When Gail-over-the-back, (we call her that because that's her name and it's where she lives), stuck her nose over the fence and suggested we catch up for morning tea on their driveway, checking our calendar didn't take very long at all. Our whole day had been blanked out as it happens so it was easy to turn up with our chairs, food and coffee and stay in their garden shade, conversing for hours longer than we intended, all the while maintaining a very safe three or four metres separation.
Yesterday marked the first month of our splendid non-isolation and we think we've pretty much got into the swing of pacing ourselves. Three weeks ago we thought we'd give this isolation lark a go for a month. Two weeks ago it looked more as though it was going to be four. Now it's pretty clear that if we are out and about again much before October we'll be either lucky or on our way to a wedding or a funeral, so there's no sense in working through our list of things to do too quickly.
On the other hand, we are getting a bit tired of our possums stripping the vege patch bare each night, and when I mentioned to another neighbour that I might risk a cautious trip to the hardware store to construct a means of intervention, his expression changed to one of concern, and it wasn't concern for the possums. He immediately offering to go on my behalf. He's a surgeon based at our public hospital, what in today's lingo is a "front line worker", and clearly is of the view that the risk of going out at all is greater than it appears to be from the bare numbers.
We'll take that as a reminder not to drop our guard, and we'll keep putting the sheet over the parsley each night.
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