Life after lockdown, one week in

Free to roam once more

One week post confinement

We have now been ‘free’ for a week (and a day), but freedom’s not all it’s cracked up to be, especially when the weather was doing all it could to keep us trapped inside. Writing my daily update during lockdown seemed to anchor me, and without having it to focus on last week I felt a bit adrift. I had planned on a few days off before writing this update, but how more than a week has passed, I have no idea.

Day one was cold and wet, day two cold and windy, day three cold, wet and windy and day four, although we had been forecast better weather, was still cold and windy. It was just as well we plenty of routine chores to keep us busy, but our moods were low.

Happy 20th birthday Pearl

The highlight of the week was helping Ed’s girlfriend Pearl celebrate her 20^th birthday and seeing the two of them looking so happy at being together again, after almost nine weeks. However, even that wasn’t without its trauma as we found ourselves socialising outside of our little bubble of three, where we’d happily been self-contained for two months.

It wasn’t until the weekend that we managed to get some real cycling in, although we’ve still only managed loops from home rather than a real adventure, further afield. Hopefully the next few weeks will see this change. We have no shortage of ideas and routes ready and waiting for us.

My 1€ Lidl veggie box

Despite now being able to travel within a one-hundred-kilometre radius from home, until yesterday, when we ventured the 45kms to Niort, we’d not been far all week, just the same supermarkets we usually shop at. One morning in Niort picking up the bits we needed in five different shops was enough for me, for the next two months at least. Although I did manage to get my first ever Lidl 1€ out of date veggie box. I’m sure I’ll think of something to do with at least twenty bunches of salad onions, even if it is only soup for the freezer.

Everywhere in Niort was uncomfortably busy for me. Too many people moving, standing around or waiting to be served and in one store the queue for the checkouts was so far back you couldn’t see the cash desks from the end. We left, empty handed.

We have pledged to try and use our bikes as our transport as much as possible this summer, but this certainly wasn’t a journey we could have replaced by bike. With 80 litres of potting compost, a 25kg sack of bird feed, a weekly shop, oh, and a hot tub to replace the pool, the poor car was fully laden.

The garden in the sun

Now the weather is better, signs of summer are popping up all the time. The ritual of a hearty soup for lunch has been replaced with a salad and the bunting has been hung outside on the terrace once more. 

The terrace

With the pool gone, the garden has needed our attention. Lots of weeding in the shady flower beds that have been hidden by the pool for twelve years and lots of head scratching as to what to put where in the new space. The pots have moved from one side, to the other, left a bit, right a bit and back again, until I think we are now happy with them. We are certainly very happy with the new hot tub.

In the hot tub

I hope that wherever you are and whether you are still in lockdown, or free to roam once more, you are keeping well and staying a safe distance from others. The world is still a strange and somewhat scary place and I think it will stay this way for quite a while yet.

For Ben