Global confirmed cases: 2,982,933; total deaths: 206,811 (JHU)

UK confirmed cases: 152,840; total deaths: 20,732 (DHSC)

Prime Minister Boris Johnson warns against easing lockdown saying UK “passing through the peak”

Government home testing kits for key workers run out one hour after website registrations open

Doctors finding it increasingly harder to get PPE, research by Royal College of Physicians reveals

Best blog photo to date I think:

Mum and Dad are looking after their garden ornaments (don’t worry – I’m assured the masks are all very old, well used and of no further use to anybody). :o)

And in other news, we painted a fence. I mean, it was the highlight of my Saturday, but was much, much more complicated than I could have anticipated….all due to lockdown. This is why:

Saturday morning I got my paining clothes on, ready to finally finish the fence that we started….last year. We had one tin left and Himself assured me that would be enough. I picked up the tin….and it felt maybe about half full. I looked at it properly as I knew we’d not opened it, and it was one of the tins the previous owner had left. In the shade of dar green we were paining over…

In normal circumstances I’d have hopped in the car and hurtled round the instutrial estate containing a number of DIY shops until I’d found the right tin in the right colour. But that’d not the way we do things now. Most DIY shops are delivery / click and collect or only selling essentials (and I couldn’t really argue that the paint was essential.

Amazon or E-bay seemed like the best option. Amazon had none of the type we needed. E-bay did though….hoorah! But the sellers had clearly caught on. A 9 litre tin retails at £20. The cheapest I could find on E-bay was £50. And that was for 5 litres!

I got in the virtual queue to get on the Wickes website (because yes, websites are now so busy you have to queue to get onto them). It was a short queue and 20 minutes later I was in to discover that the paint did not class as essential and would therefore not be delivered or be available for click and collect. Arse. It was a 58 minutes queue for B&Q. Everywhere else I could think of didn’t even have an option to order at all. So I waited, and waited and moaned to Himself when I still had 40 minutes left….so he joined to queue on his phone and had a 14 minute wait. I still have no clue how or why except he is a jammy sod and I don’t really care because it saved me 25 minutes. Anyway, he got in, he put in the order….computer said no. But in the mean time I’d discovered that the local store was one of those being trialled across the country to be open using social distancing rules. And while computer said no, it also said that that there were seven tins of exactly what we needed in that store. So I jumped in the car reminiscing about the BC (Before Covid) days and joined a real life queue. For an hour. Just to get in the front door.

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I got in, ran (in the specified direction with my newly disinfected trolley, two meters from everyone) to the fence paint aisle. And they had every bloody colour except the one I needed. I asked if they might have hidden some. I was assured not. I wandered aimlessly to find and alternative and flower pots. Social distancing outside might have been good but inside was a different matter. I felt really sad. I only had one shop, I’d spent what felt like forever in virtual and real queues and I still didn’t have what I wanted. Telling myself to get a bit of perspective and remember the bigger picture I pulled myself together and tried to get to the tills (easier said than done in a one way system where every aisle was blocked. It was like being in a game of PacMan…)

But just as I got to the till I thought I’d try one more time. I was stopped from going the wrong way up the aisle by a young employee and explained that I really just wanted to check one more time that the paint I wanted and knew wasn’t there because I’d already checked twice, still wasn’t there. He came with me, asked what I wanted….and opened an enormous high up cupboard where they had a stash of Slate Ronseal Fence thingy. I almost kissed the boy. I was wearing a face mask though, and there is a global pandemic on and two meters and all that. Also, I thought it was probably inappropriate in any circumstances anyway, so I didn’t.

And although I could have gone from ‘we have the wrong paint’ to having the right stuff in about 45 minutes BC, and on Saturday it took exactly five hours to get to that point, there was no bloody way it was stopping me from getting that fence painted and it felt sooooo good:

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Until we realised the next morning it actually needs a third coat. Arse. Oh well, it’s not like we wont have the time next weekend ;o)

Stay safe, lovely people. x