Another Week of Being Confined to Barracks

We are now entering our fifth week of being confined to barracks ands we are still alive, sane and living in non-argumentative domestic bliss.

We have developed quite a standard routine and it’s getting to be the same day after day. We lie in bed for a bit longer as there is nothing much that is pushing us to be up early, except for those days that I need to go to my Exercise Physiology Session. We look at each other over breakfast and ask “Where are going today?” but we always decide to have another day at home. I generally use the morning to send and answer emails. The other day I did,  however,  move my location from Los Lounge-room to the Salon de Sol for a few hours. Lunch then comes around and by 4.00 pm it feels as if the day has been very long. (but there’s still many more hours left). Dinner takes some thinking about – what to get out of the freezer so it is thawed in time to be cooked and then it’s night time. Jill watches some TV and I do some work on my computer. Then it’s bed time and ready for the same thing on the next day. 

I did have a welcome variation of this routine during the week with some more Zoom meetings. WeI caught up with all the family and, as well, a few members of my Probus Club had a virtual coffee together.. On Friday, I had a much larger meeting with some old work colleagues from my days at Control Data. We normally get to together for lunch for a pizza and a glass of red wine. The lunch only costs about $12 but you don’t want to take a cheap bottle of wine!  Over twenty of us joined up on Zoom and recreated our standard lunch of pizza and a red while we reminisced with long stories about our work experiences  It’s amazing that after forty years, we are all still close friends.

Jill has created an ISO (Isolation) spot on the dining room table so that she can flit between reading, knotting, sewing and doing a crossword or two. We did order some jigsaws on line but the haven’t appeared yet. Gone are the days when everything had to put back in its proper place!

We were back for a big day out at the supermarket on Sunday and were pleasantly surprised to see how much more stock was on the shelves. Toilet paper, paper towels, pasta and flour were in good supply again. I did enjoy reading about a bloke in South Australia who unsuccessfully  tried to return over 300 packs of toilet paper and 60 litres of hand sanitiser to the supermarket after EBay cancelled the account that he was using to sell them at a large profit. Selfish idiots like him were responsible for the shortages that inconvenienced so many people. Good on the supermarket for not allowing him to return his stuff. 

I saw another funny article about how very wealthy people in England were taking lessons on how to make beds and do their washing because all their household staff were absent and being confined to their own homes.  

My veggies are growing well but the Brassicas have a good number of caterpillars eating little holes in the leaves. I’ll have to be more diligent in spraying and applying insecticide. I only have one area left for planting and that is for some garlic that I’m waiting to plant. The old rule of planting garlic on the shortest day and harvesting it on the longest day seems to no longer apply in Melbourne. I’ll get the bulbs in the ground in a week or so.

I got a little bored on Saturday so I experimented with some abstract photography. I bought a set of three LED puck lights from Bunnings DIY store for $10 and then used some coloured cellphone to make different colours. I placed the lights under a glass coffee table (with a diffuser sheet on the table) and rolled up some A4 paper in different ways. I sat the paper end up on the coffee table above the lights and then used my macro lens to create some abstract photos. Nothing stunning but it filled in a couple of hours. I guess there is always something  to photograph. 

We have cancelled, or deferred, all of our planned travel up until August and will probably cancel plans for the remainder of the year over the next few months. I’m still walking around the park on a few days each week. I like being outside as long as I can keep dodging the bike riders.

Apart from all these parts of a routine, I find myself becoming more angry at China for this disruption of the entire world. All because some peasant wanted to cook and eat a bat!

Some years ago Prince Phillip was roundly criticised for one of his gaffes when he said (at a World Wildlife Fund gathering) “If it has got four legs and it is not a chair, if it has got two wings and it flies but is not an aeroplane, and if it swims and it is not a submarine, the Chinese will eat it.” I think that there is still some truth in that although it probably wasn’t an entirely politically correct statement.

I saw that the largest newspaper in Germany (Bild) gave the Chinese a real serve in their editorial the other day.. They told the Chinese in no uncertain terms  that they were endangering the world. Read it here:  I see that the Australian government wants some form of inquiry into the origins of Covid-19 and I would really like to see China held accountable in some way. Meanwhile American politics continue to be as combative and as weird as ever.

Finally, here’s my thought for the day: