Another couple of days of isolation ahead of us, although we feel pretty isolated already! R has been awaiting news of having a biopsy and speaking with the hospital on Monday they said he was on the waiting list. Think a cancellation must have come through because at 8am this morning they were trying to reach him to ask him to be at FPH by 1530 for a covid test. How blessed we were to find a car hire 10min walk from boat and that I had remembered my driving licence when we came aboard. Almost came unstuck when they asked for a utility bill with my address. Then remembered G is scanning our post, which is in a file on my phone, so they accepted a Premium Bond win letter – all of £25!
I calculated journey time of 1.5hrs and added half an hour for traffic delays and then a bit more so I wouldn’t get stressed, so decided to rent car from 1300hrs. Am I thankful for that extra time – the company computer was playing up and even though we were the only customers, it took 30minutes to log our details, repeatedly! I was beginning to calculate alternatives in my head for getting to FPH, none of which seemed very possible. What alarmed me was that these guys were not going to rent me a car unless they could log in to their computer system. No alternative was offered, such as a handwritten paper agreement. We really are at the mercy of technology in all sorts of ways. I hadn’t even considered this would be an issue.
Then I actually had to drive! It’s been so long I nearly forgot what side of the road I had to drive on. Add a manual rather than an automatic and you can see that R was in for a bumpy ride! The car was just about brand new – we were the first punters to use it and it went like a dream. Small and compact, it whizzed along, all the while R reminding me to keep to the speed limits! I had to keep reminding myself what gear I was in. I grew up with two brothers who loved tinkering with cars and listening to their engines and gear boxes almost like they spoke. I never got the language of the car and certainly couldn’t hear what gear I might be in dependant on the noise!
The covid test was straightforward and before we knew it we were en route home but not before we had filled the car with petrol remembering the ‘glove procedure’ detailed to us by the rental guys to avoid any cross contamination from pump handle to steering wheel. Then before leaving the car we had to sanitize everything we might have touched. All very thorough and reassuring, just a bit nerve-wracking. I remembered, after depositing the keys through the letterbox , that R had sat briefly in the back but I had not sanitized the back door handles. I had also, in the confusion of the morning computer glitch, left my ancient driving licence in the car hire office. So a call to the office was in order to guarantee safe keeping of my licence until Saturday when we hire the car again, and to admit that the door handles need sanitising!
Thank goodness I did all that cooking yesterday. Plenty of food to eat as we obviously can’t go shopping. After our unexpected exciting daytrip I was delighted all I had to do was warm through some chilli. Honestly, driving on the M25 after a narrowboat is mentally exhausting! All those other drivers. And I thought it was lockdown!
Ended the day watching a documentary of a young German couple who decide to drive through Africa. It looked far more adventurous than our narrowboat experience! The one thing that struck me was that their trip occurred during an ebola crisis. The West African country they were travelling through was experiencing a lockdown, very similar to us today. If I had seen that film a year ago I would never have imagined we would one day be in the same situation.
Other than taking pictures of the hire car to prove we haven’t scratched it my camera remained idle so sadly I have nothing to liven this post, except £1 worth of joy – aren’t daffodils amazing!
NarrowboatTLC 