Lockdown

Well that’s now eight, or is it nine, weeks of lockdown, and frankly I have done absolutely nothing useful with my spare time. I am sure there are lots of people who have spent this time productively. Learning a language, taking up macramé, waking up bright and early every morning to do Joe Wicks (seriously does anyone really do that?) Well I get up, go to work, otherwise known as walk to the kitchen, work then go home, otherwise known as put my laptop back in a box. It really is not that different to my usual workday to be honest. I do find after a day sat at the kitchen table staring at a laptop though the last thing I want to do on an evening is stare at a computer again so I am way behind on reviewing all the books I’ve been reading recently.
One good thing about this whole situation is that the neighbours seem to have started talking to each other. Interaction between neighbours on this street is quite low, one side of the road is pretty much just old women, our side is a bunch of young couples with kids who for some reason avoid us like the plague. That of course could have something to do with the fact that the only sun we get is on the bench I put in the front garden, and it’s just wrong to sit in the sun without a glass of wine. We’ve always assumed that we are therefore seen as the pissheads on the street.
However that illusion was completely shattered the other day. One of the mad old women over the road invited us to join her for a drink in the garden. Of course neither of us wanted to go. If it were up to me I’d have happily hidden in our own garden and ignored her. However Mr F had made the stupid mistake of giving her our home phone number (that now makes the total number of people who have that number 2, the other being my 94 year old gran) so of course she kept ringing and the only way to make the noise stop was either unplug the phone or go over. As she could see us through the window option one wasn’t much use, so we had to go over.
There were 4 women in their 70s, all sat on deck chairs 2 metres apart, absolutely hammered. From what we could gather (as well as sitting 2 meters apart, and being drunk they were all rather deaf) they’d started on wine, moved onto gin and that had run out so they were on the rum. It was only 5pm but like they said what else were they going to do with their afternoon. I do suspect however that this is nothing to do with the current COVID-19 situation, I have a sneaky suspicion that this is how they spend most afternoons. Well I say afternoon, one of them admitted that the night before she hadn’t finished a glass of wine and had found it in the morning… yep you’ve guessed it she had it with her Weetabix.
Well clearly we are mere lightweights compared to the women over the road. Maybe that’s how I can use my time whilst we are stuck at home, I could practice my drinking. Or I could maybe learn how to write my book reviews in crochet so I don’t have to continue to stare at the computer on an evening. That would at least be something useful to have to show for my time in lockdown!