It feels like I’ve lost a year rather than gained one
IT was my birthday this week and I can confirm it felt nothing like the one I had 12 long and arduous months ago.
That’s because celebration goes out of the window when you can’t get very close to your close family and your anniversary coincides with yet another official announcement of stringent social restrictions.
I’m not questioning those decisions in any way but from a purely selfish interest it meant my big day of the year became a stifled process of carefully scheduled family visits, all accommodated in and around my recently acquired and now greatly appreciated pop-up plastic gazebo.
Here we now often spend hours sort of moving around each other in a rather frustrating distanced way.
Personally, it feels as if I have lost a year rather than gained one.
It’s evaporated in a haze of Covid tedium as many domestic plans we had conjured up for ourselves ahead of 2020’s arrival have not materialised and fallen by the wayside.
I suppose if I’ve achieved anything it’s that a fair bit of home decorating has been done– the kitchen, dining room, stairs, front porch, back door, downstairs front windows and two of the bedrooms.
But after a while it eventually becomes too much of a chore and, once you have lazily let the uncleaned paintbrushes harden, it’s just far too easy to shrug one’s shoulders and leave the rest of the rooms untouched by fresh coverings of vinyl matt.
Our cottage also possesses a complete set of “character” windows with lots of small square panes of glass. There are actually 16 panes to each window or 48 edges to paint for each one and the upstairs front ones are crying out for a lick of gloss. It’s tedious tackling this task high up on a ladder and I’ve been putting it off all through our self-isolated months. I know now I won’t be doing it before winter arrives. So next spring it is, then.
The kitchen’s become a bit of a battleground, too.
I like cooking. So does my wife. However, while we have been incarcerated with no escape for weeks on end she has defeated me in the clash of catering and now takes command of all menus –
unless it’s a curry when she graciously allows me a rare sight of a chopping board.
This kitchen control has been acquired by her becoming the mastermind behind all our online grocery orders. This week, though, probably as a treat because my birthday was looming, I was allowed to compile one of them.
My food order arrived on Tuesday and it wasn’t long after that when a shouted conversation from the kitchen went something along the lines of: “Sausages! Why on earth did you order sausages?”
“I don’t know. I just thought I’d get some,” I replied meekly.
To which my wife, landing the last verbal punch from the deep recesses of the fridge, said, “Well, where am I going to put them?” To which I could provide no answer.
There’s also the thorny issue of changing our car, a proposal met with significant resistance by my wife who doesn’t drive. She argues that, right now, we’re hardly using the one we have. I grudgingly admit she does have a point. It’s got to the stage where filling up with fuel is an occurrence so rare it’s as exciting as having a proper away-day. But those of us who do the driving can dream, can’t we?
Anyway, while I was sitting inside our gazebo during a birthday week family visit my youngest grandchild popped up to deliver a hefty emotional moment by appearing at one of its “windows” and asking: “Can I give you a hug through the plastic before I go home?” A very touching moment. Something that’s in very short supply this year.