I have decided to write a weekly diary of our time through the Coronavirus pandemic. To keep for the future. It’s such an unprecedented time and full of so many mixed feelings and events we have never encountered before it is hard to process it all.
23rd June
Today marks our 4th lockdown birthday. We are certainly due a big party when all of this is over! It was my husband’s birthday and he pretty much wanted to keep it low key. Once again, we all took the day off. Although I did get my children to get a couple of bits of English and Maths in the morning. We wanted to do afternoon tea, but the place we use doesn’t work on Mondays and Tuesdays so I baked scones and popped to M&S for lovely sandwiches and nibbly bits and had a lovely lunch in the garden.
After which we all went for a walk to feed the ducks. Sadly the ducks were too warm and already well fed, but the children enjoyed running about on the green instead. They cannot wait for parks to be open again.
Today we also saw a lot of lockdown restriction measures announced by Boris. Quite big ones. From the 4th July, hairdressers can open, pubs and restaurants can open, parks can open (my children will be pleased), weddings of 30 or less can go ahead, and two families can meet indoors. All with social distancing which has now been reduced to 1m+. I don’t agree with the 2m reduction, as it is quite clear is for economical and not safety reasons. Or at least if they are going to bring in that measure why not make face masks compulsory in shops? But transmission does seem to be dropping which is very positive and I’ll be honest and say I would really love to get my haircut!
24th June
Another garden meet up with friends. We were chatting until nearly midnight. We’ve agreed to try and do it every week now and alternating between each other’s gardens. It’s just so lovely to talk about things with women who get it and talk to people outside of a telephone or a screen.
25th June
The heat is insane today. We hit 33 degrees and we’re all struggling with it! Logan’s sleep has gone downhill and he has started waking up in the middle of the night, I don’t know if this is heat or covid related or just a developmental stage. We will just have to wait and see how it pans out.
26th June
My parents visited, it is the first time I have seen them in 4 months since February and outside of a computer screen. It was lovely and hard at the same time. The weather was kind to us and we were able to sit in the garden all day which was great. But it seemed wrong not to give my Mum a hug. I could also see how hard it was not to give the children a squeeze too. But despite that I really enjoyed seeing them, nothing beats catching up with a person in real life. I could see how much the children got out of it. Seeing and interacting with their grandparents, someone else to talk to and share their news and adventures with. For me, it was so good for my mental health too as I am finding lockdown getting harder and harder. Social interaction really is massive for well being.
I still long for normality, it feels like it’s getting closer. But it also feels like it could get further away if people don’t adhere to the rules and we see another spike in infections. The scenes from the beaches over the last couple of days are insane, with people parking on roundabouts and all sorts and don’t even get me started on the rubbish left behind.
On a more positive side, we’ve ordered Aria’s birthday bike this week. We were going to wait and take her into a shop to try them, but it’s summer already and she’s going to miss out on the nice weather to get out on it. There is also a shortage in bikes due to the factories being closed so there is limited supply. So we were limited in our choices, but managed to find one in a shop in Lancashire of all places. Which is going to be shipped to us. So hopefully we can all soon go out on family bike rides.