TINY TUESDAY - SOMETHING IRISH, GREEN OR HOLY

So today is St. Patrick’s Day and I do wonder how many Irish men and women will take heed of the Government’s guidelines issues yesterday and keep away from pubs, clubs and large gatherings.  I guess they might think that if they drink enough alcohol and particularly Guinness, it should ward off any virus - but of course, that can’t be right, otherwise we would all have been imbibing for the last few weeks.

I don’t mean to make light of this serious situation and in fact, our older son, Martyn, gave both Mr. HCB and me a good talking to last night, especially when I said that towards the end of the week, once our period of self-isolation was up, I would be popping to our local Morrison’s supermarket to do some shopping, but would go at 7.a.m. in order to avoid meeting too many people.  He told us in no uncertain terms that we would be foolish to do that and that if we needed anything, we were to ring him and he would buy it and put it on our doorstep, but wouldn’t come in and certainly wouldn’t be hugging us - so guess that’s us told!

So along with millions of others who are Three Score and Ten Plus, we face three months or twelve weeks of “Sparkling Isolation” - according to this tweet from Vikram Paralkar, and seen on another Blipper’s journal yesterday : “It’s only Quarantine if it’s in the Quarante province of France.  Otherwise it’s just Sparkling Isolation”.

We have already done a week of self-isolating, so perhaps for us that will now be eleven weeks.  That means missing Church, Girls About Town, Coffee at Jack’s, meeting up with friends - and of course, our upcoming holiday to Canada and America - but as older and wiser citizens, we need to show the young ones that we oldies - and there are almost 12 million of us in the UK - can do this and do it with finesse!  It will certainly mean that I need to be more inventive about Blips!

Thankfully, we don’t have any underlying medical conditions, but if our son thinks it is important for us to self-isolate, then we will - because he’s a clever lad and knows what he’s talking about - the cleverness comes from Mr. HCB whilst the talking…......I'm sure you get my drift!

He has already made some suggestions about things we can do and says he does realise it will be difficult, particularly for me, being a very social person, but at least we can go out for walks, as long as we don’t talk to anyone, he says, so we are going out now, while the sun is still shining.  So now you know and I know and we all know that we need to step up and be sensible, even if we don’t much like having to do it!  

This is my entry for Tiny Tuesday - a tiny glass cross, given to me by a special friend, who died many years ago, against a green background, as a nod to St. Patrick’s Day - with some sparkle around it - and now all over me - I will need to be careful where I sit!

“Viruses are contagious -
     so is panic, fear, hysteria,
          calm, love, enthusiasm,
               kindness and joy.
Choose wisely.”
Christian Mindfulness