Diary of a self-isolator – week 34

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

Sunday 01/11/2020 – Day 232

Did you all go through the white Rabbits scenario this morning? The good news is that there are only 60 days remaining of this really rubbish year, there are only 54 days remaining to Christmas day as well.

Speaking of Christmas here is a bit of useful information I thought I’d share with you. Do you remember when you bought a new TV years ago, the store would have to register your name because of the TV licence fee, well today you need to be careful when you order your Christmas Turkey from your Butcher, he knows where you live, I mean, a 25kilo turkey for just two people? Just saying.

Mrs H and I still haven’t decided where to go for Christmas – the back room or the front room, but I daresay she will make up her mind by then – I don’t think!

I have got to mention the fact that England won the six nations last night, this was their first win since 2017. Ireland failed to beat the French and so the honours went to us, bit of a damp squib though, They interviewed Owen Farrell after the game finished, You’d have thought he had just lost a tenner and found a shilling, well done anyway lads!

The other big news is that I have now lost a stone since the beginning of my own  self-inflicted diet plan started about 8 weeks ago, Mrs H won’t tell me her weight but she looks really good at the moment, perhaps she is waiting to shock me by saying she too has lost a stone. The shoulder is sadly no better, there is still a lot of pain when I do certain things, like hanging from the bedroom window by that arm or scratching my head with my arm up my back, we will survive!

Mrs H and myself are having a really lazy day today – so lazy in fact that I’ve had to convince her that I need to eat lunch!

There were 23254 new cases registered today, there were sadly a further162 new deaths recorded.

Monday 02/11/2020. – Day 233

Woke up this morning with a bit of a problem, I had either slept in a funny position all night or had slept on my arm, either way it damn well hurt, more so than any time since  I had initially done the injury to my shoulder ten days ago.

I got out of bed and then it really started – a searing pain all down my back ad my arm on the right hand side, worse still, it was painful to breathe, Fearing the worst I immediately got out my pen and began writing my will, (Just Joking), I went downstairs and made a cup of tea thinking it was probably cramp, took a couple of paracetamol and went back upstairs.

An hour later I went to make Mrs H’s usual morning Latte and the pain had worsened, by the time I was back upstairs I was almost gasping for breath, On waking Nurse Harvey (remember her Gripe water for babies) asked what was wrong, within a minute she had googled the symptoms and it appeared that it could be anything from trapped wind to a stroke or a heart attack with a further 30 scenarios in between.

Now, I don’t know what your local doctor’s surgery is like but at ours, getting an appointment at any time is a task worthy of Indiana Jones, but, on a Monday it is virtually impossible. Firstly, you have to get past the receptionist who has suddenly –  overnight – become a fully fledged nurse, nay, that is an insult, a fully fledged doctor who will diagnose your situation from the few pathetic words you manage to wheeze out. You almost have to give them the name of your undertaker before they will give you an appointment, but not with the doctor, oh no, they are the Gods of the surgery and put to one  side for real cases even though you are now gasping for breath. No, you are entrusted to a nurse, now to be quite honest I haven’t managed to reach a doctor for almost 18 months even though I have serious underlying problems with my health, but those nurse at our doctors have a greater understanding and knowledge than many of the twenty or so doctors that change weekly.

So, dear reader, the upshot is that I didn’t bother, the pain was bad enough but I didn’t fancy spending my last few hours listening to that constant beeping and a voice saying ‘the number you have called is busy, please try again later’. I have heard that voice so many times that the lady is now on my Christmas card list and comes to all our family events.

But here I am moaning about a pain in my side when there are hundreds suffering and dying daily, so the paracetamol will do along with a heat pad for now.

Another 18950 new cases recorded today plus a further 136 deaths recorded, I am dreading the figures tomorrow as these figures represent the weekend when traditionally they drop.

Tuesday 03/11/2020 – Day 234

The pain has eased this morning but is still there when I breath in, so I have taken the drastic decision not to breath in – just out! Mrs H and I  have been waking up for a long time now with aches and pains, neither of us is getting a decent nights sleep, it doesn’t bother me, I only need 6 hours maximum, but Mrs H must have her 15 hours or she cannot be lived with. Anyway, we have both decided that it is our mattress that’s at fault.

This mattress was bought last year at Mrs H’s suggestion, we had a perfectly comfortable Silent Night pocket sprung job, but Mrs H had to have one of the latest memory foam jobs when we bought a new bed.

It arrived and was tightly packed in one of those polythene bag things where a machine sucks all the air out and shrinks it to a manageable size, very convenient I thought.

Two chaps dropped it in the hallway and would not under any circumstances drop it upstairs, they took a lot of convincing not to leave outside in the pouring rain on the gravel drive!

Then, clever old me made the ultimate mistake, I took the wrapper off whilst the damn thing was still in the hallway – downstairs. Have you ever seen one of those inflatable dinghie’s which automatically inflate when you pull a cord – well you get the gist. Within seconds, what was once a quite manageable lump of foam, had become a swollen oblong mass of uncontrollable material, worse still, how were we to get it up the stairs? I could have sworn I heard she who must be obeyed utter that immortal word ‘Berk’ under her breath.

Ever the gentleman I asked Mrs H which end she wanted, she didn’t want to lead so opted for the pushing end, I didn’t have that heart to tell the dear lady that she would have all the weight as we went up the stairs.

After a lot of grunting, groaning and cursing (from Mrs H) we had final got it onto the landing, the other ‘perfectly good’ mattress had earlier winged it’s way to our daughter’s house, so it was straight into the bedroom and onto the waiting frame.

We rolled into bed that night and I heard a big sigh from Mrs H as she literally sank into the cushioning foam, peace at last I thought.

The next morning I awoke and looked up at Mrs H, and I mean ‘looked up’, I have no idea what had happened but I was at least six inches lower than her, my foam had collapsed, I rolled out of bed almost immediately hitting the floor as it was so low, I watched the foam mattress spring up gently to it’s proper position as though nothing was wrong.

Mrs H woke up blissfully happy so I didn’t mention the ‘dip’ on my side, this went on for a few weeks until it was time to turn the mattress which you should do every six weeks or so. This of course meant that the ‘dip’ would now be on Mrs H’s side. We went to bed that night and I waited for the inevitable ‘What the hell’, but it never happened!

This went on for a further six weeks until it was time to turn the mattress again.

“Thank God for that” Mrs H remarked, “There’s one hell of a dip on my side”

So, since that day we have had to put pillows beneath the dropped side to support it, this worked very well for a couple of months, but the mattress just gradually began to lose it’s shape, this was about the same time coincidentally that Mrs H and I decided to start our diets, nothing to do with the extraordinary shapes and indents that were suddenly starting to appear in the mattress..

The result is that a brand new Silent night pocket sprung mattress will arrive today as the foam mattress makes its way to our daughters house, and good riddance to bad rubbish – the mattress – not the daughter.

As I said yesterday I was dreading todays figures, the number of new cases fortunately have not increased by much, but as predicted the death count has really increased, in the last 24 hours there were 397 deaths registered.

Wednesday 04/11/2020 – Day 235

And so here we are on the run up to bonfire night, Bonfire or Fireworks Night is a uniquely British event. It commemorates the successful foiling of a plot to blow up King James I and Parliament by Catholic subversives in 1605. The fireworks are a reminder of the gunpowder that was placed by the plotters under the Houses of Parliament.

Back in the early sixties this major event in any child’s calendar would have started around the beginning of October when small armies of young boys would be walking around with axes freshly honed by their father, can you believe that, youngsters running around with axes and machetes?

Everything within walking distance would be chopped down mercilessly and dragged off to the field in which our street always held theirs. It was also an opportunity for the locals to get rid of all their rubbish too, that sofa long past its sell by date, the hessian sacking unceremoniously torn away in the search for lost coins, and then of course there was always the old stained mattress, the stains would be blamed on the resident gran or grandad to ease the householders conscience.

Over the next few weekends the bonfire would get bigger and bigger until the weekend before the event the father’s would get involved, they would make sure there was not going to be any nasty surprises like gas bottles. The night before someone had to guard the stack of wood, there were unscrupulous lads on the estate that would wilfully set it alight.

Standard Fireworks – would usually appear in the shops two weeks before, these would consist of Catherine wheels, rockets, Roman candles and of course sparklers. But if you were a young lad of 10  years these paltry things didn’t interest you, we wanted bangers and jumping jacks (both now banned) the jumping jacks were particularly popular for throwing amongst a group of unsuspecting girls, putting the fear of God into them. Bangers were usually saved for running up behind someone you didn’t like and giving them a fright.

These would all have been paid for from begging when I say begging what I mean is ‘A penny for the Guy’, many a brother and sister would stand outside the shops with a ‘Guy’ in an old cart, it would be dressed in dad’s best jacket, and old pair of trousers and stuffed with straw, a bit like an early Worzel Gummidge I suppose. In the sixties children could purchase fireworks but the law made it illegal to sell to under 18’s in 2004.

Another regular event would be the annual Blue Peter safety talk, Valerie Singleton would go through all the motions of lighting the blue touch paper and retreating at haste. Wearing gloves while holding sparklers and never ever touching them if they had just gone out.

On the actual night there would be lots of children from the street all dressed in woolly hand knitted hats, scarfs and mittens which would have to be removed as they held their very first sparkler. Doing circular motions in the pitch darkness.

Then the big light, always done by a responsible adult, if it had been raining this was always a bit of a game, but dry paper would be fetched and eventually everyone was gradually taking a few more steps away from the searing heat, then the firework display would start, rockets, fountains, and roman candles lighting up the faces of the young onlookers clutching a spent sparkler. The Catherine wheel was never a success, it was either nailed on too tight so it wouldn’t spin, or it was too loose and would spin off into the crowd.

As the fire died down mothers shielded their faces to bravely drop potatoes into the embers, these were eaten with great gusto by the hungry children, within a few hours months of planning, collecting and building were over for another year. Well, not quite – the next day there was the great search for spent rockets and fireworks, with a bit of luck you just might find a live one, but that was very rare. Bath night only happened on a Sunday for most kids, so children would go to school next day reeking of smoke and fireworks! Then of course the milkman would have blackened bottles returned after they had been used for rockets.

Hope you’ve enjoyed this nostalgic trip down memory lane. Now back to this day.

My arm has got worse over the past couple of days and I have a stabbing pain in my right side every time I breathe in, I finally bit the bullet and got a telephone call with my doctor, after a series of questions and answers we were both of the same opinion, I had a chest infection.

Fortunately I have an emergency pack of a week’s course of steroids and ante-biotics which I started immediately, he has also (for caution) advised that I take a Covid test, I will see how the tablets go before bothering anyone with that, the aforementioned tablets do two things (1) Give you a boost of energy, whilst making you eat everything that doesn’t move, bang goes the diet. (2) Makes a normally happy old fellow into the most grumbly old git imaginable with mood swings bigger than Bing Crosby’s – Would You Like To Swing On A Star (1944)

Todays figures have increased frighteningly, newly recorded cases have risen by over 5000 to 25177 for the last 24 hours, New deaths also rose by a further 100 to 492, our government keep telling us that these figures still are nowhere near the March epidemic, but the March figures included every death in the UK, today the figures are purely Coronavirus related.

Thursday 05/11/2020 – Day 236

Lay in bed this morning on the luxurious new mattress purchased online, Today is the official start of the National Lockdown, 56 million people will become under government control, on average around 50% of them will attempt in one way or another totally ignore the rules, which is basically the reason we are in this mess now. A lot of it is down to the restless younger generation unknowingly and sometimes uncaringly spreading this terrible disease.

The thing is that if this virus was reversed and it was the youngsters that were catching it, every parent, Grandparent and Great Grandparent would do their utmost to protect the youngsters, sadly this is the age we have created and now live in.

Anyway, enough of this remorse, I am now officially back on furlough after a letter from my employers. It seems that the scheme has been extended to March 2021, does someone know something that we don’t, asking for a friend.

Sign we are in lock down again here in Kidderminster If it wasn’t enough with people taking all the loo roll last time it seems that panic buying has reared its ugly head again, a shopper in Morrisons earlier today cleared the entire stock of prawns, crabs, mussels and cockles from the chiller.
Shellfish pratt!

Once more it is the male population that suffers the most, no more pub, no more restaurant, no more mates meetings and no more football, while the women still live their normal lives, cooking, cleaning, washing, it’s just not fair!

Well it is bonfire night and we are on lockdown, but that doesn’t stop the night skies being awash with every type of firework available, I don’t mind them myself but some of those big ones that actually shake the tiles on your roof are a bit iffy, I feel sorry for the elderly living alone and for those who have pets, as I said I don’t mind ordinary fireworks, but the problem is that according to previous years we have at least two more weeks of them yet.

Meanwhile in the news on this day in 1909 Woolworths opened its first British store, in Liverpool. Almost 100 years later, (at the end of the first week in January 2009) the last remaining stores closed  for the last time. I loved the sleigh ride at our local Woollies, not as good as the Co-op’s mind you.

In 2013 the village of Wool, in the Purbeck district of Dorset, reported that at least 160 sheep had been stolen from nearby fields, sometime between 1st and 3rd November, My younger brother Paul lives there, I must ring him and ask if he’s got any spare lamb!.

We’ve had another update from Boris Johnson who has claimed that people will be able to have “as normal a Christmas as possible” if they comply with the lockdown rules. Speaking at his press conference this evening, he said:

“I have every confidence, if we follow this package of measures [ie, the lockdown] in the way that we can, as we have done before, I have no doubt that people will be able to have as normal a Christmas as possible and that we will be able to get things open before Christmas as well.”

There will also be tough fines for those who flout the new rules. So, all we have to do is keep our fingers crossed that everyone is as sensible as us eh dear reader?

The figures for today were 24141 new cases and sadly a further 378 more deaths recorded

Friday 06/11/2020 – Day 237

I was laying in bed this morning reminiscing. Do you recall the days when football stadiums were packed to the hilt and the pitch would be littered with toilet rolls – you don’t see that today.

My breathing problem has eased, but I am still having problems with my arm – lifting it that is, haven’t been able to do a tap all week, just typing this blog has to be done in bits and dabs, I have to rest my arm after just a few minutes, but, as they say, there is always someone out there who is a lot worse off, and sadly there are far too many these days.

The medicine I am on has got me hyper, I went to sleep at 2.00am and was up at 5.00 am unable to sleep, this is a common occurrence when I am taking my steroids.

I recently started saving, well, when I say saving what I really mean is that I have started throwing 10p into a bucket every time I got irritated, I now have £45 – I only started yesterday.

Meanwhile on this day in 1938 Singer P.J. Proby was born. He was later banned from performing when his trousers regularly and ‘accidentally’ split on stage, he was immediately banned for showing more flesh than Pan’s People.

Also on this day in 1942 The Church of England relaxed its rule that women must wear hats in church, it was rumoured that ladies hairdressers had full bookings for months after.

And finally on this day in 2004 The death, aged 66, of my hero Fred Dibnah MBE – Bolton born steeplejack, industrial historian, mechanical engineer, steam engine enthusiast and television presenter. His coffin was towed through the centre of Bolton by his restored traction engine, driven by his son, followed by a cortège of steam-powered vehicles. His former home in Bolton is now the Fred Dibnah Heritage Centre. He is buried here, in Tonge Cemetery, Bolton. I had followed Fred since his very first series when his first chimney came down and he uttered those immortal words 2Did thee like that”, RIP Fred you are sadly missed.

I wonder what Fred would have had to say about this pandemic, there were 23287 more new cases today with another 355 deaths recorded.

Saturday 07/11/2020 – Day 238

Went bed at 10.30 last night watched TV until 2.00am (we are watching a brilliant series called Heartland at the moment) and was up again before 5.00am, the good news is that my Christmas poetry collection has grown substantially, it is painstakingly slow to type anything of length still, but the pain has now completely gone from my side so I can at least breathe a lot better, and I now just have the aching in my shoulder and arm.

Mrs H is in a mood with me at the moment, it all started when I put this survey on my local Facebook site:

Ok lads, when this second lockdown has finally gone, if you could choose between a foreign holiday with the wife or a steak and a few beers down the local with your mates which would you choose.

1. Well done
2. Medium
3. Medium rare
4. Rare

I mean what’s wrong with that?

On this day in 1942 The birth of Jean Shrimpton,  (the Shrimp) leading English model whose face and figure, enhanced with a miniskirt, set the fashion for the 60s. There’s a lot of men in this country who owe that lovely lady a lot.

1964 The country’s first drink-driving advertisement was shown on television, with the message “Drinking and driving are dangerous.” Still a lot of fools out there though.

1967 British heavyweight champion Henry Cooper beat challenger Billy Walker to become the only boxer to win three Lonsdale Belts outright. A few years earlier of course ‘Our Enry’ had knocked the then Cassius Clay on his arse backside in the fourth round of their first fight, Henry sadly went on to lose in the fifth  when Clay’s corner happened to find a rip in his glove, the time taken to replace it allowed Clay to recover from what was a fight winning blow, he came out and pummelled Cooper, cutting his eye badly in the process, the ref had no choice but to stop the fight and give the win to Clay.

And finally on this day in 1996 The closure of ‘Butlins – Barry Island’ in south Wales, Billy Butlin’s last-built and smallest holiday camp. At the time of its closure it was owned by Majestic Holidays and was sold for £2.25m to Vale of Glamorgan Council who demolished the camp and sold it to Bovis Homes for housing development. Not only was was the brilliant ‘Gavin and Stacey’ filmed in Barry Island, but way back in 1973 Mrs H and I had our honeymoon at Butlins camp.

Stop laughing you lot, times were hard and money was tight back then.

Another 249557 people have tested positive today bringing the total over 7 days to a staggering 141,817, a further 413 deaths today bring that total over the week to 2333, and some are still saying this virus is not real!

Well, that’s me done for another week dear readers, my books are still available on Amazon

PS

Don’t forget to at least stop what you are doing at 11.00am today for the 2 minute silence, it isn’t much to ask, I will be on my doorstep with – hopefully – millions of others.

It’s been emotional.