A bit glum...

Day 9

I was really hoping that the headlines of the news today would be "April Fool!" - it was just a joke and now we can get back to normal, but alas, it wasn't to be. I'm not sure if anyone has the stomach for playing tricks on us this year!

Today dawned grey and overcast, which matched my mood. Every morning I wake up and then the reality hits me... we're all in lockdown. Sophie did her run and then settled down to work and I spent most of the day grappling with uploading my blog onto the book publishing website. Now I know why authors have it done professionally! It was extremely frustrating!

By early afternoon, I'd had enough so I managed to convince Keith to let me have the remote control and I did something I rarely do during the day - watched television. I chose The Aftermath, a film starring Keira Knightley and the gorgeous Alexander Skarsgard. I thoroughly enjoyed it and it nicely filled a couple of hours!

We had planned on going for a walk when Sophie finished work, but the weather continued to be grey and very cold - we've had the heating on all day so heaven knows what our bills are going to be like for this period.

Instead of going out we settled down and watched Masterchef as we are a couple of episodes behind. Dinner tonight was breaded chicken escalopes and I'd suggested to Keith we make our own chips for a change as the oven ones are so insipid. I went upstairs to get changed and when I came down Keith had filled one of our large saucepans almost to the top with vegetable oil, which unnerved me. Having worked in the fast food business for over 20 years, I was very alarmed to see the oil bubbling away... I suggested we use our big wok instead, but he pooh-poohed that idea and started putting all of our chipped potatoes into the pan.

Predictably, the oil overflowed and went all over the hob. Thankfully, it didn't catch fire which would have been a real calamity! I quickly turned off the gas and went to get the wok so we could use that! Sophie appeared and started taking charge because, of course, she used to cook in the cafe and knew exactly what to do!

Over dinner we talked about where we'd go if we had the chance and for some reason I started talking about Scotland, when we did the whale watching tour and Keith had eaten fish and chips every evening for his meal! Maybe we'd give that a miss!

Our viewing choice for the evening was Tony Robinson's new series of train travel around the world. It was heaven to watch it and escape for just a little while!