annanotbob2's Diaryland Diary
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Day 41
It was going OK today till I couldn't be arsed top go for a walk or to cook dinner so I suggested having a takeaway curry and now I feel totally paranoid about every aspect of it - who cooked it, who packed it, who touched any part of it - though now, when I write it down, I can see it's only going to be a couple of people - after being washed and prepped it's all cooked quickly on a high heat, the delivery driver will only have picked up the bag and for that to be infectious he'd have had to have coughed or sneezed right on it, but really, it's too much.
I'd planned to go for a walk on the beach at about five as the tide would be turning, and to paddle in the shallows, but a cold, strong north-easterly wind came up and it lost its appeal. So I haven't been out all day, apart from wandering in and out of the garden. Bloke has taken on the veg growing and has a row of mixed salad leaves coming along, beans, both runner and broad (aka fava, I believe), peas, and several seedlings from a packet of heritage tomato seeds I found a few weeks ago when I moved things around to make room for yoga. He tells me every time something germinates - there are now seventeen runner beans up etc. I don't care.
I want to be able to write more clearly about what's happening, how I'm experiencing the ups and downs of this weird situation but I don't have a clue. I feel OK or I feel terrible. When I feel terrible I don't want to examine it, as I'm too scared. Orangepeeler wrote something today that I get - the question of why the fuck would I think I'm going to be exempt from the sharp end of all this? And I don't - I feel as if I'm just waiting for the blow to fall - although I can't bear to write that down, as if I'm willing it towards me, because I'm not, I'm not. But I don't understand how some people get it and others don't - I mean, really, are all the people who are infected those who ignored the social distancing rules, who don't wash their hands after being outside, or is it really sneaking in on post and the packaging food comes in? We try to be low-packaging, but eggs come in cartons, oil comes in bottles, these things have all been taken out of crates and put on shelves - how is it that some people get ill and others don't? When I feel OK I'm just glad and don't want to look at why I felt bad before.
I did my art group this morning and painted more of the same - I feel I might like to try something else but I don't know what. I always go like this with painting - I get stuck in a groove that works for me for quite a long time - it's the process I like, the sitting down, putting paint on paper, rather than having a burning desire to express myself that way. So far I've done beach huts, rooftops, Cezanne still lifes and now these skies. These were today's:
I had lunch with muso J after art - I made some broccoli and stilton soup and actually followed a recipe for once as I've had varied results in the past and thought I needed to go back to basics. I'd not been putting in anywhere near enough broccoli. This one just had onions, sweated in butter, then the broc stalks chopped quite small - I sliced them thinly - sweated them for a bit before adding chicken stock and milk, cooking for about five minutes till the stalks were quite soft and adding loads and loads of broc and a pile of crumbled stilton, another five minutes, blitz, salt, pepper and a grating of nutmeg, job done. As I was writing all that out I wondered why I was, and it occurred to me that J was quite shivery when we started our lunch and that's part of what's got me down today - worrying about her and everyone I know, not feeling up to supporting anyone else, feeling like a cunt about it.
So I went to bed, with the little dog who chased the sunlight round
and watched these seagulls who have moved in on the chimney pots opposite:
Noisy, they are, squawking at each other with all the emphases of a human conversation, full of indignation, taking it in turns but overlapping a bit. They were there yesterday, much the same, chattering, just too far off for my phone camera to get a close-up, but I'm guessing they're nesting so will produce at least one clumsy great offspring who they'll fiercely defend against all foes, real and imagined. That'll keep me entertained.
This was today's facebook memory, from 1980:
It's one of my favourite pics. When we were young. That plant is sitting on my old hand-crank sewing machine, which folded down into its table. Mum and Dad's old Habitat sofa, uncomfortable as either a sofa or a bed. I might have my hair cut that short again, if we come out the other side of this. When. I noticed in one of the mask photos that I suddenly have masses of grey hair - how does that work? I thought grey hairs were a different kind, thicker, wirier, so how can it change suddenly? And I'm only 65, too young to go grey.
I need to do something different, I think. I'm not sure what. I'd quite like to finish making the inside of the house nice, but I need to get rid of loads of things and there's nowhere to do that. The tip is closed as are all the charity shops and the bin men only take one recycling bin one week and a general bin the other week. We don't fill our general waste one but it's not big enough to take a ton of cheap paperback books and all the clothes I'll never fit into again.
11:36 p.m. - 21.04.20
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