Journal of the Plague Year 2020 (Entry Six: A Reverse Joker)

Entry Six: A Reverse Joker

(28.3.20-3.4.20)

Another week’s gone. Another week. It barely feels like it, one day and another have rather merged. I have a routine now, I wake up, drink tea and log on my computer and ‘work from home’. I have a notion of what this is now, I set work, mark some but largely find myself as tech support for children writing in that they, ‘don no wat to do’. They knew how to write last month.

I’ve got them into geo-guesser, that’s an achievement of sorts.

Yet again, I panicked about food, I thought I would have to do something disgusting like buy a tin of baked beans, as they say desperate Heinz call for desperate measures.

Actually, I do have a bit of a story.

I originally wanted to go to the supermarket Thursday afternoon thinking that it might be a good time but was convinced by everybody that I should go early on Friday, so I did. I didn’t go unfairly early, I left the time for the NHS workers and the older people but got there pretty much as early as I could. The queue stretched out into the carpark but that was as much a result of everyone being meters apart than anything else.

As I went around, I looked at what was there, the selection was pretty decent. I bought a ham bigger than my face, reasoning that I could turn it into pea and ham soup, some stock as well as generally having ham sandwiches and ham with veg.

I definitely did put bread in my basket.

When I got to the checkout, they’ve installed these huge screens to protect the people working there. I started to load the conveyor belt and it started to move. To catch up with it, I moved up to add my things but was promptly told off.

It was about then I think I left my bread to one side.

I paid and packed and it was all smiles and then I went home. When I arrived, I found I’d somehow not bought bread. I also discovered that I’d done my whole trip with a massive smear of toothpaste round my mouth, not a small dab but a full on lipstick of white, a reverse Joker. I wish there had been someone to tell me.

Also, we tried to play wink murder on googlechat, it doesn’t work. The problem is not that the detective catches the murderer too easily, it's that everyone thinks that the wink is for them and dies. Wink A-Bomb.

Entry One: A Cough in a Box (22.2.20 - 28.2.20)

(Coronavirus is a rumble among other stories but silly stories start early.)

Entry Two: Eat More Garlic (29.2.20 - 6.3.20) 
(A song and a wash, rising paranoia.)

Entry Three: A Guilty Sigh (7.3.20-13.3.20) 
(Confusion at school, a new variation on 'it' and a new chat up line.)

Entry Four: A Week as Schrödinger's cat (14.3.20-20.3.20) 
(A week at school where it's open, closed then repurposed as something else.)

Entry Five: Lego and Ice-cream (21.3.20-27.3.20)
(In which much of what we called life goes online.)