Another day dawned with crappy weather but one that was enjoyable anyway as we were stepping off the lockdown treadmill – and it felt quite anarchic! How easily we’re pleased in these strange times!

Our often mundane and routine weekly schedule was being interrupted because we’d some extra shopping to do for Dawn’s parents, which meant – wo hoo! – we had a legimate excuse for a trip out in the car! The mission (which we’d chosen to accept) was to shop for a humoungous amount of meat from the excellent Bolster Moor farm shop which is high above Slaithwaite in the Colne Valley. John and Norah had sent us over their shopping list so we knew exactly what we were shopping for – which would restock their freezer for quite some time.

The trip over was a bit of a doddle as it’s cross-country on back roads. Although there seemed to be more people out and about recently traffic seemed to have died down again which was reassuring as the edges of lockdown have felt like they’re starting to fray. The Farm Shop was certainly taking social distancing seriously. No couples were allowed – only individuals, so Dawn went in and I stayed in the car and filled my time by blogging via my phone. Neither Dee nor I are big red meat eaters, but we do occaisionally indulge so Dawn picked up a selection for us which included minced beef, minced pork, chicken livers and bacon. Another bonus was being able to buy some flour, which is as rare as hen’s teeth nowadays. Bolster Moor have been buying it in industrial quantities and then putting it in smaller bags for resale. Apparently, packaging issues are one of the main reasons for shortages, not the inability of mills to supply the raw material. Folk are running out of packaging, not flour! Dee’s final purchase was one of the shops award winning Pork Pies for us to share as a treat. Admittedly, around this neck of the woods it’s almost impossible to find a pork pie that doesn’t carry the sobriquet ‘award winning’ – but with Bolster Moor’s the title’s well deserved!

Mercy mission done we drove over to John and Norah’s to deliver the goods, along with some other bits we’d picked up for them as part of our shopping trips. I feel for John and Norah, we get to do their shopping but they’re completely cut off from a lot of their normal life. Both of them are active and have a wide circle of friends with (until Covid-19 happened) a busy social calendar – all of which has had to come to an end for now and be put on hold until who knows when.

I’d packed my camera in the car on the off-chance there could be a picture opportunity in the offing but the weather conspired against us, so as we drove across the Colne valley and the railway from Manchester to Leeds a band of rain seemed to take delight in frustrating me by blocking off the views which would have been gorgeous a week earlier as we came back cross country via Slaithwaite – or ‘Slawit’ as some insist on saying – i’ve no idea on the correct way to pronounce it as even the local can’t agree on that one! I sometimes wonder if it’s a class thing in the same way that some people insist the word ‘bath’ has an R in it.

Back at home we dodged the rain and settled back into a routine. Dawn got busy in the kitchen sorting out our supplies whilst I retreated into the office to catch up on some work and process some more old railway pictures that were next in the queue whilst respondng to emails and trying to keep on top of information about the big, wide (lockdowned) world. Tomorrow we have another day where we sally forth – this time to shop for ourselves and visit a fishmongers that Dawn’s folks frequent but we’ve never visited…

*blog under construction*

Sod it, for once we both decided to throw caution (and plans) to the wind and have a lie-in! We felt like proper lockdown slobs as we stayed in bed drinking coffee until 09.30 when we got up and prepared a leisurely breakfast before finally getting our arses into gear to start the day proper which meant sorting out various household chores before strolling down into Sowerby Bridge to pick up some food shopping. Being good little lockdown observers we combined our daily exercise with a trip to buy some essentials.

Not having been into Sowerby Bridge much recently we were surprised by the the increase in traffic. There seemed to be far more cars on the road. Mostly with single occupants but not exclusively. I’ve no idea what can account for the increase or what folk were doing or where they were going, but it was rather concerning. Is lockdown starting to break down? – and if it does, what are the long-term implications of people’s impatience? The UK’s death toll is already bad. How much worse could this get if the numbers start rising again? 

Despite the folks mucking around in cars our local supermarket was still blissfully quiet and almost everybody was respecting the rules, making our shop speedy and stress free whilst the climb back up the hill to home with a ruscac full of shopping was good weight-bearing exercise even if it did get a bit sweaty as the weather was still sunny and warm.

Feeling virtuous after our exertions the two of us retired to the front garden for a cold drink in the evening sunshine, soaking up what may well be the last of the good weather for a while as the forecast’s suggesting change is on the way. I can’t complain. We’ve had a fantastic run of good weather that’s made the lockdown easier to bear. 

Later, the fresh veg we’d replenished our stocks with went very well with some of the tinned stuff we’d been hoarding since the early ‘no deal Brexit’ fears (Sadly, we may well need to replenish them with the way this Government’s behaving) I made the two of us a rather nice chickpea, tuna and Feta cheese salad using some tuna steaks out of the freezer rather than the tinned stuff the recipe recommends, plus some Vegan Feta as Dawn’s allergic to cheese. Adding red onions, lemon juice, parsley and seasoning to the mix and serving it with salad leaves made a simple but gorgeous meal. I love recipes like this, tasty but unfussy and a doddle to make.  

The end of the first full month of lockdown dawned today in it’s usual fashion – with wall to wall sunshine! I’m loving this weather and the vitamin D boost it’s providing – even if I am chafing at the inability to travel.

The pair of us began the day early as we were up before 06:00. Dawn began her workout and I knuckled down to a couple of hours work on my laptop. Then the stormclouds arrived. Within a very short time the damned machine crashed twice and froze once – despite only having a new motherboard fitted by the Dell engineer yesterday. Just as soon as I was able I was on the phone to the Dell helpdesk who lived up to their name. It took over an hour to go through various fixes over the phone between me and the patient but knowledgeable Aussie chap on their helpdesk, but we managed to resolve the problem which it transpired related to the graphics driver. I’d been worried that I’d need another visit from an engineer but once some programmes had been tweaked the machine’s been running sweetly ever since *fingers crossed*.

Computer problems aside the day positively flew by as I was engrossed in sorting out pictures, responding to emails and continuing to declutter the office. I’m looking forward to having some more time to restart scanning old slides as that’ll make a great difference to the amount of space I have available as well as allow visitors to my website the chance to pass some of their lockdown hours wallowing in nostalgia. Or (hopefully) even buying some prints from the collection.

With the temperatures outside climbing I did take an hour off to sit in the garden and catch up with some reading whilst basking. I’d love to take the laptop outside and work from the garden but sunshine and laptop screens don’t really mix – although composing blogs on my smartphone does – even if I do need a good sub-Editor to pick up on all the typos (Thanks Dawn! x). The smallness of the screens and the automated ‘spull chuckers’ can make the process long and fraught!  But, I do get to sit in the sunshine, generate some vitamin D and work on my tan…

I’m beginning to think the weather’s conspiring in the effort to make every day of lockdown feel like “Groundhog Day”. Each morning when I wake up and open the bedroom blinds I look out across the valley and see clear blue skies and sunshine picking out the vibrant greens of the trees that are bursting into leaf in our local woodland. Don’t get me wrong – I’m loving it, but – it doesn’t give you much to work with from a literary perspective when you’re writing a daily blog during lockdown! I’m almost tempted to summerise a day as if it’s written in a teenagers diary. “Got up, went to work, had a walk, had tea, watched TV, went to bed”…

First world problems eh? Variety, or the lack of it. It reminds me of a family I used to know in Goa, India. Sometimes Lynn and I would be invited round to eat with the Gawade’s. 6 days a week they’d eat the same thing: Fish riceplate. Only on Monday would the routine change. They’d have the riceplate without fish! It made me realise why so many poorer Indian families love celebrations and festivals – they get to eat something different! Me, I’m now (half) praying for a good rainstorm…

At least my laptop dying provided a change in the routine, although personally I’d have preferred the thunderstorm as it would have been a lot less stressful. As it was Dell came good and their engineer (an Indian chap who lived locally) arrived before midday and within half an hour he’d replaced the Motherboard and had my laptop up and running again. So Dawn could keep working he said he was happy to stand in the kitchen to effect the repair as anyway, his next call was in Hull and he’d be spending hours sat at the wheel of his car. We kept all the social-distancing protocols whilst the pair if us chatted, with me talking to him from the doorway and he at the worktop. It was actually really nice to be able to chat to a stranger for a while!

Job done, he headed off to his Hull call. The laptop needed to be recharged so I left it doing that whilst Dawn and I went out for our daily constitutional on what’s now a well worn route through woods and parks. I’d have been tempted to walk further but we both had things to do at home as – really – life hasn’t got any simpler for either of us. Kicking our heels would be a luxury and neither of us are couch-potato material anyways, so we’d always find something to do other than sit in front of the TV eating crisps. However, a sunset drink in the garden’s another matter!

When we returned from our stroll the pair of us knuckled down for a few more hours until it was (briefly) time to kick back and enjoy the sunset before plodding on for a little longer. Then my newly fixed laptop crashed. My reaction can best be summed up in two words that rhyme with ‘clucking bell’. Fortunately it rebooted and seemed fine once I’d run some diagnostic checks on it, but to say it made me nervous (even though no work was lost) was an understatement. There’s never a good time for these things to happen, but during ‘lockdown’? Oh, please! 

Still, I’m not the only one having a difficult time right now. Imagine what it must be like of you’ve spent your life denying that the climate’s changed due to human activity? You look pretty bloody stupid now! All over the planet people have woken up to the fact that the skies are clearer, cities are less polluted, quieter and nicer and damn – are those the Himalayas I can see over there for the first time? 

You’re not going to get away with blaming this on ‘sunspots’ or any of the junk science climate change deniers normally try to use as an excuse. There’s going to be reams of empirical data coming out of this vast experiment in shutting down human activity that’s going to be impossible to deny. 

The other people who’re having a hard time are the far-right rentagobs like ‘Hatey Katey’ Hopkins or little ‘Tommeh’ Robinson. The people who’ve spent their lives trying to demonise Muslims have hard the (prayer) rug pulled from underneath them now it’s bloody obvious Covid-19 doesn’t give a shit about what religion you are – oh and all that crap about banning people covering their faces? That’s going to go down well right now! And this is before we even mention the Trump supporters who’re trying to stop the lockdown in the US, despite it having the worst Covid-19 death rate anywhere on the planet. Coronavirus has shown up right-wing populism for what it truly is – morally and intellectually vacuous with no answers to anything. 

Maybe there’s going to be an upside to all this after all…