Lockdown, Day One

When I woke up this morning, it was very quiet and very still. Then the binmen came at 7am, as they do every week, and made the sinus headache that had made me wake up early worse. So at least some things are still continuing as normal.

So yes, today is the first day of the UK's three weeks of lockdown-but-not-quite, as announced by PM Boris Johnson last night. Honestly, I could see it coming a couple of days before Monday, as every day in his daily briefings he had been leaning heavier and heavier into the "We don't want to have to tell you to stop going out, but we will if you don't start taking this seriously..." statements and a worryingly large portion of the British public responded with, "Actually, we feel like going to the seaside this weekend, and also shoving elderly people and exhausted nurses out of the way at Tesco's at 7:30am so we can get the last 6-pack of eggs."

As it was, I managed to time my online shopping delivery pretty much perfectly, it arriving 20 minutes after the lockdown announcement. So I am comfortably set for food for the next three weeks (and since my 48 Creme Eggs arrived today as well, I'm set for chocolate as well) and, as someone who spent 80% of her time inside, shunning as much human contact as I could because of my case of the crazy, my day-to-day life hasn't really changed all that much. It almost makes me feel a little guilty to have it much less stressful than others. On the other hand, I pay for this by being a paranoid, permanently anxious to the point of panic attacks depressive with OCD and a tendency to catastrophise every other day of the year, so I guess it balances out.

Self-Isolation, Day Seven

Today I bought a box of 48 Creme Eggs from Amazon. It was either that or start eating Nutella straight from the jar, spoon optional.

I've been self-isolating for the past week after developing symptoms that were almost certainly covid-19, but we will never be sure of that because the UK isn't testing everyone with symptoms unless they're in certain groups or seriously ill and I have opinions on why that hasn't really been the best practice but we'll leave that for now. So for all of last week, I was slightly feverish, extremely fatigued, suffering from muscle aches, fatigued and, from about Friday, coughing. Today, all those symptoms bar the cough have vanished, but because I'm being a good plague vector I'm continuing to self-isolate for another several days at least. Also, I'm relatively certain that the whole of the UK is about to have its going-outside privileges revoked anyway, so it makes very little difference to me.

All of last week, it didn't really bother me if I had enough chocolatey goodness to keep me going, because (a) I did; and (b) I was too busy feeling as though I'd been hit by a truck to care much anyway. Seriously, for me, the fatigue part of covid-19 was by far the worst I've ever suffered from with any sort of virus or flu, and if I never experience that again I'll die happy. But now that I'm feeling better, and my supplies are dwindling, a little voice in the back of my head has started to panic, trying to urge me to go out - just to the corner shop - just to get chocolate bars and the like. And I have to say, I'm quite disappointed in myself. Do I really have so little willpower that I'm starting to go stir-crazy over lack of chocolate?

Apparently yes.

At least 48 Creme Eggs will last me for a while. And I have a perfectly normal (albeit slightly larger than usual) online shopping order from Tesco's coming tonight, which should contain two Chocolate Oranges and two large bars of Dairy Milk - that is, unless they've been substituted for something else. With all the panic buying going on, I can't be sure I'll receive anything that was on my list - "You ordered one loaf of bread. We've substituted that with one slice of bread. You ordered one dozen eggs. We've substituted that with a feather and a picture of an egg."