Diary of Covid-19 confinement, day forty-nine

Out in the sun

Day forty-nine, 4^th May 2020

Busy bees, out and about in the sun

It was such a great feeling to open the shutters this morning and to see a blue sky and hear no rain. I could feel it in my bones, it was going to be a good day. 

The first thing to tackle on the to-do list was to buy eggs. We are lucky to have an organic, free-range, egg farm just outside the village and as my old birds don’t lay enough for our needs at the moment, being able to support a local business is perfect. Being able to use the bike to get there is even better as this also means the environmental gain over driving to a supermarket to buy eggs that have had to be delivered, is huge.

After a coffee, it was time to head further afield so Ed and I set off for Chef Boutonne; the first time Ed has left the village since 16^th March. That should have been the day of his driving test, and with lockdown being eased from next week, it seemed a good idea for him to get back behind the wheel and get in some practice. Although he drove, parked, moved location, parked again, and repeat, I didn’t let him get out of the car, at all. He will have to wait for next week before he gets anywhere near that level of excitement in his life.

Hand delivered Living Magazines

I’ve been helping to deliver Living Magazine, a local English language magazine, for a number of years and today I picked up their latest edition, that has been sat in their barn for almost two months. I normally drop them off at local bars, restaurants and other places us Brits hang out, but apart from the supermarkets, everything else is still closed. As the weather was so good, Adrian and I packed twenty magazines in the bike bag; enough to hand deliver one to every British household in the commune. This had many benefits, including getting us out and about in the fresh air, being able to chat (from a safe distance) to quite a few people we haven’t seen for two months and make sure they were ok, and doing our bit for a local business whose business plan has unraveled almost as much as our own during confinement. One of our chats was with a lady in her seventies, who lives alone and admitted to finding lockdown very difficult. She was so pleased to have someone to talk to and something new to read, in English, it made my day. What at first seemed like nothing more than a good excuse to get the bikes out, actually left us feeling that we had done a bit of good in the community.

Pharmacy run Chef Boutonne

The thing with cycling is the more you do, the more you want (need) to do, so this afternoon saw us headed back out on the bikes, returning to Chef Boutonne to collect a prescription that had to be ordered in this morning. I’m feeling happy and alive once more and even treated myself to an extra slice of carrot and coconut cake with my afternoon cup of tea.

Melle

May holiday memory

Sadly, I have come to a pause in our holiday memories, but I did find this picture of our local market town of Melle, taken in May, just a bit closer to home. I hope you enjoy it.