*I know this blog’s a few days, late as it’s not appeared until Wednesday – I’m trying frantically to catch up, honest! *

The pair of us threw the rule book out of the window this morning and decided to indulge in the nearest thing to a ‘duvet day’ we’ve had through the entire lockdown! Both of us slept through until 08:30. Even when we woke up and made a drink we went straight back to bed to browse social media and gauge the reaction to the PM’s awful interview last night. Did it seem as bad to others as it did to us? The answer came through as a pretty clear yes. Cabinet Ministers and Tory backbenchers were getting savaged on national TV with both Dominic Raab and Andrew Bridgen having car-crash interviews. Let’s face it, if they didn’t understand what the new advice was – what chance did anyone else stand? Other commentators were just as unkind. Both of us felt uneasy about the Governments new strategy. Having been around the political block a few times I was even more scathing of it than Dawn as I saw it as an attempt by the Government to absolve themselves of responsibility by passing the buck to ordinary people. Now, if you contracted Covid it would be your fault for not being ‘alert’ enough. Needless to say, social media soon went into overdrive to parody the new slogan and design. This one pretty much sums up my take on the new advice.

Dawn and I had a long discussion about what we thought we should be doing and the pair of us agreed that we’d be sticking to the old advice for now – along with the Scots and the Welsh! We’ve a responsibility not just to ourselves but also Dawn’s parents, who we shop for. Relaxing lockdown now when the Governments so unprepared is only going to lead to another spike in the infection rate, and we don’t want to be part of that. I hope we’re wrong, but we’ll find out the truth in the next couple of weeks…

We finally got our arses in gear not long after midday when we moved down into the living room where Dawn had her massage bed set up in order to give me a Reiki session. Dee’s recently trained in Reiki, which she’s really taken to. My treatment lasted for an hour, which really surprised me as it seemed like no time at all, but then it’s a lovely experience.

Suitably refreshed, relaxed and appreciative I scooted into my office for a short spell of slide scanning in order to make some progress before the two of us took our daily constitutional, although it wasn’t far enough for me to get my normal level of exercise as we had to be home in time for the Platt family Zoom call.  Needless to say, Johnson’s (recorded) speech to the nation was discussed and critiqued before we moved on to lighter matters. The internet’s (and Zoom) has proved its worth in keeping us all together, but it will never be a substitute for the real thing – human contact.

A favour…
If you enjoy reading this blog, please click on an advert or two. You don’t have to buy anything you don’t want to of course, but the revenue from them helps to cover some of the cost of maintaining this site – and right now (because of Covid), us locked-down freelances need all the help that we can get…