Quarantine Cymru - day One

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.

State of Alarm - day Eighty Eight

Another blue sky sunny day. BBC Radio Four Sunday Worship was from Westminster Cathedral this morning, Mass offered by Cardinal Vincent Nicholls with two socially distanced assistants. It's such a huge church building, that with a priest at the altar and assistants at lecterns on either side, there could be ten metres between each of them! Previous recordings of the Ordinary of the Latin Mass sung in situ by the Cathedral choir made it special, and the Cardinal preached well, remembering the victims of the Grenfell tower tragedy on this the third anniversary and reflecting on the shared experience of doing without the Eucharist and Communion over the past three months, just as the churches are allowed once more to be open for private prayer.

Rosi came around for a farewell chat at midday, reminding me that hereafter I will be known as the 'Lockdown Locum Chaplain', whether anyone remembers my name or not. I cooked curried chicken and potatoes for lunch, and made a starter using mussles, olives and chopped apples. Interesting!

After siesta I walked down to Cala de Bou again and along the shoreline to Cala des Torrents. After some days of absence the little colony of cormorants was back on their rocky outcrop in  the sea. I photographed them just before lock-down three months ago, and now again on my farewell visit. Clare sent me a photo showing a cormorant on a stony shoal in the river Taff, plus the Goosander family which lives there, near the cricket ground, if my memory serves me right.

I completed and printed off the UK government form required for entry at Heathrow so I can be traced in quarantine. The instruction says you can keep it on your 'phone, supposedly if you can't get a print out. Three sheets of A4! It's illegible on anything but a tablet to anyone checking at Border control. Why on earth the can't reduce the essential details it to a QR code that can be scanned from your phone or a piece of paper, like with an airline ticket, heaven knows. A nicely laid out Web 2 style form, leading to a finish that's more trouble than it's worth. All I need now is my boarding pass for the UK bound flight, available tomorrow morning I think, then I am fully ready.

I've made up two thirds of a loaf of rye bread into jamon and hummous sandwiches to sustain me during my sojourn, then I don't have to go out and look for food, effectively quarantining myself in Barcelona to be on the safe side. Then there was the food cupboard to sort out, so unopened packets can be kept in store and opened ones given away. The house is going to be shut down until the next locum can arrive safely, probably in the autumn. Such a strange turn of events.