CoVid Corner shop

I've always wanted a corner shop in this neighbourhood. The post office stores on the road nearby had closed even before we moved to this street, 17 years ago.

Now we have one in landlord Rodda Thomas' pub, the Crown and Sceptre,, which is of course not a pub right now. They sell bread, milk, eggs (6 per customer) and whatever else they can get hold of. They also have cooked takeaway meals, and will deliver to those unable to go out. Entrance is limited to two customers at a time, and there is a counter from which people are served.

It's strongly reminiscent of the 1940s corner shop in a reality/documentary series I was watching only a couple of weeks ago! The speed at which things change and the fabric of advanced capitalism falls away, is mind-boggling.

When I awoke this morning and realised we were in UK lockdown, day one, with the sun blazing down, I was saddened. Persuaded myself in the end that I just needed to get up, finish a jigsaw while singing my way through a 1970s playlist on Spotify. This seemed like a plan.

Of course it didn't work out that way, and it must have been 3pm before I got the jigsaw out! But I did have several phone conversations, including one very surreal one with my mother, the Queen of hoarded stationery. She had not heard about lockdown, and wanted to get some more notelets... Of course, we all have our addictions, but you couldn't make this script up! I have directed her to my card website and offered to send her a parcel from my stock, Tanya is going to send some from NZ, and my youngest sister is going to remind her that she has "a f#ck ton of them already, in her bureau!"

For my one permitted form of exercise today, I delivered some paracetamol to a person in our support group, and extended the trip into a pleasant walk. She left 'sanitised coins' on her doorstep. At least it's not dirty money..

Later, I went to this shop to give away some paracetamol that they can sell/give away. Hardly anyone is on the street in our neighbourhood. Children in the park are playing socially distanced football, and the play equipment is closed. As a child of the 1960s, I always thought that the end of the world would resemble a post-nuclear wasteland, not this sunny Tuesday in Stroud.