9th April - still on Lockdown

My life is now a whirlwind of Lockdown Art Challenge entries - so much so that I have to squeeze in time for my blog.  Entries come in from all over the world and from all ages - it is one of the few very positive aspects of this strange life we find ourselves in.

There isn't much to differentiate between the days but today is Thursday and we have put in a request to go shopping this afternoon.  This proved to be absolutely painless with no queuing and now shortages and I was able to get everything on Isobel's list and drop it off to her and David.  John has been able to get official clarification about what we need to do should we have to go out twice in a day to help vulnerable people.  We rang the helpline and they told us that if we text our request for the first outing then we can carry a form for the second outing.  This is good to know and hopefully we wont need it.

Our enforced house arrest means that we are taking time to make both the inside and the outside of our home the best it can be.

In the garden I have an old coffee/tea tray which is possibly from the Lebanon - it was given to me when Elena was very ill and she insisted that I took it.  I have never really known what to do with it but because she wanted me to have it I cannot bring myself to do anything but find a home for it.

The tray part is fine and is in the garden but there were two small dishes which came with it which were extremely tarnished and so quite unattractive.

I looked on the internet as to how I should clean them and if they were brass, which they seemed to be, they recommended covering them with tomato sauce and then cleaning.  It would seem that the combination of the vinegar and sugar in the sauce would help to clean the grime and I remember my hairdresser telling me, when I had over bleached my hair and it had gone green, that ketchup would sort it.  Well nothing ventured, nothing gained so I soaked the little trays with the ketchup before we set off on our shopping trip.

Well, this is the finished article, well finished bar buffing - so the dirty little trays are now clean and have a slightly pinkish hue - probably from the cheap Cypriot ketchup I used but they are sweet and hold a tea light and will be fine outside and I couldn't get rid of them!!

I sent my Cypriot neighbours a text this afternoon to make sure they are OK.  Persephone loves Charlie so we managed to take a nice photograph of him to send to her to wish her well, both she and Savvas are on the frontline as she is a dentist and he is a doctor.  We also made contact with Galatia and Charalambous and learned that they are all keeping safe which is good news.  It will be so lovely when we can return to some sort of normality and know that they are able to travel freely here and enjoy their holiday homes as they have done for years.

Another corking fire tonight to keep us company whilst we watched the final and compelling episode of The Virtues which was not something to watch if you were feeling the least bit down.

Stephen Graham is the most superb actor and this was possibly the best thing we have seen him in so far and as a result of watching this I have earmarked the film The Man with the Iron Heart as our viewing for tomorrow.

It feels like time has stood still.  It is a strange world we are living in at the moment and we watch the news and it feels like we are somewhat detached from reality.

There are, however, some real positives that are coming out of this whole experience.  We are in 'real' contact with friends and family with whom we have, in the past, only just exchanged cursory texts thinking that this was enough to qualify as contact.  This is the trouble with the modern technical age.  On this subject, we use Alexa for our shopping lists.  We have a list for us and a list for Isobel.  Today I tried to add 'a bag of frozen pollock' to Isobel's list and Alexa thought I was saying something rude so refused to record it!!

The Ration Book says...
...Paper shortages weren't exclusive to Britain and in New Zealand the Government's drive against wastage encouraged people to use both sides of every sheet of toilet paper they used.