Home – somewhere in Brixton

Anonymous as always

We were just sitting on the sofa bemoaning our lack of travel – one due to be in Florence, the other meeting pensions experts across Europe. All we have now is Skype, Zoom, Webex, Microsoft Teams, GoToMeetings and Google Hangouts. I am normally a digitally excluded person and I have learnt that shouting at the computer produces little benefit in tech terms, but is a great relief from the stress when you can’t work out where the controls are. You can do the washing if you turn the video off. Now also learning to dress up when I go online – a jacket over pyjamas seems to work as long as you don’t stand up.

We have done the occasional webcams of pandas, remote visits to museums and thought (only thought) about physical exercise. But it isn’t enough. We looked forward to having a good meal out in a nearby restaurant. Our idea of excitement now is watching Jamie Oliver or Masterchef or Stand-up-to-Cancer BakeOff. We decided not to blog about our current in-house meals. We are using up those half packets of dried beans and any weird stuff in a tin we thought would be useful in 2017. Self isolation is something we owe to our friends and neighbours, until we can get back onto a normal regime.

We satisfied our wanderlust by roaming around Europe from our drinks cabinet. There are so many delights. National drinks that we bought when it was sunny and we could eat al fresco or well-meaning foreign friends who thought we might like to try something from afar. They have all been buried for many years. We have got standards and decided not to even retry the one that smells and tastes like petrol (the one even our children refused – they’re over 18 and usually not that fussy). Saturday was Spanish rum, Sunday was Italian Grappa (what did we think we were doing), Monday was Greece with Ouzo and Tuesday was Portugal and white port. We are now having a mandatory three dry days …… unless we break before the weekend.

We are definitely not advocating alcohol, except in moderation – we all need to think about our health after all. We have run out of fresh vegetables so we will be reviewing food and grocery delivery so you don’t have to wait until the end of lockdown to enjoy the great food from Brixton.