Category: The Covid Diaries

Day 5 – LD2

Well here we are again.  I don’t think it’s remotely as depressing as it was last time.  Were we prepared for it? Not really, at least not as well as we should have been. I’ve still got a cellar full of beer for a start, but the food side is liveable, we were being careful with that.  What put the dog amongst the chickens this time, was that a few of us have actually tested positive for COVID and we have been in a self imposed shut down since Tuesday, and so are ahead of the curve. Today for us is day five.  I must admit that it is strange because when all the test results came through, I think most of us, whether we had the virus or not felt like lepers.  Like we had some horrid disease, which of course we did, but with that, we were some how responsible for all the worlds COVID issues.  Silly I know, but that’s how it felt. It’s funny how you can feel so isolated in your own house, let alone in your own village.  

The reality is that Boris should have done something like this sooner, before half term allowed people to move around again.  Its hard to hear, its even harder to think, but its true.  He should have made the decision weeks ago, because the rate this thing spreads is unbelievable.  It’s a virus, and I don’t know much about them but this one is unpredictable and no one really knows how long it will take anyone to show symptoms, you can be negative one day, positive the next, go right thought your quarantine period and still come out the other side carrying the virus.  On top of that nothing works like it should, the systems in place to deal with positive results are organic, they haven’t had time to mature, and they simply cannot cope. Track and trace is floored, that’s first hand experience talking, and the guidance provided is patchy and wholly dependant on those who are simply following some ‘operating procedure’, which unfortunately has not developed alongside the breadth and unpredictability of the virus. Whatever the problems, it is no ones fault.  It is impossible for us to move at the rate that the virus spreads, and all we can hope to do, is to follow the guidance that is there, and do our best to keep ourselves and others safe. 

As for what its like? Well I’ve had a few days of feeling terrible, but I’m not sure if it’s psychosomatic, the effect of seeing a positive test result, the whole mind over matter thing. I think I’ve had a bit of difficulty breathing, but then I was running right up until a few days ago, and I’m very very tired, but that’s fairly normal. What is new and annoying, is that I’ve completely lost my sense of taste, which most of my friends have reminded me was pretty dire already, but still, it’s annoying. I really can’t even taste chilli, and I only know I’ve eaten it because my mouth tingles.  But somehow, Boris announcing today that everyone goes back to some level of lock down from Thursday has lifted my spirits somewhat.  It’s ok for the NHS to text you and say your not alone, but it certainly feels like it while the world is going on outside the window and your stuck isolating with a couple of depressed dogs and four very wet chickens!

So what to do, with the next four weeks? Pray that Mr Jones stays healthy for a start. How he can come away with a negative test when he was the one coughing and spluttering like an old mother hen, and I was as right as reign, I have no idea. He on the other hand has the answer, a fifty year old cough and a blood alcohol ratio so high nothing can live in him, (I might add with him to that caveat), but who knows he’s a mystery to me so he may well be right! I’d like to say we aren’t taking any chances, but he won’t go and sleep in the spare room, so I’m stuck with him – again. This virus is a bit like running a pub, while attempting to ’live’ above it, something I don’t recommend to anyone, because its akin to existing in a pressure cooker on a constant slow burn, however every time Boris shuts us, the gas gets turned off… I wonder what’s going to happen this time…

Day 105

The fire is lit, for the first time in one hundred and six days. The pub is sparkling, well as sparkling as the Rod and Line can be, for a spit and sawdust, dogs and wellies type of joint. The staff are sitting around, feeling pleased with their achievements, enjoying each other’s company and testing the liquid from the newly tapped barrels of beer settling in the cellar. It has been a long time, and everyone is raring to get back to work. We all know that it is going to be a long summer, not everyone has come back and for all the excitement there is a little apprehension about exactly what we are going to be able to cope with when we open. There is a positivity that I haven’t seen in this lot for a while and its a great leveller watching them throw ideas around as if they were paper airplanes with secret motors. Suddenly I realise I am proud of the way they are assuming control of all those future unknown anomalies. Rachael and I share a few words about our interviewing process and how we feel really pleased with our new appointments, while Ollie just looks like he needs a haircut and a good feed. Someone yawns and its catching , so we quickly fold up and retire for an early night, with the anticipation of a busy day tomorrow.

There are always early adopters. They are not always reflective or indeed indicative of a normal customer, if there is such a person, but they tend to come out and invest in things before everyone else. I haven’t said anything to the guys, but I am a bit worried and I sit alone for a while after they have left considering the various scenarios that could unwind over the next few days. What if people don’t come out. Just because we are reopening, it doesn’t necessarily mean people will rush to the door. I remember the run up to the lock down, and the virtual emptiness we injured for a few days before the government confirmed we would close, and I hope that people aren’t still frightened about returning to the real world – albeit with a few new rules of its own. We have taken the decision to do everything from the word go, or at least I have. I’ve taken the line that its better to be safe than sorry, also if we start in the way we may eventually need to go on we won’t have to keep changing systems and confusing people. That might have led to a slight overkill in the screens and barriers, but we can always take them away. As a result, I feel over the last few days I have turned into the hotel inspector from hell. I have ranted, pointed at health and safety policies, quizzed staff on where they are kept, what they say and how they translate to the way we deal with customers. Most of them looked to frightened not to know the answer, which was not really my intention but if it works why worry about it at this stage. We invested, probably prudently in new benches, and I have wondered around with a tape measure, like someone with a unnatural infatuation for detail, shouting things like ’one meter to here’, and ‘move that to the left’, or ’remove that chair, take away that table’. I am happy, but less than happy our lovely local constabulary decided to leave it until this morning to issue their advice/guidance/expectations of us when we reopen. I don’t like to be underprepared, so in this case I’ve anticipated where the gaps will be and already filled them, yet I file this away as something to complain about at a later date.

I take a last walk around the new installations of plastic, the perspex screens look clean and bright, a contrast to husbands own invention, Harris fencing panels, wrapped in hardcore polly tunnel plastic. The less said about them, the better. Rod and Line meet 2020 I say to the new menus, which are now simply QR codes on the walls, I hope our customers can use their mobile phones. Will came good in the end and the signage looks fab, and its in our brand colours for once. I take one last look, and turn out the light.

With massive thanks to Will at www.rapid graphics.co.uk

Day 96

When Boris, or who ever it was, but I think it was Boris, decided that we could meet in gardens, from the 1st of June it didn’t take very long for that to become a stately tradition in the Jones residence. Up to six people in the garden, at roughly 5pm somewhere time. As most of the beer has been drunk, given away or poured down the drain, there has been a slight drought in our cellar department and the boys have been forced to bring their own, which itself has added some variety to life. Having people back in our space, even if its only the back garden has had an impressive effect on Mr Jones who now looks forward to 5pm with a great deal of relish and excitement. He is laughing more, and while he is getting a bit more done around the place, it hasn’t improved his need for at least 14 hours of sleep every night. I can tell that he expels most of his energy thinking up tall stories to tell over crisps and peanuts, and to my annoyance, the one that is repeated with notable regularity, is the non existent, ‘I’ve been tucked up’, electric bike story. The EPC, standing for the empty pub club, consists of a few old boys that have weaved their way through the troubled Covid lockdown, in a similar fashion to ourselves, and for the first few gatherings they all want to talk at once so I leave them too it. There is such a thing a too much testosterone, even at their age.

Plans for reopening have been moving at a moderate pace. The governments guidance, from memory all 52 odd pages of it, is fairly explicit with regards to the ‘do’s’ and the ‘don’ts’ of the situation, and as a result new plastic appendices have been added to the precious interior of the untouched Rod and Line, as well as screens, QR codes, no smoking signs and a plethora of other signage that I don’t expect anyone to read or take any notice of. Most of the staff that we employed before lockdown are returning, but things will be a little different moving forward so we need some new blood. Racquel, despite already looking more heavily pregnant than she should be, has been undertaking a sterling job with interviews and adverts, so much so that I feel fairly redundant, and I acknowledge the slight pang of worry which is starting to develop when I think about what I am going to do when she disappears on maternity leave. I know that she’s worried too. Not about the maternity leave, but about returning to work with the threat of Covid-19 hanging over us. People will come on holiday we know that, we just have to be ultra careful about how we manage the situation. ‘Table service’ she said to me that morning, there was a long drawn out pause as I nodded. ’Oh she said and we both laughed.

I head back out to the garden where I am handed the first cold can of cider I’ve consumed since I was a twenty something at a rock festival. I look around the table at the boys sitting and joking among me and wonder who will have the lucky job of telling them they can’t stand at the bar. As it happens, its Mr Jones, who slips it into the conversation, just as a little aside, but I know that the table note it. I smile, he does have some redeeming features after all.

Day 90

Throwing beer down the drain is another one of those sacrilegious occasions. There have been a few in this lockdown but this is probably the most painful, so I’m not going to dwell on the matter, suffice to say its also brilliant for the garden…

Day 82

Today was marked on the wall calendar with purple pen and the day the bike would arrive. Needless to say it didn’t. Which resulted in a very, very long monologue, from husband railing against the fragilities of the eBay system, followed closely by the debauched status of technology in general. After a brief pause for serval gulps of what I assume was cold coffee, this was followed up by a run down of most professions in general, including but not limited to builders, plumbers, biomass boilers, the renewable heat initiative, China, Classic FM and back to eBay. But I didn’t buy your bike on eBay I pointed out weakly. It’s all the same he said waiving his hands about, I’ve been conned and I don’t like it. The coffee cup, now emptied was thrown somewhere towards the sink area, where miraculously it didn’t smash and he disappeared towards the garden.

After some considerable effort on my part, I managed to ascertain from the retailer that they didn’t actually have the bike at all. In actually fact, they had never had the bike in the first place, it was a stock error and they hadn’t realised it until I had got in touch. That small piece of unhelpful information resulted in another blasphemous tirade very similar to the first one, although we could now add ufos and 5G to the list of the things in the world that were responsible for the upset to his equilibrium. The fishing rod had reappeared and the poor bees who were quietly trying to feed on the Borage, were I imagine quite upset about having their favourite plant thrashed by a piece of fishing line. I did point this out but it didn’t go down well. I left him to his own devices for an hour and spent a happy time working on the book. Only to be disturbed when he came in to have another moan about getting his money back. My money I said pointedly. I admit that was probably a mistake.

As there was no placating him, I decided to do the next best thing and go for a ride on my bike…

Day 81

Of course I knew before he did. One of us has to get up to catch the early worm. There was even a note, scribbled on the not so helpful wall calendar, saying ‘three weeks notice’. According to the man who says he is the business secretary, we will have to wait until the 4th of July (at the earliest) to reopen. I would have hoped that might have cheered husband, instead he finds me in the polly tunnel, looking dejected and says ‘I have to wait another three weeks’. I feel like flicking his lower lip it’s sticking out that far. 24 days actually, I corrected him. He sticks his tongue out in my general direction. Go and make yourself useful I chide him, and light the BBQ, I call to his retreating back.

I’ve hidden myself away in the tunnel because I don’t know how I feel about reopening, just as I didn’t expect my reaction to closing, I’m wondering what emotions will rear their ugly heads as we make good for the mammoth task of getting this place up and running again. I’ve actually enjoyed, dare I say it, being stuck together like this for the last few months. I’ve enjoyed sharing time with Mr Jones in the way that people normally get to do on a daily basis. We don’t get that luxury often because the business dictates that we don’t play when other people do. We don’t eat at normal times, or go to bed and get up at normal times. We don’t do a nine to five, have 2.4 children, live in a colder-sack with two cars on the drive, one a hatchback for the family dog, and go to church on a Sunday. Not that the majority of people do all that, but most people have a semblance of something that is normal, we don’t even have the semblance. I finish picking the last of the inside produce and move outside to collect some courgettes. ‘It’s not been a good year so far for these’ I say, looking at the scant gathering in the basket, as he hands me a cold beer. I take the beer and frown. ‘There isn’t any more gin‘ he says as by way of an excuse. There isn’t really any more to say so we sit in companionable silence for a while, each lost in thought. ‘It wont be the same’ I say slowly. He looks at me, ‘Whose name?’ he replies. I lift my eyes to the heavens and look at him square in the face so he can read my lips, I said, ‘it won’t be the same!’ What followed was a lot of toing and froing about names and hearing aids, which I won’t bore you with. He knew what I meant, he just didn’t want to discuss it.

I think, he said finally with a yawn, I’ll go and watch the telly. Fine. I replied to his receding back, it was nearly dark and I poked the fire pit reproachfully, as if I was a small child who had just been told I couldn’t have an ice-cream. Roll on the 4th of July I said to myself quietly, and settled down with a book.