EXCERPT: I might have hit the wall. I see it coming nowadays though. I ought to, I’m old enough. I usually get one day a week when I feel like that:

I took a day off everything yesterday, even speaking. The poor boy (Harry’s son – ed) tried to engage me in conversation a couple of times, but I just grunted. It’s Ok to do that too now and again, or everyday. You gotta do what you gotta to do to get through. Doobie doo.

I did write a bit of a diary but it was nonsense, more nonsense than usual, so I abandoned it. I don’t think I’ve much to say any more. “I’m locked down – I’m good – I’m worried – I’m happy – I’m scared. Nothing particularly insightful at all.

As it was Easter, I was going to write something pompous about resurrection and try to tie it in with our current experiences, but it didn’t go the way I had planned. I thought about passing it off as post-modernism. There is definitely a school of thought I belong to, I don’t know which one, but I bet it has a padded cell.

I managed to write the first draft of a short story. I’m writing a second one now, it’s taking a bit longer. I think it might be overly ambitious. It keeps me amused though. I always get embarrassed by work I get published. I don’t know why. It holds me back.

It’s the same in other areas. I bought a cheap second-hand laptop off eBay today and felt ashamed that I’d spent the money.

I might have hit the wall. I see it coming nowadays though. I ought to, I’m old enough. I usually get one day a week when I feel like that. Sometimes it feels easier to just wallow. The trick is day two. That’s when I get the option to sink into depression or force myself out. After that it gets a bit harder. If it carries on ‘til tomorrow, I will hijack the dog for a while.

To take my mind off myself I rang a friend while I was in bed and asked her how lockdown was? “Try being perimenopausal with two hormonal teenage girls?”
I knew straight away it was a trap, Naturally I said the wrong thing and she hung up, so on that great start I went downstairs for coffee.

I thought I’d find some news not Covid related. Luckily a big asteroid had just missed the Earth. Less fortunately a radioactive fire was approaching Reactor 4 in Chernobyl.

I really didn’t need to read about the greatest economic shock since the great depression. I’m not over the last one yet. Last time I didn’t know what to expect. I do now and have far less energy to deal with it.

It might be a good time to take up drinking again. I haven’t had one this decade. I’d rather decided I wanted to live to my full potential. I had a plan to make one last big hard working push to pull myself up by bootstraps and get out of the rental trap before arthritis and peripheral arterial syndrome (bad circulation – ed) overwhelmed the last of my youthful vigor.

By the time this next recession is over, I’ll be in need of all types of medication – only austerity will have butchered the healthcare system so I’ll more than likely be dead.

I knew it was foolish to dare to dream again.

Nature isn’t worried about economics. It’s amazing how quickly the leaves unfold. One day bare, the next everything is looking green. The birds are happy to have some foliage to cover their modesty now mating season has arrived.

Sap was also rising in young adults who had congregated by the river. They must have been defying the lock down – they couldn’t all live in the same house? It’s only natural though. There comes a point in every lockdown when even the trees begin to look alluringly exotic.