Gordonstoun has sent us a detailed letter explaining that they are not going to give in to the ravages of Bat Flu, but are going to Keep Calm And Carry On. After all, we would never have had an Empire if we’d all started flapping about closing things all over the place.
Oliver is going to be coming home for Easter next week. We have got to take his temperature every day for the last two weeks and sign a promise that we did not make any of it up, it is not a holiday reading list. He is only allowed to go back into school if his temperature is normal for the whole fortnight.
We considered this instruction dubiously. We do not normally bother taking anybody’s temperature, because it is more than obvious if one of us is ill. They are complaining their head off for a start.
In the end Mark remembered that we did have a thermometer somewhere, and eventually we dug it out of the bottom of the first aid box.
It did not work.
I do not know why a thermometer might not work. Neither of us wanted to try it in our mouths at all, because Mark thought that he vaguely recollected we had stuck it up a baby’s bottom once, but we warmed it thoroughly in hands that had been holding cups of tea, and nothing happened.
It was one of the old mercury ones, obviously, so ancient that it was marked in Fahrenheit. No amount of warming it and squinting at it and shaking it made any mercury appear anywhere, so in the end I put it in the bin. I do not know if you are allowed to put thermometers in the bin, even ones from which all the mercury seems to have evaporated, but I couldn’t think of anything else to do with it. If the landscape becomes a desolate wasteland due to thoughtless disposal of dangerous medical waste then it is probably my fault and I am sorry in advance.
It was clear that we needed another one and so the obvious place was the mighty Internet.
Thermometers appear to have become a sort of companion product to loo roll, in that everybody in the developed world seems to have developed a sudden urgent need of one.
They were selling at a hundred and fifty quid, although they did appear to function in virtually every conceivable orifice into which you might fancy inserting a thermometer.
Mark said that the thing to do would be just to ask Oliver if he felt hot, and remove his dressing gown if he did, but I did not think this would be an acceptably responsible approach to our current public health crisis.
I hunted through web page after web page, until finally I found a Chinese one on eBay for a fiver, which said LAST ONE in red letters, so I bought it.
It has got to come from China, so will probably arrive with Bat Flu included in the package, as a sort of free gift.
I hope it gets here in time. There are not so many flights in our newly plague-saturated era.
On the subject of shortages, to my great happiness Sainsbury’s were able to supply bread flour today.
We are not yet running low on this vital commodity but I do not wish to be left out as the rest of the UK pretends to be squirrels. In any case it will stave off post-apocalyptic starvation for a further three days, which I think is something to celebrate, so I bought a bag.
I had gone to Sainsbury’s for cream, because I was having a cooking day, and pretty much everything is improved by the addition of cream.
I made bread, obviously. Then I made chilli chocolate and strawberry fudge, parsnip and pear soup, hazelnut and mushroom pate, mayonnaise and a risotto. This took me the whole day, and I put cream in everything, except the mayonnaise.
If we are expecting an apocalypse I have decided to do all my hoarding internally. It saves cupboard space and there is no possibility that rascally looters will steal any of it.
I will leave you with that thought.
Have a picture of this morning’s walk.
