It was Mother’s Day today. The first for my wife as a new mum. Before all this happened, my plan was to take her out to Oulton Hall in Leeds for afternoon tea with our little lad, walk round the grounds. Have a nice relaxed day with good food as a family. Obviously that didn’t happen. Instead we were indoors for most of the day. Our little lad has a rough cold right now, which is causing us worries. He’s had a cough for a good part of this week, with a runny nose. We’ve been in insolation for about a week anyway, and he’s been a bit down in the dumps as you’d expect. But you worry, especially as new parents.

Our situation means if we were both to get the virus at the same time, and both get a bad dose of it, there would be no one to look after him. Both our mums are in a high risk category, so they wouldn’t be able to look after him. Its very important that we avoid getting ill for as long as possible.

That being said, we managed a walk in the sun for a couple of hours in our LOCAL area, with a cup of tea to warm the hands. There were some on their bikes, and some other people walking as well. Gladly just about all using their grey matter and keeping at least 2m away from others.

We were going to go to the canal near us, but we could see there was a lot of parked cars so I’m guessing that was stupidly packed when it shouldn’t have been. The little man was getting tired so we headed back. I had bought my better half a nice bottle of prosecco with her other bits for Mother’s Day, so we settled down on the sofa once we had put him to bed, ordered a Chinese from our local place, which was left on our door step, and got comfy on the sofa. Not the best first Mother’s Day, and it was disappointing for both of us. But we both knew the situation and it couldn’t be helped.

The walk was nice. Got us out of the house. Lets us talk about other things, like how awful it is to see so much litter thrown away on the grass banks, or where they are going to start building new houses.

Then we go home. Not soon after we got in, there was another press conference by the Prime Minister. I’ll be honest, I get an awful feeling in the pit of my stomach when they’re on. Almost every day new measures are brought into place and new, starker warnings are given, like they were today. I have my thoughts on that, and other things which I’ll save for other posts.

I’d had enough of the press conference. I went to run a bath for our little one and splashed in the water with him. I like bath times. When I’m at the office I hardly see him, other than for a couple of hours in the morning, and maybe abut 90 minutes on a night before he goes to bed. So whenever I got a chance to bath him I always enjoyed it. I am going to be working from home a lot more now, so the silver lining is I will get to see more of him which is awesome!

We heard some sad news today as well. My wife’s friend told her that someone she knew with cancer and was on chemo, and had got COVID-19. My heart sank. This was a case not that far away, when you work out the connections between people. We were told that their chemo had been stopped and the docs were going to let it run its course. We looked at each other, knowing what that actually meant. It nearly brought me to tears. I don’t know this person, but I know their outlook is grim. So it continues to infuriate me when I see people blatantly ignoring the advice being given.

Tomorrow I start working from home properly. I have to protect my family and others as best I can. In a way I feel guilty, as though I have abandoned my office. But I can do all that I do from home, and if that means I keep my family safe, then that’s what it is.

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