Fiona’s Corona Diaries (24th April)

Yesterday I felt as flat as an apple cake

Not a term I would use often but as my apple cake had just turned out like a nutmeg flavoured custard frittata, it seemed apt. I am not very good with recipes, either for baking or for life. If there were instructions for life somewhere, I must have lost them along the way. This isn’t really a problem because any set of instructions that included something as bizarre as coronavirus lockdown would take up far too much room in a cupboard (we didn’t have databases when I was born).

Corona diary updates

• There are an awful lot of crows on the beach
• I have added them to my new film
• It is called 28 Seconds Later
• But doesn’t have any woman-eating zombie creatures in it
• Which is nice because nobody wants to go to the beach with those
• I seem to be talking to far more people in the streets than I used to
• At a distance of course
• We are all doing the corona pavement shuffle
• One man finally spoke to me
• I have seen him every morning for a couple of years
• He clearly needed to get a few things off his chest
• It was nice to be of service
• People, in general, are far more pleasant than I thought they were

Conversation of the day

On the way home after my daily early walk to the beach. Pavement man is standing on the pavement, I am standing in the road.

Pavement Man: I have about 500 employees and can only keep 80 of them.

Me: Oh that must be difficult

Pavement Man: Not really a lot of them are fuckers

Word of the day – pollination

There is a lot of pollination going on chez Darby. Not in the house you understand, we are all far too closely quartered for that. No, our garden is full of pollinators, particularly bees. One of my current favourite stress relief habits is to stand as close to the crab apple tree as I can manage and listen to the bees buzzing.

I have also started noticing, in the traffic-free quiet, the sound of birds’ wings as they flutter into the garden.

I will miss that.

But not arguing about the broadband.