Wednesday, 24 June 2020

BACK IN THE COVID - The Lockdown Diary, day 94(and 93)

What celebration day was Sunday (Day 93)? Here is a clue.



Not my birthday, not yet, I am Virgo. Your next guess might be father’s day and you’re on the money, hence the socks. My son has bought me these so called ‘Odd Socks’ which is entirely appropriate for such an odd Virgo and I absolutely love them.

Yesterday was in fact a double whammy. It was our 51st wedding anniversary on the same day as father’s day, a conjunction without any ominous implications (so far at least) which has only happened as far as I can remember once before and that was around 1985 or 6 on a boating holiday on the Norfolk Broads. We had moored up in Horning and an expedition into town, I can remember to this day exactly where the shop is, resulted in the purchase of a little porcelain love token with a linked two-heart design. Sadly this little pot has long since disappeared following an accident and now only survives in a painting of Sharon where I had deliberately placed it on the window sill behind her. Here it is in the detail below,



Day 93 was our 1st anniversary in lockdown and of course we hope that it will be the only one. The number of deaths are reducing which on the face of it is great news but since at the same time the infection rate is at best stable and predicted to rise after the #scumgate effect, lockdown easing, VE day celebrations, bank holiday, BLM protests and other government mismanagement we remain at risk. It feels as though we have been safely imprisoned, forgotten about and the authorities have now mislaid the keys while they are busy restarting the economy. I get the general idea and I am bound to admit that it is not an unreasonable plan while the economy gets going and the virus is affecting only that part of the population least at risk. Unfortunately our jailers are not even talking to us through the bars. The most vulnerable are getting their sparse survival rations by way of a food parcel and the rest of us get by on the occasional visits of our loved ones behind an ever present glass window called, rather incongruously, a ‘social’ distance. I call it unsociable distancing.

We made an anniversary card for each other and taking my inspiration from the two hearts design on the little pot mentioned above I produced this little effort with my graphics software,



The worse thing right now is that a prediction of when it will be safe for us to venture out to that completely altered new world out there remains illusive. Today a date was given for pubs and restaurants to re-open and no doubt there will be celebrations with much quaffing and laughing, lock ins instead of lockdowns and general inebriation going on throughout the land at which point the masks will be off, people will move to a more ‘social’ distance in drunken recklessness and infection rates will accelerate once again. 

I have kept the file and a backup of my card design. The possibility of a second lockdown anniversary is unlikely but real enough. 

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