Here we go …
6:00 am
Wake up with full bladder. Toilet without opening eyes. Back to sleep. Why wouldn’t I? Nothing much to do if I get up.
7:00 am
Read Herald online while I wait for Johan to wake up. COVID news not good. Young people are not immune after all. Check to see that we have narrowly missed all the places of interest listed so far, even though some are local and others we visit occasionally.
7:30 am
I need someone to talk to so wriggle around a lot till Johan wakes up. Leisure activities in bed.
8:15 am
Have our ‘no breakfast’ breakfast. This involves me drinking 1/2 litre of water and Johan a pot of fresh herbal tea – slice of lemon, fresh sliced root ginger, and mint picked from pot on balcony. Takes a very long time on a day with no work or commitments because I have to finish reading the news, Johan has to watch the Dutch news, we check emails, FaceBook, surf YouTube – you get the picture.
9:45 am
Shower, wash hair, dress and make the bed.
10:30 am
Time to do something useful. Put washing on. I make a few phone phone calls. Mum is bored, but has broken up the previous day with a socially distanced, masked, BYO event in neighbour’s garage at retirement village. Only half her online grocery order has arrived and she wants my sister, who does the ordering, to sort it out. Fat chance, with Countdown overwhelmed. Much easier to go to the dairy and deliver missing items to gate for the village staff to drop off at Mum;s door. We chat about being in lockdown, and wish each other well.
10:45 am
Put on make-up. It does not pay to let standards slip.
11:00 am
Go out for a walk. Problem – my ears are overburdened. Hearing aids, glasses and face mask too much to cope with. I discard hearing aids. A quiet walk is all I need. After 5 minutes of walking in a fog I discard glasses too. I had forgotten that a de-mistifier is required when wearing glasses and a mask. Lipstick is smeared all over the inside of the mask.
I do not go far. Along Great North Road, through Grey Lynn shops (2 chemists, 3 dairies, a liquor store, a whole food store, and the laundromat open), past the car dealers and new apartment blocks as far as the last set of lights before Ponsonby Road and back. I run into two neighbours, one fully masked and the other not at all. Brief chats then home. In the meantime Johan has walked 11 km with Tina, from home into city and back up hill and down dale including Jacob’s Ladder and tortuous steps at Cox’s Bay. Mind you, he is buggered for the rest of the day.
Nothing to report from that little excursion. Road traffic light. Plenty of buses all empty. Runners many. Walkers not so many. Cyclists everywhere and often on footpath and pedestrian crossings. Families on bikes terrorise pedestrians like me by encouraging seemingly blind children to ride in areas designed for people to walk. Masks a plenty on both young and old. But none on the parents I saw with young children. Maybe this is a Grey Lynn thing? I shudder to think that I live in a suburb of anti-vaxers and mask avoiders, but it would not surprise me.
12:00 noon
Prepare lunch. Cheese and onion toasted sandwiches made with Vogel’s bread (of course) in the fry pan. Followed by lovingly peeled and sliced golden kiwifruit courtesy of Johan. Lunch also involved quite a bit of screen time – emails, Face Book etc. Not sure where the time went.
2:00 pm
Tidy up lunch stuff. Do dishes. Make crostini to store for future lunches. These are super useful and good. Cut a french stick into slices (you will get A LOT). Layer on baking paper on an oven tray, drizzle liberally with olive oil. Grind over quite a lot of rock salt. Bake in oven at 150 degC for 30 minutes till golden brown. Let cool and top with whatever you fancy. They will keep forever in an airtight container. Vacuumed (third time this week but Tina in bubble with us and coming to dinner) while they were cooking.
2:35 pm
Johan back from quick trip to supermarkets. You read that right. He went to three. No queues to speak of but not much of anything else either. He bought me a packet of Edmonds Soft White Bread Mix because there was none of the flour I had asked for. Just as well I bought an eight-pack of long roll toilet paper last week because all official declarations to the contrary, there was none of that either. Local supermarket in Richmond Road closed off with orange cones just as Johan arrived. Deep clean required after infected person reported. Decided to record my activities for the day. Sat down at computer and began writing.
3:15 pm
Practise on DuoLingo. I have been getting lazy lately and it shows in the number of mistakes I make.
3:42 pm
Time for a break and a sugar-free V. The man in the convenience store across the lane from my office must think I have given the stuff up! Chat to my sister on the phone. One niece was caught on holiday in Queenstown, but safely back in Auckland now. The other at a nightclub at the wrong time, queued four hours for a COVID test but in the clear.
I spend a lot of time doing jigsaws on-line, surfing the net, checking sites of interest, blah, blah. I could do more useful things but somehow I don’t.
4.15 pm
Johan has ordered Rummikub online and it arrives this afternoon. Teaches me to play and beats me royally. Later he and Tina both beat me royally.
5.30 pm
Johan is cooking a Woop meal. In half and hour or so we will eat dinner and listen to the news. COVID and Afghanistan, Afghanistan and COVID. The Olympics and our competitors are old news, and the para-Olympians will not now get a look in.
7:00 pm
Parked in front of tv. The only relief between now and bedtime is getting up to do the dishes and restore the kitchen to order. That, and getting washing out of drier to fold and put away.
10:30 pm
I am in bed. Johan has to walk the dog, undertake mysterious and protracted bathroom rituals and shower before getting to bed an hour later. But then we both fall asleep instantly, just as if we had actually done something during the course of the day.
Tomorrow I really will do something useful …. maybe.