Day 2

I forgot to mention that yesterday, our first day of shielding was also my wife's birthday. Many happy returns! A grand way to spend your birthday, sorry love! There's always next year, we can celebrate your 60th in style!

We got through the day, and like many others settled down to watch Boris make his proclamation to the people yesterday evening. At last, it looks like they are starting to take things a bit more seriously, hopefully now people will take a bit more notice and stop acting like selfish morons - as if this whole thing is just someone else's problem, and will only affect the old and vulnerable.

We woke to another decent day of weather here in Kent. Good, as today's task is to carry out phase one of the garden redesign - that makes things sound quite grand, but in reality we have a small garden and the plans wouldn't have taken more than a few hours to carry out, but hey, don't want to peak too son - after all we have 83 days (or more) to carry out our Grand Designs, or should that be Ground Force or whatever!

First though was the task of taking in an Asda grocery delivery.

Now Asda seemed to be pretty much on the ball, with the necessities to try and stop the spread of infection. We did a dummy run last week, and put in our notes that we were self isolating. The driver did everything by the book, called upon arrival to let me know he was there, put gloves on and bagged up all the items at his van, then brought them to the door and left the bags outside my front door. He then retreated down our drive to his van, where he let me know it was all good to go and wished me well.

Contrast this with today's driver, who simply rang our door bell, then brought the tote boxes to our door and promptly put all our shopping, loose, onto the floor, all the while not wearing any gloves - clearly he didn't get the memo as to how things should be done!

Having today received her official letter from the government regarding her health condition, my wife has since been bombarded by text messages letting her know what is going on! We have registered to say that she doesn't need anyone to call in to help care for her, as that is my job, and initially we said we didn't need help with food deliveries, as family could do that and drop to our door - however after last night's announcement I have changed that, as I don't feel it fair to put that burden on my daughter to go out more than she needs. I will just have to rely on my Asda deliveries to get me through, as long as today's driver gets the message we should be fine!

The wife is now panicking about whether we are doing the right thing. The advice she has been sent indicates she should sleep alone, use a separate bathroom (not possible) and take all her meals in her own room (our bedroom). I have assured her that this advice doesn't apply to us, as the whole family have gone into shielding mode, whereas the government advice expects the others within the house to go about business as normal, whatever that may be. The kids have been laid off college and work, and I don't go out to work, so it made perfect sense for us all to do this - my wife's health is paramount...

She was still getting stressed about this, but fortunately her counsellor has rung her today, and she feels, like me, that the way we are doing this takes away the need for the drastic measures, if members of the household were still going outside in the horrible world...

Let's see what tomorrow brings - other than phase 2 of Ground Force/Grand Designs!