How was your day? (Random off topic chat)

Beautiful early morning walk, stumbled on a new green space between Elstree and Edgwarebury Park.

Now settling in for the first nibble of my Easter Egg whilst listening to The Archers.

Yesterday was a difficult day.

I’m feeling very claustrophobic and trapped, and whilst I’m happy to be doing my bit and staying home, it’s not something I think I can mentally do for longer than a few more weeks. Im worried that the government furlough scheme is only through to the end of May. What’s the exit strategy? We need to know.

Hang in there Mark. Totally normal to have difficult days. Be weird if we didn’t really. 
I hope you have a better day today x

Intriguing as you now live very close to the area where I was born and brought up, but I'm less familiar with the part to the south as I tended to gravitate towards other rural areas to the north, east and west.  Probably the furthest south I reached as a teenager was doing my Saturday job at a kennels outside Elstree, or visiting my aunt, uncle and cousins in Borehamwood - where I later used to go swimming and then worked for a year, post-university, at the new branch of Tesco - which at the time was the 2nd largest in the country.

I had a run this morning along the River Thames and even though it was congested at times, ppl made their best to keep 2 meters apart. This whole thing seems to be changing ppl on the whole, the amount of "good morning"s and "hello"s I got was more than I get the whole year usually. There is something good about this lock down.

Later on I went out for a shopping trip. In Chinatown they took my temperature before I could enter the shop. I walked over to Green Park where I sat on a bench for a little bit while I had my Chinese snack. I walked over to Waitrose which was closed and walked even further to a larger Waitrose which was also closed.

On the way home I ordered pizza from a local restaurant. I never ever dined there in my 15 years of living around here and it was interesting to pick up a pizza from there. We had a lovely spring salad with the pizza and it felt very summer-ish. We also opened a bottle of champagne to go with it. We would be on holiday right now in the far east if it were not for the coronavirus and it felt the right thing to substitute it with some champagne.

I am very surprised to find that I enjoy my days, it feels less commercial now that consumerism is non-existent, and London feels more relaxed. I feel a little guilty though, I should not be having good time whilst all this tragedy is going on.

Frustrating, but good that you know what it is now, Matthew.

My day was a bit better than anticipated. I was nervous about my first trip to the supermarket in weeks, partly if we'd get everything and partly if I'd argue with my brother as usual. It wasn't too bad at all, got everything we needed, most people were sensible about distance and everyone was friendly, even my brother mostly!

Great pictures! My dad and I did a 7 mile walk around our local area - nice to have all that fresh air. Barely saw a soul.

No walks the next two days for me as I'm off to India working one of the rescue flights. Will be an experience for sure!

Someone in a tree, I'm almost a little jealous! London without people looks both eerie and beautiful.

My day has been... It hasn't really gone according to plan in any way. I've been feeling incredibly tired and kind of like I will come down with a cold the whole day, including an annoying headache that refused to go away.
So, instead of going out as planned, I stayed in. I listened to music (I'm still obsessing over Tim Minchin's performance in 'Jesus Christ Superstar' which I saw yesterday, so there was a playlist of his songs from it, on repeat, and some other stuff I love...), allowed myself some more treats than usual and 'worked' a bit on some ideas for my hobby (which I would call a blog, but it doesn't really deserve the title... It's an occasional writing outlet, really).

Tomorrow will be better, I'm sure. :)

Mark, have a safe trip! (Are you a pilot? That sounds so exciting!)

I’m in the cabin. Pushing your flight attendant button will not turn your flight attendant on (although at presents it’s preferable to visiting us in the galley!)

What great pictures. I wondered that myself about birds and any animals if they wonder where we all are!

I’ve been fine since lockdown started, much better than before that when my anxiety and blood pressure were through the roof. Last few days though, with all these people talking about exit strategies and ‘getting back to normal’ it’s all kicking off again. Then, I put the radio or TV on and the media keep going on about ending it and I’m literally screaming at them telling them that it isn’t safe! I don’t know if they realise how much they are effecting people’s mental health with all this talk. I’m finding solace in music though, I have a massive pile of CDs (yes, some people still buy physical product) so I’m making my way through them. Playing an early 70s Stax soul music collection now. I’m also going on late night walks as my exercise, partly t make me sleepy but also because there are so few people around it makes me feel much safer.A shame that I have to keep doing the same walks but whatever it takes to keep me relatively fit! And breathe.....

It’s my physical health, in the end, that is the greater concern. Many of us are ‘at risk’ without being part of the ‘at high risk’ group. It just feels as though some are happy for us to be sacrificed so that others can do what they want to do again. I think the announcement on Thursday should help; six weeks seems long enough for there to be proper testing and more PPE available for all of us to have access to. It would help to lengthen the fear/relief/fear cycle anyway. I fully understand how younger people will think the risk is worth it, so maybe they could be allowed to work and socialise more (the problem being, those that live with older family members, I imagine. People living their own lives in their twenties and thirties should be okay though, so why not?).