I’m slowly going quite batty

It’s Lockdown day four. I’m exhausted. Day one set the tone.

Spent hours listing things to do around the house. Starting with the garage. Old paint tins. Try placing these in black plastic bags? With every three tins the bags tear. Two in each bag does the trick. So wasted five bags to hold the 10 tins. I’m already perspiring with the effort.

Then the half-used poisons. Weed, mouse and snail killers. Still can’t figure why I didn’t finish the stuff. What to do with these is puzzling.

Phoned the neighbour who knows it all. Pour the stuff in one Coke bottle. Wash out the emptied bottles of excess poison, place same in recycle bin. What to do with the Coke bottle with the killer cocktail? Easy he says. Dig a deep hole and pour the stuff into it. Don’t forget to wash out the Coke bottle. And for goodness sake, wash your hands until you finish singing the anthem.

The pouring, washing and digging leaves me battling to get my second breath. Then it’s lunch time.

I’m too tired to fully enjoy the fare provided by my Heidi, who is also feeling the aches and pains of doing the floor, ironing and shelving summer clobber.

Let’s call it a day, I try. No way, the prompt reply. Let’s stick to the list, otherwise we’ll run out of days.

Seventeen to go. Gardening, painting, re-hanging curtains, filling cracks in walls, clearing gutters, scrubbing paving filled with slimy moss, replacing old globes with power saving ones. These chores await us over 70s.

And it’s the over 70s being targeted by the medical fraternity as being vulnerable to the scourge of Covid-19. It feels as if we’re on death row awaiting the noose.

Fair enough, only a small percentage in this group will succumb to the bloody bug foisted on them by Eastern countries with alien eating habits.

Unfair, I say. At our age we are forced into isolation like lepers and are having to find ways and means of keeping sane for a relatively long spell. Put another way, if we don’t find something to occupy the time and minds – it could cause other health problems. Like going nuts.

So we oldies are caught between a virus and groendakkies.

All because of a dreaded bat.

Cliff Buchler.

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