Lockdown.

It happened. Last night a broadcast from the Prime Minister put the country into what is basically a lockdown. Everyone except key and other essential workers has been told to stay home. We're allowed to go outside once a day for exercise, shop as infrequently as we can, go out for medical appointments or medicines and carry on with staying 2m from anyone apart from our own household. All shops except those selling food or medicines, and building supplies/hardware are now closed.

Now that it's so serious my first thoughts were that one of us should go shopping first thing today but then I thought that we haven't run out of anything and I expect a lot of people might also head for the shops. We can go next week. My next thought was that my pack of 20 latex gloves wouldn't last very long. That had me getting out of bed, turning on my PC and ordering a box of 400 ex-large gloves which should arrive in a couple of days.

I saw this on FB and thought it was worth sharing again here. 

It has been another lovely sunny day. I had a very early start to my day and saw a woman walking her dogs at 5.30. I was up not much later and for once did my floor exercises, went on the exercise bike and put washing in the machine before breakfast time.

Before painting on the final coat of wood stain I gave the tin a very good stir until the orange sediment had blended with the purple liquid. As I sploshed the stain on the wood (and whatever got stuck down yesterday) I could hear the sounds of work going on all around. Our next-door neighbour was repainting all their decking and the chap from the big house behind us sounded like he was giving his greenhouse/shed some spring maintenance while in the distance was the sound of mowing. I hung the washing up before starting painting and while resting my aching back after the painting was done I noticed some small raindrops on the window and a grey cloud overhead. The sight of my neighbour's husband taking in their washing was the final straw. I had to work out a way to cross the newly painted decking. My solution was to use some pieces of baking parchment, now blown away to step carefully on to the almost dry decking.

I spent the rest of the afternoon resting my back which has been bad after so much painting on my knees. Maybe I should have split the work up into shorter sessions but then it would just go on that much longer. Peter's lumps on his knees from his arthritis means he can't do any work on his knees and it would be silly to get somebody in just to paint the decking. Once rested I got the ironing done as another neighbour who lives next door but one to us on the right used his petrol mower to cut another big section of the grass.