Day 8 of lockdown which has now been extended until mid April at least :(
We always used to have a staff meeting on a Monday morning to go over the previous week’s events, so, in an attempt to keep things as normal as possible, and to keep in touch with my colleagues, we held an online “meeting” via “Whereby”. I’d not heard of that program before but it worked really well – might try it instead of Skype next time I video call the family.
We helped each other set up a schedule of daily tasks to help each of us organise our day. It is very difficult to juggle work, home school kids and generally keep the house in order, especially as, for the majority of us, our living rooms are now our offices so a little bit of prior planning really helps. I consider myself quite lucky that I don’t have young children to home school (both my kids are grown up and have left home) – I just have to deal with my cats trying to “help” me sort my paperwork :)
We are allowed to leave the house to visit the supermarket and as we were running low on quite a few essentials (particularly chocolate :)), I decided to brave the outside world and go to Mercadona. My son, who lives in Medina Sidonia, had told me that the Mercadona there, had closed the entrance from the parking and everyone must enter from the pedestrian entrance. As you enter, everyone is asked to use hand sanitiser and put on gloves (provided) and they were controlling the number of people in the shop at any one time. He said that they were also limiting the amount you could buy – you couldn’t buy more than 2 of any one item and no more than 10kg of meat or fish. I assumed that this would be the case with every branch of Mercadona – How wrong I was!!
The car park was very busy – I’ve seen less cars in there on a “normal” day – and you could access the shop from the parking . Only one person is allowed in the lift at a time which makes sense obviously but no-one was controlling the stairs from the car park – as I went up, someone else came down!!
There was hand sanitizer and gloves but this is near the pedestrian entrance. I had already got my trolly (luckily I was wearing gloves anyway) before I was directed to the sanitiser and gloves.
I was very surprised by how many people were actually in Mercadona yesterday. I was desperately trying to keep 2 metres away from anyone else but it was virtually impossible. You go up one aisle and someone else comes down the other way with their trolley and you can’t go back because there’s someone coming up behind you – it was really quite scary. On top of that, at least 50% of what I wanted, they didn’t have. I appreciate that this is not their fault, they are doing their best to restock the shelves following the panic buying pre lockdown and we can learn to live without most things (not sure on chocolate though! :), however, I really feel that they should limit the number of people in the shop at any one time – for the safety of their staff if nothing else. I would much rather queue outside for half an hour and have less people in the shop than all be in there together.
On a much lighter note, and this time, well done Mercadona, my son has just shared this video which emphasises the “stay at home” message but is done in such a fun way
Anyway shopping done, home, changed and now in my Pj’s at 4pm (Well I’m not going anywhere and no one is coming to visit!) I had a quick video call with Shani to discuss the structure of our lockdown diary and how my shopping trip had gone.
Hubby has disappeared upstairs and half an hour later there’s a lot of banging and crashing. I call up to check all ok.. and he say it is…so leave him to it! Next stage in bedroom renovation – doors and frame removed from wardrobes and he has started to lift the floor!!
Hasta Mañana!!