I wonder if I ever slept in our attic bedroom before, but now I'm living in it for the next two weeks. The bed is very comfortable and I slept well, waking with the sun rising into a clear blue sky and the neighbourhood blackbird singing its heart out. It's a tiny precious thread linking me to my fourteen week sojourn in Can Bagot. There, the blackbird sang from the neighbouring Torrent a little further away, its song slightly muted by intervening trees. In this urban setting where we're mostly shielded from traffic noise, the blackbird's song echoes off the terraced houses making it that much more vivid to hear.
Just being home again with Clare is such a blessing. All the tension of travel in such strange conditions seems to have drained away. No nightmares, no flashbacks, nothing to worry about coping with, just gently relaxing, like being on holiday in the last week, after accumulated work stresses have finally evaporated.
Clare is being very strict with me about confinement, doing everything for me, which is going to take some adjustment, as I'm so used to fending for myself, and also like to think that ordinarily we collaborate well on many domestic tasks. Kath teasingly said as she departed yesterday, "I wonder how long it will be before you drive each other crazy?"
My attic room is kitted out so that I can make drinks for myself. I have use of my study and the bathroom while Clare uses all of the downstairs, kitchen and shower room. We can both sit out in the garden - socially distanced of course. She brings meals up for me on a tray, really delicious meals, home made bread, raspberries from the garden with breakfast porridge, home grown salad to add to the organic veggies from Core Hills Organics. And best of all, blackcurrant crumble made with currants freshly picked from the little bush in our garden. It's done well this year with a 300 gram harvest.
My first task was to update my Windows 10 PC, after fifteen weeks of idleness. I must say that the Windows update process has improved. It took about four hours to clear the backlog of half a dozen outstanding items. I can remember times when I returned from being away for eight weeks and the updating would take more than a day, with several 'fails' thrown in. My Linux laptop only too ten minutes to clear the backlog, by way of contrast. Both Chromebooks updated instantly, as they are designed to, and these are with me in the attic, as they are light and don't take up much space, vital given that the double bed occupies nearly half the floor space.
It was almost exactly twenty four hours after passing through UK Border control that I received an quarantine advisory email from Public Health Wales setting out the rules. Twenty four hours. If I was infected, which I don't think I am, given the 'hygienically safe corridor' I've passed along since leaving self-isolation in the Ibiza Chaplaincy house, how many people might I have infected in the time elapsed if I was ignorant of the facts in the time elapsed?
Most annoyingly, I am confined to house and garden for the next fortnight. The advisory presumes everyone has a garden - such a bourgeois bureaucratic assumption. Medical researchers think that people confined indoors may become vitamin D deficient and less able to cope with covid-19 infection. I can sit out in the garden all day I suppose, except when it rains as it does here, more than I appreciated. My exercise regime has to change.
I'm up and down to the attic dozens of times now, and feeling the benefit of weight and strong legs, which is good for me, but getting up to 5k a day (with stairs) still means a lot of pounding around the place and risking annoying Clare. And if it rains, I am even more confined. I've been told I should be thankful that I don't live in an apartment under lock-down. But I wouldn't willingly make an apartment my home. Many enjoy the benefits of apartment living, make this their choice, and in these circumstances suffer in a way they wouldn't have expected to.
In the evening I started working on a sermon for next Sunday. I'll continue to offer audio services to Ibiza until they come up with an arrangement that serves people better. It's something I can do to express my appreciation for the support I received while I was there.
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