So much has happened and not happened since I blogged last Wednesday and as today is sort of a milestone (the end of the month) I thought I’d better put finger to keyboard and log events. In our familial universe, the make-shift gym has been supplemented by the acquisition of a borrowed bench press and weights which one of Harry’s friends left outside his house and Harry brought back home (as his daily exercise) then disinfected. They now live on the patio outside the hobbit house under three makeshift tarpaulins weighted down with the humongous rocks Harry gathered for his first, more make-do-and-mend home gym construction. Harry comes up every afternoon and blasts out rap music whilst working up a sweat. On Sunday George and Paulina joined in, working on their shoulders whilst listening to the music. Unfortunately George, who unlike his brother, is not a keep fit fanatic, badly pulled a muscle which sort of popped out of his shoulder at the back and sent a pain right down his arm. He was on pain killers all night and unable to work from home in the morning (yesterday) and had to (at the worst time ever) call the doctors. The line was dead at first, then just rang and rang and rang, then eventually a very hassled-sounding receptionist said they don’t do face-to-face consultations any more and that a doctor would call back. When the doctor did call back he diagnosed a damaged muscle and a trapped nerve and told George to call in at the surgery for an unfit-to-work letter and some codeine. George duly did this but is still in quite alot of pain and unable to tap at his computer and/or hold his phone. Is there a moral in this? Not sure, but keep safe peeps whilst you’re taking your exercise. Accidents still happen even in lockdown and the last thing we need is to stress out the health providers any more than they already are.

Meanwhile, the rest of the family poodle on in new normal, Harry doing uni work, Nick working on his website, Paulina cooking and shopping (she made us all some brilliant custard slices from scratch with puff pasty) and me beavering away in the self-shielding hobbit hole. My colleague, and head of hobbit hole security has been working at keeping me company and staring very, very hard (every time I eat something mostly. ) Her gimlet gaze is captured on this photo taken a couple of weeks ago in Llan-on. I swear that pug can well-up on demand. She’s like the Olivia Coleman of the canine world.

In the big outside, the Prime Minister and most of his fighting-the-covid-19-team have caught the bug and are (we are lead to believe) not very poorly at home and still running the country, also Prince Charles has had the bug too and is now feeling miles better having passed it no-one of any great importance so far as we know, I.e. the Queen and Prince Phillip.

Bucking the mild-symptom trend amongst the rich and powerful, thousands continue to die world-wide and the first frontline NHS worker in the UK died having caught the disease in the line of duty. Huge sympathy and respect to his friends and family, and to the NHS workers who are out there everyday struggling to keep people alive.

Last Thursday the UK went outside their closed front doors to give a round of applause to NHS workers everywhere to express gratitude and appreciation. I ventured into the thick blackness outside my hobbit hole feeling a bit daft and sad all by my lonesome, but both my dead mothers were nurses and would, had they been still alive and in good health, been working tirelessly to save lives so, bang on 8 I started clapping, and it was so moving. Our silent village burst into a wall of resounding applause, then whooping. I’ve lived here over 20 years and I’ve never heard anyone whooping before but it was really brilliant. I whooped a bit myself for a couple of minutes, then went back indoors where I wept a little in gratitude and because I didn’t feel quite so alone, like I was part of a community that really gave a shit and was prepared to do unprecedented whooping to prove it.

It really makes you think this crisis. About society’s keys workers on whom everything depends: nurses, doctors, shop workers, post people, bin emptiers, cleaners, delivery drivers – they are amongst some of the worst paid workers in society and yet it is them that keeps the world turning and who are keeping our society ticking along. I truly hope the captains of industry and the politicians remember that when this is all over and pay them well enough to live comfortably, and in term of the healthcare workers give them the proper equipment they need to do their invaluable work.

But enough of this semonising, now the schools and unis are closed and non essential workers are working at home or on hiatus, now lockdown is being observed by most of the population who now only leave home for short walks and essential shopping, the government have started to level with us that the lock down will not be short. The PM has snail mailed us all a letter apparently though we haven’t got ours yet, but on yesterday’s daily covid-19 news update (which is apparently getting huge viewing figures as the nation tunes in each day to get the latest), they started to tell us we may well be inside for a good six months if not longer. It seems almost impossible to think forward to September, but it will come, eventually. September is my busiest month family and friends birthday wise. The sixteenth of September is a birthday shared by my sis, and good mate Crispy Jowett as well as my husband’s best mate Al. The 15th is my mate Hel’s birthday and the 6th is Harry’s and the 13th is shared by my 85 year-old mum in law and my 84 year-old dad. I can’t help but wonder how we’ll celebrate all these birthdays this year. Times are so strange and uncertain. The picture above is of Hel’s 50th and Harry’s 10th shared birthday tea round our big table in the place we had it before we had a proper kitchen. Makes you wonder when we’ll all be able to get together like that again. Maybe this September if we’re lucky. Only time will tell.

On the writing front, I’m doing this https://www.arvon.org/5-day-short-story-challenge-introduction/ which is free and really good fun so far, if you fancy joining in. Yesterday I followed the prompt instructions and wrote something so weird, it even weird for me. Not sure what we’ll all be doing today but looking forward to it if yesterday’s exercise is anything to go by.

Well it’s all changed in our house. Yesterday, I went down the kitchen at the crack of sparrows to avoid contact with my still office-working family (and to disinfect all the surfaces in the kitchen) and couldn’t fail to notice two computer screens, two stacks and loads and loads of wires on the kitchen table. George’s work had sorted out home working for him then. Later, once he’d got up, George confirmed this (I came down the garden for a second time from my hobbity isolation to get the deets and stood at a safe distance talking to the kids from outside the back door). The new arrangements are as follows:

George is working from home as of today (he had yesterday off to get set up)

Paulina is not working at all but on hiatus and in receipt of the government organised 80% wages for staff/employees who are on PAYE

Also yesterday Harry emerged from the doldrums where he’d been for days, sleeping in late and harrumphing round the house in desultory disbelief at the solitary, no-mate situation he found himself in

Nick is still working on the website he’s launched in response to the Covid-19 crisis. He was so outraged at lack of info and action and the mixed messages we were getting form everywhere, when things first kicked off, he started building a sort of webpage of shared information where people can log experiences, thoughts, findings, data on a local and global basis. It went live yesterday but it’s not pretty or very user friendly at the moment I’ll post a link on my next blog in case anyone wants a look once its a bit more polished.

I now have an Alexa device thang in the Hobbit Hole which Nick installed the day before yesterday so I can be contacted at all times and I can contact the house. To ‘dial’ them I have to say – Alexa, call kitchen/study/all devices. I really dislike the tone I have have to adopt addressing Alexa. If my mum had heard me speaking like that to someone, with no pleases and thankyous I’d have been on the naughty step, or worse – leg-flicked with a wet pot cloth (her ultimate sanction.) I’m resolved to say please and thankyou to poor old Alexa whether-or-not it confuses her. And today I shall be busying myself seeing if she has a male-voice setting. It makes me feel very uncomfortable barking clipped orders at always female-gendered electrical ‘servants.’

Anyhoo as part of Harry getting himself over the first wave of shock of having to stay in for the first time in his life and being separated from his lovely girlfriend from Uni who is at her home in Leeds, he set up a sort of home gym, up the garden, outside the hobbit house. Harry’s mental health and well being very much depends on his rigorous gym routine. He does deadlifting and works out everyday in more normal times, so I was all in favour of him doing this. Unfortunately we have no gym equipment except some teeny weights and a skipping rope, so he improvised with stuff from up the garden and in the shed vis a vis, a jemmy, a jack hammer, a huge mallet, a tyre and two enormous rocks. Here’s a picture of some stuff he came up with and a link to wee video of him weightlifting. (sorry about the cobwebs on the window). https://www.facebook.com/jankaneen/videos/3113054502118428/

I actually feel really proud of him for doing this (though I actually peed a little bit laughing silently from inside the hobbit-hole as I watched him gather the motley assortment). When he was done I asked him if he wanted to warm down by joining me in my online Tai Chi (at a safe distance of course), but he said it wasn’t his cup of Tai Chi which really made me smile.

In terms of my own mental health and well-being, this blog is really helping as is a wonderful idea by the lovely Hannah Storm who’s started a Twitter thang called #flashfamily where-in the lovely Flash Fiction writing community record themselves reading a micro-fiction, or longer flash or extract from a longer story and post themselves reading it. I found hearing the voices of on-line friends with whom I usually only interloculate in the Twittersphere really uplifting. The stories are just wonderful and hearing them read by the voices of the people who wrote them and seeing their faces strangely moving. Thanks so much lovely @HannahStorm for thinking of it. If you’d like to access these readings, just go to Twitter and tap into the search box #flashfamily, and up they’ll come. Here’s my attempt which you can access with one click, https://twitter.com/JanKaneen1/status/1242789960740200449 Here’s a link to my fave so far, read and written by Donna Greenwood, my cyber friend who I’ve never met in the flesh but who I count as a genuine friend because of her supportive and joyful on-line presence. She is such a wonderful and talented writer, (and it now turns out reader) but don’t take my word for it. Here she is. https://twitter.com/DonnaLouise67/status/1242859339427336195

Also, mental health wise, I’ve been looking at some photos I took three weeks BC (Before Coronavirus) when me and Boo went to the seaside in Llan-on in wales. Looking back at the wild outdoors and snuggly indoors really cheers me up so I thought I’d share some here in case they cheer anyone else up who chances past this page.

So that’s where we are in our house then. All home for the foreseeable. Very much like the general population who aren’t key workers I suppose, and it feels better knowing that they’re home rather than braving the outside. Today the big news in the outside world should be the government announcing measures to help self-employed people in the same way they helped employees. I’m keeping my fingers crossed these measures bring relief to the many freelance and self-employed friends and family who are struggling so badly at this worrying and frightening time. As I write this, Zoe Ball’s program is playing on Radio 2, and the news just came on saying that Dyson are going to build 10 000 ventilators to help treat people suffering from complications of covid-19. Hope they get them built in time! It also said that over half a million people have responded to the govt’s call for volunteers to help in the crisis which really makes me think we’re not all a bunch of selfish, stock-piling shit-wits after all. Though I knew that all along its good to see the proof. Stay safe peeps and do whatever you have to to keep your peckers up – within new legal perameters of course.

Last night the prime minister did a broadcast telling us all to stay indoors except for shopping, exercise (once a day) and essential work. As no-one is clear what essential work is and as no-one wants to get sacked from their first ever jobs, George and Paulina are still going to work in their respective offices which are still very much open for business. The rest of the family, me Nick and Harry are staying indoors in various places .

Harry came home from uni last Friday as they closed it down for the foreseeable. His first year as a biomedical sciences student ended abruptly and without warning. There will be no exams and the year will be marked by assessments which he continues to work on. Loads of his possessions are still in his halls as he planned to go back next week and pick them up and see his girlfriend, but with this new lock down in action he wont be able to. I feel so sorry for him, having to stay in like billy no mates at the age of nineteen. I was chatting online with one of my friends last night who I met when we were at uni together at a similar age, and she said how it would have killed her to be socially distanced at nineteen. I thought back and agreed whole-heatedly. Social distancing doesn’t bother me now but teenagers are such herd creatures. Still – metaphorical death is not the same as actual death and since that’s what Harry risks by going out, both for himself and others, he’s is mostly (except for running round the village by way of exercise) staying in.

I’ve now been shielding myself up in my writing shed for a week, so yesterday’s announcement didn’t change anything for me and I’m starting to get used to this new normal. Mother’s day was weird though. Nice pressies but no dinner together and no visiting. George bought me a pair of harem pants that fit perfectly and which I’m wearing now and Harry bought me a bottle of gin. I had one last night even though it was a school night (well a night formerly known as a school night so that’s all right then) and fell asleep quite easily. When I first started sleeping up here the night noises made me jittery and jumpy but now I quite like them and its been so cold and clear I’ve been doing a bit of star gazing before I drop off

On the writing front I’ve started two new extremely weird flash fictions which have allowed me to channel my disquiet into something positive. I’m planning to sub them to Molotov Cocktail and Reflex Fiction.

In a world BC (before coronavirus), I wrote a blog detailing some good writing news that I couldn’t divulge which I said I’d mention in the next blog and then didn’t because of – well the pandemic so here it is…I’ve been shortlisted for the Dinesh Allirajah Prize at Comma Press! The winner was going to be announced at a ceremony at The Northern Short Story Festival where we were all to read an extract from our stories at a theatre in Leeds on May 30th but as that’s been cancelled, it’ll now be done on-line instead. So watch this space! Here’s the link to the announcement https://www.facebook.com/commapressmcr/photos/a.1583467751889275/2613135238922516/?type=3&theater and (above) the photo that went with it.

Also good news writing wise is this – the publication of Ellipsis 7 in which I have a sad and strange wee story. If you’d like to buy a copy you can do so by following this link http://www.ellipsiszine.com/seven/

Right – back to where I started, at the top of this blog – things I have learned from my first week self shielding

1) I was very lucky to have gone to Sweden earlier this year and the memories have been wonderful to linger over

2) You are never alone with pets, even in the teeniest space

3) Social media is brilliant

4) The writing community is brilliant

5) Writing is the best therapy for me even in the darkest of times

6) On-line Tai Chi is the way forward

7) I am super fortunate to live where I do and know the people I know

8) March is not a warm month

9) I am so weird it shows even in my candles (observe phantom hand that melted into existence the night before last)

10) This pandemic will come to an end one day. Its just a matter of battening down our hatches and staying in and safe. We can do this people.

I wrote the blog entry blow last week when I first moved into the hobbit hole (my writing shed) five days ago, but due to technical problems (both digital and human) it didn’t load properly so I’m posting it now by way of backstory so I can continue charting what its like being in proper isolation during these weird, weird times. As I now have more time on my hands I plan to blog more, by way of therapy as much as anything.

Day (and Night) One – 18/3/2020 – Dreaming of Hilary Mantel

Me and my nine year-old pug, Booboo went into a sort of isolation last night up our garden in my writing shed (also known as the hobbit hole). The reason for this in-house isolation is that I’m a chronic asthmatic with a dodgy immune system and so am vulnerable to covid-19. As I live at home with my husband and twenty-year-old son George and his partner Paulina, and as both the young folks are still working in offices full time (for now) in the virus riddled outside,  I have adapted the hobbit hole so I can live in it, virus-free, for the foreseeable. It’s not just to keep me safe though. If (when) the young people and my husband come down with the virus I will be able to keep the house running, do the shopping, make sure the ill have all the necessaries, take the bins out etc and help my near friends and neighbours and elderly relies without actually coming into contact with them, by doing their shopping too.

As I write this I’ve got the radio on and its saying that London is a couple of weeks ahead of the rest of the UK virus wise and that the NHS is already seriously feeling the strain there. It also says that the Govt aren’t going to stop people leaving the city, hoping to rely on people doing the right thing (whatever the right thing is.) I really hope people do start behaving more responsibly. Last week I was ill with a non-covid tummy bug which George and Paulina had the week before, so on Monday I realised we’d run out of paracetamol. I went out early yesterday morning to buy some and after going to the village shop, then the adjoining village shop, then the local Tesco then our local Morrison’s, there was not a single paracetamol to be had (or eggs, or pasta or loo roll).  Came home and tried to do an internet shop. The Ocado site was in total meltdown and unusable so I went to Morrisons and managed to book a delivery for 3rd April. I know panic buying is often caused by anxiety but people really do just need to buy what they need and not stock pile. I’ll try to get paracetamol again when I go out later… and gin I think! Here’s a link from a blog page from someone living in Italy which details what she wished she’d done before they went into total lockdown. Maybe we can learn some lessons? https://www.insider.com/coronavirus-italian-mom-and-these-are-the-mistakes-we-made-2020-3?amp&fbclid=IwAR0YMlWFWuVM-TFFfhC5cwEUHZB_bjUiHOGF0YCFqf-e5vm0sZApdP9KQ9E&__twitter_impression=true

The radio just said there will be no exams this year, no GCSEs or A levels which more than anything drives home to me how this pandemic is changing normality – way more than the FTSE plummeting, the shops being empty,  the grounded aeroplanes and shutdown European cities. The world today, one without A levels and GCSEs feels like a totally different place. I’m trying to look on the bright side though. That’s why I’m starting this blog which aims to document how we manage to keep things normal, or make a new normal in the face of changes. I began creative writing 5 years ago as a sort of therapy for anxiety and grief so writing this blog is a sort of self help too. As part of my creative writing journey I did an MA delivered online by the Open Uni, so I know that delivering education and testing knowledge doesn’t need to happen in classrooms. Maybe its time to make some educational changes to help us through this so the kids don’t lose out entirely. And Brightside wise, staying put both locally and globally will defo help the planet. It’ll reduce carbon emissions no end and halt climate change which may well end up saving gazillions of lives in the long term.

Anyhoo, getting back to last night – I didn’t sleep very well at all up here in Hobbit-land. It was all so weird and noisy.  I decided to listen to The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel on Audible. I’d downloaded it just before I got the tummy bug and had played it on and off as I tossed and turned in feverish half-dreamland when I was poorly. As I’d been too ill to follow the plot, I decided to start again last night and dozed off to it by way of not listening to the jack-booted wildlife partying all night long up our garden. My broken, shallow sleep was full of strange Tudor-related dreams and imagery – headless strangers and threads of story when everyone I met morphed into Hilary Mantel – my husband on a park bench on a wintery snow covered walk changing into her mid conversation; my dead step-mum morphing into her on a picnic chair in a layby in 1970s July; a stone garden sculpture of a Roman goddess morphing into her as she foretold how to create a better, non-pandemic future which I forgot the moment I woke up. If I was a sensible person I’d listen to something a little more floofy tonight but I’m not going to. I’m going to start from the beginning again, hold on tight and see what happens. No prizes for anyone who spotted the all-too obvious metaphor there.  Right this pug won’t walk herself and I have gin to source.