Emz by the Thames

Good grief, that wind! Checked on my polytunnel and the window had been blown in, crushing loads of seedlings inside - shearing off a metal hook in the process. The little trees both blown over and half of the building project on the allotment next to mine had ended up on my allotment crushing loads of plants. Carnage, considering it's May. Back at the flat, it's so chilly that the hottybotty (hot water bottle) is back out of storage! Hope you are all well.

You're not alone...not being able to get food to our parents is making us all anxious (especially when the stubborn beggars keep threatening to go out themselves!!) p.s Plain flour is really hard to come by at the moment unfortunately.

Getting a supemarket online shop is impossible now. Is your mum in a high risk group? If so, Sainsburys are working with the government to prioritising those most at risk - details at the bottom of their home delivery page(it will take you to a government website). So many small outlets are converting into mini delivery businesses, do you belong to any community Facebook groups near where you mum lives? They may have details of businesses turning into home deliverers. I booked my Dad a veg, milk and bakery bread delivery from a cafe in Marlow this morning.

As you may have heard, the government are allowing the allotments to stay open as part of exercise allowance, so we've been up there, working on laptops and digging potato trenches! Lots of rules and social distancing but for many people an allotment is their only outdoor space (including us) so having them remain open is a great mental health boost in these scary times. Have to say it was lovely weather, just what we needed after weeks of uncertainty and fear and being around too many people. Shame it may gets colder but that's the ups and downs of Spring!

Some nice, bright spells around today - really looking forward to the sunshine of the next few days. Thankfully, my partner has been allowed to work from home now - but like me will take unpaid leave for the whole of April. After that? Who knows. But so many people are in the same boat. Fair to say our plans of buying a house are over, at least for the foreseeable. Looking forward to the allotment tomorrow,

Hugs to you too, enjoy time back with your OH and keep well. is one I recommend too! And eating a whole ginger clove is you can stomach it! (good job social isolation is happening for that one!)

12.5.c here - so nice to get up and not turn the heating on. Still grey though. Social distancing here now but the past few days have been madness making sure various parents/step-parents/parents in law have what they need. My partner has pleaded with his boss to allow him to work from home (he has a desk job which can be 90% done on a laptop) but they've been told repeatedly all absence will be treated as annual leave, Some companies are really not doing all they can to stop the spread of this thing.

I'm now starting to wonder if in some people this is incredibly mild. About 10 days ago, I fell asleep in the afternoon, twice. I only ever do this when my body is fighting something. I also felt a bit breathless. Both my partner and I starting having night sweats. Can't comment on a cough because I've still got a post-cold cough from a cold virus I had in late January. Makes you think, doesn't it?

Did Italy really have their first case and their first death on the same day??

World Snooker seem keen on playing without crowds - I think if the ban is still in place by the time the Championships happen, they'd rather play to empty rooms but still with a TV audience.

No because my sport - snooker - is unaffected. They're just playing on without crowds. Gibraltar Open currently on Eurosport player. The radio was funny today though as footie programmes battled on without footie!

Sorry to hear you'll be away from your OH, this virus is putting distance between loved ones, it's awful. x

Why the leap in testing?

A tale of two panic buys! Went to Sainsburys as soon as it opened at 7am. I'd been in the store about a minute when a couple left with nothing but 4 12-packs of loo roll. Another shopper yelled at them and called them selfish bastards. When I walked past the loo rolls shelf there was barely 10 packs left. I went to the soap aisle and after three weeks of looking, I managed to finally find a liquid soap albeit a refill. I'd been using what was left of a fairly useless beauty soap that doesn't lather much and because I share a front door with 12 other flats, I'm quite anxious to wash my hands well when I get in. But worse than that, my dad who has COPD hasn't been able to find any Carex either for weeks and he really needs it because he had to protect himself. So with that in mind, I picked up a handwash refill for me and one for Dad. But as soon as I picked up the second refil - I got daggers from other shoppers. Because of panic buying, when you find things that are really needed, you will buy a couple more either for family members or because you don't know when you'll see that essential product again. What I'm saying it, greedy buyers are forcing sensible shoppers to become panic buyers. If you scan-shop, you can't buy more than two of some products anyway (like soap and Carex) but people get round this buy going to the self serve and making 2 transactions. It's madness.

My niece's school has written to all parents telling them each child now has their own email address at the school to make home study and teacher contact easier. They are expecting disruption to school terms and that might come at short notice. Rumour going round school is the Easter holidays will start earlier.

Get an allotment!! (I'm like an allotment pusher I know - but it benefits your physical and emotional health in so many ways - and it helped me give up smoking!). I see Wexham Park Hospital in Slough has a case now. 'Very worrying': Patient tests positive for coronavirus at hospital WWW.BUCKSFREEPRESS.CO.UK A patient at Wexham Park Hospital has tested positive for coronavirus - shutting down its elderly care ward.

Much mental illness is caused by stress, so the more stressful the world, the more mental illness will be prevalent. I was reading something really interesting about how a sense of emotional safety we find in belonging to something meaningful (a small community, religous group, village, hobby organisation, sport etc) makes us happier than anything including money - I shall try and dig it out. There are a lot of changes we need to make in society to combat the mental health epidemic, talking and medication is not enough. Poor nutrition doesn't help either - that's why I have an allotment. I have suffered from horrendous anxiety on and off in life but I seem to be able to cope well in a crisis (lots of practice - lol) but I have noticed those around me who don't suffer from anxiety become more and more anxious because of the virus. For example, I work 2 days a week in an office environment and the growing anger there against a colleague who goes to gigs in London twice a week and doesn't seem to be doing the hand gel or hand-washing things and despite being a diabetic, he doesn't seem to care about the virus. I have heard at least 3 times 'if I catch it, it will be because of him'. Someone has already asked to work from home because of him. People are anxious and rightly so I feel.

Looks like South Bucks/Wycombe has it's first case, a local doctor's surgery is closed for deep cleaning and a 'contact' of a pupil at the local has tested positive. That makes me feel a little scared even though I have no contact with the surgery or school, it also makes me feel like I should start staying in.

Lordy...it's suddenly very breezy out there.

Could be that the regime implodes and the people will finally get their country back. It's going to happen at some point anyway. I don't think the housing market will come away from all that is going on unscathed. We have just been told a house viewing has been cancelled as the elderly lady does not want strangers walking round her house, which is totally understandable. She's considering taking the house off the market for the forseeable.

The in-laws are on a cruise ship off Miami currently. We're a little concerned what with cruise ships and the coronavirus. Late last night, the phone rings. Us: "Hi, are you ok? Is the ship infected?" MIL: "No, no infections onboard currently, all is fine". Us:"Phew!" MIL: We were just wondering...if you pop to Tesco in the morning, could you pick us up some toilet roll? It's all everyone is talking about on the ship. US: "uh.......ok..." Hysteria over lack of liquid soap and hand gel is perfectly reasonable but this hysteria over loo roll will be talked about by social anthropologists forever.

Lots of loo roll in the supermarket this morning...very few women's sanitary towels!!! Madness! No disposable gloves or hand sanitizer and no full fat Red Bull. A dopey old guy coughed in the queue without putting his hand to his mouth and was lambasted by the cashier, felt for the shop staff who seemed on edge today.

The trouble with some sporting events (taking a friend/colleague mine who is a huge Watford FC fan as an example) is that they are crammed into places - busy pubs before and after matches, busy transport networks, crowded stadiums/stairwells etc - the opportunity to spread is huge. Even if I tried to avoid this virus by avoiding crowds, the people in my apartment block and work seemingly aren't and I don't want to risk getting it and giving it to my Dad via them. So I've made the decision to not visit by 75 year old Dad for a while because he has 2 different lung conditions including COPD and recently had carioversion and has decided to avoid crowds. Don't feel sorry for him though...he's a newlywed.

Two questions, really. I note that so many of our UK cases are a result of half-term trips to Italy and Italy itself is in a dire situation. I don't feel enough is being done to prevent spread from Italy. China is now seeing reductions because of the stringent measures they put in place at their hotspots - but we don't seem to realise we need a similar response here in Europe? My elderly uncle is due to go on a 'trip of a lifetime' round Italy in May and he currently doesn't know what to do so as a family we've had many discussions about the Italy situation. Sure the planes are empty - but I feel travel restrictions should have been put on Italy as soon as the issues was realised. The current advice is 'go to Italy and come home, put yourself in isolation if you don't feel well'. Surely that's not enough in a place so utterly affected by COVID19? I also have a family member who works at Heathrow and some people there thinks it's nuts that planes still fly from Italy. Also, do we have any figures on what are considered recovered cases? The common practice was to ship everyone positive off to hospital but where are they now? For example, 5 or 6 weeks since two Chinese people were hospitalised in York - what is there status now? We know they haven't died. What are our UK recovery figures? P.s When I was at primary school, at lunchtime all the kids would walk from the classroom to the dinner queue apart from one little boy who would go straight to the toilets and therefore always end up last in the dinner queue. I asked him about this one day and said his dad is a GP and you must always wash your hands after the loo and before food. Years later, when the little boy was a junior doctor himself and I was working in a nursing home, we had a chat down the pub about why there aren't more handwashing facilities in places where you eat. I said I felt my residents were at a disadvantage to people at home who can wash their hand directly before they eat and there should be more handwash places in places where people eat, not just in toilet sinks. For example, when I'm in London, it's quite hard to find somewhere to wash your hands before you eat except some germy and badly maintained public toilets where you come away dirtier than when you went in. Upshot is after this virus peaks and fall, I hope we become a nation that takes its everyday pre-eating handwashing more seriously - and not just after going to the loo - but facilities are required in a order to do that. Anyway, that's my handwashing rant!

Sleety, can't-be-arsed, 'phoning it in' kind of snow here. (settling a tiny bit on the hills apparently).