Watching the fields around us being tidied up for the winter; the crops reaped and cut back, rolled into bales and placed in polythene or left bare; a series of random cylindrical shapes scattered around the fields, didn’t a member of ELO die when a bale of straw or hay rolled down a field through a hedge and into the road he was driving on, either squashing him or causing a fatal accident. I may have made that up, but I’m pretty sure I haven’t.

First day back at work to me and my manager asked me that leading question as to wether I am ok to work, I am but my job is out and about and so being under house arrest, my waters told me i’d be doing some really tedious project working from my desk. But I simply couldn’t cough a bit and tell him I’m still poorly, I’m not a total skiver, merely slightly sensitive to tedium, probably somewhere on a spectrum if truth be known, and if they dig hard and deep enough. So to state the obvious I told him I was ok, and opened the patio doors in readiness to bring the outside in, maintaining short strolls into the parched garden. Work was ok, it passed, but it’s been nearly 10 days since we got back from Falmouth, and I haven’t been out anywhere apart form to walk the dog twice and to steal 3 sleepers from by the skip on site. My world has shrunken to way smaller than it’s ever been, to since way before I can ever remember. My son’s however has opened up and welcomed him in, swimming in the river with his friends today as we toiled in our tiny bubble, the girls world even smaller than mine; they haven’t walked the dog twice or been to the skip.

Honestly, I’ve found this experience not a bundle of laughs, but not awful; christ there’s people who are so much worse off than us, but I expect they probably know that and probably do without some privileged knob head telling them so. And whilst I think these last 2 years have been pretty damaging mentally for some, it might have also force taught us a bit of resilience, in the face of the unknown, as opposed to the expected. Slightly resetting the mental clock. I feel that I can be alone with my family, and will work on being content.

In 8 days time my daughter has her driving test, she hasn’t driven for around 3 weeks due to Cornwall, Reading festival and then Covid. He isolation ends on Thursday, mine friday and I have promised to take her out for a couple of hours every day from when I’m allowed out until she takes her test, then, hopefully, she’ll be free to go, and won’t have to listen to her Dad spout the usual bullshit as we negotiate the trickier parts of Worcester, stopping off in Waitrose on the way home for the ice cold DIPA they stock in the chiller there.