Lockdown Diaries 2020/21

Yes, that’s right – we’re back in the “pub”.   Last May I wrote a post headed: “Last orders at the Quarant Inn” in the assumption that our days spent reimagining Robbie’s room as a pub were over. Robbie was heading back to London, lockdowns were easing and real pubs were about to reopen. And this meant life would return to normal.   Yeah, right.    Little did we know that within six months we’d all be holed up inside again.    The Quarant Inn started out as an in-joke between the three of us. Early on in the pandemic – even before the first lockdown – we saw the writing on the wall and decided, with much mirth, that it would be a cracking idea to have Friday night drinks in Robbie’s bedroom and pretend it was an actual pub. It pretty much had the accoutrements – wood panelling, oil paintings, stuffed birds, human skulls (okay, some other weird stuff besides the accoutrements).   The Quarant Inn was supposed to be a one-off gimmick to amuse ourself one ...

Change is in the air. You can feel it on the streets, in the parks and on the common. Things are gradually easing up and the excitement is palpable. Everyone has responded gleefully to the decree that we’re now allowed out to exercise as many times as we want. People to whom the word “exercise” was once an anathema are now swarming to the nearest open-air space to jog, walk, throw frisbes, kick balls around, ride bikes and generally run amok.  Meanwhile the garden centres have opened at last - to the boundless joy of us older folk for whom the urge to grow stuff seems particularly strong. I went to a nursery last week and joined the queue of happy seniors snaking around the perennials, scooping up bedding plants like gasping nomads who had finally happened upon a water source in the desert. And socially-distancing friends are now allowed to meet up in pairs, provided they walk two metres away from one another. Ha. Doesn’t work. My friend Sue and I tried it the othe...

This week we notched up another first: we took part in a virtual pub quiz. Brian and I used to love a quiz in the Real World. In fact we used to regularly attend the Thursday night quiz at our local pub until they carried out a terrible refurb and moved the event to a much-less-acceptable Tuesday.  So, imagine my excitement when I discovered there was a virtual lockdown quiz on You Tube – and on a Thursday night, too. I’m not sure what I was expecting. A jovial, wise-cracking landlord interspersing his questions with banter, perhaps? Plus a cosy, pub-like backdrop with low lighting and background music? Instead there was this ordinary-looking bloke, drinking gin in his living room and working his way through a bunch of standard quiz rounds with a deadpan delivery. A wild night in It wasn’t. But it did serve to highlight another new facet of our lives: the fact that everyone’s worlds are becoming smaller. I hate to mention Joe Wicks again, but his daily wo...