Day 1: Self-isolating.

Dear family, friends and followers.

Here we are Day 1 of self-isolating. You may ask why we are bothering to self-isolate when we are on a secure mooring at the end of an arm. We took the decision to self-isolate because in the Arm we have elderly and poorly people living on their boats here. We are both 100% sure we are not carrying anything nasty, but to be certain we want to make doubly sure for the peace of mind of others. We will sit out on our pontoon and potter, but for us it is the right thing too do. Once we have done our self-isolating, we will then wander around the Arms grounds. I am not actually sure I want to venture out of the Arm even for shopping when the time comes. We do have a Sainsbury just a five minute walk up the road, but there will no doubt be queue's and that I am not going to inflict on myself. At the moment we have enough supplies to last the 14 days and a friend who has had the virus has offered to get us supplies, as she is now immune. But we will see what happens as the day's go by.

This morning we had a nice leisurely wake up, with a cup of tea in bed, and the TV on for the news. My legs are certainly telling me to do very little today. Having crept out of bed gingerly, I stoked up the fire and turned my attention to food. I decided to batch cook some mince beef out of the freezer. First of the batch meals is a Madras Curry, which will do us at least two days. I have some Naan bread in the freezer plus Onion Bhaji's and Samosa's in the freezer as well, plus plenty of rice. The rest of the mince will probably make a cottage pie and a pie, but we will see. We are a little low on vegetables, so I may need to use the frozen vegetables for a while. I am all about making use of everything I have available.

After all the cooking, the only thing to do is eat some of the hard work. I have to say it was lovely. The rest will freeze for later on. The remainder of the mince has been fried off with half an onion ( using the other half for dinner tonight), a tatty leek, frozen tomatoes, four remaining mushrooms, a couple of oxo cubes and a dash of pepper. It was put on the coal stove to cook slowly during the afternoon.
It has been another glorious day, with wall to wall sunshine. I did venture out to sweep the chimney and get rid of rubbish, but today was all about relaxing. I may feel more up to doing more tomorrow. I have realized my knees are not as young as they used to be and so need some TLC for a day or two.
This virus has made me realize that life is cheap and then some. It does not care if you have wealth, housing, fancy clothing or the latest car. It is impacting on everyone's lives, so PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE do as you are asked by Boris Johnson. Not even he is immune we now know. Stay at home and look after your loved ones. Potter around the garden and do the jobs you have been putting off, but do not pack a picnic and think you can go off trekking because your life is worth so much more. There will always be time for fun when this is all over and it will be over. The more we do as we are asked the quicker this will go away.

Pop back soon xx