Our Second Covid-19 Quarantine of 2020 is Almost Over

We are now on serious countdown mode here in The Cooler, as our second Covid-19 quarantine of 2020 is coming to its end. Personally I have found this round of quarantine much more difficult than the one we had to undertake when we arrived back from Spain in March. Back then the days were unseasonably warm and sunny and a couple of days after we went into quarantine the rest of the country went into lockdown. Our street fell silent, no voices and no traffic noise, not even from the nearby A610 which usually emits a constant hum. Back in March it was so quiet I could hear birds singing. Our 14 days seemed to go quickly probably because we were in a bit of shock after our four day blast across Europe, but also because there was so much going on – nightly Government briefings, scary news headlines which felt like they were proclaiming the end of the world and also updates from so many fellow motorhomers either trying to get home, help others with information or opting to stay put and ride it out abroad.

This time around I’m finding quarantine much harder mentally. Partly because the days are short I guess, it’s dark by 4pm and when it’s not cloudy or raining the sun is so low it doesn’t manage to reach into our yard, I don’t mind my tan fading but feeling the sun on your skin, even if it is a cold day, is a wonderful way to heal the soul. However the biggest difference I have noticed is that even though the country is in a second lock down the streets aren’t quiet. I can hear people going about their day to day business, and the traffic hum has hardly reduced. It sounds like there is a world going on out there, and I’m missing out on it, and that’s tough. I suspect people aren’t as afraid of the virus now as they were back in March, I know that I feel like I have more of a grasp on what to do to keep myself and my loved ones safe. The plus side of this new found covid confidence is that it’s possible to book supermarket delivery slots, something that was impossible last time, but fortunately we knew this so had stocked up the van before crossing the channel.

Since we got back we’ve been helping Jay’s Dad to arrange the funeral and working through the bureaucracy that comes with someone dying. The experience has made us realise how much there is to do for whoever is left behind, and has prompted me to dig out our wills. They were written back in 2008, before we embarked on our crazy life experiment, so they are in serious need of an update. I’ve also started to write out a list of all our current assets, bank accounts, income streams etc. to make life easier for whoever is the executor of our new wills. I think we’ve been fortunate that Jay’s Mum hadn’t really ventured much into the online world, so there hasn’t been any frustration of not having passwords for online accounts, something which I suspect will become increasingly problematic for our generation. While it might all sound a bit morbid, now that the admin process of funerals has been demystified for me, I’ll be able to plan and write out my wishes for my funeral, hopefully taking away any stress for those I leave behind (fortunately for us Jay’s parents had done this for their funerals). It’s not like I had my head buried in the sand about death, but I guess it’s only when you get exposed to these things that you stop and think about them.

Since being back home I’ve developed a cough, this has happened before over winter when we’ve the wood burner going all day, even with an ever evaporating vessel of water on the top of it, the air gets very dry. When I inputted my cough into the Covid symptom tracker survey that I’ve been filling in every day since it began, it asked us to both take a covid PCR test. The results came back this morning and we are both negative (which is reassuring) so our aim is to ensure we stay that way until the funeral next Friday in order to be able to support Jay’s Dad. So once again the highlight of the week will be our supermarket delivery, and this time I’ve added in a decent amount of chocolate as we are starting to run low. It wouldn’t normally an issue, but these are (as we keep being told) unprecedented times.

In breaking news from The Cooler, we’ve just booked flights back to Spain. As it stands at the moment, we can’t actually leave the UK but that will change when lockdown ends this week. Nottingham is going into Tier 3 and while we can’t travel to another part of the UK and stay overnight, we can travel abroad. We will need to have a PCR test in the 72 hours before we arrive in Spain (which costs way more than the flights) with a negative result – no stress there then! Looking into it we thought we were onto a winner as Boots does them in both Nottingham, Derby and Sheffield stores, but sadly they didn’t have any appointments available in the time window before the flights we could have taken, so, we’re going to have to do a bit more digging into that one. Also we can’t currently get from the airport to the campsite where Zagan is stored because in Andalusia travel between municipalities is currently banned. We’ve booked a flight close to Christmas in the hope that this restriction will be lifted by then, and if not, well the lovely people at Ryanair will let us change our flight without their usual amendment fee (or we could stay in a BnB in Malaga). So, we have our fingers crossed that the planets will align for us and we’ll be back in Nerja for Christmas Day, and our next round of quarantine won’t be until March 2021 – if it hasn’t been stopped by then!

Ju x