It's six weeks into COVID-19 induced self-isolation, and almost five weeks into the lockdown.
We've got the routine pretty much down to an art, home-schooling the kids and keeping ourselves motivated and focused. The days all blur into one and seem to pass faster and faster. The alcohol acceptance policy has been widened by a few days, it virtually meets in the middle, besides Wednesday.
It's Sunday today and the weather outside is warm and cloudy, but still continuing the unprecedented run of dry weather since this whole saga began. It's been a quiet day so far, there's not much going on.
Just about the most exciting thing that had happened so far was having a power cut, which I wasn't even aware of because I was happily reading in a comfortable chair, but the kids lost their wifi connection and all hell broke loose. We never resolved it, but have had to accept no power to our upstairs plug sockets until we can get an electrician to come over and take a look. You don't realise how much you'll miss the upstairs plug sockets until they are gone. I'm determined when all this is over to never take them for granted again.
I sat down at my desk to write, and was struggling to find something interesting to talk about, having already filled a couple of pages of my journal today. There's only so much you can write when everyday is pretty much the same. My eldest daughter came to find me and suggested I take a look in the garden as a pile of feathers had appeared in the middle of the lawn, and she was worried the dog would eat them. The dog will eat anything.
I went out to investigate the rather impressive array of feathers, which could only mean that somewhere around there was a less impressed, and most likely bald, bird. I followed the trail that led into the bushes and sure enough I found a dead pigeon lying right at the back next to the fence, closely guarded by an evil looking cat, whose eyes told me he was less than impressed with my arrival and the scuppering of his potential supper.
My wife and eldest daughter joined me armed with some plastic bags, ever the practical ones. I retrieved a nearby broom, which had been propping up a lopsided sapling for over a year, only to happily find that upon it's removal the tree actually stood upright on it's own. Result. I prodded the broom towards the cat to scare it off, so that I could reclaim the dead pigeon and give it a decent enough send off. As I thrust the broom in the cat's direction the cat hissed and the bird suddenly shot back to life and flapped around manically in a frenzied panic. The girl's screamed, the bird panicked more and somehow managed to lift itself into the air with it's balding, featherless wings, before heading straight for us like a kamikaze pilot on a death mission. The girls screamed more, the bird panicked more and hovered, flapping just above our heads before gathering just enough momentum to take off and flap it's way across the garden landing in the top of a large fir tree.
The cat gave me a look of total disgust and then climbed the fence and went to find something else to eat.
Now I've got a dying bird stuck at the very top of a tree, and there's no way I can reach it. He's already defied all medical odds. Whilst he was flapping in mid-air I got a better look at him and I'd say he only has about a tenth of his feathers left. He wasn't looking too hot, I'll be honest with you. If he does survive, he isn't finding a girlfriend for a while, but I'm certain that's not top of his priorities right now.
My daughter, known for her catastrophic thinking, is worried that the bird will die, fall out of the tree, and the dog, who eats anything, will eat the bird and then die. So we've had to go on bird watch every half hour. Nothing has changed. He's stuck in the tree, still alive. I know he's still alive because he winks at me when I go out to check on him. The dog is banned from going outside unattended for the foreseeable future.
Other than that, it's been a totally uneventful day.
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