Here is Ralph on his favourite box; no expensive cat bed for him. A short blog as I’ve spent all morning sorting out Ralph’s bad leg. He became increasingly lame over the weekend and I know he’d had a fight.
The vets are doing everything on the phone; I sent them a video of Ralph so they could see his limp and the vet prescribed antibiotics and painkillers which a friend will collect later.
Poor Ralph! I was worried that he would be the one to cause injury but he’s not as fierce as he makes out, or perhaps he’s just not very streetwise having spent all his life inside or in a run. There is a white cat that lives locally that has had the surrounding area as his territory for some time so no wonder he has it in for a newcomer.
Today is dull dull dull. One of those sludgy days when things won’t get going.
It is frustrating not being able to go out and ironic that I couldn’t barely go out of the house for a long time and now that I can I can’t. I don’t like having to ask other people to do everything eg shopping and getting prescriptions. I emailed Waitrose just now to ask how they are making arrangements for vulnerable customers to get online deliveries. The dedicated shopping hour for oldies is worse than useless if you’re unable to go out.
The garden is starting to show promise; I’m looking forward to my tulips which are coming through. Perhaps this week’s forecast sun and warmth will urge them on. Then I’ll have something new to paint. I’ve done a few this week despite lacking in inspiration:
It doesn’t help that all the things I had planned : pop up shop, Open Studios and an exhibition in Cley are all cancelled. There is still Instagram of course but I think creativity is an untamed thing that needs lots of stimulus from all sorts of places/ things.
I cannot imagine being inside for 12 weeks although that is what looks likely to happen. I am seriously considering how to cut my own hair. There seems no real authority in charge of the response and as we’re not doing much testing and not doing contact tracing I don’t understand how we will get on top of it. Without a true picture of numbers infected and without tracing their contacts we’re just letting more and more people get infected. Which is the herd immunity thing that we're not supposed to be doing.
On a more positive note we are getting shopping from local suppliers by phoning through our orders and getting them delivered or collected for us. Yesterday we had an enormous roast chicken which was delicious with roasted celeriac, butternut squash, carrots and red onions with a walnut sauce. Today I’ll turn it into soup. We’ve also had some lovely fish including monkfish with cannelloni beans and roasted tomatoes and some very nice hake. Oh and Barnsley chops with baked fennel went down a treat.
At least food is something to look forward to and we are so fortunate to be able to get such good quality meat, fish and veg.
We did our book group on Saturday using Houseparty which worked quite well and although not quite as nice as meeting up with a homemade cake and tea it did allow a book group of sorts.
We’ve also done Zoom and Skype with family and friends. So I’ve probably had more conversations than I would usually have. I rarely speak on the phone and hate being ambushed!
Apart from that it's an endless round of lists and orders and coordinating collections and deliveries; keeping on top of my medication is a full time job. Trying to make order out of chaos I suppose which is what Bach does so well. Not that i'm comparing my shopping lists to a Bach composition! Here is Serge Poliakoff doing it well:
