Corona Lock down Diaries – Day 1

I know it is not day 1, we are obviously at what feels like 427 days into lockdown, but this is the first day I have chosen to write about it. It may be my last too. Not as in it is my last day but in that I may not choose to write about it again.

On the work front, it has been a pretty easy ride for me so far. I run a team of financial modellers for a large bank and they sent us home even before the lockdown was declared and they have been brilliant in supporting us. We can order whatever equipment we need, they pay us whether we can actually get any work done or not, and on that front it has been pretty plain sailing. There are challenges of course but moaning about them would seem petty. Ive managed to move to a 4 day week, have developed a taste for home working and do not really ever see myself returning to the office full time even after this shit storm has passed. If anything, I think I am working harder and longer than before.

At home there have been a few challenges given that we commenced a building project to renovate the 3 cellars in the house two weeks before lockdown so have been living in a building site for a couple of months but we seem to have ridden that pretty well. Yes we only have a few usable rooms and yes, it’s filthier than a whore’s nickers but there are worse things going on out there right. Some of the builders have recently returned which has posed a few issues with trying to social distance inside our own home but now that they have fitted a toilet in the cellar and the separate entrance we don’t really see them much but we know they are down there because of the absolute bedlam of hammering and drilling going on.

Home schooling has been hilarious. I did some volunteer teaching a while back and quite enjoyed it so figured I might be good at this. Turns out I could not be more wrong. I have neither the patience, aptitude nor – at this is probably the most important point – intelligence to teach my own children. Fortunately the wife is far more intelligent (yes I have said it MRs Afterwards if you read this) and suited to it than I am so she has for the most part taken up the mantle of teacher. It still occasionally results in shouting, crying and threats of putting the boys up for adoption but all we can do is try.

So day to day things seem pretty much in hand. I will admit that the whole thing certainly has me anxious on a number of fronts – as it does most people I am sure. We have family members who are isolated on their own, there is always the worry of what if’ and there is the inevitable endless speculation about where this all ends. The wife is more pragmatic than me in these things so she has been doing most of the shopping as I definitely worry about going outside more than she does. On that front though I can;t actually get out much right now anyway because on Friday I fell down a step heading outside and have damaged my ankle pretty badly so am not particularly mobile right now. Funny thing is though, as I fell I knew it was going to be bad and in less than a second I clearly remember throwing myself forward to prevent me doing something even worse to it thinking “Fuck this, I ain’t going to no hospital!”

I think that is about enough for now. That has you mostly caught up with our general situation and I will possibly write more now that I’ve started…