Quite an apt day to finish my post on ‘Sabbath’ as that is the day I gave myself today, having woken up feeling a bit under the weather. Immediately my mind turned to all things covid, so decided to cancel going to the laundrette and settled down to a day on the boat. R meanwhile attended to some mechanical details on the boat and continued sawing logs! We had had quite a busy day planned. After the laundrette, a Tesco shop and topping up the water, we were going to moor a mile up the canal at Cosgrove and walk to Deanshanger, the village we lived in in 1987/88. All of that will have to wait a day or two because tomorrow is meant to be wet so not a good day for a longish walk.
To compensate for missing a walk today I did some Joe Wicks exercises. Then I got creative and made a ‘prayer boat’ sign from bunting. I have been meaning to do it for weeks but never got started. It’s to hang on one of the boat windows so is not too large a project. It kept me busy for the morning and then after lunch I settled down to a couple of Bridgerton episodes. A cross between Jane Austen and Mills &Boon! By the late afternoon I was feeling back to normal and decided my early morning vapours were either a reaction to a couple of long walks combined with poor sleep, or a psychosomatic reaction to a fear of spreading covid. Places you have to go, like the supermarket, have warnings, obviously, against entering the shop if you have any covid symptoms. Now there are so many possible symptoms it is easy to jump to conclusions that the blocked nose you have along with a muzzy head may well be the start of covid rather than a simple allergy! And changes in body temperature, another covid symptom could infact just be an affliction to women of a certain age and feeling chilled is no surprise when the boat is unheated during the day and cold!
The logistics of actually having to isolate on the boat are complicated. Planned isolation, such as before R had an op, was easy as you just buy provisions in advance and make sure you have plenty of fuel, water and empty lou cassettes! Waking up and deciding you shouldn’t leave the boat because you may have covid is much more problematic as your basic necessities may run out within three days and yet there’s another week of isolation to cope with. Prevailing upon neighbours isn’t an option as you can’t visit the boat next door!
A quiet day was much appreciated and then in the evening we enjoyed a Zoom, sitting at the end of our daughter C’s dinner table, chatting to the couple she and her husband now share a community house with in London. They moved in together before Christmas and we have never met them so it was good to have a chance to meet virtually. There was an odd coincidence in that one set of parents owns a narrowboat. On retirement they had planned to spend many months aboard but then grandchildren happened along, so those plans went awry! That’s why R and I are so keen to spend as long as possible on the canals now whilst our family responsibilities are relatively light.
We watched a couple more episodes of The Queen’s Gambit and now at episode 6 I am finally finding it riveting enough to want to see it to its conclusion. The themes of a bleak childhood, an ill fated adoption and a brilliant mind combined with an asperger’s personality which then leads to severe addiction, makes an interesting storyline.
NarrowboatTLC 