Day 1...

...or is it?

It was announced last night by the Prime Minister that the UK is now essentially in lockdown. We have been told that we can only leave the house for very specific reasons. We can do one form of exercise each day outside, by ourselves or with other members of our household. We can go to buy essentials such as food, and to the chemist or for medical appointments, and those who absolutely have to are allowed to travel to work - although there is already criticism that the rules on this are too unclear.

From a personal perspective - the lockdown news was something I truly feared. As a claustrophobic living in a not-that-large flat with no garden, the thought of being imprisoned is fairly terrifying. Before anyone tells me all the reasons why it's needed, yes, I know them, and understand them - my claustrophobia pre-dates any form of conscious thought on my part though so it's not something you can just shrug off, and some empathy for me and those in similar positions would be nice during all this.

The speed of change at the moment is possibly the most astonishing thing. I left work at 5pm last night expecting to be back in the office at 9am this morning to carry on sorting out files to work on at home at a later stage - just 4 hours later I had exchanged messages with my Boss and we had agreed that it would not be possible to continue with this plan. By this morning there was a relatively clear list of businesses which are exempt from the expectation of closing for the time being, and our business was definitely not included in those exemptions, so that at least confirmed our decision was correct. Working from home started today for me - although today was mostly getting things sorted out and set up, and it felt like a rather disjointed sort of day with a lot of just trying to keep busy.

Ironically today was the warmest day of 2020 so far - not though many of us got much benefit. MrEH and I grabbed our exercise first thing with a 5k run/walk, then we popped to the supermarket briefly at lunchtime, but apart from a short potter on the balcony, and putting a bag of rubbish in the bin, that was it.

I have a vague plan that I'd like to try to take a photo a day while this is all going on - whether with the phone or the camera. I suspect like most times I come up with a plan like that it might not last long, but we'll see...

Robyn