Statuesque social distancing

Today marked the first time I had set foot out of the house since my return from Spain. Mrs. Ottawacker had had enough, quite rightly so, of my grousing, so loaded me up with a shopping list and sent me out to fulfil the ancient hunter-gatherer role: yes, I had been sent to the butcher’s in far-away Navan.
 
We are fortunate enough to have access to a very good purveyor of freshly slaughtered beast. We head out of the city to a place called Navan, where Lavergne’s ticks all the boxes in terms of quality, price and reliability. It’s a bit of a schlepp, but I quite like it.
 
Even here, in the boonies, social distancing is being observed; and quite rightly too. I arrived at around 11 o’clock to find a 12-person line up, as Lavergne’s was letting four people in at a time. I had neither hip flask not winter coat, but I braved the sub-zero temperatures to queue up in the newly approved style.
 
Four-hundred dollars later (two months’ worth of meat and a couple of errands) I was stood outside my friend Mitch’s house chatting away. And I think that is when it hit me; rather than go inside for a coffee or a snifter, we just stood 2 metres apart chatting away. I handed over his chicken and ground beef, and then headed off back to the bosom of my family. There I scrubbed hands and changed clothes, had a shower, started unpacking the meat into freezable portions… I felt like I was in a science experiment.
 
Still, we had fresh buns and ham, sausage and soup for a late lunch, so it was worth it. And I finally submitted the bloody translation I have been struggling with since 2015.