As New Zealand awakes to its first day of a month-long lock down, it’s day 10 here in Spain. The shutdown has been extended from two to four weeks, which in all reality will go on for a lot longer. I can’t see us all being let out on the streets in two weeks given the current situation of 500+ new cases daily. Imagine those stats if everyone was still out and about carrying on as normal!
The first few days of lockdown were probably the hardest, I was getting my head around the drama of still trying to get home and was receiving a lot of well-meaning messages and advice that individually were lovely but collectively just made me more stressed. You can’t get from Europe to Australia and New Zealand without transiting somewhere and coming from Spain made it all the harder, with fewer options because of the CoVid-19 situation here. No one wants you landing on their soil. Understandable!
Don’t get me wrong, those messages, love and chats are what is keeping me sane now but in the first couple of days they were a little overwhelming. It’s probably one of the best things to come out of all this, I’ve caught up with good friends and family that in our busy pre- CoVid-19 days we were all a bit slack doing and we’ve had some great laughs.
Anyway, once I’d resigned myself to my fate of staying put for the long haul it was a question of what now? Eat, drink, sleep, Netflix binge and repeat! It’s shouldn’t be that hard, I’ve been known to laze around for days at a time, Netflix bingeing, not even getting dressed let alone leaving the house.
So, by myself, without a TV or radio and not fluent enough in the language even if I did, sloth and gluttony has become the norm. Unlike Australia and New Zealand, we are not allowed out to walk or exercise, I don’t have a balcony to even be able to sit outside but I’ve discovered I can climb out the back window and lay on the car park roof between between the unit blocks for a bit of fresh air. It’s my pretend beach, one with a view of the twenty odd units looking down on me and the rows of washing hanging from each.
Five litres of wine and a bottle of port at last count! CoVid-19 won’t get me, but the drinking might. I’m managing to keep myself ‘busy’, lying in bed, occasionally moving to the armchair to eat but mostly snacking in bed. Getting dressed has become optional, there’s a lot of funny shit being posted on social media at the moment, that sends me down the virtual rabbit-hole for hours at a time and I don’t need to get up or dressed for that.
The trouble is that the internet in my building is sporadic on a good day, with thousands of people now stuck at home it’s struggling big time. I used to go to the library or sit at one of my local cafes to get online, download my Netflix viewing. Can’t do that now, everything is closed.
I can walk up to the laundromat and use their WIFI to download Netflix but, when you don’t bother getting dressed most days, there’s not much washing to justify this outing.
Prior to the lock down I was walking 45 minutes most days and swimming three times a week, so after a week of sloth I decided it was time to start doing a few seven-minute workouts. Bloody hell, one seven-minute set was all I managed and two days later I’ve still got sore arms from my pathetic 10 from-the-knee push-ups!
Change of tact, time for a port and to dance like no one is looking – cos no one is.