Lockdown - Week 4: 14th- 20th April

Week four of the lockdown was another glorious time weather-wise, and I'm starting to behave  as if this were just some odd sort of holiday. Yes, there's still housework to do, but that's less important when there's no one else to see how clean and tidy - or not - the house is. There's still gardening, but the mad dash to sow vegetables that always comes at the end of March has passed, and things are quieter. Nothing seems to have much urgency to it, and the sun's been shining most of the time, so there's a great temptation to just sit and watch the flowers open - and that's what I've done for much of the week.








After a few days of this though, rain arrived on Saturday, and I roamed the house looking for something to occupy myself with. I ended up tackling the ironing pile, and then making rhubarb muffins.


I've started to sort through and use up the weird odds and ends in the freezer, which resulted in some odd dinners - an intended pork goulash had to quickly change into moussaka when I discovered the de-frosted cubes of meat were actually lamb, and I've discovered that a small piece of kipper goes a long way flavour-wise in risotto.








Thanks to all the on-line streaming of shows, I've had a couple of 'nights out' - Treasure Island from National Theatre Live, The Phantom of the Opera, one of Andrew Lloyd Webber's productions on The Shows Must Go On YouTube channel , and Romeo and Juliet from The Globe Theatre. I'm really looking forward to these each week. I've had doubts in the past about 'filmed theatre' but I've really enjoyed these broadcasts from The Globe and National Theatre Live and after the first few minutes forgotten that I wasn't actually in the theatre. The Phantom didn't appeal to me as much, but musicals aren't really my 'thing'.



I've even been out in real life this week, to see the bluebells in our local wood. Even at seven on a Sunday evening some of the paths felt uncomfortably crowded, so there was a constant battle between enjoying being out and wanting to get home.

Having the lockdown extended for three more weeks came as no surprise, but by weekend rumours had started to spread that the corona virus exit strategy may involve advising the elderly and vulnerable to stay self-isolated for a year or 18 months! Now, I'm not in that group, and neither is my husband, although he does have health issues, but all along we've followed the health advice for it on the 'better safe than sorry' principle. If going forward into summer and autumn this were the advice what would we do? Tricky question, but one we'll need to think about over the coming weeks