Essential Exercises

My post last week about gardening injuries was indeed prescient. I’ve developed a shoulder injury and T is exhausted. So the heavy gardening jobs that we were undertaking have been set aside. There remains plenty to do, but we are only working on lighter tasks for the time being. In the main we are resting, reading and going for local walks and bike rides.  

I’ve recently bought a Kindle and have downloaded a pile of classics from Project Gutenberg. I’m currently re-reading Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories. T is reading plenty of gardening books, her favourite is Monty Don. We check the coronavirus news online once or perhaps twice a day. We have stopped watching the BBC news as it has become rather unbalanced in its reporting since the Government has put pressure on it via the license fee. In the evenings we usually watch a film that we have recorded from Film 4 or TPTV. We don’t subscribe to any pay channels.

We are content with our routine. And T is still working from home. We didn’t have a very active social life previously so we have managed to adjust to the lockdown so far without too many problems. We have each other and that is a great blessing. You can pretty much cope with anything when you have the one that you love by your side.

To protect me, T has taken on the ordeal of going to the shops once a week. She travels into the local town with mask and surgical gloves on and queues up outside Tesco to bring back our essential groceries. She is always very stressed when she returns and regales me with tales of people (often the young) who are paying scant attention to social distancing rules.

I rarely leave the house for anything other than exercise. Because there are far fewer vehicles about these days, I have taken to cycling on local roads that I would previously have avoided due to the heavy traffic. The main roads around here are certainly less hilly than the minor roads. But the surfaces of the main roads are often far worse than the minor roads. Cars are able to scoot along with most of the bumps being contained by shock absorbers. On a bike you feel all of the bumps and potholes. Furthermore, on a bike you are travelling at the side of the road where the surface is at its worst because the main road has been dug up repeatedly for work on cables and piping. On these bike rides I take all the food and water I need and stop for my breaks far away from people.

I have stopped going for bike rides along the canal towpath. It is flat and with a good surface, but since the lockdown has been introduced the towpath has become much more crowded than usual. Many more people are now travelling there for their essential exercise. I was a little worried by the groups of people with prams and the gangs of dog walkers, but I managed to give them a wide berth. But the runners were a different proposition. They came towards you puffing and panting, dispersing aerosols which you had no choice but to breathe in.

Today I was amused by Matt Hancock’s observation that sunbathing was not an essential exercise. Obviously, he has no knowledge of the climate of Northern Ireland. Sunbathing is only possible here for a couple of days a year. Whilst these hot days are very unpredictable, they certainly don’t happen in early April. And if you were unwise enough to strip off, the wind would cut through you like a knife.