Fiona’s Corona Diaries (5th April)

Anyone else missing hugging?

My name is Fiona and I am a hugger. In fact I have at tendency to hug, without invitation, at entirely inappropriate moments. I once, at the end of a holiday in Turkey, mistakenly hugged the taxi driver as well as the family to whom I was bidding farewell.

It seems very sad (but very sensible) to not be able to hug people just when they all need it most and (let’s be honest here) when I need it most. Still, here in Devon we seem to be developing a whole new set of social norms. Read on to find out more…

Corona diary updates

• When out for daily exercise, eye contact, morning greetings and pavement space are all still under distanced and silent debate but I have detected a couple of developing norms (a kind of Covid highway code)
• If the person approaching on the pavement is older than you, you must move into the road or wait in a driveway to allow them safe passage
• If someone has waited for you to pass or moved away from you, it is acceptable to offer a polite ‘thank you’
• We really must stop bumping into each other.
• No I mean it, we really must
• We also need to invent a few new idioms
• The pigeons have been doing a grand job of replacing the post-pub litter in town with pigeon poo
• Chez Darby we are playing a new game called, ‘How long can you make a tank of diesel last?’ It’s going well because we’ve only been shopping twice in two weeks and one of those times we walked

Conversation of the day

After reading today’s ‘people are sunbathing’ news

Me: I don’t really understand the difference between walking in the sunshine and lying in it

Hubby: Isn’t it obvious? One’s moving and the other’s stationary

Me: Nobody wants to sunbathe at the station

Hubby: Nobody wants to sunbathe with a pad of foolscap paper on their head either

Word of the day – Idiom

You’ve probably already seen the word ‘covidiot’ heading towards September’s Oxford English Dictionary entries but how about a few covidioms? An idiom is where you use words to mean something that they wouldn’t usually. For example if you ‘bump into’ someone, you don’t have to make physical contact (which is a relief at the moment I can tell you).

It remains to be seen whether or not some idioms will survive 2020.  Bumped into is obviously out but perhaps a few favourites can be saved through some careful adjustment:

• See it from two metres (see eye to eye)
• The ball’s in my court (the ball’s in your court)
• Wait to see who else is on the bridge (cross that bridge when we come to it)
• Looking carefully round corners (cutting corners)
• Find a completely different job (don’t give up the day job)
• Don’t take too many eggs (don’t put all your eggs in one basket)
• Tango it alone (it takes two to tango)

I could go on but you probably don’t need the whole two metres.