Day 2 of COVID-19 Lockdown

Cape Town, 28 March 2020.

Hello World

Day 2 of lockdown and a long way to go. Yesterday we managed to keep ourselves fairly busy. In between the Nerf gun battles – Fandom cheated and stole all the bullets – we were engaged in a number of activities. I used the time to start sanding down some of my windows in preparation for a few coats of Woodoc. Fandom focussed his attention on reformatting Chronicles of Christmas into a paperback format. After lunch and a bit of exercise we beta tested a website on behalf of a friend of mine in the UK. That work will continue today along with more sanding (sigh!). We finished things off by making silly podcast recordings of Emma and Tracy, our female alter egos.

News on the COVID-19 side was not good. By lunch time it was confirmed that South Africa had suffered its first COVID-19 related death - a woman from Cape Town. And more bad news, the number of reported cases had risen to just over 1100. There was a steady increase in cases over the past week and this confirms that government’s decision to lockdown was the right one. Now if only people would adhere to it. Financial markets continue to struggle and the South African Rand has lost a fair bit of value against all major currencies. No surprise really. When I last looked yesterday one British Pound could buy you R22! How different it was when I travelled to the UK in 1997 and paid R7 for £1. I don’t see this changing much for the foreseeable future.

Exercising at this time can be tricky. We are fortunate enough to have a reasonably sized garden albeit rather unkempt. My aunt and uncle from Holland are staying in our garden cottage for a few months. To stay active my aunt decided to do a few laps around the house. She was lucky that our garden provides so many natural hazards (uncut grass, broken branches and a few deposits from our Wire-haired Foxy Lily). The obstacle course was negotiated with remarkable ability and she completed it in record time. At least for a pensioner.

Stay safe.