Through the square window ...

Was it PlaySchool on TV that took watching toddlers through a different window every day to see something from the real world and tell them about it? That wonderful 15 minutes of the morning when I could sit down with a coffee? That floated into my head when I was trying to title this post, taking me back 45 or so years to when all the world was young - including our friend Jonathan Cohen, who for some time was one of the resident musicians on the show and who came as quite a surprise one summer to my adult son when they met on the Waverley ...

Anyway, all that has absolutely nothing to do with today except to represent the essential blankness of it. Having been certified safe to go out, I headed down to the supermarket at 8.10am, and was halfway round an insanely expensive shopping when I realised how awful I was feeling. I think it was largely the fault of the temperature in the shop; since all this plague malarkey began, it reminds me of the New World Supermarket we shopped in when we stayed in Cromwell, New Zealand, in January. We used to run out into the summer car park to warm up every time we visited it. Anyway, but the time I got back home I was fit for nothing but sitting down with porridge and tea and listening to the radio till it was time for coffee.

That was really the pattern for the rest of the day, except that I managed to do some Italian in the afternoon and went out for a brief, gentle walk with Himself before dinner, largely because we're neither of us very good at sitting around. This walk was largely interesting because we explored a cul-de-sac which is at most 6 minutes' walk from the house, where we've lived for the past 46 years, and we've never been there. It's like a whole new bit of town, and we walked down it staring like tourists. We need to get out more ...

The blip today is the view of my back garden from the kitchen sink, and I took the photo in the middle of conducting a texted conversation with Munroist about the privileges of royalty and the priorities of the press. I thought it might amuse ...

And I think I'm feeling a bit better again. No more chilly Morrison's for a week.