Day 83 - Wednesday 10th July
I wake to the smell of freshly-baked bread. Although it hasn't risen especially well, the wholemeal loaf I set off to bake overnight in the bread maker looks like a success. In the kitchen it's another story - my two sourdough starters which I had taken out of the fridge to try and get them started again have escaped the confines of their jars and spread over the worktop. I find another jar and decant some into it, then put them back in the fridge. More baking today, I guess.
On the news I hear a virologist explain that there were more than 1300 cases of covid-19 infections being brought into the UK and that the majority of them came in from France, Spain and Italy; debunking the myth of a single "patient zero". The majority of these cases were contracted between late February and late March; reinforcing the view that the UK locked down too late and that many lives could have been saved. Former scientific adviser Neil Ferguson has claimed that deaths could have been halved if the UK had locked down just one week earlier. Meanwhile, the Colston statue argument rattles on. More or Less on Radio Four devotes its programme this morning to the virus, exploring and challenging the statistics. It has become on of my favourite programmes because of its rigorous approach to data.
I spend a productive day ticking loads of things off my to-do list, have a good zoom meeting and attend a useful webinar on resilience. I start the process of finding a new custodian for my theme of the climate change strategy so I can focus on my duties as Chair. New stock arrives from one of my suppliers and I set the items up on my website ready for a Fathers Day promotion. Hubby is keeping busy, which is good, but our son is still in bed mid-afternoon. We eventually decide to wake him, and he's frustrated because he set an alarm for noon and seems to have slept through it.
In the afternoon briefing, Boris Johnson announces the creation of bubbles whereby a single person can effectively join another household and can have close physical contact and stay overnight. This will help people who have partners with whom they don't live and, ironically, would have saved Neil Ferguson from having to resign when we had his lover over. The bubbles won't make much difference to us but would allow my grandson's other grandmother, who lives alone, to visit my daughter's household, and my friend who had Covid to visit her Mum - both live alone and are mourning my friend's Dad who died earlier this year.
We have ramen for dinner, which turns out to be somewhat uncomfortable due to increasing tension between hubby and son. We're fine on safe territory like entertainment and food, but when we touch on politics it gets difficult. With the news almost exclusively devoted to covid and black lives matter, and our lives so limited by quarantine, there is little else to discuss. Hubby seems frustrated that our son argues against his views, rather than engaging in the debate and taking contrasting arguments into consideration. After our son has left the table I suggest that politics should perhaps be avoided in future; the challenge will be to find an alternative topic when so little else is going on.
After dinner I put sourdough in the breadmaker to knead and catch up on my messages, discovering that my sister has misunderstood my invitation to her household of 3 to a barbeque at the weekend and extended it to her son and his family - another 4 people. I explain that I'm not comfortable with a gathering bigger than the law currently allows and leave her to explain; I'll follow up with message to my nephew tomorrow. I unwind with the literal escapism of Escape to the Wild - a different kind of isolation on a remote island off the west coast of Australia. Tonight I am grateful for the first step in relaxing social distancing.
On the news I hear a virologist explain that there were more than 1300 cases of covid-19 infections being brought into the UK and that the majority of them came in from France, Spain and Italy; debunking the myth of a single "patient zero". The majority of these cases were contracted between late February and late March; reinforcing the view that the UK locked down too late and that many lives could have been saved. Former scientific adviser Neil Ferguson has claimed that deaths could have been halved if the UK had locked down just one week earlier. Meanwhile, the Colston statue argument rattles on. More or Less on Radio Four devotes its programme this morning to the virus, exploring and challenging the statistics. It has become on of my favourite programmes because of its rigorous approach to data.
I spend a productive day ticking loads of things off my to-do list, have a good zoom meeting and attend a useful webinar on resilience. I start the process of finding a new custodian for my theme of the climate change strategy so I can focus on my duties as Chair. New stock arrives from one of my suppliers and I set the items up on my website ready for a Fathers Day promotion. Hubby is keeping busy, which is good, but our son is still in bed mid-afternoon. We eventually decide to wake him, and he's frustrated because he set an alarm for noon and seems to have slept through it.
In the afternoon briefing, Boris Johnson announces the creation of bubbles whereby a single person can effectively join another household and can have close physical contact and stay overnight. This will help people who have partners with whom they don't live and, ironically, would have saved Neil Ferguson from having to resign when we had his lover over. The bubbles won't make much difference to us but would allow my grandson's other grandmother, who lives alone, to visit my daughter's household, and my friend who had Covid to visit her Mum - both live alone and are mourning my friend's Dad who died earlier this year.
We have ramen for dinner, which turns out to be somewhat uncomfortable due to increasing tension between hubby and son. We're fine on safe territory like entertainment and food, but when we touch on politics it gets difficult. With the news almost exclusively devoted to covid and black lives matter, and our lives so limited by quarantine, there is little else to discuss. Hubby seems frustrated that our son argues against his views, rather than engaging in the debate and taking contrasting arguments into consideration. After our son has left the table I suggest that politics should perhaps be avoided in future; the challenge will be to find an alternative topic when so little else is going on.
After dinner I put sourdough in the breadmaker to knead and catch up on my messages, discovering that my sister has misunderstood my invitation to her household of 3 to a barbeque at the weekend and extended it to her son and his family - another 4 people. I explain that I'm not comfortable with a gathering bigger than the law currently allows and leave her to explain; I'll follow up with message to my nephew tomorrow. I unwind with the literal escapism of Escape to the Wild - a different kind of isolation on a remote island off the west coast of Australia. Tonight I am grateful for the first step in relaxing social distancing.
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