Who hit the pause button?

Life as we knew it has just ended. Like someone hit the pause button on the whole world. How are you coping?

If I’m honest, I’m not doing that well. Physically I am well and so are my family members, and for that I am grateful, but mentally trying to process this all I feel like I am still in shock and constantly on catch up.

Last night having given up on watching Blade Runner 2049 (really, don’t bother), I decided to have a nice relaxing bath, reading and bed. My often favoured bedtime reading is the Waitrose “Weekend” free newspaper. With everything that has been going on the latest copy I’d picked up of this was 5 March. Unbelievable. On 5 March weekend we had no mention of the virus AT ALL, and plenty of listings of lovely spring events we were all going to attend. That was only 16 days ago, what a different world we live in now.

I’m sure like me you have all experienced the challenges of trying to get a bit of grocery shopping done this week. My poor colleague looked almost on the brink of something after 4 days of trying to track down a single egg. She has now resorted to buying Easter eggs to console herself whereas my husband seems to have sought comfort in filling the fridge with beer.

We all have to learn to be more flexible. My shopping list that said “gnocchi, pork meatballs, grape juice..” has been scrapped. The list now just says “dinner”, whatever you can find in the first shop preferably a ready meal as I’m often too tired to cook or to traipse around numerous possibly virus infected venues full of potentially virus infected individuals.

At the beginning of the week I went around smiling at strangers trying to establish some sense of community camaraderie. No one smiled back, they all continued looking worried and I just looked like some sort of friendly weirdo. To the one lovely lady in Windsor who finally returned my smile on Friday I thank you from the bottom of my heart, you made my day… I will now track you down to smile at you as often as possible like a deranged stalker… ONLY JOKING! I have given up the smiling at strangers thing because quite frankly, it wasn’t really working.

We did the first doorstep drop to my elderly parents today. This was our offering to them:

A little basket of flowers for Mother’s Day, a big bag of rhubarb from my garden that smelt so fresh and delicious when I picked it this morning, and a very miscellaneous box of toiletries and foodstuffs. My parents are not that local to me so at the beginning of the week I asked for a list from them of what they were going to need over the next few weeks. By Thursday we still only had got as far as a strange combination of new pyjamas x 2, bubble bath and concealer stick make up. (Similarly my friend Julie had an emergency request from her elderly neighbour that included the essential item of Trebor mints, I kid you not). Eventually last night my parents came up with a few food requests which amazingly Londis in Vale road post office was able to fulfil except eggs of course. “Eggs….? They’ll be in next year” I was told with a smile.

Well I won’t waffle on about my shopping habits all day long, other news from Windsor is that I made a delicious caramelised red onion and mature cheddar quiche on Wednesday night. It contained 6 eggs!! I had no idea I was being so decadent at the time, a bit like sprinkling gold dust onto your pudding.

Today’s lunch was not so deluxe. We had tinned ravioli in tomato sauce on toast from The Happy Shopper range! It actually was quite tasty and felt like comfort food. When have I ever bought a tin of anything for lunch from The Happy Shopper, I have no idea. I just saw it on the shelf and it looked easy.

So of course you’ll all be staying in tonight. Eating your food you’ve had to battle through the crowds for and compromise on your usual list followed by a manic hand washing session afterwards. Followed by worrying about possible door handles you may have touched before hand washing and have now touched again afterwards! Whatever you are eating I hope it is truly delicious. You deserve to enjoy it after getting through this week.

We will be phoning our local Indian takeaway at 6.00 pm tonight when they open to try to get a meal for 2 hours later. (Do you think they still have rice?) If this is a no go we will be investigating the freezer, probably for one of our “Cook” meals. The beef wellington looks particularly tasty. Have a nice evening everyone, keep healthy. I will check in with you all again soon xxx