March 2020 - Part Two

Hi everyone, just a quick message from me before we start March 2020. I've been ill for a while with some back and spinal issues, I've been in and out of hopsital, and had been signed off work for 5 weeks. I've now returned on reduced hours, and am slowly getting better, although I've been told I need to have an operation. I'll post about it fully when the times comes, but being signed off and laid down all the time, has given me some time to write some posts. I've queued a load of them, and there will be a new post every Wednesday & Sunday for 2025. Think of it as my little treat to you all! I'm doing ok, just waiting for the operation that will hopefully get me back to normal, so until then, you may see me wobbling about the place on crutches! 

One of my trusty crutches. My legs are bruised because I still havent quite got the hang of them and keep hitting myself with them!

 Halfway through March, things started to get worse. Working in the clothing side of the business, things had gotten quieter, so many of our staff were moved down to the food & operations aspect of the store, to cope with the increased demand there. Things like eggs, toilet rolls, flour, fresh foods seemed to be in short supply, and restrictions were in place limiting the amounts people could buy.

I started to stare at the news, everyday the death toll went up, first it was a couple a day, but by the end of the month there had been over 1,500 deaths from Covid-19, and the nation was heading into lockdown. Lockdown closed anything that was non-essential. The clothing departments at work were all closed off, and I was moved to the food department to help keep filling the shelves. Somewhat frighteningly, the shelves were becoming empty across the foodhall, and it was an impossible job keeping them full.

As a key worker, I still went to work everyday, in that respect, nothing much had changed. Getting to work became harder, as the bus services were cut down. So it meant having to change shifts, which to be fair work were so good about. There were so many people shielding and self isolating that they were happy that I was turning up.

I suppose in some ways, that old British stiff upper lip came into play. I was determined to live life as normally as possible in these abnormal times. We couldn't go out, so we made things to do at home. Couldn't have takeaways, so I finally got round to trying to cook recipes from all these cookbooks I have. I tried to make sure that we all remained upbeat and engaged, and we tried not to let the anxiety and stress come into our lives. That is easier said than done though!

I saw this on the way to work early one morning. Truer words were never written!

While I was working more hours because of the pandemic, I was doing less things outside home, so I was starting to spend some time catching up on the blog. Here I am writing about my visit to Ukraine in 2018, and Husky was here to check my spelling. 

Husky also spent time playing computer games with me. Here we are playing on Cities Skylines, and trying to decide where our collection of skyscrapers should go.

I think you could tell that we had spare time on our hands by the use of the fridge magnets! The house also felt crowded at times, a feeling that I'd not experienced here before. Rob would be working in the conservatory on the dining table, James would be working in the loft, and because you couldn't go out, I felt like there wasn't a spare room for me to go and be in, if that makes sense. So I would just sort of wander about the house and hope that the weather was nice enough to go into the garden.

We even made our own monopoly board, based off all the places me & James had been together! 

And this was something new I noticed, despite having lived near Asylum green for three years now, I'd never noticed this interesting little display before. It has the Southampton city crest on it, and these beautiful carved pots on it. But other than that, I can't tell you anything about it which is a shame. I also noticed the mile marker too, again on the green near where we lived when I would go out for my little walk around the block for some exercise on my days off.

French onion soup, and I finally got to use the soup terrine which had been sat in the cupboard since I moved in!

And we managed to get our passion fruit plant to flower in the conservatory. It had a load of buds on it for about two weeks, then suddenly one morning I noticed it had opened itself up. What a beautiful flower. For some reason though, we could never get more than one bud to open at a time. It was like the plant was teasing us!