My day: Work seem to have finally sorted their network issues out now as for the last few days I have been able to log on and stay connected without too many issues. I received an email from the manager first thing to say I’m to work from home full-time now so no more weekly going into the office. This is a relief to be honest. Until this is over I would prefer to be in my own surroundings and avoid public places as much as possible. This means that my first scheduled outing (apart from daily exercise!) is on 5th April when the milk runs out!

A group of us are taking part in the work virtual quiz on Thursday so tonight we need to come up with a team name. Any suggestions are welcome – all the ones I came up with were NSFW.

This afternoon’s entertainment was provided by three girls having a fight outside the church opposite my flat! They were screaming at each other and pulling each other’s hair! So much for social distancing!

This evening I’m checking in with my parents and then Sarah, so I decided to have a bath earlier and before feeding my cat. Big mistake. She usually gets fed at 6pm and it was 5pm when I was running my bath so it wasn’t as though I was making her wait longer but she made her displeasure known by ripping up my carpet in front of the bathroom door! So she got fed earlier but has a ten second memory and the minute 6pm came around she was trying to get fed again! I have a longer memory and with the carpet incident fully at the forefront of it she didn’t get even a scrap!

Linda G. Hill came up with this great idea to keep track of the weeks and months ahead. For those who already are, and will be isolated in the coming weeks, it is important to all come together and support each other.

Yesterday: Yesterday I decided to treat myself to a real lazy day. Before the lock-down I would have been busy doing something on Saturdays so for the first time in about 7 months I found myself with a free Saturday! So I played a bit of Animal Crossing whilst having a marathon viewing of Friday Night Dinner which continues to be hilarious no matter how many times I watch it. Honestly I just need light-hearted fun things to watch at the moment (thanks Amazon Prime for high-lighting Contagion when I logged in earlier yesterday!).

I also made a new household on Sims for a break from my legacy family. I decided to do something a bit different and created a mean, lazy and self-assured Sim who had the serial romantic trait. Bella doesn’t have a job and my only goal with her at the moment is to fulfil the aspiration. It was going pretty well except for she was running out of money! Her only income was beach-combing, odd jobs when she had the time and digging up stuff or harvesting from community lots. So I decided that she needed a room-mate aka slave to send to work and do all the cleaning. So I moved in NPC Sim Mitchell Kalani! He’s got the lazy trait too so the constant cleaning up after Bella and her dog keeps upsetting him! Unfortunately when he moved in he was suffering from a cold (ironic how this mirrors real life at the moment!) and so she caught it too. When I left them they were starting to get that funny red rash thing that they get all over their bodies!

In the evening I played some Pokemon and watched some more of Friday Night Dinner but I think Tash might have jumped on the remote at some point as I fell asleep and when I woke up Friday Night Dinner had been replaced by Ancient Aliens!

Today: Today I started my day with cleaning my flat which now takes a lot longer as I am so paranoid about germs so go a bit madder with the bleach than usual!

I then did some writing. I worked on my new fantasy novel as well as Perfect World 3. For my new fantasy novel I have tried something a bit different and actually have chapter outlines. I’m only on the prologue so far so I am not sure how well this will pan out but it will be interesting to see. I am on chapter 8 of Perfect World 3 now and I have a feeling that it is going to be a lot longer than the last two books in the series!

In the afternoon I checked in with Mum and Dad. They are fine and have a neighbour getting some bits of shopping for them. They also received the buddy card from the help network that is being organised in Selsey for people who are self-isolating which is great. Its really amazing how people have come together and hopefully the community spirit will continue long after the pandemic is over.

Then I went to see how Bella and Mitchell were doing. They have recovered from their colds but Bella broke up with her boyfriend Marcus Flex after he caught her cheating with Don Lothario! Don has also got her pregnant so I need to raise some extra funds for that house extension asap! Don has now moved in too but he didn’t seem that thrilled about the baby news so I don’t think he will be sticking around for long 😦

Linda G. Hill came up with this great idea to keep track of the weeks and months ahead. For those who already are, and will be isolated in the coming weeks, it is important to all come together and support each other.

My day: I had leave booked today as me and my sister had planned about a month ago to go on a shopping trip to Portsmouth. I didn’t bother cancelling the day off with work as I haven’t had much holiday since Christmas so thought it would be nice to have a three day weekend.

I spent most of the morning on hold to my travel agent about our holiday to Crete next month only to be told that they could not amend it and that another department needed to call me back! They are doing it in departure date order which is fair enough but its slightly frustrating as I wanted to get it sorted out. I also had an email from booking.com cancelling our stay at the Gatwick Hilton the night before our planned departure as the hotel is closing until the end of May. I was going to cancel it anyway so that saved me a job at least.

After sorting that out (or not as it turned out!) I finally was able to log into Asda’s website after days of downtime and amend my order that I have booked for two weeks time. When booking it initially it was rather late so I made the decision to throw a load of random stuff in the basket and check out with the plan to amend it all the next day when I had more time. Then the whole thing crashed for days due to high usage and I had been slightly concerned that I wouldn’t be able to get back on and I would end up with a load of random stuff instead of a proper food order!

This afternoon I decided to visit my Sims 4 decades challenge. I’m really into the gardening side of things on Sims at the moment and their massive garden is coming along quite well at the moment!

Linda G. Hill came up with this great idea to keep track of the weeks and months ahead. For those who already are, and will be isolated in the coming weeks, it is important to all come together and support each other.

My day: I worked from home again today and battled with the usual network issues. I have to go into the office tomorrow which I am not looking forward to. I am hoping considering the situation is not improving that it will be for the last time.

The most exciting event today was the ASDA online delivery this evening! They emailed me earlier in the day with a mass of substitutions but most of the things that they sent instead were actually better so I’m not going to complain there. Things that they didn’t have (unsurprisingly) was eggs, bread, and (surprisingly) crisps and mince. I popped down to my local Tesco express in my break and they had just re-stocked! So I managed to get the eggs, bread and crisps. No mince but I think I will try and make do without it as I really can’t face Morrisons again.

I was relieved that my order included the cat litter (although not her usual one but she’s not fussy!) and my Brita filters as the water in Bognor tastes weird so I need to filter it.

I checked in with Tom Nook and friends on Animal Crossing earlier. I’m still gathering the materials for the shop but the museum is up and running now!

Linda G. Hill came up with this great idea to keep track of the weeks and months ahead. For those who already are, and will be isolated in the coming weeks, it is important to all come together and support each other.

My day: I woke up as I have done most mornings by initially thinking that this entire situation is either the plot of my latest WIP or a very weird dream. I was quickly reminded that it was neither by a text from the Government not to leave the house for any of the reasons other than those specified yesterday. I was working from home again today and have enough food to see me through until the arrival of the ASDA order tomorrow evening so I had no plans to go outside anyway.

The work network still can’t cope with the volume of people connecting so yet again I didn’t get as much done as I normally do which was frustrating. At lunch time I continued my Animal Crossing adventure. I now have a small house and Blathers’ museum has been built! I’m just gathering the items needed to build the shop now.

This evening I checked in with Mum and Dad, and Sarah. Dad has managed to set Skype up so we’re going to arrange a time to test it out at the weekend. I also wanted to make sure they weren’t planning on leaving the house (unless its on fire, then please leave the house! which they found amusing!).

Sarah’s cat sadly died today. She had been ill for a while and had deteriorated quite a bit in the last week or so. Little Georgie doesn’t understand where she has gone and keeps going over to where her basket was looking for her 😦

Disney+ launched in the UK today and I logged in earlier this evening to have a look. Already there is loads of stuff I can add to my to watch list but I’m most excited about the National Geographic Section. I love documentaries, especially about unusual or obscure subjects so am looking forward to checking that out.

Linda G. Hill came up with this great idea to keep track of the weeks and months ahead. For those who already are, and will be isolated in the coming weeks, it is important to all come together and support each other.

My day: I worked from home today and whilst I did actually connect to the system first time today it was a lot slower. I got some stuff done but not as much as I would have done normally.

Of course the big news of the day is that the PM announced just under an hour ago that we are to go into lock-down. We can only leave home for the following reasons:

1. Shopping for basic necessities
2. One form of exercise a day
3. Any medical need/care for vulnerable person
4. Travelling to and from work, only if absolutely necessary

I’m still trying to work out what exactly this all means as the instructions were as usual as clear as mud and left a lot up to interpretation (especially 3 and 4!). Hopefully there will be some further clarity in the morning!

Linda G. Hill came up with this great idea to keep track of the weeks and months ahead. For those who already are, and will be isolated in the coming weeks, it is important to all come together and support each other.

Linda G. Hill came up with this great idea to keep track of the weeks and months ahead. For those who already are, and will be isolated in the coming weeks, it is important to all come together and support each other.

As this is my first post, I would like to firstly say that my heart goes out to everyone who has contracted Covid-19, those whose loved ones have been taken ill and all those who have lost someone to this horrible disease. I am thinking of you all at this terrible time.

I have also been moved by all the acts of kindness and togetherness that I have witnessed. Yes there has been a lot of fear and panic-buying but people have also been supporting each other so much. Family, friends, communities and workplaces all need to come together now more than ever and I am so pleased to hear of that happening.  Stay safe and keep supporting each other!

My day:  For the moment my work has not shut down completely but me and my colleague are on a rota system so we only have to go into office a couple of times each and we can work from home the rest of the time. Unfortunately the broadband is not coping as well as the companies providing it said it would so that has been creating some frustrations in an already difficult situation!

At lunch I went to collect an extra bag of cat food in case I end up having to spend 14 days in isolation. That alone will be difficult enough without having to ration cat food to a hungry (and very greedy!) moggy! The city was not empty of people but there were way fewer than normal and there were no queues for the buses!

The afternoon went by pretty quickly surprisingly and so has the evening! I received notice from my travel agent that I have the option of moving the holiday that me and my friend booked to later in the year. We were due to go to Crete on 3rd May. It has not been officially cancelled but the way things are heading I’m pretty sure it will be. We’re going to look into moving it at the weekend. It may sound strange but I felt so much relief when I saw that only because I feel like so much is out of my control at the moment and this is one thing that I can take back control of.

I am working from home tomorrow and I am sure that Tash will try her best to convince me to give her some lunch! And she will probably succeed too!