Cabin fever

As we enter the third week of lockdown, the restrictions are beginning to get to me. Not that I am any kind of gung-ho athlete, but I do like getting at least a couple of walks in every day, and some more strenuous cardio exercise two or three times a week. That’s been out of the question for about a week now, with the parks shut and cyclists liable to be stopped.

This cuts in another way too: my podcast queue is backing up fast. That’s because I find it hard to listen indoors. Podcasts deserve my attention, and they don’t get it if I am doing something else, like cooking or hanging up the laundry. I listen on my walks. No walks, no listening.

Advice in the past couple of days has been to walk or run around the block, more or less, but that seems pretty tedious. So this morning I adopted a new regime. I’ll walk around the block for one or two podcasts. It went well. I was out, getting a bit of exercise, and trimming my queue. If I do that two or three times a day, it will be like being able to do my normal morning walk.

I’m still not sure I understand why the parks are closed, but I hear that people were gathering too close to one another in the parks. I’m a bit surprised by that, because when I went to the supermarket on Saturday everyone was very patiently standing 2 metres and more apart. I was in line for about an hour and a quarter, during which I enjoyed the sunshine and three shows; 99pi, Shortcuts and The Automators. Very diverse.

When I got in, the supermarket was very orderly. All the shelves were fully stocked.¹ Some people’s trolleys did seem awfully full, and I confess I bought twice the number of tins of tomatoes I normally buy, but by and large things were calm. Even the cashiers seemed less stressed than usual as they did not have a large queue waiting for their services. We can probably restrict supermarket visits to one every couple of weeks as long as the wonderful greengrocer round the corner stays open, although the queue is a great way to reduce the podcast queue.

Still no clear idea of how long this is going to be, but I’m mentally prepared for at least another 6 weeks.