Diary of Covid-19 confinement, day twenty-two

Covid-19 confinement day twenty-two, feeling reflective

Feeling reflective

We are now into week four of confinement and life outside of our little home bubble is still a very scary place. People are still falling ill in large numbers, hospitals are still struggling to cope and well-known names, including the UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, are being hospitalised. I don’t read too many newspaper articles in full as the more I read, the more out of control it all feels. 

Despite all of this so many still do not seem to have grasped the concept of staying at home, or the importance of social distancing when they do leave home. I find this as hard to get my head around as I do the surging rapidity that the virus is spreading by.

I last ventured out of the village on day eleven. It was calm, uncrowded, some people wore masks and gloves, many didn’t. I think it would be different if I went out now. The French official line on wearing masks has shifted in the last few days, from there being little point in wearing one, to them being an effective barrier, and if the wearing of them is adopted by many people, a good way of reducing the spread of the virus. Medical masks are now impossible to get hold of, but our Mairie has encouraged those of us who sew, to make homemade ones to be given to the more vulnerable in the village. Once my accounts and admin duties are completed this week, I shall be making some more, especially as I unearthed a lot of spare fabric during a tidy up. If you would like to give it a try, here is the pattern I used and some simple instructions.

Mask template

Mask instructions

Coping

My current coping mechanism seems to involve the need to be as organised and in control at home as possible. In fact, this need has given me more drive and motivation than usual. Every task I achieve from clearing out the freezers, to ensuring there is always a homemade cake in the tin, to getting around to sorting areas of house and garden that have festered for too long, all help to improve my mood. This increased activity is balanced by yoga and home cooked meals, which keeps me feeling calm, grounded and sleeping well at night. We are all different. For Adrian, hard exercise is what he needs and for Ed it is his music.

Change of focus

In some bizarre way I think I needed this massive change of focus. Something big and beyond my control, forcing a rethink and taking the attention away from the doom and gloom of Brexit. This is bigger than Brexit and has the magnitude to create more harm and damage to our lives, but this time we are all in it together. There are no smug voters who won, nor any ‘remoaners’ who lost. This is an invisible war. We can’t see the enemy approach we can only try to protect ourselves and those around us to the best of our ability and do whatever is necessary to cope. If we are targeted, we just have to hope that we can recover.

Stay indoors, stay safe.

Lockdown library

My reading selection for today is Miss Moonshine’s Emporium of Happy Endings. These books are pure magic, two collections of short stories from different authors, set in different era’s but all featuring the enigmatic Miss Moonshine and all scoring a 100% hit rate on feel-good happy endings. Just what we all need in the world right now.