800 last night, sadly she was in shares with her mum but that still means she won £400, If I was her mum I would have told her to keep the lot ‘Can you hear me Mother? (Sandy Powell) lol, I am now naming her Golden girl to match her little brother Golden child.

Yesterday I put the final piece of cladding on the walls of the repair shop, so today I will be in there setting out everything exactly where I need it, which means of course that a lot of stuff will have to go (honestly).

Sunday mornings as a child were lovely, us lads were encouraged  – nay forced – out of the house while my sisters changed all the beds, hoovered  (or swept) and generally helped mother around the house, if it was raining we were confined to the kitchen, where we would listen to Two Way Family Favourites. was the successor to the wartime radio show Forces Favourites, broadcast at Sunday lunchtimes on the BBC Light Programme, BBC Radio 2 and the British Forces Broadcasting Service until 1980. From 1967 to 1972 it was also carried on BBC Radio 1. It was a request programme designed to link families at home in the UK with British Forces serving in West Germany or elsewhere overseas. I shouldn’t think that there’s a lot of you that can remember the signature tune  “With a Song in My Heart” I think it was Cliff Michelmore and Jean Metcalfe presenting it back in the fifties, but there was quite a variety of presenters including Bill Crozier in Cologne, Michael Aspel, Judith Chalmers and Sarah Kennedy. The final UK presenter was Jean Challis, it finished in 1980, although both Pete Murray and Ed Stewart continued to use the title for segments of their shows, often linking up with places such as Australia and New Zealand, for another couple of years during the 1980s; During this time, the song “Hurry Home” by Wavelength became popular with the families of troops returning from the Falklands War.

This was usually followed by the Goon show, Around the Horne or the latest episode of Jimmy Clitheroe all intermingled with the smell of roast beef and roast potatoes.  Not that us lads wanted to be inside, there was a wonderful wide world out there to explore.

They were really late again with the figures for the last 24 hours, it was no surprise when the numbers actually came in at 22961. a staggering figure that Public Health England has said is ‘artificially high’ due to case reporting backlogs. This has meant the 15,841 cases that went unreported between 25 September and 2 October were added onto Saturday and Sunday’s figures, with worrying implications for the country’s contact tracing system. There were also a further 33 deaths reported.

Monday 05/10/2020 – Day 204

Woke up very late this morning after feeling a bit poorly yesterday, my eyes were streaming, my body ached and I had a bad headache. Needless to say Mrs H feared the worse and started searching the cupboard for some paracetamol, (or was she secretly looking for the insurance documents, we will never know dear reader lol), so I took some just before bed and as stated above I overslept until 8.15am, but I was feeling ok so all was once again good in the Harvey household.

After a four Weetabix breakfast it was back out to the repair shop to carry on tidying up, my son Mark hasn’t been to collect the rubbish yet, which is just as well really, I have been adding to the growing mound every day. Which reminds me of when we were young, I mean, what happened to all our rubbish?

We only had one galvanised dustbin, usually missing the lid because one of the kids had been a Knight of the round table the previous day, I know the dustbin men came every week but even so, we still coped with what was I suppose a bin half the size of today’s wheelie bins.

Well the truth is dear reader that there just wasn’t the waste that we see in today’s society, uncut bread for instance was initially wrapped in a tissue paper which would then be utilised around the home – eventually ending up as a Firestarter among the kindling, Mothers pride and Sunblest then wrapped the new sliced loaf in a wax paper, but even this was kept by mum and used to wrap sandwiches for work.

Potato peelings and other peelings were given to anyone who had chickens, if not they went straight on to the compost heap which is where all the old newspapers were put, if they weren’t taken to the local chippie or used to support a broken spring in the armchair seat, or, as a last resort cut into squares and hung on a bit of string on the toilet door. There was no packaging as such, everything was put into brown paper bags at the grocers, the only cardboard you saw was on the burnt slopes of the local grass hill where they were used as slides.

There was certainly no polystyrene or polythene, your washing powder came in a cardboard container as did your soap, all good for the fire, plastic was limited to things like liquid washing up bottles. Everyone had a wicker basket or shopping bags, there were no plastic carrier bags back then. Meat from the local butchers was also wrapped in paper, the milk was put on your doorstep by a milkman and the next day the empties would be put out rinsed and clean ready to be taken and used again, after sterilisation of course.

The rag-and-bone man was a regular sight on the streets with his call of ‘Any old iron’ or ‘Rag bone”. Some rag-and-bone men would push a hand cart, others might have a horse and cart. The rag-and-bone man would take old clothes, pots and pans, shoes and so on, to either sell on or to repair. Any bones collected would be sold to make glue and fertilizer. The rags were used in paper-making and the rag-and-bone man would sell any metal as scrap.

We used to get ‘thruppence’ for the return of pop bottles a great incentive to root around looking for empties, or sometimes a neighbour would ask you to ‘pop to the shop’ for them, they would give you an empty pop bottle for your trouble

Mum would take knitted garments apart and simply knit something else. We even saved water! Bath night was on a Sunday and you would often find yourselves bathing in a couple of inches of lukewarm water after five of tour siblings had already visited it!

So yes, we and our parents were the original recyclers, they think today that all this recycling business is new, well, we’ve been there, done that and almost got the T-shirt, but it was recycled and used for dusters.

My eldest grandson Mason has got a job interview today, I won’t say where but you could be home, home on it, anyway, he should know by Wednesday, he is at a football academy at the moment so he can only do so many hours.

We have had the Health Secretary on the news most of the day, fumbling an apology for the fiasco of the numbers in coronavirus, today there were 12594 new cases and 19 more deaths, but can we trust the figures any longer?

Tuesday 05/10/2020 – Day 205

Bit of the old currant bun (sun) out this morning, still quite windy though and guess what? yes, it’s raining!

Last day of getting the repair shop sorted today, just underneath the benches to sort out, I may be adding even more to the growing mountain of stuff to take to the tip. Then tomorrow I have to start on Mrs H’s list.

Now I may have told you this before – many months ago – but the reason I never rush into a job for Mrs H is quite simple, she keeps changing her mind! I am quite surprised that she allowed me to marry her twice! In the latest episode Mrs H has changed her mind about the moving of the peninsular, if you recall last week I told you that a peninsular is a kitchen unit that juts out from a wall, an island is a kitchen unit you can walk around. Dear Mrs H wanted me to basically turn the aforementioned  peninsular into an island, I was quite willing to do this for the light of my life, I was quite willing to break my back moving it around, strain my muscles changing the electrics no probs. But Glory be to God she has decided against it, well she has  -sort of – I came back in feeling so pleased that I had put the final touches to the repair shop, Mrs H was beaming from ear to ear, this is a danger sign to any well trained husband, their wives don’t smile like that unless there is something up their sleeve.

Sure enough, within a few minutes of coaxing Mrs H had revealed that she had been sat there thinking – another dangerous pastime – and that she had once again changed her mind about that blessed peninsular! It seems that she still wants it moved to the opposite wall, which basically means I have to alter the big unit below and also alter the lighting, but do you know what the really annoying thing is ? The thing that really gets my back up – it’s the fact that she is right!

The North of the country is in a bit of a state over this coronavirus it seems, the new rules recently introduced are having little or no impact. The blame is being put on the fact that there was a massive influx of students going back to University in those cities mostly affected, but I fear that is the easy way out as an excuse, this virus is once more getting a grip, today’s figures are once again quite shocking, there were 14542 new cases and another 76 deaths.

Wednesday 06/10/2020 – Day 206

It seems I am working in the house today, Mrs H and myself have come to the agreement  that I take the top off the peninsular which is about seven foot long and five foot wide and not very light!, We will then move the unit around until we find a favourable position, (sounds like a chapter from the Kama Sutra!), then we will replace the top and my work will really start in that room.

Speaking of rooms there was one room in our house as a child that used to frighten me to death, it was the Cubby hole, did you have one? That triangular space under the stairs, the council in all their wisdom decided that when the house was built – the gas and electric meters should be housed in there, it didn’t take long for that dark dank space to fill up with unwelcome visitors like big hairy spiders. They don’t bother me at all today (we get on very well, we have a little chat about putting the fear of God into Mrs H as she lies in the bath) but when I was little I must have had a serious case of arachnophobia, which as you know is a fear of spiders, as I said the meters were in there and so were lots of shoes, raincoats etc, when the electric went out we had to put a ‘bob’ (shilling) in the meter to get it back on, there was no-one would willingly volunteer to go under there and feed the beast (the meter) so mum inevitably did it. But one Saturday night she went out, and so did the electric, the youngest siblings were in bed, so it was a toss-up between me and my four elder siblings, my big sister said that if I didn’t put the shilling in then I would have to go to bed, we were halfway through Rawhide, I poked my head into the darkness, straining my eyes to see the meter, I couldn’t quite reach it so I had to crawl in further, I slipped the shilling in and turned the handle, there was a loud cheer and then – someone shut the door on me and it all went black!

I have never been so frightened in all my life (except when the ghost of my Great Grandma visited of course) I’m sure something ran over my foot – I screamed and screamed until my sister undid the latch.

“Who locked our Eric under the stairs?”

My brother grinned from ear to ear until he copped a whack on the back of the head from big Sis.

It has taken the biggest part of the day but Mrs H and I have finally found the new place for the peninsular, yes, it is still a peninsular because she whom I love dearly has finally got her way. Let me expand on that for you, Mrs H has over the past few years often brought up the subject of moving the peninsular, questions like :

“Why can’t it go on the opposite side of the room?”

“Er, because there is a big radiator stopping it my darling”.

“What if we,,,,,,,,,,,,?”

“Forget it, it’s not going over that side of the room”

So dear reader, guess where the peninsular finished up – oh, I see you’re one step ahead of me. Going through all those phases of turning it into an island, spinning it around to face another way, hanging it from the ceiling (Ok I made that one up) and all the time she knew where she wanted it, so it is now positioned over the radiator with the end section removed to allow the heat to flow. I wondered where my other tape measure had disappeared to when I was refitting the repair shop, I have said it before and I’ll say it again, if that woman of mine ran this country there would be no problems to worry about!

Figures for new cases were once again above 14000, at 14162 the situation seems to be worsening, Hospital admissions are rising alarmingly with some papers reporting that the NHS are only 10 days away from the peaks reached in March. There were a further 70 deaths recorded.

Thursday 08/10/2020 – Day 207

It seems to have been raining most of the night, but I don’t think rising water levels are uppermost in people’s minds at the moment – unless of course you are in the vicinity of a flood plain.

I have had to order a new light fitting after Mrs H decided that she wanted one of those big flashy bulbs in the kitchen above the recently moved peninsular. Also, after many (warm not heated) discussions I have now had to order more hinges and magnetic catches. It seems that Mrs H has now decided that she no longer wants to see all my cd’s and my music centre, so I now have to make new doors for the unit in order to hide it all.

I finished all the electrics – moving lights etc – and was awaiting my order of MDF boards and timber, it eventually arrived at 2.30pm, by then I had ‘knocked off’ and wasn’t interested, tomorrow is another day and I will still be aching!

Nearly got scammed yesterday, I have a Paypal account and had just finished ordering something, when you do that you normally get an email saying that you’ve used your account. Well, this did happen, but fifteen minutes later I had another email from Paypal saying that my spending power would now be regulated, if I wanted to know why I must log in, I am always suspicious of things like that so I logged in – but from Facebook -, I couldn’t find anything untoward, so I checked the second email again, then I noticed the error, it said ‘ for more informations log in to your account now’. Just one letter gave them away, no-one would put an ‘s’ on the end of information, no-one except a foreigner!

We heard today that my grandson Mason has got his first job, his interview at ‘home, home on the R—–’ went really well and they’ve offered him a job, so proud of that lad, he has good manners, is very thoughtful and is a brilliant footballer.

Apparently, George’s Grandfather’s first job was as a scarecrow – rumour has it that he was out standing in his field.

The number of new cases has shot up by 3378 on yesterday’s figures, today they are a massive 17540, sadly there were a further 77 more deaths registered as well.

Friday 09/10/2020 – Day 208

Not a bad day today weatherwise, it is quite calm and the sun is struggling to make an early morning appearance, as I look out of my office (back bedroom) window I see the pigeons stripping the red berries off the Hawthorn covering my repair shop roof, this will be digested by our lovely feathered friends and then deposited all over the outside furniture and decking, I really do wish that one of those famous chefs would re-introduce pigeon pie in order that we may decrease the ever-growing population of rats with wings.

Ok, that’s today’s whinge out of the way, apparently, on this day in 1991 The first Sumo wrestling tournament ever held off Japanese soil in the sport’s 1500 year history began ‘on this day’ , at the Royal Albert Hall. I hear that they have just finished strengthening the foundations.

Also, on this day in 1961 Britain’s youngest ever Conservative MP, Margaret Thatcher, was given her first governmental job. She would soon be dubbed ‘Thatcher the milk Snatcher’ after taking away the school milk from the children of the day, a mild act compared with what was to come methinks.

And finally on this day in 1955 Three armed men raided a Turkish bath in London, but the well-heeled customers were wearing very little clothing, and the robbers’ total haul was only £7, I’ll wager that their meagre haul was hardly enough to cover the robber’s airfares back to Ireland lol.

About 10 weeks ago I sent this ‘Diary of a self-Isolator’ off to about four different publishers, I knew it took between 8 and 12 weeks to get a response. Well, today I had an email from Europe Books a very well – known respected and Worldwide distributor and publisher, they said that their team had read my diary and would like me to join their growing team of authors. They are promising Worldwide distribution and bookshop and even TV coverage everywhere, I will have my own editor and support team.

I am not naïve enough to know that there is going to be a setback as I read on, sure enough, for them to publish they require me to order 200 copies of my own book, this will cost me £2800, but they also say that when they have sold 500 books then they will reimburse my £2800. They may as well be asking for £28,000 it is a good deal on paper, but surely if the book is as good as they say then they would take the risk.

Guess I’ll wait and see what the others respond with, but I will find a publisher one day.

Meanwhile, there are more important issues going on around us, Thankfully, there is a decrease in new cases down to 13864, but sadly the number of deaths continues to rise with a further 87 recorded today.

Saturday 10/10/2020 – Day 209.

I was wondering – do you do that Facebook memories thing? Mrs H doesn’t like them much, they show her wearing the same things she was wearing six years ago!

Spent all day yesterday constructing Mrs H’s new housing for the other end of the peninsular, it is basically a large cabinet to house the TV, the TV box, Alexa (about time I pigeon-holed her) and the BT reception disc for the Wi-Fi. The result is that my brand new sparkling repair shop is now covered in a thin film of brown dust (yes, I did wear a mask), I’ve a good mind I get Mrs H in there when I’ve finished, she can hoover the place out, but then, I’ve got more chance of knitting fog!

The latest Government ruling has got postmen working from home, the idea is that they read all your mail and if there’s anything important they’ll give you a ring lol!

An update on the continuing diet, Mrs H hasn’t wanted me to mention it as she has been stuck on the same weight for nearly three weeks now, blames the scales, but I have broken through the 12 stone barrier, for the first time in about 15 years I am down below 12 stones at 11 stone 13pounds, fit as a Butcher’s dog I am, seen more fat on a greasy chip!

Oh Dear, George’s son Colin is in trouble with the law again, it seems he phoned the police to tell them that there were eight or nine people gathered illegally outside his house, but he failed to tell them that he lived by a bus stop!

Well, almost finished the unit for ‘she that must be obeyed, just the doors to hang and it’s all done, not going to be till tomorrow though, we had a late-night watching TV and I was up far too early!

Once again the figures were late in on Saturday, that is always a little worrying, The new cases continue to rise and today stand at 15166, but more reason for concern is the growing number of deaths which today have grown to 81.

You’ll be pleased to know that there is nothing more to say today, It’s been a bit of a torrid week one way and another, Boris will be popping in again on Monday to reassure us all that we are on the right track.

Please stay safe out there in the coming week and with God’s grace we’ll all meet next Sunday.

It’s been emotional.