Avoiding non-essential social contact

The pre-Coronavirus Diaries, continued

Sunday

Life continued as normal today. Was at church morning and evening, where we sang songs about God’s goodness and love. Nobody sounded fearful, but it felt like there was an air of resignation that this would be our last ‘normal’ Sunday for a while.

My fellow tech team member tonight was George, whose self-isolation game is strong all year round. I hope he starts blogging with self-isolation tips for the masses.

Phoned mum in the evening. She stayed away from church tonight, on social-distancing grounds. On the upside, her forthcoming 80th birthday will see her receive an additional 25p per week in her pension. She is understandably over the moon about this and unsure of how to invest her new-found affluence.

Tomorrow I am theoretically up for jury service. But a phone-call this evening confirmed that I am not required to attend tomorrow. 24hrs stay of execution, at least.

Monday

In the whirl of coronavirus-related uncertainty I put on a clean pair of trousers this morning, but forgot to add a belt. However, it’s ok – it turns out that my trousers are self-tightening. Should be ok so long as I don’t stash too many tins of tuna in the pockets.

My trousers’ new-found self-tightening status may or may not be a result of me powering through the 90kg weight barrier recently. Smashed it, I did. Left it choking on my dust. I look forward to renewing acquaintances with 90kg on the way back down sometime in the future.

Just after I’d sent an email to my work teams saying largely “business as usual this Sunday” the PM, without checking with me first, holds a press conference and instructs us to avoid “non-essential” social gatherings.

So we’re into the next phase.

My Sister gets in touch on WhatsApp: 

“Y’all ok? Enough turmeric?”

Then she sends me a link to where I can buy a 25kg bag of it online. I am grateful.

Not required for jury duty tomorrow either. On reading the “Coronavirus Update” page on the Scottish Courts website, I am fairly sure that they consider the judicial system to be “essential” social contact. So I don’t think Coronavirus is going to help me here.

Tuesday

On reading my previous post (I originally wrote “last post”, but a slow trumpet sounded in my head and I realised that has other connotations), some pointed out to me that I visit the supermarket a LOT.

I confess I hadn’t thought about this. But, perhaps because I live very close to Morrison’s, and not that far from Sainsbury’s either, perhaps because I have very little freezer capacity, and perhaps also because I don’t plan very far ahead, I am probably in a supermarket at least every other day. So my regular supermarket visits are not a result of coronavirus-related panic, but rather just the outcome of a permanent state of semi-disorganised food planning.

Is this a single-person thing? Or just me? It may be just me.

Today is my usual day off. I am accustomed to spending Tuesdays without much in the way of social contact, and some Tuesdays I don’t really leave the house anyway(!) so today probably won’t feel all that different.

Nerf guns and press-ups

Well, dear reader, time has moved inexorably onwards, like an ever-rolling stream, as a wise and poetic songwriter once said. The summer is on the wane, and the twilight gradually creeps earlier and earlier. Saturday saw the last day of the cricket season in Scotland, and marked the end of my twentieth season with Holy Cross Academicals Cricket Club.

Apart from a couple of short trips down to Yorkshire and over to Northern Ireland, I have worked steadily through the summer. The office, usually a hive of industrious activity, has been mostly quiet over this time, with many staff taking well-earned holidays.

One has to be one’s guard in the office. Chief among the reasons for this is the stash of Nerf guns in the Rector’s Office. There is a veritable arsenal of deadly plastic weaponry in there, and just as certain Western countries feel the need to have nuclear firepower on tap, as a deterrent to the Bad Guys, so it is with the staff, many of whom have a Nerf gun of some description within easy reach at any given time.

It should be said at this point that I am not comparing the Rector with Bad Guys of any kind, and any inferences drawn by the reader in this direction should be promptly repented of.

But on any given day there is no telling just when intra-office hostilities might commence.

Just the other day, I was fixing one of Disco Dave’s projectors on a nearby desk, when I was, without any warning, shot three times at close range. The Rector, discussing matters of great theological importance (perhaps grace and forgiveness) nearby, witnessed this unprovoked attack, and straightaway authorised me to plunder his arsenal to take revenge.

Within seconds a reasonably significant skirmish had commenced, sending the Rector’s Administrator scuttling into the Executive Director’s office for cover.

Meanwhile the Finance Director clutched her tin hat tightly to her head, and heroically carried on crunching numbers on her Fat Club spreadsheet. The FD has recently coerced the rest of the office (or most thereof) into joining her on a health kick, and a weekly weigh-in.

In the interests of getting a benchmark of current levels of overweightedness, and targets to work towards, the Executive Director and I punched some numbers into the online BMI calculator kindly supplied by the NHS and almost sent it into meltdown, with the result literally off the chart at the ‘overweight’ end.

It was then that I realised I had put in the ED’s vital statistics along with a mistyped age of “5”, and much hilarity ensued at the mental image of a five-year-old with the body of a retired hooker. (It’s probably wise to explain for the rugby-uninitiated that ‘hooker’ is a position in a rugby team. This is the kind of hooker-ing that our ED has retired from, not anything else you may have been thinking. Tsk.)

The implications of this (almost) office-wide enthusiasm for healthy living have been profound, with the office’s regular supply of cakes (of which the FD was a regular and frequent provider) having dwindled into near-nothingness. Instead, a fruit bowl has appeared on a shelf previously considered sacred. Conversations have been had about the relative health merits of various types of nuts. (Cashews, it seems, somewhat inevitably given their tastiness, aren’t all that good for you.) Empire Biscuits have become a Friday-only treat. And Disco has been advocating all manner of wild physical exercise.

A few days ago, he bravely wandered, unarmed, over to my desk. After reaching reflexively for my Elite Strike Jolt EX-1 Blaster, I chose instead to extend an olive branch and hear what he had to say.

Naturally he had a raft of new extreme press-up techniques to impress me with, including the “Diamond”, the “Crucifix”, and the “Superman”. He even dropped his waistcoat-splittingly muscular torso to the floor and demonstrated the Superman, which involved him flinging his arms forwards at the apex of the press-up, and back again in time to prevent him losing his teeth. I was impressed. I wasn’t sure how to confess that my own press-ups have been restricted to the “Common-or-Garden” variety, and not that many of them either.

But who needs press-ups when one is playing an athletic activity such as cricket in Scotland’s East League Division 6? After a comfortable win and early finish on Saturday, a number of the team sat outside in the sunshine and celebrated a mediocre season by working our way through the considerable left-overs from tea. Having assiduously monitored my diet through the week, cutting out all manner of tasty treats, I undermined my own efforts by piling into doughnuts and french fancies, and two Cokes. Plus a Coke Zero, but that doesn’t count. A lot of laughter was had, especially at the expense of everyone’s favourite Indian “bowler who bats a bit”, who still hasn’t told his mother-in-law that he married her daughter several years ago.

Sunday followed Saturday, as it is wont to do, and a late night pizza followed the doughnuts and french fancies. Given the nutritionally-suspect weekend choices, I held little hope of good news on the scales on Monday, but as it turned out still managed to register a slight weight loss.

Hurrah! Time for a celebratory carrot stick.