Toilet roll situation: Nearly finished the roll! Am shooketh. Must immediately go to the shops and battle pensioners to replenish stocks, as other 36 I own MAY NOT BE SUFFICIENT. 

Pasta stocks: Have shamefully traded the fruits of my mild panic buying with friend as previously arranged, so now have four bags of pasta less than yesterday. Still have five in the cupboard. Not intending to eat pasta in the next few days, either, so. 

Times left house: Once!! Freedom!!

Human contact: 

Phone calls:

• Mother for gardening tips after spending entirely too much money at the garden centre, given the statistical likelihood of any plants staying alive due to personal historic record. She also passed the phone to my father, which is usually the strategy either of us use to end the conversation. My dad can manage about 2-3 minutes on the phone before saying ‘so…. What else have you got to tell me’ and then hanging up shortly after. The exception to this appears to be our group Ticket To Ride calls. 

Visitors:

• Friend & Friend’s fiance’ (who is also a friend) to swap pasta for kidney beans and coffee. We stayed responsibly far apart from each other because she is on that 12 week social distancing lockdown which makes my whining about the past 7 days sort of embarrassing. 
• Friends for garden centre trip! 

Mum’s top tip of the day: 

Be careful when you handle the primulas, the leaves bring me out in a rash.

This is probably not as widely applicable as some of her other tips, but will hopefully be helpful for my gardening endeavours. 

General:

Feel like we missed some of the early parts of the story, so I’m going to briefly take us back in time.

Day 1 (but what I was treating as day 0, which is the reason for my timings jump): Am going to Sheffield to visit two of my beloved besties. Cough a few times when I wake up, but presume this is due to the cold I had a few weeks back playing up. Occasionally still had cold-y like symptoms in the morning, so was mostly concerned with being lynched on my train for coughing in public. Read ‘The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry’ on the train and feel inspired to embrace silence, solitude and rest, after I’ve completed my busy weekend plans, of course. 

Approximately halfway through our second game of Mariokart, become growingly aware that feels like beloved bestie’s cat is sat on my chest (the cat is not sat on my chest). The urge to cough begins. The urge to cough is real. Say, with some trepidation, I think this is a new cough. Actually cough. Cough feels like it comes from somewhere underneath my lungs. Best friend gives me a sympathetic look. Best friend’s girlfriend (who is also in the beloved besties category, this is just the easiest way to differentiate) backs away because she has asthma and doesn’t want to die. Cough a few more times into a tissue, as recommended.  Conclude that I probably need to leave and lock myself in home, rather than go out for dinner as planned. Regret mocking other-friend-who-got-a-cough-yesterday.

Text housemate and tell her I’m coming home to self isolate. We haven’t seen each other this week due to busy schedules and she is due to go home to her parents on Tuesday, so suggest she might want to leave earlier to reduce chances of her getting sick. 

Finish Mariokart game. Play one more, because, well, I’m already here. Offer to anti-bacteria everything I have touched. They turn this down. Suspect bestie’s girlfriend may have done this after I left.

Sit on the floor of the bike storage area of the train to maintain 2m distance from people. Message family whatsapp. Have mocked my mother’s insatiable advice that we should stock up on food relentlessly. When I say I have to go and self isolate she says ‘bet you haven’t got any food in’ which is the level of sympathy I generally expect from my mother (and deserved, probably). She rings me while I’m on the train and says ‘I suppose it’s not really appropriate to talk about this now’ which feels like the right move to avoid inciting public transport panic.

By this point, I sound like I have spent several hours at a screamo gig. When the cough comes for ya, it really comes for ya.

Housemate & friend pick me up some food and by the time I get home she has packed her belongings to go back to her parents the next day (this was pre the 14 day rule so a legit decision at the time; also, she still has no symptoms but is on lockdown because someone else there had a temperature; should’ve stuck with me, Grace 😉 ). 

Weird evening of high level of handwashing and anti-bacteria-ing the light switch every time I remember I need to get something from downstairs (hence mother’s: bring the wine to your bedroom, it’s more efficient). First remote game of ticket to ride that has now become a staple. 

Day 2 (which I thought was day 1):

Wake up and cough approximately seventy seven times. Get myself coffee and book to read in bed, but go back to sleep for a bit instead. Watch the church live stream from the conservatory and they announce that it’ll be the last service for a while. Unsurprised but a bit gutted, as have been away for 3 of the last 4 weekends and really wanted to get to church this week before the services stopped. 

Message housemate and ask if it’s okay if I come into and make myself a new coffee. She stands at the other end of room while I make coffee. Her parents are coming in 20 minutes. She says that when she told them I was sick they said ‘… we’ll come and get you out of there’. Choose not to meet them for the first time from 2 meters away while they try and extract her from the plague house. 

Genuinely sick and feel horrendous. Head is pounding and can’t stop coughing. Sound like I smoke 40 a day; all gravelly and deep. After housemate leaves, move to sofa and cough guiltlessly. Nap on sofa and watch an entire season of Ru Paul’s Drag race. Nap in bed and wake up drenched in sweat and have to change into new PJs. Crawl back to sofa and take more paracetamol. Become convinced I am going to run out of paracetamol (I didn’t; obviously). Conclude I will probably be too unwell to work tomorrow (I wasn’t).

Day 3: Blog begins. 

>>Fastforward>>

Day 8:

First day of freedom is underwhelming, as I start off not really sure whether I’m free or not. Friend who got the cough the day before me embraced her freedom yesterday (by going to ASDA), but in my head I wasn’t free until Sunday. Check with Dr friend, though, and doc confirms that I am FREEE! 

Now feel like I missed my opportunity to listen to the COVID Quarantine Spotify playlist while self isolating ( I did a bit on Friday night, but it’s one of those things where the titles are hilarious but I have a low tolerance for the actual music; would have tried harder if I knew this was my last chance) and debated doing another day, just because I didn’t mark the Final Day properly and because it will screw up the ordering of the blog entries. 

To be honest, most of the things I like doing are:

• Indoors-y things (like writing and painting and lego)
• Solo things (like writing and painting and lego)

In this respect, I’m definitely more set up for Self Isolation than outdoorsy extroverts. Plus, I don’t have kids and have a study that I can use as a home office. I’m probably the most well equipped for this whole malarkey which is probably why my first morning of freedom I spent doing…. Exactly what I would have done if I was self isolating. 

Drink my coffee, paint and listen to Audio Bible. Am doing Bible in the Year and have just started reading Leviticus and am finding a bit tough going, so paint at the same time despite my previous words about multi-tasking being evil (just, seriously, that is a lot of detail about burnt offerings. I’m a veggie and there’s a lot of slaughter talk; and also, I reserve the right to be a hypocrite, particularly about rest and that stuff). Then continue building my Harry Potter lego. 

Friend pops round with coffee and kidney beans, in exchange for the new currency of the land (pasta). Chat a bit in the doorway and discus the excellent meme game that has come out of Self Isolation / COVID.

Decide if I am going to buy plants, I should probably be Responsible Adult and mow the lawn and weed. Looked for shed key. In a shocking turn of events,  have no more idea of where it is than when I realised it wasn’t where it should be in September.

Unscrew hinges of shed door (screwdriver was in conservatory, not shed, which is good news). There are sixteen screws holding the hinges of my shed door. (Well, there was. Now there are four). Mow lawn and remove weeds from cracks in patio. This high commitment to gardening makes me falsely confident that I am going to master gardening immediately and will never kill a plant again.

Am about to go out when I realise that I need to screw my shed back together. Also, that I can’t find my gardening tools. They’re probably in the shed but I couldn’t see them and now I have screwed the door back on, the chances of me looking again are limited. 

Buy plants and gardening tools at garden centre. The outside world is…. also Underwhelming. It’s a bit cold and they’ve stopped serving food at the Garden Centre restaurant. Also, don’t actually know anything about plants so am wildly picking up things and checking it says ‘hardy’ on the back to have maximum chance of this not being a total waste of time. 

Nice to see friends (and not through glass).

Overall, am out of the house for approximately 1 hour. Friends help carry the excessive amount of plants into my garden. It’s now late enough in the day that I decide I’ll plant them tomorrow. Decide to spend the evening building more of my lego (I own a LOT of lego, as it turns out) and playing a remote game of Ticket to Ride with my family.

Friends & I agreed that we will go for a (socially distant) walk tomorrow. Think there’s a possibility will be too tired after all my hardcore gardening tomorrow, but we shall see. It’s a nice day and I’m feeling pretty good about my wholesome pursuits and the fact that, during this whole week (other than ill day) I have watched 1h30 mins worth of television, rather than falling into social-isolation binge-fest. Feel inspired to live simple life full of plants and paints and books and nice coffee.

Two weddings I was going to next month have been postponed / shrunk today.

In my original conception of the plan, I was supposed to: go to Wedding number One, then the next day go straight from wedding-accommodation to airport for Malta holiday with beloved besties, then go straight from flight home to my parents house to say the night, to go to Wedding Two the next day, then the next day head back home for Hen Party One. To facilitate this, I had worked out what I was going to wear so that I could pass the appropriate items of clothing to my parents, so that I didn’t have to take Wedding number Two outfit in Ryanair-sized luggage. Had planned to do this this weekend, when we went for a Mother’s Day meal out. I know this is probably the kind of rushing / busyness that the book-on-Hurry was talking about, but I am genuinely gutted about missing all of these things. I wanted to do all of them a lot a lot, and I’m not even the one getting married. That part of my soul is achingly sad. 

Still don’t own any garlic. 

Top 5 things about freedom:

1. Now my decision to stay at home and embrace JOMO feels like a choice rather than something that has been thrust upon me, I can enjoy staying at home more
2. If I run out of wine, can go to the shop. I’ve heard rumours that you can’t buy food at the shops anymore, but have heard nothing about diminishing wine supplies. 
3. No longer feel like social piranha when people come to the door but stay waaaayy back. 
4. Don’t feel insecure about getting bin from the top of the driveway, just in case I accidentally step too far into the real world and the Self Isolation Police jump on me and accuse me of causing the COVID pandemic because of my recklessness
5. Can now join in the ‘I went to the supermarket and there wasn’t any x’ conversations, which have now  usurped the weather as the top british thing to talk about. 

Top 5 things I miss about Self-Isolation:

1. Whenever anyone’s going to the shop they told you they were going and asked if you wanted anything from the shop. Feels reasonable and yet sad that now I am able to leave people expect me to get my own things from the shop.
2. Feels less socially acceptable to stay inside in my pjs all day.
3. If what I had wasn’t coronavirus, I am less likely to actually catch coronavirus if I don’t leave the house. 
4. Now the reason I don’t own garlic is because I haven’t been to the shop, not because I am confined. 
5. The camaraderie with other people who are self-isolating. This now includes:
   1. The-sister-who-asked-to-be-called-the-awesome-Sister
   2. Friend/ IT colleague who came and set up the WIFI extender
   3. The other beloved bestie that I didn’t see last weekend
   4. Several work colleagues

(The last two are definitely not my fault, but the others might be. Sister-who-asked-to-be-called-the-awesome-sister and I went out for dinner & drinks the Thursday night before I went down. She made me try her cocktail because she knew I would find it unpleasant because it is VILE and the worst thing that has ever happened to my taste buds. She found this very funny which is why, people, you shouldn’t mock. It only leads to one thing: Coronavirus).