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I felt pretty buoyant for the first half of the day and made some progress on the book, but am still at the stage where I am trying to plan the through line and working out the balance of comedy and seriousness. Things ground to a halt a bit at lunchtime and Covid 19 fatigue set in (that’s just the fatigue at being under lockdown rather than the fatigue that comes from being ill).
I popped out to post out the monthly badger prize and see if I could pick up a few provisions from the shop in the Post Office. The family running it have done a great job of coping with the lockdown and created a vegetable section which was well stocked and even had some bags of self-raising flour (they’ve bagged them up into 1kg packs, presumably from some large sack of flour, but aren’t taking the piss on the price). I got a good lot of stuff for a tenner which will help us avoid having to do a big and mildly perilous supermarket shop for a bit longer. In fact with the combination of the post office, the milk man (who also delivers some food) and the honesty shop we might be able to get through a couple more weeks without having to leave the village.
Of course the shop keepers are more at risk and I appreciate what they are doing for the community. They were very good before the lockdown too, but we all took each other for granted back then.
One of the occupational therapists that I shared a house with in the second year of University got in touch to say that she’d heard me on Off Menu and her memory of me in 1988 was that I just bought a big block of cheese and lived off toasties, and only her cooking some veg curry every now and again meant I got nutrients. I remember cooking a bit myself and listening to Just a Minute whilst eating a mung bean casserole (which was probably as disgusting as it sounds) that I had cooked. But yeah, my breville got a fair bit of usage back then. My speciality was an egg and onion toastie, where I’d crack an egg into raw onion rings and then toast (maybe there was cheese too). It was fucking cracking. As was a toastie with leftover bean casserole in the middle. I was a toasties chef.
My friend is working 12 hour shifts for the NHS and making my claims of fatigue seem ridiculous. She’s scared (of course) but knows she has to carry on regardless. So I am sorry for any moaning that I have done on here. It’s possible though to feel sorry for yourself even if others are going through something far worse. As long as you recognise that. And appreciate it.
I hope we can come out of this with a better understanding of which members in our society deserve praise and money. I suspect we’ll slip back into selfishness and believing we shouldn’t be paying for stuff we don’t use (by conveniently ignoring the ways we use it). Be nice if we didn’t though.
I can’t tell you how good it felt to be bringing some flour home though. Remember the people who overcharged you for it and don’t buy anything from them again. Remember the businesses that were decent.
I was rightly greeted as a hero when I got home. There’s enough for five days of pancakes there. As long as we don’t run out of April syrup.
