Day 68 - Garden centre
19. mai 2020, Irland ⋅ ⛅ 17 °C
I decided to head out to the garden centre early today. The weather’s due to be nice this week, so it’d be great to have some flowers to plant while the sun is shining. I’ve literally done every other thing that’s possible to do in the garden at this stage. The place has been meticulously prepared - I’m pretty much picking weeds as they appear, these days!
I got to the garden centre just after 9am and I was the only person in the shop! It was a lovely experience. They had social distancing measures in place, including a one-way system in the shop, jut in case the crowds were big. It’s in quite a rural location though, so it’s still not possible for a lot of people in Cork city to get to this shop. The staff were lovely too, and they were all saying things like “welcome back!” Many of the staff seem to be close to or over seventy, but they had a teenager out on the floor, moving your trolley to the exit after you’d paid, while the older staff stayed behind a plexiglass screen.
When I got back from the garden centre, I had a Zoom meeting with my manager, Marian. I told her that I thought the chemistry online exam paper will be very tricky for the students, and that I had prepared a question to show them, that was almost identical to the question on the exam. It turns out that she’s done the same for her subject, which was funny, but also a relief. She said to me “Lisa, you’ve verbalised how I’ve been feeling - there is no rule book for this year!” We’re all just trying to do our best, in unchartered territory, I guess!
Before lunch, I prepared to do my running session at the same time that I knew Fiona, Olwyn and Mum were meeting in Kilboggat to do theirs. I was on the phone to Mum, and then every time Fiona and Olwyn passed her, we would shout and woop at each other! It was great fun! I was also stopped twice during my session by two separate women out walking in the field, who commented on how much energy I had. “No sooner have you passed me by, then I’m turning around and you’re passing again,” one of them said! One of them is called Mary, and we’ve seen each other a few times recently in this field. She told me that she’s over seventy but that she wasn’t able to stick with the full length of the cocoon, so she comes down to the field to walk up and down a few times every day. She was very keen to hear about my training! I know her name is Mary, because on my jog home, I spotted her driving from the field and then going in the gate of a house a few hundred metres further along on the Lee Road. She waved at me again, and I heard the man she was with saying “see you soon Mary!”
My Miles that Mater T-shirt and medal arrived in the post today. I got them as part of a virtual run that I did, and all proceeds go to the Mater Hospital Foundation. I’m not really sure what you’re meant to do with a medal that arrives in the post during a pandemic, so I decided to wear it around the house for the afternoon, much to Peter’a bemusement!
I spent the entire afternoon having a great time planting all of the flowers that I bought this morning. Then, as usual on a Tuesday, we had our Crusaders table quiz. James Cottle won this week, on his birthday, which was nice. Following the quiz, we watched the next two episodes of Normal People on TV. It’s such a great show, and it’a nice to look forward to every Tuesday!
There were only fifty five new cases of covid 19 reported today. This is good news. However, we’ve also been told today that this virus, and social distancing measures, are likely to be with us for years, rather than months. That’s the type of comment that I note briefly in my mind these days, and then quickly filter out, so that I can focus on the present. There’s a good bit of evidence online that shows that people are not sticking to groups of four, as per the current rules, when meeting up. Lots of people are meeting in much bigger groups. It’s a bit of a kick in the teeth to those of us who haven’t seen our families in months, and are patiently waiting and hoping that the phased relaxation of restrictions won’t be pushed back later than it’s already scheduled for.
Oh look, I’ve just spotted the photo we took of Peter blending into the blue chair!Les mer
Day 67 - Phase 1 begins
18. mai 2020, Irland ⋅ ☁️ 13 °C
Phase 1 of reopening country begins today. It doesn’t mean much for most of us though. Hardware shops, garden shops, and a few other essential shops can open again, and construction workers can go back to work. The rest of us still have to stay within 5km of our homes.
Hardware shops have been getting ready for big crowds. I’ve posted a photo of preparations at Woodies, below. On the radio, I listened to an interview with people, who had been standing in a queue of fifty, waiting since 7.30am for a garden centre in Cork to open at 9am! The woman who was first in the queue said she came because she really wanted some geraniums. I think people are just bored and desperate for something to do at this stage! On the news this evening, they showed scenes from B&Q in Liffey Valley, and the queue stretched back and forth several times across the car park!
I certainly wasn’t going to attempt going to any of those places today. My students online chemistry exam arrived, so I spent most of the day using it to prepare a revision class for them. The exam is quite out of left field, and will be quite a shock to the students, I think. Even Peter found it tricky enough! So, I’ve prepared a question for them to do this week, that is almost identical to the exam question, but with a few small changes! I normally would never do something like that, but there’s no rule book for this year! Me and Peter had a great laugh, as he helped me to prepare my revision class. The answer to one of the exam questions is copper sulfate. We decided that I should talk about a hypothetical substance called popper pulfate in my revision class!
It’s funny how so many things around town have become frozen in time. One of the photos below shows the advertising hanging on the Cork Opera House, advertising shows in February, before the lowdown!
We got our covid 19 information booklet in the post too. For some reason ours is completely in Irish though - they must have run out of the English language ones!
My sunflowers are also still doing really well. I must get some twine to help them stand up though. I can’t wait until I can soon go to a garden centre!Les mer
Day 66 - Back to the Marina!
17. mai 2020, Irland ⋅ ☁️ 12 °C
The 5km limit on how far you can go from your house has been in place for almost two weeks now, but today was my first time back at the Marina in over two months. This is where I would normally do almost all of my long runs, so it was lovely to be back for a ninety minute run today. I particularly enjoyed getting to be beside the sea again for the first time since March. The next thing that I’d like to be able to do is to go for a sea swim, but I think that’ll have to wait until the radius extends to 20km in three weeks time, as I can’t think of any swimming areas within 5km of home. At least it gives me something to look forward to!
I also managed to capture one of my favourite images of the lockdown, while out for my run today. A lady, who looked like she was over seventy, had her arms outstretched and was breathing in the sea air. It makes me feel really uplifted just looking at this image!
On the way home from my run, I stopped in a nearby Tesco express to pick up some grapes and a few treats. Unexpectedly, I was the only customer in the shop for almost the entire time. People are shopping less these days so I think they prefer to go to the bigger supermarkets where they can do a bigger shop.
Me and Peter did a lot of work on our lockdown band recording this afternoon. Peter seems intent on perfecting the piece to within an inch of its life at the moment! I guess we won’t be going anywhere for a while, so I’ve now allowed myself to get sucked into the process of tweaking and fixing lots of little bits in the piece. It’ll be a masterpiece by the end of all of this!
I’d a lovely chat with Fiona and Orlaith on Zoom at 4pm today. We avoided almost all talk of the virus, and we’d a good laugh about air fryers and egg makers. Complaining about the restrictions of lockdown has its place, but it’s also really nice to have a conversation with friends, in which the virus and lockdown are not mentioned at all! After a little wobble this morning, where Peter had to listen to me rant about how “Leo Varadkar is not managing the situation well,” the chat about an egg maker was much needed!
I do, overall, think that the authorities have managed the situation in our country well. Sometimes, though, it just seems that the current restrictions are unwinding at a snails pace!Les mer
Day 65 - Eurovision
16. mai 2020, Irland ⋅ ⛅ 10 °C
Saturdays always start with the parkrun Global Quiz. Me and Mum both did it from bed this morning, and I got a pretty dismal seven out of fifteen this week! Doing the quiz in bed is a nice way to gradually get used to the idea of getting up.
After this, me and Fiona did our running session. This felt great this morning, and my legs felt nice and energetic, compared to the tiredness that’s been in them for a good few days up until now. On my way home, I spotted a sign outside the Cork Waterworks tourist attraction. It said that, due to coronavirus, the building would remain closed until March 29th. That got me remembering those days in March when we all thought that we were going to be shut down for about two weeks or so. I even remember, at a staff meeting around the 10th March, discussing whether we should do laboratory work or not when the students came back in April! We really had no idea what was ahead!
RTÉ and TG4 are showing past sporting events, to make up for the complete absence of sport on TV these days. The Ireland vs Romania match from the 1990 World Cup was on television, and I put it on for a while. Peter remembered so much detail about this match, including the players, the score and a lot about what happened during it!
Pretty much the whole of today was spent adding Peters recordings and video to our lockdown orchestra project. We had a good laugh making his video part - he’s gotten surprisingly into this project!
In the evening, the Eurovision was on. During the show, they played a thirty second clip from each of the entries, and interviewed previous winners etc. It was an unexpectedly emotional watch, and I ended up going to bed earlier than I was planning because I was tired from the emotion of the programme!Les mer
Day 64 - A new washing machine!
15. mai 2020, Irland ⋅ ☀️ 8 °C
We have not had a working washing machine for about two weeks now, so I was very excited today to have a new machine installed! In fact, I was probably a bit too excited, as I put on five washes and now we don’t have enough space to hang all the clothes to dry! It’s not a great time to have an essential appliance break down. However, our landlord has been very good about it. Her and her husband came over, wearing face masks and gloves, and installed the new machine. We had very little contact with them, except to unlock the front door for them. Then we made sure not to be in the same room as them at any stage.
I started today, like every Friday, with my 8am Pete class. For the first time, I did this class outside. Pete commented on how nice the weather looked here. For once it seems like we’d more sun this morning than Dublin had. It always seems to be the other way around! I took advantage of the nice weather to read my book outside for a while. Then I collected our Tesco shopping and, while me and Peter washed and disinfected the items before putting then away, we wondered if we were going to have to continue washing our shopping for years to come!
In the afternoon, I went for a run to my usual field. Someone has moved a large slab at the entrance of the field, to make the stepping stones over the stream a little easier to navigate, which is nice! I’ve noticed lots of little things that people have done in the past few weeks to improve our surroundings. There are also a lot more weeds on the roads and paths, but I think this is a good thing, especially for the bees and insects. In addition, lots of the weeds have pretty flowers at the moment, which are nice to look at!
While out running, I missed Leo Varadkar’s speech about phase 1 of the easing of restrictions, which begins on Monday. It’s probably just as well, given the meltdown I had two weeks ago after his last speech! I only end up getting my hopes up, and it probably has less of an impact on me to hear the latest updates, gradually, from other news sources, rather than from Leo himself. As expected, not much is going to change on Monday. Garden shops and hardware shops will open. We can meet up to four people in an outdoor space if we wish, and we are advised to wear a face covering when on public transport or in enclosed spaces like shops. We’ve all been so good for the past nine weeks - all of this seems like not very much reward.
Fiona also missed Leo’s speech this afternoon, and I joked that our radius had gone back down to 2km. She got a bit upset hearing this - I shouldn’t joke about these things! I would have gone mad if someone had done the same to me. Sorry Fiona! She was also disappointed that Ikea will not now open on Monday, when it had originally been earmarked as somewhere that would open. I totally see where she’s coming from. We’re all looking forward to when we can do things like holiday in Rosslare again, so we really want to see the early phases moving in the right direction! For some reason, hardware shops can open, but not homeware shops.
This evening, we ordered dinner from Pompeii pizza, which me, Peter and Damo had been looking forward to for almost the whole week! Initially, the restaurant was too busy and we couldn’t put an order in, but thankfully they reopened a short while later and we soon had our food. I loved Peters excitement at about 6pm when he exclaimed “is our Pompeii pizza delivery tonight?!” It doesn’t take much to get us excited these days!Les mer
Day 63 - Adapting
14. mai 2020, Irland ⋅ ☀️ 13 °C
It’s funny how much you can adapt to a new situation, even when you initially think that you’re never going to adapt! I feel now, two months in, that I’m finally starting to properly adapt to the lockdown. This has become normal life now, so moving back to our previous normal will probably take a whole other period of adaptation! I see that my favourite garden centre will be opening on Monday. While I’m absolutely bursting to head there, I think I might wait until Tuesday or Wednesday as it’ll probably be very busy on the first day.
Thursdays are always busy for me, as I give classes on Zoom from 10am until about 3.30pm. The students are finding it hard to keep their motivation up now, but thankfully we only have about three weeks left of term. Almost all of them have expressed disappointment about potentially having to start college next year online. They all seem to be dying to get back to Ireland, but it currently looks like they won’t get back until January. I think this has affected their motivation too. Watching lectures online at home in Oman was not the type of Irish College experience that they dreamed of!
Thankfully, the sun and blue skies came back today again too. Me and Peter put Rodrigo Y Gabriela on the speaker, sat outside, closed our eyes and pretended we were in Marbella. This was Fiona’s recommendation, and it really worked! It was nice to imagine being abroad on holidays, especially given that it probably won’t happen for another year or so!
In the evening, we watched a film about Brexit, with Benedict Cumberbatch in it. It was great! Although it got me thinking about how all these big news stories from a few months ago have now completely disappeared since Covid-19 arrived. Not that long ago, we were all immersed in Brexit. Now I can’t even remember whether it’s happened yet or not!
This pandemic has really taught me a lot about the difference between what seems important in life and what is important in life!Les mer
Day 62 - A new training partner!
13. mai 2020, Irland ⋅ ☀️ 11 °C
Peter was still feeling stiff today after his first interval running session in a long time last Sunday. So we made plans for the two of us to head out for an easy jog, to help to ease the stiffness in his legs. At 6pm we went down to my now usual field beside the river Lee, and we jogged and chatted together for about half an hour before Peter stopped and I did another ten minutes. It was nice to have someone to run with, as I’ve done two months now of solo running. It was also a lovely evening, and it always feels like we’re completely in the middle of the countryside when we’re in that field. It’s never too busy either - just the odd walker.
I spent most of the rest of the day trying to finish our lockdown orchestra music. It’s been going on for a while but I’m really aiming to “release” it before this weekend. Apart from anything, I’d like to try a new tune if others are up for it. I’ve learnt quite a lot about remote recording from this experience, so I’d like another go at it!
We also had our usual Sheehan quiz at 9pm this evening. Suzanne, in Australia, was the quiz master and it was great fun - she even included a Kahoot round! I won the quiz today, and this was the first time that I didn’t have Peter beside me helping me too! When it was over, I chatted to mum and Anna for about an hour or so, which was nice.
The anticipation is building again this week, in advance of restrictions relaxing a little bit next Monday. I used to enjoy the build up to these government announcements but, after the shock I got at the last announcement, which basically said that Summer is cancelled, I’ve decided not too think too much about this upcoming one. Once garden centres are still allowed to open on Monday, I’ll be happy!
I popped into our local shop, for the third time since lockdown began, today. It’s only 200m from our house, so I’d like to be able to make more use of it. It’s a tiny shop, so the owner only lets one person in at a time. It feels quite pressurised, deciding which chocolate bar to buy when the shop owner is looking at you though, as well as everyone else queueing outside the window on the street! The atmosphere is always very friendly though, and people generally seem to be quite conscientious about giving each other space in the shop. It’s a bit of a pain having to queue, but the inconvenience does make me appreciate things that I would have taken for granted before. Finally walking out with the hard-earned newspaper and snack is a great feeling!Les mer
Day 61 - Normal People
12. mai 2020, Irland ⋅ ☀️ 11 °C
On our running plan today was a tempo run, followed by eight thirty second sprints, followed by another tempo run. Me and Fiona did it “together” by phone and I headed up to the road beside the “Beautiful Lee Valley” sign for the hills. The views up here are just spectacular and are such a pick-me-up! I also love how few cars there still are on the roads - it means that I can run on this road with no footpath, without too much worry. I’m already feeling a bit sad that some restrictions will start to relax on Monday, because the place will start feeling busy again. There’s a lot to be said for this quieter pace of life, and I’ve really settled into it now as a new normal! I hope we don’t all rush headlong back into the way things were before, without thinking about whether we actually want everything to be exactly as it was before!
We had our weekly Crusaders quiz this evening - Mike and Susan were the hosts. They had a really fun section, based on the Generation Game television show, where they showed us twenty items and we had to remember as many of them as we could later on. I got fifteen, but Mum and Anna remembered nineteen! Mum told the group about my “imaginary friend” story that I told on Newstalk yesterday - I don’t think I’ll live this one down for a while. Haha!
After the quiz, me and Peter watched the latest two episodes of “Normal People.” It seems like most of the country are glued to this television show at the moment, not least because the amount of nudity in it has caused huge outrage on Joe Duffy’s radio show! The fallout from the show every week is nearly better than the show itself. As Peter said, “who would have thought we’d end up glued to Joe Duffy during this lockdown!” After the show, Joe Duffy tweeted: “I want to phone in sick tomorrow - who do I call?” Brilliant!Les mer
Day 60 - Wrecked!
11. mai 2020, Irland ⋅ ☀️ 9 °C
I don’t know what came over me today, but I was completely wrecked, both physically and mentally! I spent the whole day with the worst brain fog, I could barely focus on anything, and I drifted aimlessly from one task to the next. Unfortunately, this coincided with my busiest day of the week, work-wise. I need to upload my chemistry lectures, screencasts and homework before 10am on Tuesdays and, of course, I always leave all of the work to do on Mondays! Some Mondays, I’m like a briar, trying to get it all done, and Peter knows to steer well-clear! Thankfully, today, I managed to get everything done without too much stress, despite my inability to concentrate!
At one point during the day, I also had a massive sugar low and I was feeling light-headed and dizzy. I tried eating fruit to combat it, but it was only when Peter told me to eat one of his massive chocolate bars that I started feeling better! I wonder what caused all of this? Fiona tells me she was feeling similarly wrecked today. I reckon we’re physically tired from the huge amount of running training we’ve been doing, and this is on top of the mental strain caused by the pandemic. I guess it all takes its toll, even without you realising.
At 12pm, I took a bit of time to do a live Yoga flow class through Fiona’s work account. Fiona did it too. It was good to do some gentle stretching, especially given that today is a rest day on my training plan and I’m not doing any running.
After I uploaded all my lessons to our college website, at around 6pm, I went upstairs and did a bit of cleaning. Then, I face planted on my bed for about an hour because I wasn’t physically or mentally able for anything else! Peter arrived up eventually, saying “I thought I might find you here!” He’s very good when I’m in this kind of state! He put rice on for me, then the two of us had dinner and watched a bit of TV. Needless to say, I was in bed by about 10pm!
I wonder what will happen next week, in terms of lifting restrictions. In one way, I’m enjoying having all this time at home. The roads are empty, so I can often run right down the middle of them, to give myself lots of space. Also, when I need to drive right into the city centre to collect my prescription from the pharmacy, it only takes about five minutes and I get parked right outside the door. News is coming through, from other places in Europe, like Germany, that the spread of the virus has started increasing, now that they’ve started lifting restrictions. They’re a little bit ahead of us, so it’s like a view on the future for us.
Another Crusaders virtual challenge starts this week. I was on the winning team in the virtual relay challenge last week. It was lots of fun, especially the team element. The social aspect is nice too, getting to know people in the club that I’d never have spoken to before. Initially I thought we might be doing these virtual challenges for a month or so, but it now looks like they’ll be continuing for a few months before we can get back to training! I hope everyone doesn’t get injured in that time, because lots of people ran their timed mile last week completely downhill, to shave a few seconds off. The downhill running is getting a bit out of hand in the group!Les mer
Day 59 - 5km from home
10. mai 2020, Irland ⋅ ☁️ 14 °C
Today I drove to Tramore Valley Park on the opposite side of the city for my long run. What a wonderful, liberating feeling! It’s like someone has had their hands around my neck for the past two months, and that today, they finally started to loosen their grasp! Firstly, driving somewhere that is not the Wilton Tesco is just so strange, and secondly, being in Douglas, a part of the city that we haven’t been allowed to go to for about two months, is just so exciting!
I had a lovely eighty minute run around the park. There’s so much space here - wide paths, grassy fields and undulating terrain. I even (almost) bumped into Donncha O’Callaghan on the narrow path on the way into the park!
During the run, I started pining for a time when we will be able to reward ourselves with a nice brunch out somewhere after our Sunday long run. So, to make up for not being able to do this, I stopped in Centra on my way home and bought a scone for myself. Again, I haven’t been in a Centra in almost two months!
On my way home, I spotted a guy practicing his hurling against the wall of Cork City Gaol. That wall has been creatively used, quite a lot, during this lockdown!
In the afternoon, and after a shower and lunch, myself and Peter headed to the big field beside the river Lee, so that he could do a running session. He thinks that he’s getting “soft” during lockdown, so he wants to start doing sprint sessions again. We measured out 60m on my GPS watch, and I wandered around and sat by the river, while Peter worked away for almost an hour. It’s great that he’s motivated enough again to get back out running, after a break of a few years!
When we got home, we had a great Zoom chat with Fiona, Lisa, John and Garrett. These Zoom chats always have us laughing lots, and are the perfect tonic at the moment! We chatted for almost two hours, mostly reminiscing about funny stories from races that we’ve done in the past.
There wasn’t much time after this and before I would end up falling asleep, so me and Peter watched the final episode of Money Heist - Season 1, and then I collapsed into bed. My legs are very tired after today’s long run, but I’m happy after another day well-spent.
Boris Johnson updated the British public, this evening, on how they are going to start relaxing restrictions. His speech was quite confusing, though, and most people do not seem to be clear on exactly what they’re being instructed to do for the next few weeks. I’m glad that we seem to have much clearer leadership here at the moment! Our government’s document may have been a bit overwhelming for me last week, but at least it was very easy to understand!Les mer
Day 58 - Sunshine!
9. mai 2020, Irland ⋅ ⛅ 16 °C
Thankfully I am much recovered from the shock of Leo’s announcement eight days ago, and I am enjoying lots of things about lockdown again. For a start, it’s lovely to be able to go 5km from home for exercise. I know we all talked about how changing from a 2km to 5km restriction wouldn’t make much of a difference, but it actually has. I’m now able to do a big 10km loop that brings me up over the Lee Valley, and it has the most stunning views, especially on a sunny day like today. What I also like about this route is that, while about half of it is on paths in the city, the other half is on narrow country roads through the countryside and you feel, mentally, like you’re quite far away from everything coronavirus-related when you’re out there! Thinking back, it now seems so strange that we were all restricted to a 2km radius from our house at one stage, and that we couldn’t even drive anywhere! I’ve been doing all of my running this week in the same area by the Lee that I’ve been going to for a few weeks now though - I wonder is it a case of Stockholm syndrome?!
Before my run today I did the parkrun Global Quiz, as is usual on a Saturday. After the run, I returned home to find that our neighbours had put a bouncing castle up in their back garden. Strange, but thankfully they didn’t have any visitors over for it, which was what we were expecting to happen.
Around lunchtime, I collected our Tesco Click and Collect shopping and, just after I got home, our landlord and her husband called in. Our washing machine is completely broken, so they’re going to buy us a new one as soon as possible. Hopefully we won’t have to wait too long, as the washing is really starting to pile up! It was strange having our landlord and her husband in the house, fully kitted out in masks and gloves. However it’s understandable as she lives with her mum who is quite sick and, as such, has been fully cocooning for the past two months.
Today was the nicest day of the year so far here, in terms of weather, so me and Peter sat out on the decking all day reading. I had bought the paper in our local shop, for the first time since lockdown, and we both read it cover to cover. It’s such a novelty for us to have a newspaper! It made for sad reading at times though, especially the section that gave the life stories of a number of people that have died from covid-19. Most of the coverage to date has been about the numbers that are sick and in hospital, so seeing the faces being these numbers really gave me pause for thought.
Our evening was interrupted at about 8pm, by a big group of Spanish people, on the green in our estate, partying, singing loudly and playing drinking games. It’s strange that you would draw attention to yourself in this way! Anyway, moments later, the Gardaí pulled up in a van and the most hilarious scene ensued. The entire group of grown adults sprinted into the thin line of bushes beside the field as soon as they spotted the Gardaí. They weren’t able to hide very well though, and I could see lots of branches quivering. Meanwhile, an overweight Garda was scuttling around in the bushes whooshing everyone back out again. What a scene! Everyone went home again anyway and all was quiet for the rest of the night thankfully.
I think scenes like this are being repeated all over the country though. Fiona texted this evening to say that there was a big carnival atmosphere in her estate, and that her neighbours were having people over for parties. It’s weird, I can’t imagine texting someone to invite them over to my house at the moment!
In some good news, the number of new covid-19 cases has been below two hundred for the past two days, which sounds really promising. On some days in April, it was at over eight hundred! Anyway, the trend seems to be going in the right direction, thankfully, and I’m feeling a real sense of hope and optimism with all of this news. In particular, I’m wondering if they might bring forward some of the phases of relaxing the restrictions. Peter tells me not to get my hopes up, in case I end up disappointed, but it’s hard not to. Everything feels wonderfully optimistic in this sunshine!
This morning, on our run, me and Fiona talked a good bit about the importance to the human psyche, of having things like holidays, or even just brunch with friends, to look forward to. We also talked about that lovely feeling you get when you step off a plane in a foreign country, and we pondered when we might be able to go on holidays again, even in Ireland. We’ve decided to replace our yearnings for foreign holidays, with the feeling of looking forward to a family reunion holiday in Rosslare. That will happen sometime soon, and it’s going to be just brilliant. In the meantime though, we can imagine we’re abroad, especially when the sun is shining!Les mer
Day 57 - On the radio!
8. mai 2020, Irland ⋅ ☀️ 16 °C
I’m finally feeling back to normal again now after my gradual recovery from last week’s announcement about how long lifting restrictions will take! The sun is also finally shining here again in Cork after a week of rain (when everywhere else in the country seems to have had sun). And I finally get a day off from the madness of preparing and selling my new Chemistry book.
I started the day the same way I start every Friday, with our 8am Pete class. For some reason Garrett’s image on Zoom looks like an oil painting, and it’s still making me laugh every time that I see it in Pete’s class! The class today was very high speed. Pete was doing the exercises along with us and this seems to have upped the pace of the whole session.
I spent most of the morning cleaning and tidying our house, which has been a bit neglected for the past few days. It was quite therapeutic, cleaning the place and throwing out old food ahead of our weekly shop tomorrow.
In another real highlight of the lockdown, I somehow ended up on the radio in the afternoon! This couldn’t have come at a better time, as it really lifted my spirits and gave us a great laugh! Mum had heard them discussing imaginary friends on Newstalk, and she messaged me to encourage me to text in about the imaginary friend I had when I was younger.
I sent the text, and shortly afterwards someone from Newstalk phoned me to ask if I would come on the show to talk. Of course I said yes! After about half an hour eagerly awaiting the call back, I finally got the call. The producer explained what was going to happen, a sound guy then checked that I could hear him ok, then finally Ciara Kelly was saying hello to me. It was all a bit surreal!
I chatted about the imaginary friend that I had when I was younger, and I even suggested that I might bring her back to keep me company during lockdown! It was a great laugh and I was buzzing afterwards. Peter had been listening in on the radio in the other room, but strangely, I was still talking on that radio for a bit after I’d hung up and come into the room. There must be some sort of delay on the broadcast. I enjoyed getting messages from friends that had heard me, for a while afterwards, anyway!
After this, me and Peter sunbathed in the back garden for a while. The warmth was lovely! Then, I went for a forty minute run “with Fiona.” I absolutely love the lookout spot, that I can now run to, beside the “Beautiful Lee Valley” sign. It’s beautiful there!
In the evening I ordered takeaway from Elephant and Castle. I’ve been looking forward to this since Fiona told me about it at the beginning of the week. They’re a Dublin restaurant that has just opened in Cork, and I collected the takeaway from their premises in the centre of the city. When I parked my car on South Main Street and got out, I could not get over the silence around me. It was so strange and surreal to be standing, slap bang, in the middle of Cork city, and hearing almost complete silence! There was almost nobody about too, except for hoards of Deliveroo cyclists.
After dinner, we chatted with Peters family on Zoom, then caught a bit of the end of the Late Late show. As I headed off to bed after this, Peter asked me “what’s going on - you seem very happy?!” “I am happy,” I said! It’s great to be back on top of the peak of the rollercoaster!Les mer
Day 56 - Chemistry book goes on sale
7. mai 2020, Irland ⋅ ⛅ 15 °C
Today was the big day! Eight days after I put my Biology book online, I was finally in a position to start selling my Chemistry book. And not a moment too soon. More rumours are trickling out about the Leaving Cert potentially being cancelled, so if I wanted to sell any copies this side of the Summer, I needed to get it online today.
I’m quite tired at this stage now. I’d a reasonably gentle pace of life towards the start of lockdown, but the popularity of these Leaving Cert booklets has really made things a lot more hectic! I had one or two more things to edit in the booklet this morning, which I did. Then I uploaded details of my website etc to the Irish Science Teachers Facebook group. At 10am, I had to teach a chemistry class through Zoom, then by the time that was over, sales were already coming in. For the rest of the day, I balanced trying to teach my chemistry classes with trying to fulfil orders for my booklets. Putting up details of the Chemistry book has had a knock on effect of drawing peoples attention to the Biology book again, so it’s trickier this time trying to make sure that I email the correct book to people! Some people are also asking me for a Junior Science booklet now too!
In the evening, I headed out to run my mile for the Crusaders relay event. Out on the Lee Road, I improved my time by eleven seconds, to achieve seven minutes for the mile. A bit disappointed not to duck under seven minutes but happy to have improved! When I came home, I cooked some veggie chilli and sat down to watch the news and Primetime.
The big news this evening is that the Leaving Cert has been cancelled! I’m not sure I agree with this plan, as I think it’ll disadvantage students who really want the chance to prove themselves. It looks like their grades will be based on class tests etc now. A lot of students improve by a huge amount, from class tests to the Leaving Cert, in my experience!
By the time I went to bed this evening, I had sold seventy two copies of my Chemistry and Biology booklets. I really did get in in the nick of time!Les mer
Day 55 - Chemistry booklet finished!
6. mai 2020, Irland ⋅ 🌧 9 °C
I really needed to get my Leaving Cert Chemistry revision booklet completed today. I had hoped to finish it over the bank holiday weekend, but other things got in the way (including a bit of a meltdown on certain days!) so I still had five chapters to complete today. I’m under time pressure, because there’s talk of cancelling the Leaving Cert and I won’t be able to sell as many (or any!) booklets once that’s announced!
I’ve also decided to start eating healthily from now on! I can’t get over the amount of junk food I’ve been putting in my online shopping, and I’d like to change that. Today got off to a good start with some yoghurt and fruit.
I worked solidly on the chemistry booklet until lunchtime. With it pretty much finished by then, I next worked on the website for it for a while and then put the finishing touches to the cover of the booklet etc.
I went out for a thirty minute run along the Blarney Road at about 6pm. It’s so cold outside - it’s like autumn has come back. We even had the heating on today! I keep hearing about all the amazing weather that they’re having up in Dublin, but we don’t seem to be getting any of it here. Just lots of rain this week!
At 9pm, we had our weekly Sheehan quiz. Paul was the host and Suzanne was able to join us from Australia this time! At one point during the quiz, me, Fiona and Anna were making secret faces and actions at each other on camera. We were trying to communicate to each other without anyone noticing, but we got too confident with our actions and Emmet noticed us. I laughed about the whole thing more than I’ve laughed in a good while! Oh and I almost won the quiz, except that Mum and Anna beat me in a tiebreaker where I couldn’t remember the name of one of the American doctors that is coordinating their response to coronavirus!
I felt great after this family meet up and a bit of a laugh. There’s lots of nice things about this lockdown too.Les mer
Day 54 - Routine day in lockdown
5. mai 2020, Irland ⋅ 🌧 9 °C
This morning I headed out for my run while chatting to Fiona through headphones, as is usual most days at the moment. On our plan was something called a “cut down” workout. The reps got shorter, but their intensity got higher. I really enjoyed it, and I had most of the Lee Road to myself, given that the day was cool and overcast.
I had to time my run carefully though, as I had almost no time to spare when I got home, before I had to go on Zoom for a staff meeting. I put a fleece on over my running T-shirt to make myself look more dressed up for the meeting! The meeting was to do with our exam timetable for the start of June. We finalised the dates for our online exams in the meeting, and the students will be told by the end of this week.
Most of the rest of today was spent trying to finish my Chemistry revision booklet. It’s a slow-going, and sometimes tiresome, process but it’ll be worth it in the end, when hopefully lots of teachers buy it!
We had our weekly, semi-private Zoom class at 6pm today. I wore the lederhosen dri-fit that I bought at the Munich marathon last year, and it somehow lifted my mood loads. Whatever works I guess! John popped into the background of Lisa Banahan’s camera at the start and was like “what are you wearing?!” Haha, brilliant!
At 8pm, we had our weekly Crusaders table quiz and Georgina was the quiz master. The questions were great, but I got my lowest score yet at 11.5! Georgina is out of a job at the moment, so she said that the quiz gave her a lovely focus for the week. I found that too when I was quiz master a few weeks ago. She had clearly put a lot of effort into the quiz, as evidenced by both a picture round and a music round. Her “Crusaders” round was on the theme of “people who acted as crusaders in their field.” Numbers for the quiz tonight were a bit down on previous weeks - I wonder did Brendan’s speed quiz last week scare them off?!
After the quiz, the usual suspects, me, Mum, Susan, Mairéad and Paul Kelly stayed on Zoom to chat, as we always do. Susan ended up demonstrating some knee exercises for Mum, while standing on a kitchen chair, having had a few glasses of wine. It was funny! I left the Zoom conversation at about 10.30pm to go off and watch the new RTÉ series called “Normal People.” It’s great! Such a nostalgic and relatable drama. The next episode gives me something to look forward to for next week. It’s all these small little things in our lives that put some sort of structure on the expanse of time and uncertainty that lies before us.Les mer
Day 53 - Bleeeuuurgh!
4. mai 2020, Irland ⋅ ⛅ 12 °C
I couldn’t come up with a title for today, so I’ve captioned it with how I feel. I would say that while most days have been good days interspersed with bad bits, today was probably a bad day interspersed with good bits!
I woke at about 6.30am after a bit of a restless sleep, which is not unexpected after the Wings for Life run yesterday. Then, I worked solidly on my Leaving Cert chemistry booklet until about 2pm. At this point, the washing machine decided to start making banging noises again, for the second time this week. I think we’re going to need someone to repair it. For some reason, though, this was what tipped me over the edge today! For the following hour or so, I sat in the chair by the window crying with frustration at the length of the current lockdown restrictions. Thankfully, Peter comforted me, and then I rang my Mum, and I was eventually feeling better again by about 4.30pm. Time for a very late lunch!
At about 5pm then, Peter came out with me for a much-needed walk to clear my head. We’d a lovely stroll out towards Blarney, and we stopped several times to appreciate the countryside and to absorb the lovely surroundings! This lifted my mood hugely.
By the time we got back to the house, I remembered that I still hadn’t recorded my lectures for tomorrow’s classes. So from about 7 - 8pm, I sat on my bed recording four lectures on the topic of acids and bases! I’m not sure about the quality of the lectures this week!
At 8pm, I had my first Zoom chat with my school friends since the lockdown began. It was lovely to see them all. Each has their own struggle that they’re dealing with at the moment. What Leona had to say really struck a chord with me though. As someone with an underlying health condition, she has been cocooning for the past two months and, even if the restrictions are eased in the next few weeks, she’s not sure if she’ll be able to leave her house this side of Christmas! That really put things in perspective for me.
Julie had her second child last month and hasn’t been able to have any visitors to see him. Melanie lost her job in Delphi resort, but seems to be happily painting and illustrating in her house in Mayo. Laura is working in Tallaght hospital and says that some of the wards are very quiet, although things seem to be picking up in the last few days. Aoife is starting a new hospital job next week, and so is making the most of this week “off.” We’d a great chat together. Some moments we poured our hearts out to each other, and then there were other moments of lightness and laughter. Next week we’re planning an Italian night where we’re all going to eat an Italian meal while on Zoom together. I look forward to that!Les mer
Day 52 - Wings for Life World Run
3. mai 2020, Irland ⋅ ☁️ 12 °C
Today was the big day when me and Fiona would be taking part in the Wings for Life World Run! This year it was organised through an app, where your progress was tracked and you were “caught” by a virtual catcher car. As is usual on our runs, me and Fiona chatted on the phone for the duration of the run. My aim was to get to 15km before being caught, while Fiona was aiming to complete a half marathon!
The whole event was as close to the buzz of a race as you can get in the current circumstances, and both of us were well-able to stick to our planned paces, thanks in no small part to the adrenaline buzz associated with the whole event. I managed to get to 16.49km before being caught, while Fiona got to 23.59km! This put us 10th and 3rd female finishers in Ireland, which I’m very proud of!
I was wrecked afterwards, so all I managed for most of the rest of the day was a nice, hot shower and to cook an omelette for dinner. Later in the evening, I had a Zoom chat with Lisa Banahan, Orlaith and Fiona. Right at the start of our chat, Peter asked me to move from the living room up to the bedroom, as my chatting was disturbing his guitar playing with the lads. Unfortunately I ended up spilling a glass of red wine all over myself, my laptop and the hall, stairs and landing, while on the move. It was funny, popping back into the living room to gesture to Peter about what had happened, and all he could see was me covered literally head to toe in red wine! He didn’t know what was going on, and couldn’t stop to ask as he was mid-tune on the guitar! We had a good laugh about it on Zoom when Orlaith spotted me mopping the floor with tissues while the others chatted! Having a good, hearty laugh on Zoom these days is great. There were plenty of laughs tonight too, as John did his usual criticism of us and our love of the Wings for Life race!
Peter stayed up for hours into the night, drinking a few beers and chatting to Seán, Turlough and Brían. It’s so nice that we’re gradually finding new ways to socialise and to connect with our friends.Les mer
Day 51 - Today was tough!
2. mai 2020, Irland ⋅ ⛅ 8 °C
After the news last night of the very slow unwinding of the lockdown restrictions, I found today tough. Judging by comments online though, I’m not alone. All I can do is to take things one day at a time and to enjoy each day as it comes!
I started the day, as I always do on a Saturday, with the parkrun Global Quiz. You watch the quiz live on YouTube and then fill in answers on a separate website. This week I got five answers correct, my lowest score yet! My PB so far is eleven out of fifteen.
After the quiz, I headed down to the field by the river to do my “Mona Fartlek” session, as instructed by the training plan I’m following. It was a really enjoyable session, even if I did end up running it in the boggy section of the field, due to the number of dog walkers around!
When the session was done, I headed off in the car to collect my online shop. It was a big one this time - the boxes of Cheerios for Peter just seemed to keep coming! They were on special offer this week.
The afternoon was warm and sunny, so we sat outside for a good while. Then I worked on two chapters of my chemistry book and we watched the film, Ms, Peregrine’s House for Peculiar Children. Peter said that films like that are his favourite type!
From May 18th, groups of four people will be allowed to meet in outdoor places, so we’ve already arranged with our friends Brendan and Megan in Carrigaline, to meet somewhere on that date. That’ll be something nice to look forward to!
I’ve the Wings for Life virtual run to do tomorrow, so I headed to bed early to get enough rest.Les mer
Day 50 - Update on restrictions
1. mai 2020, Irland ⋅ ⛅ 12 °C
What a rollercoaster of emotions today!
Today was the day we were all eagerly anticipating, as our current restrictions are due to expire on the 5th May and an announcement was due in relation to what happens after this date.
I started the day, as is usual on a Friday, with our 8am Pete class. Then I wrote five chapters of the chemistry revision book that I’m hoping to release for sale next week!
At 6pm, we sat down for the news, and for Leo’s announcement, and it was not good news from my point of view. From Tuesday, we will now be allowed to drive and exercise up to 5km from our homes, and over 70s will finally be allowed out of their homes again. The extended 5km radius doesn’t make too much of a difference to me, although I see that I’ll be able to make it down to Tramore Valley Park, which has a nice 5km loop in it. I’ll also be able to make it to the Glen River parkrun course. The main thing for me though, is that we won’t be able to go more than 20km from our homes until July 20th! I shouldn’t have read the detailed document that was forwarded in almost every WhatsApp group that I’m in. I feel so overwhelmed! July 20th is ages away, and the only restriction that I care about is getting to see my family.
Needing to put that out of my mind, we ordered takeaway, which only took 30 minutes to arrive today, compared with the 2 hours it took last week. Then, me, Fiona, Anna, Mum and Paul went on Houseparty, an app that lets you video chat and play games. The games were so bad they were good, and I got in such a laughing fit that I was crying and could barely breathe! It’s nice to be able to do things like that with my family.
For the next while, I’ll be focusing on one day at a time. I’m sure there’ll be tough, overwhelming days, but there have been lots of nice days so far too, so here’s to lots more of those!Les mer
Day 49 - World record attempt begins
30. april 2020, Irland ⋅ ⛅ 10 °C
For some reason, my friends have talked me into trying to beat the 5km world record, by doing it in downhill 100m increments! Thursdays are my busy days though, in terms of online classes, so I wouldn’t get to try it until later in the day.
As usual, my day started at 10am with a live Zoom lecture. I was a bit worried about today’s lecture, as I didn’t get to prepare for it as much as I would have liked due to the sales of my biology book kicking off yesterday! However, both lectures today went fine, and the students were their usual optimistic, enthusiastic selves, which always gives me a bit of a lift. In general, they don’t seem to worry as intensely as older people, even during this global pandemic, so it’s good to be around that sort of attitude every so often these days. In my individual meetings, I was chatting with one girl in Kuwait. She was very overwhelmed last week, as she is electronically tagged due to covid-19, and the police monitor her whereabouts every day as she has recently returned home from Ireland. She seemed much more motivated this week though, and my weekly video chat with her seems to have contributed to that, which is good. I enjoy catching up with her every week!
After all my classes had finished for the day, at about 4pm, I headed out to complete my Crusaders one mile time trial. We’ve a fun, virtual competition happening, where the winner is the person who gets a mile time that is closest to their predicted time. I predicted 6:55 and finished in 7:11. Fiona headed out at the same time as me an finished in a fantastic 5:55! It’s tough racing these sort of speedy, short distances at the moment, especially on your own.
When I got home from the time trial, I then decided to make a start on my 5km world record attempt, by running five downhill 100m segments. It was a lovely, sunny evening, and I completed the 500m in 80 seconds, which is five seconds ahead of the pace I need. My legs were a bit sore from it afterwards though, so I’m not sure when I’ll get out to do my next 500m segment! In fact, with five reps done and forty five to go, my motivation is waning somewhat already. At least I have my segment marked out, and it’s on the road just across from our house, so it won’t be too much effort to pop out and do a few if I feel like it later in the week. Although, I’m now wondering if it’s a bit of a mad plan!Les mer
Day 48 - Maddest day so far?!
29. april 2020, Irland ⋅ 🌧 9 °C
Today started off as just another day in isolation. I went for a short, easy run down by the river. I showered and had breakfast. I answered various student emails and caught up on a few bits and pieces online.
While I had been out on my run, my thoughts had wandered to my, recently finished, Leaving Cert Biology revision booklet. It had been my New Year’s resolution to make such a booklet and, thanks to all this extra time during lockdown, I had finally finished it. I’d almost forgotten about it though, and I starting thinking about what I was going to do with it. I’d probably email it to my cousin Luke, who’s doing the Leaving Cert this year. I’d like to try to sell it to students maybe, but I don’t know where I’d do that. How would teachers react to me trying to sell something to them? By the end of my run, I had decided to post the booklet in the Irish Science Teachers Facebook group, as a start. One or two people there might be interested in buying it.
So, in the morning, I submitted my post about th revision booklet to the group. It didn’t get posted straight away though. This private Facebook group is moderated and all new posts are screened. I figured they wouldn’t allow a post that was openly trying to sell something. So, I continued with my day, preparing homework for tomorrow’s online classes, and so on.
A few hours later, I noticed something strange in my email inbox. PayPal was starting to notify me of payments that had been submitted to me. People had started buying my revision booklet! It was so unexpected. “Peter, I’ve just made almost €50 off this revision booklet!” I was speechless! What an interruption to my afternoon. I had to drop the class preparation that I was in the middle of, and I had to start emailing the booklet out to my new customers. I was slow, at first, as I hadn’t expected there to be such a demand, but I quickly changed a few things to make the process at my end a little bit more efficient.
An hour later, the demand was far exceeding what I could keep up with. “Peter, there’s now €500 in my PayPal account!” I needed to go to the bathroom, but emails and queries and all sorts of messages were keeping me going flat out! A quick bathroom break and I was back. I had made €700 in just two hours. This is crazy!
The rest of the afternoon and evening continued like this. There was a non-stop stream of teachers buying the booklet and, where I had expected people to be annoyed at me asking for money, people were so grateful. I received so many lovely and complimentary messages throughout the day. Teachers are clearly worn out, and running low on digital resources at this stage, so they were loving my booklet. “I wish I had this before,” one said! By the time I finally fell in to bed this evening, I had received over €1000 in payments! At one point, it had gotten so mad that I even considered taking my post down so that no more people could access the link to buy my booklet! Peter tried to talk to me at one point during the day and I replied “can’t talk, I’m trying to run a business here!” “Ok Walter White!” he replied, in reference to the chemistry teacher in the TV programme, who starts making money on the side by making and selling drugs!
A few teachers messaged me over the course of the day asking if I had a chemistry version of this booklet. I told them that I had one in preparation (which I don’t!), so I have my work cut out for me now over this upcoming bank holiday weekend to get this now, much-anticipated chemistry book started and finished!
At 8.30pm this evening, we had our usual Sheehan family quiz, with John as host. Paul won tonight, and all of the rest of us were joint second! It was nice because Suzanne in Australia joined us towards the end of our call, for the first time. I am exhausted now. I didn’t even have time to watch the six o clock news this evening!Les mer
Day 47 - You just cant win!
28. april 2020, Irland ⋅ ⛅ 9 °C
Today, a funny thing happened to me on my run. As I was running along the path, I could see another runner coming towards me quite quickly. I decided to cross to the opposite side of the road, to avoid coming within two metres of him. I had to wait a few moments before I could cross, as there were cars coming, but I managed to duck across just before our paths crossed. As we passed, I gave my usual smile and wave, but he shook his head, tut tutted and shouted “there’s no virus!” You just can’t win! This is a new one on me, getting given out to for making an effort to socially distance. I wonder is the guy a conspiracy theorist, or is he just fed up of people “overreacting?” For some reason, this incident annoyed me way more than any time a walker has given me a dirty look for being out running.
These days when I’m out and about, I wave and smile to as many people as I can, especially the people that I see almost every day. I like having a project of trying to befriend the regulars that I come across while on my daily run! Plus, smiling and waving pretty much always softens the attitude of walkers that look like they might be annoyed at the sight of someone out running. There’s a guy that usually sits outside his apartment block, above the Sunday’s Well Road. Some days he’s doing some sort of DIY project, but today he was just sitting and watching the world go by. He’d a big greeting for me today when I said hello!
This morning, I’d a few bits and pieces to get through for work. This included a plagiarism meeting with a student, who didn’t actually show up for the Zoom meeting in the end. I was quite productive with the morning though, and got my work to-do list completed.
In the afternoon, I took a while to make a nice lunch for me and Peter, to read a running magazine and to write a postcard to send to Garrett, who sent us one this week. We had quite a laugh composing our poem on the postcard!
In the evening, we had our Pete class at 6pm, then it was Crusaders quiz time again. Brendan was the quizmaster. The questions were hard tonight, and he flew through them at quite a fast pace. Even when people kept asking him to slow down, he kept churning out the questions quickly. It was a bit stressful, but quite funny, and I got a final score of 19 out of 50. During the quiz, myself and Emer had a great text conversation about Percy Pigs, as she was eating some. Now that I’m thinking about these, some of my favourite sweets, I’m suddenly thinking about how much I miss Marks & Spencer food! You think you’re fully aware of everything that you miss during lockdown, and then moments like these pop up. Small, but not insignificant moments!Les mer
Day 46 - My new kettlebell arrived!
27. april 2020, Irland ⋅ ☁️ 9 °C
I always seem to be on a bad buzz on a Monday these days. The reason being that I have to upload screencasts of my lectures for the week ahead on a Tuesday and, despite being stuck at home all day every day, I still leave all the preparation until the day before! As a result, I spent pretty much the entire day today, making powerpoints, recording lectures and preparing homework assignments. I think, at the start of the lockdown, I used to be more at peace with tapping away on my computer all day, preparing material for class. However, then we had a week off for Easter, and that put me into a different routine which has been tricky to break out of! It’s funny because, before Easter, I didn’t know how I was going to cope with having the week off, and I assumed I’d just work right through it. That obviously did not happen!
In some excellent news, the kettlebell that Fiona ordered for me was delivered today by An Post. This brings to an end a five or six week search for a kettlebell! I don’t know how she did it. As I’ve said before, kettlebells are not available online or in shops, unless you’re willing to spend several hundred euro! I can finally ditch the rock that I’ve been using in Pete’s class. This will be bittersweet for me as I, and the others, have become somewhat fond of my rock. Fiona was very excited about the arrival of my kettlebell anyway. Perhaps even more excited than me!
By the time I had finished my lecture preparation for tomorrow, it was late enough in the evening. Thankfully, today was a much needed rest day in our running training plan, so it was an evening on the couch for me. I finally finished the amazing “Easter Logic Problem” that Anna posted to me. Although I did need a little bit of help from Anna! Then, as is usual, I worked on our lockdown orchestra music. Peter has lots of ideas for how to improve the sound of the piece - we must have played around with the music and discussed how to make it sound better for about an hour. What will I do when I finally release the piece?!Les mer
Day 45 - Unexplored parts of my radius
26. april 2020, Irland ⋅ 🌧 12 °C
We are now 45 days into our lockdown and there are still, somehow, parts of my 2km radius that I haven’t explored! I went out at 10am this morning for a long run while chatting to Fiona. We spent most of the time discussing what lies ahead in the future, especially in terms of immunity to covid-19, and the development of a vaccine. The WHO announced yesterday that there is currently “no evidence” that covid-19 induces long term immunity in people. We had a good chat about what we thought the implications of this were.
About halfway through my run, I spotted someone emerging from a gap in the hedge beside the road, and so I decided to see what was beyond the hedge. I was so glad that I did, because what I found was an expanse of field, right beside the river Lee. And barely a soul around. It was just perfect! There was one spot where the trail was only wide enough for single file, but when I emerged from that section, I saw that two people were waiting patiently for me to come out of that section before they went in. I think this will be my new spot to come to every day. It feels like absolutely ages ago that I was running up the hill from our house, and past the buy Supervalu etc.
The rest of the day was nice and lazy. I worked a bit on our lockdown orchestra. Incidentally, producing our orchestra piece has almost become my full time job, but more of that anon! I also did a free yoga class on the Downdog app. I chose a “restorative” class, as I was quite tired. I then edited my Tesco delivery which is due tomorrow. I think I’ve mentioned before that planning the Tesco delivery is a big highlight of the week!
I somehow ended up out in the garden for a bit in the afternoon too, even though the weather was quite cool. My buxus plants, that I adopted from Fiona’s garden last Summer, are looking half dead, so they are in dire need of some care and attention. I’ve trimmed them, and will water them every day for the next while.
In the evening, me and Peter sat down to watch the new Chris Hemsworth film, Extraction, on Netflix, as he had been discussing it on the Graham Norton show the night before. It wasn’t the best film ever, but it was a nice, easy watch. It was one of those films that’s good if you don’t think too deeply about it!
Anticipation is really building now about what will be announced this Friday, in terms of our restrictions that are due to expire on 5th May. I’ve been listening to the radio and television. Some days it seems that the restrictions won’t change at all, but other days it seems that our 2km radius might be widened slightly, or done away with altogether. I’m so jealous of the people on the National Public Health Emergency Team that already have some idea of what’s coming next week!Les mer
Day 44 - Stay at home!
25. april 2020, Irland ⋅ ☁️ 10 °C
We have just over one week to go until the current restrictions expire, but there’s a lot of talk of people relaxing the restrictions themselves already. On the news, Dublin Bus said that they have seen an increase in passenger numbers, and seismologists in Dublin have also noticed an increase in vibrations that correspond to increased car and pedestrian activity in the city. Leo Varadkar has, therefore, been on television telling people that if they don’t adhere to the restrictions properly, that they’ll have to be extended.
I went out for my usual run “with Fiona” this afternoon, and it felt like the place was jammed with people. It made for quite an unpleasant run actually, because there were too many people to dodge. Fiona reported the same where she was on Dun Laoghaire pier. I also couldn’t get over the amount of recreational cyclists out and about!
In the morning, before my run, I did a virtual Zoom brunch with the family, which was nice. Fiona had collected a takeaway brunch from The Mellow Fig for herself and the others, and I made my own scrambled eggs at home.
In the afternoon, Peter and I collected our shopping from Tesco, which is always a highlight of the week! Demand for click and collect seems to have reduced, as we were able to book this slot only yesterday.
In the evening, we’d a much overdue Zoom chat with Lisa, John, Garrett, Orlaith, JT, Fiona and Paul. It’s so nice to be laughing heartily again with friends. We actually stayed on chatting for about three and a half hours! JT told us that, three days ago, he started having symptoms of covid-19! Rhona had it about two weeks ago and has ,thankfully, recovered, so it looks like JT picked it up from her. This is the first time that I’ve personally known someone with the infection, and I’m so glad to hear that it’s been relatively mild for both of them. Although, Rhona did go to the hospital with breathing difficulties. That’s scary to hear.
Today was also Peter’s siblings, Mike and Mo’s birthday. I made a group “happy birthday” video again. I must get back to finishing our “lockdown orchestra” piece of music tomorrow!Les mer