Day 47 Saturday 9th of May

Decorating 😠

More wallpaper has been applied to the walls.

There is a fallacy promoted, partly by DIY stores, but also, I think by the general population, that anyone can paint and decorate, and do as good a job as a professional. Why bother paying someone who has had proper training, and who does the job every day of the week, hundreds of pounds, when you, who have had no training (does watching a video on YouTube count as training?) and decorate a room every other year, can get the same results as a professional decorator.

I’m giving up with it. We’ll finish this room, but next time I’m getting someone who knows what they are doing.

The wall paper is now all up, more or less. Sometime, probably on Monday we will paint the walls. Then all we need to do is order a new carpet and get a carpet fitter to fit it. Oh, and transfer all furniture back into the room.

Day 48 Sunday 10th of May

Today was a rest day, what with it being Sunday and all. We had a lie in, got up and made ourselves a proper cooked breakfast, which we ate while listening to Cerys Mathews on Radio 6. All that was missing was the Sunday Papers. A trip to the allotment in the afternoon helped restore some kind of sanity.

Bozo tries to do his Churchill impersonation (and fails)

Our Prime Minister made a sort of announcement this evening. No one is really sure what he said or meant, probably not even himself. Apparently you are supposed to go to work, unless you can stay at home. You should not use public transport, but ideally cycle or walk instead, or more likely drive, if you have somewhere to park. If your commute is 25 miles, not unusual in London, unless you are a fairly fit and fast cyclist, that is not going to happen. People are going to ram themselves onto public transport.

A cynical , but not necessarily wrong. way of looking at it would be to say if you have the privilege, that allows you to sit at a computer all day, stay at home and stay safe. Peasants get back to work, if you die you died for the noble cause of saving Boris’ face.

Day 49 Monday 11th of May

We finished the painting in the bedroom today. Bought and fitted a bit of skirting board to replace the bit we found was missing, and that was about it. Apart from making Spaghetti Bolognese for dinner. Actually it was Linguine Bolognese, because we didn’t have any spaghetti.

Day 50 Tuesday 12th of May

Stay safe, stay out of hospital

Half a century of lockdown days. We don’t appear to be any closer to getting on top of it, although the government thinks we are. My sister says that she has a little spare capacity in her ICU, so possibly it is easing slightly. She posted this earlier, with the request that people didn’t try and fill the place again.

Having listened to and read yesterdays spin, I still don’t know where we are. It’s Tuesday so back to work. I decided that a soundtrack of Scottish and Irish folk music, with a little bit of Americana was what I needed rather than Radio 4.

I’m getting fed up of the lockdown. We should be in Spain or possibly France in the Big Green Bus at the moment. We would dearly love just to jump in the van and go somewhere, anywhere, even for a single night away. We can’t and I accept the reasons why we can’t. If you did an honest risk assessment, it would probably conclude that there was less risk of transmitting Covid-19 by two people, self sufficient in a van, keeping their distance from others, than in a crowded bus or tube train, with or without masks. The problem is that it wouldn’t be two people, it would be thousands. I am sure that it is more than Diane and I who would like to head down to the coast.

Other things

I also discovered today that a mouse is a much more useful computer accessory than a cat.