– Opinion –
Corona Chronicles: Day 1
So while facing two days of social distancing this past weekend, I came to realise that, at last, I would have time to tackle some of the ‘eleventy’ seventy two hundred things on my ‘to do’ list. I was so excited I nearly wee-weed in my broek! First up was ‘the spare room cupboard’ – you know, the cupboard that you shove things into when trying to tidy up for house guests or put things into that you want to keep but aren’t exactly quite sure which category they fall into and when exactly next you might even use them! So when I creaked the door slowly open, out jumped a left-handed batsman, a small dwarf with a missing eyebrow and a partridge in a pear tree! (Clearly I am VERY good at storing things! And let me not even mention the dreaded magazine cupboard!)
I set about my task with a fervour that I normally reserve for tackling a delicious bottle of the Cape’s finest crushed grapes, and organised everything into beautiful neat little piles and even put some stuff into dinky little plastic boxes. And then I packed all that right back into the cupboard but boy did it look neat!
Addendum: The author would like to confess that she technically only tackled one shelf (yes one! Uno! Een!) of above said cupboard but as three weeks of lockdown loom, chances are that her evenings will be well spent tackling the others! Watch this space!
Corona Chronicles: Day 2
So I started a new job yesterday at a company called Home. The people seem kind of nice but I guess I will only get to know the three of them better over the next 21 days. Yesterday was kind of busy – about an ‘eleventy’ seventy on the Richter scale, but we needed to do some damage control as to the way forward. At one point my Skype was ringing and there was nearly an accident in the very small passage way as SP (Son Person) came flying out of the bathroom in only a towel and nearly collided with me to answer mine. Going to have to see if Skype can personalise my ring tone – something practical like wine bottles clinking or something. SP’s ring tone could be ‘software programmer noises’ or something.
I do have one complaint though – these colleagues all cook themselves very delicious lunches and the smells come wafting down the very small passage. They do offer but I just sigh deeply and try to look happily at my three dry Provita and pretend they’re a gourmet meal. (Apparently self-isolation spread is worse than first-year spread at varsity!) But the owner of this company has stocked up on delicious snacks and while dealing with my ‘eleventy’ seventy-five-hundred-and-one call of the day, I did quietly sneak a hot-cross bun out of the freezer to see me through until home time. And that’s the best part – even though my day went on very late it only took me 12 seconds to get home. Today I am getting to see if I can cut it down to 10!
Corona Chronicles: Day 3
So everyday when I go to work I take a cardigan or jacket with me. It’s a bit of a public service initiative actually as they get very lonely hanging in a dark cupboard for days on end and I feel that the outing is good for their mental health. I even make sure I rotate them regularly so that they all get an outing at some stage. Gets them as excited as I do when walking down the wine aisle as they never know who will be chosen next!
I don’t ever actually wear them, of course, as since the dreaded ‘M Factor’ hit me, my body has these moments of spontaneous combustion where I want to rip off all my clothes and dive headfirst into the closest freezer. For someone who used to shiver on a 34°C day, this is quite hard for the blonde brain to process hence the ‘take a jacket to work’ day! So they just hang quietly over the back of my work chair and secretly watch my work colleagues make career limiting moves!
But now I am faced with a dilemma: Now that my office is 12.2 metres from my bedroom cupboard, should I still be giving my jackets and cardigans their daily outing? And if I don’t, will I end up paying a small fortune for jacket therapy once lockdown is over? The struggle is real people!
Corona Chronicles: Day 4
And so Day 1 of the hostage situation begins and I try not to have a mild panic attack as I didn’t do any ‘panic shopping’. (Okay so maybe I did do a little in the wine aisle but hey, a girl needs a little something to put in her late afternoon sippy cup!) What did bother me on my third visit to the shops yesterday was some of the things people were stocking up on. I can see dinner parties in six months time where people have to serve chocolate chips for pudding because they bought ‘eleventy’ seventy boxes of it! Never mind the 32 years of frozen vegetables people are going to be eating. And we are going to see lots of little Teletubbies rolling out their houses after the sixty billion ‘eleventy’ hundred tons of biscuits that were bought!
Some of us even had to do some ‘creative shopping’ due to no stocks – like me swapping two kilograms of chicken breasts with a friend for a litre-and-a-half of hand sanitiser! The struggle was real, I tell you!
What bothered me enormously last night was a report I read that said ‘only essential items can be sold at supermarkets’ and that a torch, for example, was not an essential item. We live in a country where electricity is an ‘optional extra’ and you are telling me a torch is not an essential item! One can only hope that condoms are considered an ‘essential item’ otherwise in nine months time we really are going to have lots of little Corona’s and Covidia’s bursting forth in maternity wards! (Especially if there are no torches and there are power cuts!)
Oh and does anyone know if dishwasher tablets are considered an essential item.
Corona Chronicles: Day 5
And so as I wake up on Day 2 of the hostage situation and reflect on yesterday’s exercise regime, it occurs to me that these three weeks are going to end up feeling VERY much like ‘eleventy’ seventy weeks.
Yesterday morning I got up bright and early to attend to my Inmate Exercise Plan as I believe Lockdown Spread is quite a thing! First up was five minutes of intense skipping. Thankfully I was one of the last people to panic buy a skipping rope and even though I had to settle for some fancy-assed one … I figured it would be worth the investment. However, it appears that skipping is NOT like riding a bicycle – not only did I keep tripping myself up, but I also ended up with at least one Chocolate Log (aka Chocolate Labrador) trying to skip with me or with a chocolate nose up my ass, so that didn’t end well!
Next up was 20 laps around my garden at around a minute a lap. Now I am a regular morning neighbourhood power walker and have four different variations in the area that I do – all very pretty. Thankfully my garden is quite big (being on a corner stand) but let me tell you that 20 laps of the same view is as mind-numbing as root-canal treatment. It would have been less painful to stick hot fondue forks in my eyeballs! Plus (and I really need to speak to the body corporate of this house) but the amount of doggy mine dumps en-route was totally unacceptable. I really think we might need to implement ‘designated poo area rules’ during the lockdown! At least above said logs didn’t attempt the 20 laps with me but watched me very curiously from the patio!
I suspect I might be googling online workouts today for a wee bit of variation! Alternatively I might just be forced to do the reverse walk of the 20 laps.
P.S. Is wine drinking considered exercise?
The public is advised to call the coronavirus hotline on 0800 029 999 with any suspected cases of corona, or to report or obtain information relevant to the pandemic.
