2020 what a year like no other

 

On the 23^rd of March the Government (Boris Johnson) told the nation people ‘must’ stay at home and certain businesses must close. In the very beginning one person was allowed out to go food shopping and that as it. So for me that screamed panic. My husband and I live in a small block of flats and we have no garden. I decided straight away I was going to keep a diary, I wanted to keep some form of order and didn’t want my days to blur into one.

My first thought was my carers and the worry that they would be going in and out of their client’s houses all day but I was soon reassured by an email I received from the Care Manager with detailed instructions of what was expected.

My carers came the first morning wearing their PPE and to be fair as I write this they continue to wear PPE (personal protection equipment)

         

Reality started to dawn on me our only child had spent the last 3 years at Uni studying to be a Children’s Nurse and had graduated in January she started her first job in February at a London Hospital. Oh my God was she going to be safe, there were nurses who had been doing the job for 20 years and had never experienced a Pandemic like this one. When the hell would I get to see her again?

 

 

 I soon realised that one of the things I would miss the most was my games of Boccia. I had brought a Boccia set last year but not the gutter as that belonged to the MS Centre and that is where my months of online shopping started. I was enjoying my weeks of Boccia but towards the end of April I started to get bored and as mean as it may sound the reason I got bored was because all I did was thrash my husband he was no competition but luckily it was around that time that the government allowed a form of exercise once a day so soon my Boccia sessions were replaced with daily walks.

By the middle of April we were used to getting ready for our ritual 8pm clap for the NHS and carers. When I spoke to our daughter she was certainly uplifted by the crowds that gathered around the hospital and clapped. What was starting to cause nursing staff and doctors discomfort was when wearing the face masks and visors, soon little knitted extenders were being given by volunteers to the hospitals.

 

 

 Video calls became a massive part of my life I could find myself talking to my friends in Australia in the morning and in the evening chatting to my brother in Denmark. My fortnightly coffee mornings at Costa were soon replaced by virtual coffee mornings. One of my favourite video calls had to be my one called Corona catch up, this was held fortnightly with our old Venture Scout Unit Zantar of course they were all now in their late 30s or in their early 40s. The hardest thing was having to replace my Dad’s 95^th Birthday party with a virtual one, but we did it having all made a birthday cake we blew our candles out at the same time.

 

 

 

By now we were well into going out for our daily walks, but little did I know the next walk was a very special one. A secret phone call to my husband and the plan was hatched, we were walking round the quiet roads in Aylesbury when a van pulled up and out jumped our Assistant County Commissioner together with his partner. They stopped me in my tracks and presented me with my  Chief Scout’s 25 Years Service Award I was shocked to say the least (my scouting career deserves a whole separate blog).

 

When not out walking I spent many an hour Painting by Numbers on my iPad and I have to say at the very beginning of lockdown it saved me going completely doolally. In fact I told many of my family and friends about the app and soon they were all addicted, I even set up a private Facebook page for them to post their pictures.

 

Well the time had to come when I could no longer cope with my hair and once again I turned to internet shopping and purchased a pair of hairdressing scissors and some hair thinning scissors, little did my husband know but he was about to become a hairdresser. As it turned out he was a very good one.

 

Today is the 21^st of October and things are starting to get bad again and areas of England are once again going into lockdown. France have already gone into lockdown so I really hope things won’t be as bad this time round. All I know is me and my mate MS got through the lockdown with the help of family, friends and the MS Centre. Stay safe everyone!