More Days in Lockdown

Self-Isolation

The Coronavirus lockdown continues. Anna has now had a letter for the Welsh Health Authorities to say that she in in a higher risk category and should therefore be ‘properly’ self-isolating for 12 weeks. That means not leaving the house for anything and either making sure the others in her household are also isolating or doing her best not to come into contact with them. The guidelines say to sleep in a different room, use a different bathroom and to thoroughly deep clean the kitchen in between us using it and her using it! Fortunately, Morgan and I have been staying at home too so have been pretty much self-isolating ourselves. So, Anna hasn’t quite taken up residence in a room to herself away from the rest of us.

Government Rules

The other recommendations for the public in general remain the same for now:

• Stay at Home.
• You can only go outside to:
  • Exercise alone or with members of your own household and only once a day.
  • To shop for essentials.
  • To help others in need.
• When outside you should remain at least 2m apart from anyone except those in your own household.

All of these measures are in place to prevent to spread of the disease. Most people seem to be following them now and things here have been quiet once again this weekend. Not everyone is taking notice though and there have been reports of people picnicing in parks and on beaches and such like. There are always some who think the rules don’t apply to them.

Social Distancing

As I’ve said before, most of these restrictions haven’t had a huge impact on us. We are of course staying at home a lot more than usual but that isn’t really a problem. In some respects it’s quite nice. Working from home is fine, Morgan loves it and the lack of socialising doesn’t worry us at all. Other than the fact that we aren’t leaving the house to go to work and school there isn’t really much difference. We didn’t really go out much anyway. Other than the occasional trip to the shops or a café together it was very rare for us to go out ‘socialising’. I did go swimming, surf-skiing and occasionally cycling with other people which would inevitably include a café stop, but other than that I don’t remember the last time we were out socialising with other people! Social distancing has pretty much been the norm for us anyway.

Exercising

The main effect on us has been the inability for me to exercise as much as I might normally do.

A normal weekend would see me out for a bike ride in the hills, a short run and a surf ski paddle or windsurf on the Saturday and a run in the hills, a swim and a paddle on the Sunday. This would be interspersed with a few walks over to the beach to check the conditions and probably a walk with Anna and Morgan too. Obviously now I can only go out once a day. This means more time training at home on my Turbo Trainer and planning as to which exercise to do outside.

This weekend saw me do an hour and a half on the Turbo trainer on Saturday, followed by a 30 minute run around Ynyslas. Sunday was a 50 minute run (again locally) and then an hour on the turbo trainer later in the day. Not quite as much variety as usual and not quite as exciting but there are of course good reasons for it so I’m sticking to the rules.

The trouble is, not everyone follows the rules. The few that don’t follow them might, as is often the case, ruin it for the rest of us. The fact that people are bending or breaking the rules and using the ability to leave to house to exercise as an excuse to have picnics and gatherings means that there are rumours that it might soon be revoked. This would mean that we might not be allowed out to exercise outside at all. This would have quite a big impact on me but I’d have to cope. Apparently, in Wales it is now a criminal offence to exercise outside more than once a day anyway. It has been made illegal to do so in a new law. Elsewhere, in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland there is (as yet) no legal ban on exercising more than that.

Time in the Garden

We are fortunate in having a decent sized garden. It’s not big enough to run or ride in of course and definitely doesn’t have a massive lake that I could surf ski in but it’s a big enough space to get some fresh air in and the garden itself needs plenty of tending so there is always something to do in it. This does mean that I can get some fresh air at other times of the day as well.

Things were looking very spring-like over the weekend and temperatures reached 21.6ºC here on Sunday. Usually I post some photos of places I’ve been over the weekend but as we can’t go anywhere it’s likely that photos here will be coming mainly from the garden for a few weeks. Here are few photos of the garden this weekend to brighten things up.

I spent some time in the garden doing a few little bits of tidying up and then on Sunday spent most of the day cleaning and polishing all of my boats, tidying up the storage area in the lean-to, treating the wood of the garden furniture and even varnishing the canoe that we built a few years ago.

I think my boat collection is coming along nicely!!

There’s plenty more to keep me busy out in the garden for a while. I think Anna has plans for me to build a patio at some point during the lockdown. She has also ordered some laminate floor for the hallway as well which will presumably keep me busy for a day or two if the weather takes a turn for the worse!

These are indeed strange times, but we’re making the best of them, we’re sticking to the rules and we’re hoping everyone we know makes it through and stays safe.

Tags: CoronavirusGarden