In 2020 there was an outbreak of 'flu. It started in China, and by March 2020 the WHO labelled it a pandemic.
The UK government's response was to restrict people's activities in an effort to slow the spread of the virus. These policies meant many people, myself included, were unable to go to work.
I decided I should spend some of my spare time writing this journal. There will be no theme to individual entries; just whatever I feel like writing. The images are (with a few obvious exceptions) taken within a half mile radius of our house.
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We have returned to lock-down. The gym was closed on Wednesday night, and will remain so until 3 December.
There were some differences this time:
We were given notice; we found out on Saturday.
Essential services and schools remain open. The list of essential services is long, but businesses within entertainment, beauty, sports and hospitality have to remain closed (apart from take-away outlets).
We have planned Zoom sessions; there will be more of them this time. Also, the gymnasts took home a lot of the hand apparatus to use at home. I took the first Zoom session for the adult class theis morning.
We hope we will not be inside for too long. It took us 3 months to get the gymnasts any where near fit last time. We really do not want to have to build it all up again from scratch.
I visited Leonardslee yesterday. It was beautiful in the autumn colours. They will remain open during "lock down 2".
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And here we are again.
Zoom is more interesting this time around. As we had a little notice before shutting down, we made sure all the boys had resistance bands, a chin bar and paralettes at home. Many of them took home hand weights as well.
We are running Zoom sessions much more frequently this time. We want to keep the boys fit; it would be awful to return to the gym and have to build up from scratch yet again. We desperately hope we will be able to return on 3 December.
Most businesses and shops in town have shut. Once again, it is eerily quiet on the streets.
I am harvesting everything from the allotment. We have loads of carrots and sweet potatoes.
We have had rats in the loft! We caught one in a trap and we have laid poison bait. All signs of rat have disappeared these last 2 days, but there's an unpleasant smell in the lounge. We guess one has died somewhere, but we can't find it.
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Today's news was an announcement lockdown will end on 2 December. There will be a new regional "tier" system, which will be stricter than the old system. I think we will be able to restart in the gym, though I dare say that will depend on which tier we are placed in.
Development of a vaccine is progressing. There is hope of getting some people vaccinated before Christmas.
Maybe, in January, we can start to re-build things. We have decided to hold a gymnastics competition in March. This will be a "virtual competition"; gymnasts will perform in their own gym with no audience, all entries will be submitted by video. It has to be better than waiting for things to "return to normal".
The allotment is winding down for winter now. The image is the sweet potatoes. We have never grown these before, but they were remarkably successful.