The Lockdown Diaries

[Sporting]

Just paid well over the odds to a Spanish language bookstore for five pounds of Jasmine rice

What other food items did they have?

[ursus arctos]

I didn't think to look. Let me report back.

[ursus arctos]

Staples: rice, coffee, corn meal, dried beans, oil

And some actual Spanish language books

[treibeis]

Given what I have long been used to in Manhattan, no German supermarket ever seemed cramped to me.

Either Manhattan supermarkets are the size of a matchbox or you're the size of three Klitschkows.

[Balderdasha]

Your landlord is spectacularly different to mine. And almost everyone else's.

They are truly wonderful. They help with the gardening and outdoor house maintenance, send us a lovely Waitrose hamper at Christmas time, and haven't raised our rent in over four years.

[WOM]

Home-maintenance wise, I have changed the lightbulb in the refrigerator. That involved finding my socket set, unscrewing two hex screws, removing two (2) separate bits of plastic, removing the burned-out bulb (a job in itself), finding the replacement bulb (surprisingly easy), and then reversing the whole process. Whew. Now enjoying a nice cup of tea.

[Sporting]

Home-maintenance wise, I have changed the lightbulb in the refrigerator. That involved finding my socket set, unscrewing two hex screws, removing two (2) separate bits of plastic, removing the burned-out bulb (a job in itself), finding the replacement bulb (surprisingly easy), and then reversing the whole process. Whew. Now enjoying a nice cup of tea.

If I could manage to do all that by myself (and if I knew what a hex screw was) I'd be celebrating my achievement with something stronger than a cup of tea!

[ursus arctos]

This is a hex screw, for which one needs a special screwdriver or an Allan Wrench (aka those things one gets with Ikea furniture)

[ursus arctos]

Manhattan supermarkets are really small (and packed very tight).

They even have their own reduced size carts/trolleys.

[WOM]

These were the slightly more fiddly hex-headed screw (unslotted). But it gave me a chance to use my socket set, which is always nice in the winter months.

[WOM]

Manhattan surprised with those prepared food stores where they charge you by the pound. They should have those everywhere.

[ursus arctos]

Immigrants

They Get the Job Done

[ursus arctos]

These were the slightly more fiddly hex-headed screw (unslotted). But it gave me a chance to use my socket set, which is always nice in the winter months.

I was wondering why you were using the socket set for hex screws.

And now I know.

[WOM]

They're basically self-tapping machine screws. Whatever they had laying around, I guess.

[caja-dglh]

Manhattan surprised with those prepared food stores where they charge you by the pound. They should have those everywhere.

Some people are extremely sub-optimal in their behavior at those. I am amazed how many people load up on potatoes or mac n cheese. Amateurs.

[San Bernardhinault]

The existence of those amateurs make it possible for the price to be acceptable for the rest of us.

[ursus arctos]

Yet another nail in the coffin of the Efficient Capital Markets Hypothesis

[Balderdasha]

Day 7: Thursday March 26th.

We're getting into a bit of a routine. Breakfast, which today was bagels with various toppings (port and redcurrant jelly, brie, rocket and grapes for the adults, less sophisticated for the kids) followed by Joe Wicks PE and then table time. My daughter was tasked with writing a sensory poem about an emotion. She chose relaxation but then started getting upset when she couldn't think what it smelt like. So we went around the house smelling lavender, grapefruit, basil, anything we could find with a strong smell. She eventually settled on relaxation smelling like vanilla custard. I set my son up with two colours of playdough, orange and green, and we ended up having a lovely time, first making caterpillars, then lots of food for the caterpillars to eat (leaves, carrots, satsumas, broccoli, peas, etc) and then when the caterpillars had eaten enough we metamorphosised them into butterflies.

After table time, we have garden time. Today I set the kids up with a big tub of warm soapy water and got them to clean all the outdoor toys (bikes, scooters, seesaw), while I cleared any rubbish with a litter picker. We don't use our garden a lot over winter and during the last storm lots of corrugated iron had blown off next door's outdoor roof. I gathered three bags of it. Today was bin day and I managed to go and add the bags to three neighbourhood bins before the lorry came round. Win.

My husband made tomato and mascarpone pasta for lunch and then had a webinar with a client. It was supposed to only last half an hour, but the cliebt was a middle-aged woman who lives by herself and her obviously been going stir crazy with no-one to talk to. It took two hours.

During the webinar, I had to keep the kids in the lounge and quiet. We started by watched a Lego YouTube video about the last supper prescribed by my daughter's school. Then my daughter retold the story while my son drew pictures on my phone. I moisturised all our hands (which are getting cracked from excessive hand washing). We watched several episodes of the alphablocks, then played Animal Crossing. Our lounge overheats in the afternoon so by the time my husband finished the webinar we were all a bit hot and cross and tetchy.

Back in the cooler dining room, my daughter drew a detailed diagram of a crocodile while my son helped me sharpen all our pencils. My husband then took the kids out to the park to play football while I did the laundry and the dishwasher, and then went to tackle more rubbish in the back garden. I was merrily dismantling a rusted metal clothing dryer with my bare hands (very satisfying) when I heard a knock on the door.

It was the aforementioned Tesco delivery driver with a truckload of food courtesy of our very lovely landlords (they're a couple in their fifties with no children, ours is the only house they rent out, they seem to view us more as family than anything else. Very different experience to the slum landlords we endured for years in London). I rearranged and put away as much food as I possibly could, but there was still too much. So we messaged my husband's parents, who have been struggling to get a delivery, and left a box of fresh fruit and vegetables on the doorstep for them. They drove over and collected the food with gloves on, and we all waved through the window.

We had a massive buffet of fresh food for dinner. Raspberries, blackberries, mini cucumbers, salad of lettuce, tomatoes and peppers, potato salad, coleslaw, Quorn scotch eggs, leftover pasta from lunch, grapes, blueberries, Emmenthal cheese slices, (when writing fictional stories at school, I was always told off for listing too many things, but I don't care). Followed by chocolate orange rice cakes.

Watched the first episode of "The Worst Witch" with the kids. Soon be time for bedtime.

Frankly, so far, I prefer this lockdown to usual life.

[imp]

imp, is the Kleinmarkthalle open? It could handle distancing reasonably well.

Given what I have long been used to in Manhattan, no German supermarket ever seemed cramped to me.

As far as I can work out, the Kleinmarkthalle is still open. Given how crowded it gets in there too, I assume they're controlling the number of people inside. My local supermarket is the ReWe on Grüneburgweg (just down from the post office you mentioned once before), which is incredibly cramped, especially at lunch time or whenever they're re-stocking shelves, which appears to be all the time. Great staff in there, though.

I am loving Balderdasha's diaries. If my kids were still young, I'd send them round there to hang out.

[ursus arctos]

I figured as much.

That was our local market when we lived two blocks away (though it was then a HL). And it was significantly more spacious than what were used to at home.

[Furtho]

Not sure if this really is the right thread, but here goes.

I can cope with the "from home" bit of working from home, but the "working" bit is very tough.

I work for a small subsidiary company wholly owned by a university, which like other institutions across the sector has sought to increase its online provision massively over the last few weeks. As a consequence to this change in circumstance, the university has suddenly started paying a very great deal more attention to my company, which contains the word "online" in its very title: we represent a potential solution to a large number of institutional problems. When coupled with the fact that everyone is of course having to work in a new way, managing the workload of the team and the pressure from the university is very draining.

So in the evening I feel like I don't want to do anything. I'm worn out, lacking interest in anything. And I can't complain - my next door neighbour told me via Facebook that he lost his job today after the little company he was working for shut down.

Ah, but it would be nice to see another person.

[WOM]

Some people are extremely sub-optimal in their behavior at those. I am amazed how many people load up on potatoes or mac n cheese. Amateurs.

Yeah, see when I went, it was like I had my mother standing over my shoulder saying "Now a bit of the corn. Now a bit of the potato. Now something green. No, not just the sticky ribs...."

[San Bernardhinault]

I'm back from a little walk around the neighbourhood. I observed quite a lot of people just sitting in their parked cars. I don't know if this is normal, or it it's people working from home just wanting their own little space for a few minutes away from the rest of their household.

[Benjm]

That detail is quite Ballardian, SB.

Even more so if, as you noticed the people in their parked cars, you forgot to look where you were going and fell into an empty swimming pool.

[San Bernardhinault]

The whole thing feels Ballardian. The end of the world combined with suburban mundanity. My swimming pool is still full, fortunately.