Is nature trolling us?

The weather gods are mocking us again. A splendid Saturday that should be spent enjoying the great outdoors. Instead, we need to zombie dodge our way around a guilty walk in the normally quiet local woods and be home inside the hour to help prevent the spread of the contagion known as COVID19. I'd prefer to use another term for it right now, but young eyes might read this blog so I shall refrain (rhymes with 'smother plucker'). 

So here is a picture of some blossom as provided by the troll known as Spring.

Sakura Troll by Spring

Yesterday morning's drama was that our boiler broke down. The shower felt a bit tepid,  and naturally enough, when I descended to the kitchen to take a look, the boiler was flashing a "get an engineer in" code (L/F) and refusing to ignite, Naturally, I tried "rebooting" it a couple of times, but no avail. No doubt it was blocked with sludge again as happens every year or so. So, I scrambled to get an appointment from our service provider to get it fixed. "Due to COVID19, computer says not until the middle of next month". Er, great! Fortunately, after a phone call, I eventually managed to get an appointment for Monday. This was possible due to my existing medical condition as I am apparently on some priority list. Small mercies eh? Luckily, we have an immersion heater for backup hot water, so the crisis was not that bad, but what if that breaks?! Ok, breathe. My propensity to catastrophise is at least unaffected by the current situation.

As I stepped out of the shower this morning (Saturday), the phone was ringing. Expecting some marketing or scam call, imagine my delight to be talking to a gas engineer who said they had an appointment today! Huzzah! So after morning coffee and a slice of yesterday's pizza, I cleaned up the area around the boiler; disinfecting everything and awaited the engineer. 

He showed up as promised, though not before the postman delivered a package containing two glass jars of Easter eggs, one of which had sadly broken, resulting in me hollering for help in a shoeless state with shattered glass from the upended parcel scattered around me like wedding confetti. Duly rescued by wife and child, the mini eggs themselves were salvaged and set aside to form part of the hunt next Easter weekend.

Anyway, as expected, the boiler was full of sludge which the engineer efficiently and cheerfully cleaned. He was a pleasant chap, who lives just a mile or so up the road. At a respectable safe distance, we had a good chat. It was nice to talk to someone else for a change (other than via video conferencing). After he left, I disinfected everything that he had touched or may have touched on his way in/out and where he was working. Then I prepared lunch of chicken sandwich, chips and coleslaw which Nozomi, TomokI and I enjoyed eating at the garden table. (Our own little pub garden for the duration). 

After lunch, Tomoki and I spent some time cleaning our shoes outside. He needs yet another pair as the sole is pulling away on one of them. Kids and shoes! They are barely 2 months old. He selected some new walking boots online after we finished the cleanup.  Hopefully, they will be delivered soon. Home deliveries (groceries notwithstanding) have so far been pretty good.

After shoe cleaning and a spot of gardening,  it was a walk in the woods for me and Poppy (our little dog), a nap for Nozomi, and Minecraft for Tomo.

Eep! Too many people. I had to duck and dive into many a bush and it was quite fraught in one or two pinch points as I scrambled to maintain at least 5m distance from other people. The woods are usually fairly quiet, but people are desperate to get out I guess, and it was a little too busy for my liking. A somewhat stressful walk all-in-all, made slightly more bearable by the excellent BBC podcast about the Apollo 13 incident 50 years ago.

Time for a beer.

Grey goo begone!

The days seem to be merging into one grey blob of time. I am minded of the Grey Goo hypothesis which postulates that one day, we shall invent nanotechnology that will get out of control and proceed to transform our world into some amorphous blob of grey goo. It is now the end of the second week of confinement and still no end in sight to this interminable pause of our human activities. Unemployment is shooting up all over the world, social gatherings are forbidden and humans avoid it each other like, well, the plague whilst performing a permitted dog walk or grocery expedition.

Well, at least it is officially the Easter "holiday" from today for the next two weeks. I customarily booked two weeks off work (to coincide with the school holidays) before we all went into lockdown. So, I will have the next two weeks off work.

I sense a lot of DIY and painting in my imminent future. I guess it will be as good a time as any to finally paint the family room after 13 years of living here!! I will attempt to banish Nozomi to the home office (she has been working from the dining table) and paint the walls of said room at some point in the next fortnight. The garage side door could also use some TLC and paint.

It's been a strange week. I had a very bad day at work on Weds (or was it Tues?). This contributed to a very poor night of sleep (maybe 3 hours?) with my mind flitting between work and COVID19 worries like a tongue over broken teeth. I finally relented to the inevitable and arose at 5:20am (having tossed and turned since 2am) and performed my usual morning exercises. I was basically on autopilot and am sure I probably nodded in and out of sleep mid press up at one point. 

Time to make dinner. (Home made pizza). To be continued...

Home made pan pizza

Ingredients

1. Self raising flour (250g ish)
2. A bit of salt
3. A splash of olive oil
4. Half a cup (ish) of water
5. Toppings of choice

Method

1. Stir and then kneed into dough (add a bit of flour and water as required until its maleable and not sticky or dry). 
2. Roll out the dough until roughly frying pan sized. 
3. Heat a drizzle of olive oil in the pan. 
4. Fry both sides on a medium heat. (Check underside every couple of mins until color/crispiness you want).
5. Stick whatever the hell you want on top. Today was a dollop of jar pasta sauce, sliced mushrooms, red peppers, pepperoni, mozzarella cheese, another layer of pepperoni, and some parmesan cheese.
6. Stick under a grill at 180C and keep an eye on it (turn your back and it will burn because - grill).
7. Enjoy!  (It was lush!)

Spring clean

We took the opportunity of enforced confinement to have a bit of a spring clean this weekend. Nothing too drastic. Didn't get as far as washing the windows. (Gotta save the ammunition. Don't want to run out of fun things to do for the rest of the spring eh...)

Nozomi had a half-day on Friday and made a successful excursion to purchase supplies at Tesco. There were a couple of substitutes, but generally, she managed to get a typical week's shop in. Well done dear! The weekend itself was simultaneously dull, and yet numbing. Upon waking, for a few delicious seconds thoughts of COVID-19 are out of mind, but it is only for a few seconds. The crushing reality of the current situation soon settles like a mantle of iron across the shoulders. 

We are trying to keep things normal, so on Friday night, we had our usual movie evening - The Rock. We cleaned half the house on Saturday. In the evening, we had some fun playing games on the Switch. First Streetfighter and then Overcooked 2.

I squeezed in an extra workout for the week on Sunday morning. (What the hell else am I gonna do?) . After a call with Nozomi's family in Japan, we cleaned the other half of the house. There has been a case of C19 in their neighbouring town of Chikugo. In a way, it is good that Nozomi's dad had to give up his driving license recently due to poor eyesight. It keeps them at home. Nozomi's mother's condition is getting worse though. She seems to be developing dementia. The fact that international travel is banned for the foreseeable future is a weight on our minds as it is impossible for us to offer much in the way of practical assistance. I doubt we will be able to go to Japan this year. 

I will be on "vacation" next Monday and it will be a relief to not have to sit in front of the laptop. There are some painting and repair jobs to do which will keep me plenty busy and I intend to make the most of our daily walk - assuming we are still permitted to exercise outside for an hour a day next week...

Sunset walk, 30th March 2020