How was your day? (Random off topic chat)

When I started working from home many years ago my desk was a coffee table which I raised to a reasonable height by cutting a wooden pole into sections of the correct length and cable-tying them to the table's legs. It's still set up that way, though I no longer use it for work.

I went to two places yesterday - the PO and M&S - that had someone on the door allowing only a set number in at a time. Quite surprised with M&S as it was late afternoon and the place was fully stocked.

Haven't see a '1 per customer' or variation on the theme at all this week.

South London and the food bank warehouse very calm today. The park was busy but people were disciplined. It's all good until you turn on the new.

Been out having my "permitted exercise" as it's a fabulous day, even though not being allowed to use public transport limited me to the local area. Probably a mistake though to try to combine it with searching for scarce groceries as though I tried 2 town centres and 3 major chains, none of them had any of the things we need and wretched Waitrose has started using heavy-duty security staff, so at the first branch I didn't bother waiting. I understand about the need to limit numbers and practice social distancing, but suppose you're trying to shop before work or in your lunch break? You don't even know whether your turn to enter the shop will come in the time you have, let alone whether any of the items you want will be in stock. It would help if stores could post an update at the entrance, listing popular items they do/don't have, to save customers waiting in vain.

I kept my mobile off to have a break from media but next time I go for a walk to try to switch off, I think I'll be giving shopping a miss, too!

Just been out for my permitted daily exercise- glorious sunset in London tonight!

Interesting to be even on the fringes of this mad, all-consuming scramble that so many groups and sectors in the country are currently engaged in.

Heard from both a very large foodbank group and Kings College Hospital this afternoon - both fundamentally re-organising and dramatically upscaling volunteer activities. For volunteer groups these are massive undertakings. At national level, you just get a hint of sections of industries retooling, entire Uni departments pivoting.

I'm too nervous to go outside at the moment so yesterday walked up and down my stairs 100 times, in blocks of 10, for exercise. Today my leg muscles are killing me so I've only done 80 times. At least, I really hope my muscles are aching due to excessive stair usage & not incipient coronavirus!

It is 10.50pm and I thought I would go on the Boots website to check if they have any hand sanitizer in stock. I am being held in a queue!

So at one point yesterday I was asked if i'd like to continue dating ... tuna* or did I want a change.



* it s foodbank warehouse thing.

Non-volunteer day. Pumping the bike tyres and using the opportunity to drop off a couple of ebay sales. Also keen to have a distanced look at London on my way around.

Did you check the gas people's credentials? (Not a euphemism!) Doesn't sound like a particularly wise thing to be doing with a mallet. 🤨

Manager asked me to test our home broadband speed for WFH.  I've no idea what it should be but ours is in the low 30's kbps, which doesn't sound a lot.  On the other hand, one of my fellow volunteers has no home broadband at all, so she's stuck unless she goes to the home of a colleague.

If anyone might be tempted, this is the classic Couch to 5K plan - a route successfully followed by many thousands:

www.nhs.uk/live-well/exercise/couch-to-5k-week-by-week/

Cycled around for a couple of hours this morning in glorious weather. If you take the building sites, joggers and delivery people out of the equation, it's permanently 3am on a Monday morning in central London.

Absolutely wonderful morning

No, honestly, it was kbps, as I've seen the M-version when the signal has been better.  However, that was on the work-supplied laptop at about 6 am today - which you wouldn't think would be a busy time - whereas later, on my own laptop, I got 12 mbps, which is pretty good for our ghastly ISP.  So I'll have to wait and see what happens if/when it comes to WFH, but at present we still need to cover the office on a rota basis.