I am enjoying our compulsory idleness very much indeed.
We sat in bed this morning and considered the day’s activities, and marvelled at the unspeakable luxury of having nothing whatsoever that we ought to be doing. Obviously we are not earning any money, but somehow that does not seem to be very important. I generally occupy a great deal of my life in fruitless worryings about the endless ebbing and flowing of the inexorable Barclays tide, but this week I seem to have been possessed by a reckless indifference.
I do not know what will come out of all of this, but just at the moment nothing seems to merit troubling my soul. We expect that very probably it will All Come Out All Right In The End.
Even if it doesn’t, we might as well make the most of it whilst the sun is shining.
Once out of bed we marshalled ourselves into order and went for an isolationist trek up the fell with the dogs. There is a picture attached, in order to reassure you that although we were out of the house, we were not forcing our way through madding crowds and infecting the hapless multitudes with horrible plague germs. We did pass a couple of other people, but they were miles away, and we did not talk to them.
You might possibly notice that Oliver’s coat seems to have become too small for him during the last few weeks. I am ignoring this because there is no point in spending a fortune on a coat that nobody will see. If he does not need to go back to school then he can just wear mine.
It was all a bit more difficult than it usually is, because of Mark’s squishy knee and my cough, also that Oliver became rapidly bored with the progress of a couple of wheezing decrepit parents. He resolved this by throwing the ball for Roger Poopy and then chasing after it himself as well.
I had to stop for a rest halfway up because of some embarrassing puffing and panting, it is a good job that nobody was there to see. I hope this cough does turn out to be Bat Flu. It will be a lot of tiresome suffering for nothing if not. I have been spluttering and barking all week now, at the very least I would like a Certificate Of Immunity to show for it, and a story of Brave Endurance to tell my grandchildren. Or to tell Mark, at least. I don’t know why we think of telling our grandchildren. I can’t imagine suppose that Ritalin Boy would be the smallest bit interested.
Poor Ritalin Boy. It was his birthday yesterday and his party had to be cancelled. The world is an unkind place sometimes. He will have his own stories of Brave Endurance for his own grandchildren, when all of this is ancient history.
Not that I am likely to get a certificate of anything, because I have not troubled the already overcrowded NHS with my woes. I am pretending that this is out of a nobly self-sacrificial motive of not adding to their already shocking burden, but actually it is because I do not have the patience to wait on the end of the telephone for a couple of hours until some poor weary individual can answer the 192 helpline, because they are all busy talking to dozens of sick people.
In any case it would appear that Cumbria is not a brilliant place to be sick at the moment. This is because we have got a health service designed to meet the needs of residents, but every Londoner with a share in a holiday cottage has fled north, and so we have suddenly got an unexpectedly large population. They are all milling about in the village looking hopefully at the gift shops and closed cafes and wondering if any of them might sell loo roll.
Mark went to the farm after the healthy bit of the day, and I listened to Two Thousand Leagues Under The Sea on the radio and ironed Oliver’s school uniform. I thought I ought to do this in case he needs it again some day. Either way it is better that it is ironed and packed tidily away in the loft than cluttering up the living room in a teetering guilt-inducing stack.
We should have been at work this evening. It is Saturday night. I can hardly tell you how strange it feels. I keep feeling little rushes of uncomfortable anxiety, when I can hardly believe that the world outside has really, truly stopped, and there will be no taxis sitting outside the Stag’s Head, because the Stag’s Head is closed and the lights are off. It seems unreal, almost as if I am somehow making it up, and both thrilling and terrible all at the same time.
It is so lovely to have this quiet time together.
It is a truly splendid isolation.
