Monday 30th March 2020. The UK is about to enter it's second week in lock down. According to our illustrious leader, we can only leave home for one of the four following reasons:
- Essential shopping
- Getting medical help
- One form of exercise per day
- Travelling to and from work if you cannot work from home
With regards to the fourth point, that's currently me. It's hardly essential work, but my being in the office to keep the servers and networks up and connected to the Internet means that our other twelve staff can all work from home. There is one other member of technical staff in the building with me to assist. With 4000 square feet of office space between the two of us it's very easy to maintain our distance. We occasionally wave to each other when we pass from opposite ends of the building.
All this means that our company survives, our staff continue to remain employed and contributing to the economy and our customers continue to benefit from our service, which in turn helps them continue to do business themselves. I realise how lucky we are, so far at least, and how difficult a lot of folk less fortunate than us, many friends and family included, are finding things at the moment.
I also feel like a bit of a pariah, which might explain a little as to why I felt I had to justify my current circumstances and the fact I'm still working 9 til 5 each day. There are a lot of "key workers" delivering "essential services" to the country at the moment. My wife, who works in food retail (includes alcohol!) is one of them. Our company primarily services the insurance industry, so I'm not sure we could argue we're an essential service as such, although for as long as insurance remains a competitive market I guess we are an essential part of that service for our clients and their ability to deliver to their customers.
But in any case, we can, with very minimal risk, continue to operate a pretty much uninterrupted service. So I think it's very important, for many reasons, that we do just that.
But in any case, we can, with very minimal risk, continue to operate a pretty much uninterrupted service. So I think it's very important, for many reasons, that we do just that.
Ironically, Nikki's currently taking a week's leave, although she's on call and has to go in to help out when they get their (currently much more regular than usual) deliveries. I was supposed to be on leave too; had the year proceeded as planned, we'd currently be somewhere west of Fowey with Dad and Calstar. However, under the circumstances, I figured it was best I cancelled my leave for now.
Calstar is a weight on my mind at the moment.
She's currently berthed in Queen Anne's Battery in Plymouth, which has been her home for the last couple of years. This year we decided to move her to the more sheltered cover of neighbouring Sutton Harbour. So just before Christmas we arranged and paid for an annual berthing contract for 2020 in Sutton that would go into effect when the 2019 contract with QAB expired.
At the end of March.
At the end of March.
At the beginning of last week, when the advice was still vestigial and advisory, maintain social distance, self isolate for 14 days if anybody in the household shows symptoms, etc, I observed the media hysteria, social, tabloid and otherwise, generated by the entirely predictable reaction of the crowd to a particularly sunny spring Sunday, and realised things were likely going to become a lot more draconian.
Monday lunchtime I called Dad and suggested we headed down to Plymouth the following morning to move Calstar to her new marina, rather than waiting for the weekend as we'd originally planned. At 2030 Monday evening they announced the lockdown with immediate effect and our plans were scuppered. I really should've acted the moment I thought of it.
So Calstar currently remains in Queen Anne's Battery. Our annual contract with them expires on 31st March, when our new annual contract with Sutton Harbour comes into effect. However, we've no way of moving Calstar from the one marina to the other before then; nor is there anybody else that could do it for us.
I can only hope that the lovely folks at QAB are reasonable in allowing us to arrange some kind of temporary extension to our current contract, given the extraordinary circumstances we all find ourselves labouring under.
All that said, in light of all the other turmoil and travail abroad in the world at the moment, however much a weight on my mind, these troubles really are quite trivial in comparison.
It was the strangest weekend. Got home, the gig was long cancelled, so nothing to do Friday night except settle down with a beer and chill for the evening. I'm not very practised at that (the chilling with nothing to do of an evening, that is; of beer I've had practice aplenty!) but thought I could probably get the hang of it with a little dogged persistence. Saturday morning, woke up, nothing planned except to walk the dogs and chill for another evening.
Saturday night was funny. Still no gig of course, so another evening home with another beer and the Internet. I look up from my beer and entertainment to glance at my watch, notice it's 0020, and think I really ought to consider going to bed. Figure another thirty minutes or so, finish my last glass (of by then no longer quite so so chilled) beer.
Next thing, I glance again at my watch and am horrified to see that it's now 0220. I can't for the life of me work out where the last hour has gone, but shame-faced and possibly a little tipsy from the night's, um, "chilling", I wake Nikki up from where she's nodded off on the sofa and we head off to bed.
Sunday, walk the dogs, cut the grass. Nothing else to do. Is this how normal people live? Sunday night, go to bed at a more reasonable hour, but having not done much all day read in bed into the early hours (EM Powell, historical fiction, a page turning style akin to Bernard Cornwall) then take an age to finally nod off. And oversleep a little the following morning.
It isn't until I'm pulling into the office car park after a very quiet drive into work, thinking it's around about 0900, not too late, that I glance at the clock on my car dashboard, the only time device in existence old enough to not get automatically updated by satellite, Internet or it's own artificial sentience.
It reads 0800. The clocks have leapt forward this weekend, and living in a bubble of my own isolation, I'd never realised.
Anyway. I'm fit and well. In fact, I'm pretty certain I already had this dreaded virus at the end of February before it became fashionable or was even supposed to be available in this country, go figure? Although that's another story, and there's no way to prove it, so I'm working on the clear assumption that I've not and taking all the appropriate precautions, washing hands like I hate my skin, staying a full cadaver's body-length distant from anybody not in my immediate household, coughing into my elbow when I must, etc.
The photos accompanying, completely out of context, are of our last time afloat. Dad and I had a weekend tramping around the Solent with my brother-in-law Jim, his wife's brother-in-law and my friend Paul and their friend Leigh aboard a Hallberg Rassy 34 called "Blue Spirit" that Paul had chartered from the Metropolitan Police Sailing Club of which he's a member.
I've not been sailing since, and it looks like I'll not have the chance to go sailing again for quite some time to come. So I thought I'd post the photos to accompany and lift what was otherwise a fairly bleak and self-indulgent, even self-pitying post, to combat the risk of a growing sense of captiaterraphobia that I fear may only get worse as the land-locked weeks wear on.
It was the strangest weekend. Got home, the gig was long cancelled, so nothing to do Friday night except settle down with a beer and chill for the evening. I'm not very practised at that (the chilling with nothing to do of an evening, that is; of beer I've had practice aplenty!) but thought I could probably get the hang of it with a little dogged persistence. Saturday morning, woke up, nothing planned except to walk the dogs and chill for another evening.
Saturday night was funny. Still no gig of course, so another evening home with another beer and the Internet. I look up from my beer and entertainment to glance at my watch, notice it's 0020, and think I really ought to consider going to bed. Figure another thirty minutes or so, finish my last glass (of by then no longer quite so so chilled) beer.
Next thing, I glance again at my watch and am horrified to see that it's now 0220. I can't for the life of me work out where the last hour has gone, but shame-faced and possibly a little tipsy from the night's, um, "chilling", I wake Nikki up from where she's nodded off on the sofa and we head off to bed.
Sunday, walk the dogs, cut the grass. Nothing else to do. Is this how normal people live? Sunday night, go to bed at a more reasonable hour, but having not done much all day read in bed into the early hours (EM Powell, historical fiction, a page turning style akin to Bernard Cornwall) then take an age to finally nod off. And oversleep a little the following morning.
It isn't until I'm pulling into the office car park after a very quiet drive into work, thinking it's around about 0900, not too late, that I glance at the clock on my car dashboard, the only time device in existence old enough to not get automatically updated by satellite, Internet or it's own artificial sentience.
It reads 0800. The clocks have leapt forward this weekend, and living in a bubble of my own isolation, I'd never realised.
Anyway. I'm fit and well. In fact, I'm pretty certain I already had this dreaded virus at the end of February before it became fashionable or was even supposed to be available in this country, go figure? Although that's another story, and there's no way to prove it, so I'm working on the clear assumption that I've not and taking all the appropriate precautions, washing hands like I hate my skin, staying a full cadaver's body-length distant from anybody not in my immediate household, coughing into my elbow when I must, etc.
The photos accompanying, completely out of context, are of our last time afloat. Dad and I had a weekend tramping around the Solent with my brother-in-law Jim, his wife's brother-in-law and my friend Paul and their friend Leigh aboard a Hallberg Rassy 34 called "Blue Spirit" that Paul had chartered from the Metropolitan Police Sailing Club of which he's a member.
I've not been sailing since, and it looks like I'll not have the chance to go sailing again for quite some time to come. So I thought I'd post the photos to accompany and lift what was otherwise a fairly bleak and self-indulgent, even self-pitying post, to combat the risk of a growing sense of captiaterraphobia that I fear may only get worse as the land-locked weeks wear on.
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