Lockdown - coping with COVID

[Zombie]

The UK is once again in lockdown  awaiting vaccination and hoping the NHS can withstand the immense and appalling pressures that have been forced on it. In England we’re allowed one walk a day, otherwise required to stay home unless buying food, getting medicine, caring for others or going to “essential” work (the devolved governments of the other UK countries set their own rules, so I’m not too sure what they are).

There’s a real issue with mental well-being not just from health and financial worries but loneliness caused by enforced isolation.

So how’s everyone coping?

Me, I hardly dare watch, read or listen to the news.

I need to escape.

Into fictional worlds.

Can’t go to the library - closed since last March. Can’t buy a book - bookshops not essential.

So thank goodness for the internet.

Stumbled across this audiobook yesterday of Tom Sharpe’s novel, Vintage Stuff, read by Stephen Fry in 1987. The kindly uploader explains this has been unavailable for a long time, so he’s done a public service putting it on YouTube. I’m only on chapter 4 but so far it’s a marriage made in heaven , Sharpe’s peerless prose read with marvellous mellifluousness  by Fry. Whether you enjoy his style or not is personal choice but Sharpe was an exceptionally skilled writer, carefully constructing each sentence with not a wasted word, alliteration and assonance being deployed with exquisite precision to enhance the comic absurdity of his ghastly characters. His writing must have been influenced by an earlier humorous writer, P.G. Woodhouse (they both went to the same appalling public school of the kind savagely satirised in this novel ), but Sharpe’s satire shows no mercy on his targets where Woodhouse is content with amiable buffoonery

 

 

[astone2292]

Well. Kentucky is almost the opposite of the above described scenario. Oh, bless our Governor. He means well, but he's just acting like a kindergarten teacher with a classroom full of bourbon drinkers. He wags his finger and gives a mandate to restrict business occupancy levels, thinking that's just gonna solve the problem. Almost all business types are open for business. There is a mandatory mask mandate across the entire state, no if's, and's, or but's. But once again, our wonderful state residents show their brilliant intelligence, and assume that because the virus hasn't affected them or the people in their lives, the virus probably doesn't exist.

I work for one of the largest grocery chains in America. So I've been working 40+ hour workweeks ever since March. Watching maskless customers come in on a minute-by-minute basis with our management team just not giving a good God-damn about rules, I've lost a lot of hope for humanity. Thankfully, I work overnight shift as a stocker. That means I don't handle a lot of customers, as compared to our dayshift cashiers. It took until now for one of our stock crew members to finally get the virus, which I find impressive since we're practically family. Reading of your lockdown, I would be beyond ecstatic to swap scenarios with ya, @Zombie!

[Kitt]

24 minutes ago, astone2292 said:

Reading of your lockdown, I would be beyond ecstatic to swap scenarios with ya, @Zombie

Oh he'll no! As crazy as dealing with peeps that don't believe the virus exists is, total lockdown like @Zombie deals with would have me locked in a rubber room!

[chris191070]

Our lockdown here in the 🇬🇧 is horrible. Where i live I've been in some form of lockdown since March 2020. We're hoping the health service doesn't get overwhelmed. Bring on the vaccine and a return to normality.

[Zombie]

Well the only good news is vaccines. The UK now has two in use and a third, from the US Moderna, was approved last week (but won’t be delivered until Spring) but getting the numbers is a massive challenge. The target is to hit 2m a week to get, say, 50m population vaccinated in 6 months. But that means each healthcare worker doing, say, an 8 hour shift delivering say 6 an hour (I’m guessing that’s a realistic target with prep, identity checks, database records etc) = around 50/day per person. So if you do the maths that needs 80,000 people in 3 shifts 24 hours a day, all working flat out and doing nothing else and - realistically - some will get sick so we will need probably 100,000 healthcare workers doing nothing but stick needles in people (I think!  Tell me if I’m wrong). And the UK is small and densely populated compared to the US which helps!

But the question is how are you coping, keeping physically fit and mentally cheerful?

 

[astone2292]

4 minutes ago, Kitt said:

Oh he'll no! As crazy as dealing with peeps that don't believe the virus exists is, total lockdown like @Zombie deals with would have me locked in a rubber room!

I mean...lockdown means more writing on GA! Also, when COVID first struck and there was the announcements of what businesses were deemed essential, liquor stores were the first ones stated. I love this state with a mountain of passion, but I don't think we have our priorities in order. I jokingly made a lockdown plan in my journal where every family was to be supplied with a Monopoly board, a pack of playing cards, and every neighborhood be outfitted with a tin can-on-a-string telephone system. 

[Kitt]

I firmly believe craft stores should be considered an essential business! I have spent more on yarn, needle work patterns, drawing supplies and the like in the last 6 months than in the previous 2 years!

[Sherye Story Reader]

Well, if they shut down grocery stores and places for gas, then I will be the first one to start a riot with my wrath  with whomever gives that idea out! We need to eat and we need to have gas to go get our groceries.

Otherwise, I am staying home more than going out. Well, I was already doing that before the pandemic even started lol

 

[Mawgrim]

The first lockdown didn't seem quite as gloomy as the weather was better. It's difficult to keep your spirits up when the news is depressing, the weather grey, cold and gloomy. I was lucky enough to get my first dose of the Pfizer vaccine just before Christmas, although the second dose has now been cancelled as the UK government is trying to get as many people vaccinated with the first dose as possible. I'm still cautious about going out, though, particularly with the new strain which seems to be much more infectious.

The best thing that can be said about lockdown is that it gives you much more time to read and/or write. Had life continued as normal, I would never have been able to write 196,000 words in just under a year!

Have been enjoying socialising on Zoom with a group of friends from the am dram groups I belong to. We have been compiling quizzes to test each other's knowledge, played online Bingo and other online games on jackbox.tv as one of the members has a subscription. I really miss going to restaurants, or in the better weather, sitting in a pub garden with a pint of beer. Let's hope the world returns to some kind of normal this year.

[KJames]

On 1/11/2021 at 8:48 AM, Zombie said:

There’s a real issue with mental well-being not just from health and financial worries but loneliness caused by enforced isolation.

I grew up an only child with few friends in school.

I've got this pandemic stay-at-home thing.

Welcome to my world.

😎

[Zombie]

.

Edited February 16, 2021 by Zombie

[Zombie]

Another COVID victim...

 

For the first time since the year 1199 the Atherstone Ball Game hasn’t been played on Shrove Tuesday (today) in Atherstone, Warwickshire - a town in the English Midlands.

The Plague couldn’t stop it

Two World Wars couldn’t stop it

But the COVID virus has succeeded  

 

 

Edited February 16, 2021 by Zombie

[Mawgrim]

The Royal Shrovetide Football in Ashbourne has been cancelled too. I’ve followed that one a few times.

Edited February 16, 2021 by Mawgrim
To add picture

[Zombie]

this is just a brilliant story about two young cousins, Ollie Roberts, age 13, and Harvey Roberts, age 11, wanting to use the time they’ve been given during lockdown, while schools have been shut, to do something more useful than play computer games so they’ve been busy in their Grandad’s workshop learning how to be blacksmiths 

it’s gone so well not only are they having great fun they’ve built themselves a small business

https://www.itv.com/news/wales/2021-03-26/the-young-blacksmiths-from-wrexham-keeping-the-family-trade-alive-six-generations-on

if the video doesn’t work in the link above try this

 

 

 

 

Edited April 1, 2021 by Zombie

[Zombie]

Oops GA posted twice   

Edited April 1, 2021 by Zombie