Day 5
Day 5 of Lockdown, people. That’s almost a week.
Here in the OHFTC bunker, nestled on the northeastern slopes of Arthur’s Seat, we press on. We aren’t wiping down door handles and the like – we find it’s easier to just use The Force to open doors. No contact required. Job done.
I had a spot of video-editing to do today to pull together tomorrow’s online church service. There’s a risk that there might not be quite enough limoncello left in the bottle to fuel the video-editing. So, St Mungo’s church viewers, if the service kind of grinds to a halt halfway though, you’ll know what’s happened.
On the subject of limoncello, one lunchtime last week, a friend – who may or may not hold an important position at a prestigious university – sent me a photo of the bottle of limoncello he was proposing to sample, to – as he put it – “help this afternoon’s meetings.”
I think Limoncello-makers could make this into a great advertising slogan.
Lunchtime Limoncello. Helps your afternoon’s meetings.
I haven’t heard anything from him since. I do hope he’s ok, and still employed.
My flatmate is not working today. Not that he’s not employed, it’s just a Saturday, when normal people don’t work. He has not yet appeared in the shared Multipurpose Facility we used to call the living room. I can only deduce that his buttocks are more accommodating to hard chairs than mine.
However, later on I spot him scraping moss off our back steps. The back steps lead down to our Back Garden, which is a euphemistic description at best. My flatmate and I decided, quite recently, that this Spring we would attack the undergrowth, and indeed the overgrowth, of which there is quite a lot, in the Back Garden.
This is not as straightforward as it might seem, because in order to access the back steps leading to the Back Garden one must open the back door. And after a particularly vigorous appearance by one of the Storms (it may have been Dennis) earlier in the year, we got a kind note posted through our door from our neighbour, explaining that half our back door had blown off and landed in his garden.
It’s quite fortunate that it was his garden it landed in. His garden is of an award-winningly immaculate nature, and thus a blown-off half-door is quite an obvious addition. If it had landed in our Back Garden it’s fair to say it might never have been found – in the undergrowth, or possibly the overgrowth.
In case you’re wondering how we didn’t notice, without a note being posted to us, that half our back door was missing, I should point out that it was the outer layer of the door. So from the interior, which is where we were, everything looked completely normal.
However, it now became very difficult to open the door. Even though there’s only half of it left. Even using The Force – both of us concentrating madly for some time. I would defy your average Jedi to open this door using only The Force. And so my flatmate deserves a lot of credit for getting out there at all, never mind beginning the Back Garden Offensive. I believe he used the Force in conjunction with the Shoulder Charge.
A word about this blog.
Am conscious that I am – in my usual manner – writing in a whimsical tone. I am not the only one, of course – funny videos and memes abound poking fun at social distancing, and Coronavirus, and lockdown, and all the rest.
It’s a strange thing. I am conscious that Coronavirus is having a very serious impact on some people. People are actually dying from this, and although it still seems somewhat distant to me, it’s becoming closer as I learn of people I know who have been hospitalised with it. I hope nothing of what I write comes across as blasé about the stark realities of this for some people.
I can only write from my experience, and my experience currently involves nothing more serious than being confined to barracks for the foreseeable. I will continue to try to find humour in the mundane, but want you to understand that I am not blind to the more serious side of all this.
So… after yesterday’s 10-press-up workout, I spent most of today recovering from my exertions. But I did venture out to Morrison’s to pick up some important provisions. Just as I left the house, a hailstorm started, which was pretty great. Walking through a hailstorm isn’t an experience you can have inside, now is it.
Sometimes it’s the little things.
Stay safe and well folks. ❤️