Diary of a self-isolator – week 24

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

Sunday 23/08/2020 – Day 161

Well believe it or not Mrs H was up with the lark this morning, she woke me up with a lovely kiss and a cup of tea. She told me to drink up quickly as she had done a full English breakfast downstairs.
“What about the diet?” I asked surprised.

“Sod the diet” she said to my amazement, “Life’s too short, and sod this coronavirus, as soon as you’ve eaten your nice breakfast we are going for a lovely walk, you will have to wear your mask of course, we still have to be careful”

I went downstairs and there was the most enormous breakfast of bacon, eggs, sausage, beans and fried bread! I hadn’t had fried bread for years I thought all my birthdays had come at once.
I had to admit, I really liked this new version of Mrs H, I too had had just about enough of this virus.
She wouldn’t even let me wash up!

After breakfast we got into the car and drove to Malvern, with the exception of a few sheep it was lovely and quiet, there was quite a breeze as we strolled hand in hand along the dirt track leading up the hill.
“This is brilliant” I said full of emotion.

“The best is yet to come” Mrs H said tantalisingly.

We walked for what seemed like ages until we came to a small pub on the side of the hill.

“This is the other part of your surprise darling, I’ve booked us in for Sunday lunch and you can eat whatever you like”
I could have kissed her – in fact I did kiss her – passionately!

It was really quiet in the pub, Mrs H told me to sit down and she fetched me a pint of Guinness, She had a White Zinfandel Rose’ which I thought strange at the time as she had to drive home, I mentioned this little fact to her:

“Oh don’t worry about that” she smiled, “This is not just a pub, it’s a hotel as well, we’re staying overnight”.

Well, my Flabber was truly gasted, I couldn’t believe the change in Mrs H, she had always been kind and considerate but this was amazing, I had another couple of Guinness’s and was starting to feel a bit tired, but Mrs H was the life and soul of the party, my eyes were starting to close slowly when she shook me-
“Oi, where’s my coffee”?

I looked around, bleary eyed at the closed curtains, the clock at the side of the bed said 9.30 am, I had just had a wonderful dream!

The night before our friends Janet and John (Yes really) had popped around for a barbeque and we were talking about going for a walk in the week, but driving somewhere in the car, Malvern was mentioned.

The wine was flowing freely and I did have about half a dozen Guinness’s, so that’s where the bulk of my dream came from, I have no idea how sheep became involved, but we won’t delve too deeply into that eh?.
The rest of the day was a bit of a let- down after my vivid dream, it was spent pruning in between showers, moving garden furniture around and a bit of painting, Mrs H did do a wonderful roast dinner though. I think it was a sympathy dinner after my dream.

Another day where the new infection figures were well over the thousand mark, there were 1160 in the last 24 hours with six deaths.

Monday 24/08/2020 – Day 162

Weather doesn’t look to bad today, lots of cloud around but it’s nice and white not all that grey stuff we’ve been getting for the last week.

Today would have been my Father in Laws birthday, he was a lovely chap and a great drinking partner, so happy heavenly birthday Tom, miss you mate.

After a really healthy breakfast (too frightened to look on the weighing scales after the weekends shindigs) I went outside to start on the driveway, oh, did I not tell you about my latest project, allow me to enlighten you.
Last Thursday whilst we were tidying the front garden, I had far too much free time on my hands, on the driveway we have a wall that sweeps in like an arc shape, I was looking at it and thinking, that could do with some pavers, which basically are block paving. The new gravel we bought a few weeks back keeps spilling onto the pavement, it’s always been a problem, so I thought why not block pave the entrance to the end of the wall. I don’t let the grass grow so I got my tape measure out, decided that I needed 550 blocks, went inside on the computer and found the best price, to cut a long story short I ordered the materials in less than an hour after Mrs H and I decided it would be a good idea.

So, I am outside preparing the drive to take the block paving, I have to remove at least 8 wheelbarrow loads of Forest of Dean stone which the grandson and I sweated buckets putting it down two weeks ago, I spread it over a few thin spots on the rest of the drive, by the time I had finished the prep – which included knocking out a length of concrete – I was well and truly cream crackered!
I hadn’t been sat down five minutes checking out the land of make believe from behind closed eyelids when the blocks and sand arrived! I just made sure that the driver didn’t knock down my wall as he used the onboard crane to unload, there was no way I was laying any blocks today, I had tennis elbow from all that hammering and chiselling. Besides, it could wait until tomorrow.
I sat watching the news and they informed us that storm Francis was on its way tomorrow, heavy rain and 60 mile per hour winds – Ooops! I looked at Mrs H and came to the conclusion that out of all Mrs H’s body parts I’d say her eyeballs are the most healthy, because she rolls them at least 300 times a day.

New infection figures dropped below 1000 for the first time in a week, at 853 we must remember that these are weekend figures, there were a further 4 deaths.

Tuesday 25/08/2020 – Day 163

I was lay in bed wondering why there is no plaque to the man who invented the toothbrush, listening to the rain battering the windows.

It is pizzitively possing down outside, at 6.30 am it’s so dark it’s like night, storm Francis has arrived! The winds at this moment aren’t as bad as first forecast, although there is plenty of time yet.
If it ever does stop, I shall be outside with a rubber mallet and trowel to start laying the block paving on the drive.

Having said that, we really shouldn’t moan about getting a bit wet because apparently at exactly 10.41 on the morning of this day 1875, 27-year-old Matthew Webb, exhausted and suffering from delirium, put his feet on the beach at Calais. He had been in the water nearly 22 hours but had become the first person to swim across the Channel from England to France without artificial aids, and people have been trying to emulate him ever since but in the opposite direction!

His popularity soared when he conquered the English Channel. After covering himself with porpoise oil to fend off the cold – and presumably porpoises – he dived off Admiralty Pier, Dover, at 1pm on August 24, 1875, and swam towards Calais, trailed by a flotilla of three boats.

Finally, after 21 hours and 45 minutes of swimming, often against the tide, he waded onto the beach at Calais at 10.41am, the morning after he set out. Having swum the equivalent of 39 miles (62km), he was helped ashore and boarded a waiting carriage that took him to a hotel and a hot tub of – yes you’ve guessed it – water.
Strangely enough the poor man drowned after accepting a $2000 bet if he could successfully swim through the Whirlpool Rapids of Niagara Falls. Friends tried to talk him out of it saying it was suicide, but his reckless determination prevailed. Suffice to say, he never collected his winnings.

During all this coronavirus rubbish the one thing I do miss is contact with other people, I don’t mean meeting them, I mean things like not being able to shake hands with a friend or give your grandchildren a hug, I am so desperate I would even hug an old enemy at the moment.

Mind you, my gran said to me one day, ‘Sometimes you have to hug the people you don’t like to know how deep to dig the hole in your back garden’. That lady was so wise!
George phoned and said “If you get a Facebook message from me about tinned meat don’t open it – it’s spam” I really needed him today – I don’t think!
I reckon that was my time to call it a day!

Figures for new cases are once again on the rise, 1184 new infections and sadly, 16 new deaths.

Wednesday 26/08/2020 – Day 164

Well, it’s been so windy here for the last 24 hours, we have tall trees opposite our house and the wind really roars through them, managed to drop off to sleep though, woke at 5’45 as usual and had breakfast,
Then it was upstairs to type my blog in the back bedroom, I pulled open the blind and was nearly blinded by the light, compared to the previous morning which was really dark.
Then I noticed something-

My old neighbour next door (the one with the 100 foot hedge) has been worried the last few months about a large weeping willow tree in his garden, it is around thirty foot high and stretches across his thirty foot garden, the problem was that he had been told last year that the trunk was hollow, in other words it was rotting from the inside out!

Ever since that day he has been worried that it was going to fall on our garage and Mrs H’s precious green house, we kept telling him not to worry about it, but a couple of weeks ago he had a chap give him a quote to take it down and take the stuff away, a price was agreed and the chap is coming sometime in September.

But he needn’t bother, as I said, I opened the blinds this morning and it was really light, the neighbours tree had disappeared!

Well, when I say ‘disappeared’ it was actually lay in his garden, the tree had been snapped like a twig at 4.00am this morning, it had split in two, one section fell toward his house the other section stretched out along his garden. Our Garage, shed and greenhouse are all along that border less than two meters away – and all it did was lick them on the way down.

I popped around to see if the old boy was ok, he was so relieved that it hadn’t touched any of our buildings that he was almost dancing with joy! His son is popping around later to start cutting it up, I offered him my B 7 Q best crosscut saw but he declined.

There was nothing I could do so it was back to laying my block paving at the front of the house, I hadn’t been working for an hour when I heard the dulcet tones of a familiar voice:
“I hope you know what you’re doing”.

“Morning George, yes I’m fine thank you, what are you doing out this early? And I see you’re wearing your mask at last! Good man”

George looked a bit sheepish:
“There’s a reason for that, and for me being out this early, I’m trying to avoid a very irate father whose fist wants to make contact with my mouth”
“What on earth have you been up to now?” I asked.
“It was just a joke” he pleaded, “I was about to take a short cut home through the cemetery last night when three young girls approached me and asked if they could walk through with me as they were scared”,
“Nothing wrong with that” I said, “That was very kind of you”
“I know” he replied, “ I just said to them that I used to get scared as well – when I was alive! They ran off screaming like banshees, it just so happens that one of the fathers knows me from the pub, so I’m staying out of the way for a while. Anyway, I’m on a mission to get Rosie’s birthday present for next week”,
“That’s nice what are you getting her?”
“Well, she’s been leaving jewelry magazines all over the place – so I’m going to get her a magazine rack”.

I nearly snapped the brick I was cutting, I looked up and he was gone.

A Further 16 deaths in the last 24 hours and 1048 new cases.

Thursday 27/08/2020 – Day 165

For the first time this week we haven’t woken up to rain, so I’m getting dressed as quickly as possible and I’m outside to finish my block paving – hopefully!
Today I just have to mix cement to bed the edging bricks into, then hopefully they will stay put and not ‘spread’ when Mrs H drives over them for the first time.
It’s still looking a bit cloudy and rain is forecast for later on, but once the bricks are down I can finish.

So, I was out on the drive about ready to mix another load of cement when guess what – yes, it started to rain cats and dogs again! I only had another five or six blocks to lay but it is so heavy that I got drenched just covering everything up.

Back inside it was weigh in day (the diet) Mrs H and I had both been very naughty last weekend, indulging in alcohol and food like beef burgers and hot dogs, me being the perfect gentleman I let Mrs H go first in case I broke the scales, she hadn’t done too bad actually, she was the same weight as last Thursday so that wasn’t too bad considering. I stepped on and was pleasantly surprised, I had lost another 3 pounds, must have been all that exercise putting that paving down.

My Youngest grandson Hatton (Golden Boy) came around yesterday, said he’d got a part in the school nativity, he was playing the role of a husband who’d been married 25 years.
‘’Never mind’’ I said, ‘‘Maybe you’ll get a speaking part next year”. Mrs H smacked me up the back of the head!

An astonishing jump in new cases saw them rise up to 1522 with a further 12 deaths.

Friday 28/08/2020. – Day 166

Thirty two years ago today I lost my dear old Mum, well actually that is a bit of a wrong statement, she wasn’t old, she was just 62 years of age, she had always been a heavy smoker and was also a grade one diabetic, She had some veins come up on her legs that stopped her walking very far, the doctor suggested an operation to ease the pain.
A Hospital in London refused to do it because of the danger and because of unforeseen complications, but a Coventry hospital agreed to do it. There were complications and the upshot was that she went into a coma, We spent three weeks going up to Coventry just to sit at her bedside, it was beginning to look desperate, then we went up one evening and she was sat up in bed, And it seemed that with the exception of a very sore throat she was fine, she laughed and joked with us.

That journey home was one of the best for weeks, we all went to the pub to celebrate.

I went home about 11.30, still so excited I couldn’t sleep, I eventually dropped off but was woken a few hours later by the phone ringing downstairs, it was Coventry hospital saying that my mum had just passed away.
I swear to this day that she just woke up to say goodbye to us all.

I have really fond memories of my mum, how hard she worked. She seemed to be forever shopping for food or bargains around town, there was also a local grocery store just around the corner from where we lived, but my cash strapped Mum only used it in the middle of the week after the family allowance had gone, by then she would be so desperate that stuff would be bought on the slate which would be paid back on Friday or Saturday whenever my dad deemed fit to hand over the ‘housekeeping’. I am sure women like my mother coined the phrase ‘Convenience store’ as it really was just convenient when the money ran out. The local shop would be otherwise too expensive to use.
Mum always had and needed a very large pram, it was probably a Silver Cross but it would have been bought second hand as money wouldn’t have stretched to a new one, if truth be known that pram was the best investment she could have made, it carried three small children plus one on each side and all the days groceries including a bag of potatoes beneath, so – as you can imagine – pushing that weight was no mean feat, it got a lot worse when we reached the bottom of a hill that even buses struggled up! But we managed to reach the top where we lived.

As soon as we were home the first job was to put the kettle on, not one of those electric things but a kettle that went on the gas oven and whistled when it was boiled. It was always routine in those days to run the water for a time otherwise a vile taste would emit from the brew emitting from the lead pipes that fed the house. No teabags either, it was loose tea that had to be put through a strainer before entering the cup. One per cup and one for the pot if memory serves, If it was a particularly cold day then the main gas oven would be turned up full, the kitchen was the only warm room in our house and even though it was only about nine by twelve it was the hub of the family.

To say that the life and the role of a fifties housewife was totally different from today’s women would be a gross understatement, My Mum had inherited the Monday wash day from her mum I suspect, and just like my Nan Mondays was a full day of washing, in our kitchen next to the sink was a slot for a copper boiler and a gas point which connected it, (My gran was still using a Dolly tub!) So Mum would boil the clothes pull them out with a set of wooden sprung tongs, set them in the sink and rinse them through with cold water, she would then ‘Wring’ them with her hands by twisting, then they went through the mangle, they would then go out on the line, sometimes on a good day the wind would dry them quite quickly. So, like a well-oiled machine this went on until at least mid -afternoon. There was always a kitchen full of steam on Mondays.
While all this was happening a great saucepan full of stew would be simmering on the gas stove, I always thought we had stew every Monday to use the remnants of the Sunday joint, I know now that the real reason was because poor mum wouldn’t have had time to prepare anything else.

I have often seen her go without food when there wasn’t enough to go around.

My Mum – like everyone else’s – was one in a million. RIP.

1276 new cases were reported today and the Health secretary is talking about a new blanket lockdown over Christmas should there be a second wave in Winter, 9 more deaths in the last 24 hours.

Saturday 29/08//2020 – Day 167

It is quite sunny this morning, but very cool, the heating came on at about 6.00 am, Whatever happened to Summer? The forecasters aren’t even promising us an Indian summer this year.
Yesterday I managed to finish my block paving and it looks great – even though I do say so myself. Well, actually it was all thanks to Mrs H helping, I did all the back-breaking work while she sat on the front step shouting out instructions.

So, all that remains to finish ‘the look’ at the front of the house is to repair the tarmac where the wall meets the pavement, which hopefully, won’t take long.
Apparently, since he met Rose, George has put all his ‘dogging and peeping tom’ equipment on the internet for sale, he hasn’t had any offers yet, but 21 people are watching!
My neighbour meanwhile has decided not to get proper tree fellers in to deal with the fallen tree, he thought he’d save himself a few bob, when his son -who is furloughed at the moment – offered to do it for him, so they hired a shredder and started the job Wednesday morning, and I haven’t seen him since lol!

I love Saturdays, it has long been my favourite day of the week, as I said before, we would all go to the ABC Minors on a Saturday morning, then after a walk around the Indoor market we would head home for lunch, it was always chips from the local chippy, Mum would send us to get four sixpenny portions with lots of free batterbits, these would then be shared out between however many of us were home at that time, we never had fish – far too expensive for kids!

Then it was out to play again, the afternoon would be spent mimicking the heroes we had seen on screen that morning, heroes like ‘The Lone Ranger’ or ‘Rocket Man’
I don’t knowhow we knew, but at exactly 5.00pm we went in for our tea (food not drink), it was always mashed banana sandwiches, they had to be mashed or there wouldn’t have been enough to go around, and they were all eaten in dead silence as the old man sat and listened to the football scores on the radio, he checked his pools coupon hoping to win the jackpot , which was £75000 back then, Happy days!
That evening I was looking on my laptop in the lounge relaxing, Mrs H was on the other sofa imbibing in a white Zinfandel Rose’ and watching Drew Pritchard (Salvage Hunters) on TV, Then I heard her say “I Love you”, without looking up I replied “Ah, that’s nice dear, is that you, or the wine talking?”,

“It’s me, talking to the wine”, came the curt reply.

Another 24 hours when the new cases are in excess of 1000, there were 1108 more reported today and a further 12 deaths.

Don’t forget, if you are a big fan of the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s my new book A Poetic Trip Along Memory lane is still available on Amazon, it’s had some great reviews.

Well dear friends that’s it for yet another week, hopefully I will return to annoy you in one weeks time.

It’s been emotional!