Covid-19 confinement, part three, week one

Moody skies during lockdown

One week into confinement, part three.

We’ve survived the first week of the current four-week confinement period, although I’m finding things are feeling rather different this time. Last year, there was something reassuring, and almost refreshing about the enforced pause to our hectic lives, and the knowledge that the three of us were together and safe. My daily lockdown diary gave me focus and we caught up with lots of chores we never seemed to have time for in life before Covid-19. One of the things that has been bothering me this week is that the words for a daily diary just weren’t there. I know the idea of the diary is to document how I’m feeling, living through these mesures de freinage nationales, as the French government are referring to this period of confinement, but with no mojo, it wouldn’t have made inspiring reading. There is something quite fatiguing about living through 101 days in confinement followed by 110 under curfew and now another 7 locked to within ten kilometres from home and subject to a 19h curfew every evening.

 

Ed has chosen to stay in Poitiers for some of this confinement, not quite ready to relinquish the independence he has only recently regained. While I don’t begrudge him this glimmer of normality, letting him go back to Poitiers last weekend was a worry, but he still managed to put a smile on my face. I’d texted him to ask if he’d seen any Gendarmes on his eighty-kilometre journey to the neighbouring department. His reply, “None, do you imagine a war zone or the occupation when there’s a lockdown?”. Well, yes, Ed, I absolutely do, and knowing I’m over-thinking things is beginning to do my head in.

 

In the bluebell woods

This lockdown isn’t even as severe or restrictive as the previous ones, more shops and services are now deemed essential and we have no time limit on our exercise. We are limited to a ten-kilometre radius for exercise and if I’m nit-picking, which I am, ours is a reduced-size, squashed circle as it crosses into the Charente and Charente-Maritime departments, and crossing a border is a no-no for exercise under the current rules. Luckily Adrian can be quite creative with his route planning and it certainly put big smiles on our faces when we found our first flowering bluebell wood, within our 10km, on our Friday evening bike ride.

 

I’m still very much enjoying having Adrian home all the time, but let’s just say you have no idea how ridiculously excited I was, in fact it could even have been the highlight of this first week of confinement, when I cleared the crap that constantly accumulates on the kitchen table and created enough space for my breakfast preparation area. No longer will Adrian and I be tripping over each other as he puts the coffee pot on while I prepare the breakfast. My jars of oats, berries, nuts, dried fruits and honey, are safely in their own zone far away from his sugar bowl and coffee tray. It’s the little things that make all the difference.

 

Source: MoneyTransfers.com

Another boost to my mood this week was the email from MoneyTransfers letting me know that French Village Diaries had been included in their Top 20 Expat blogs in France, up there with names like France Media Group’s FrenchEntree, as well as many other successful blogs I’ve been following for years (see here for the full list). Adrian would like his QA/proofreading skills to get the mention they deserve at this point too. Thanks darling, I don’t know what I’d do without you. Onwards and upwards, together we can do this.