Janet had a Tesco website shopping basket, order in progress, but she has decided to cancel it as neighbours report that when the order arrives most of it is missing or inadequate replacements may be present. This is together with annoying restrictions on amount of purchases. I’m wondering if Tesco’s supply chain is falling apart; especially a problem if international deliveries are required and stuff is supposed to come from foreign countries in a worse state than we are.
I don’t know how much stuff is to be seen on the shelves of the Tescos shops in the Highlands - nearest on the east coast, ~80 miles and 5 hr away [!]. Maybe it’s not so bad in the shops still. Some people are of the opinion that the problem is simply that their home delivery system (or in our case nearly-home, local-to-us collection point) is overwhelmed. But I think it could be deeper than that, a general lack of supply, as the old refrain about hoarding can only be true for so long; after a while the hoarders will have got all the stuff they want, or will have run out of money, or will have been frustrated finally by order quantity restrictions. Looking at the shelves will go some way towards an answer.
Janet said she though she couldn’t even get flour from Tesco’s. Luckily she still has some. She’s making bread this afternoon. I love her home-made bread and she’s finding that a valuable way to feed us if there’s no (nasty) bread in the Coop. Janet is feeding neighbours with eggs every day. She gives surplus eggs to the local food bank. Hope we can continue to get hen food.
Donkeys are well supplied as we have a mountain of donkey food (straw for their main food, and then chaff and treats), and next month the first grass will start to appear. Grass is very late here due to the altitude, two weeks later than down low in the village at sea level, and you see a wave of green every year rising up the hillside from sea level towards us. Presumably the northern latitude makes spring late too? Anyway in a month or so donkeys will be eating grass all the time, so only daily treats required. They will go bonkers if they don’t get their daily treats of chaff on time; kicking the house’s glass front door
and George braying for Janet to come out. Where are you - it’s getting late ? They’re not hungry as they have stray to eat constantly in their stable; it’s just that they have a routine and the crave their tasty donkey treats plus the dose of affection that they get daily.
The hens will be able to feed themselves in the field a little bit but are always totally reliant on lots of expensive hen food; they’re producing an egg a day so that requires a huge amount of food over day. They are now sleeping in the tack room which is part of the donkey stable and any predator has to get past the donkeys first; that’s the only way in. The donkeys are superb security guards. Reminds me of llamas guarding sheep in their field and running predators off. I’m told they’re so effective that it’s a reason to get a llama even if only as a policeman.
I suspect we might look into ordering more food from Amazon; we already have standing orders, automatic monthly deliveries of various food and non-food products if I remember what Janet said. That was all for Janet’s tourist accommodation business.
Janet’s business has closed down so we have nothing to live on until the end of June. I don’t know what the government thinks self employed people are supposed to do to allow them to eat and pay the rent or mortgage, and pay energy bills. You can sign on but that’s ridiculously inadequate. I’ve probably said, before it would be good if the govt would just give everyone a lump of cash right now to keep people going and then the govt can just deduct that from the July payment if they want.
At least Janet is less tired because she is getting a lie-in in the morning not having to get up to cook guests’ breakfasts after being woken up umpteen times in the night when I am asking for help with pain. And without all her usual daily work associated with the business she can do things similar to bread-making for example
I’m not sure what I will do if we get COVID-19. If Janet gets it then I’m done for as she is in poor health anyway so is vulnerable, and I hate to think about her going into hospital, and in any case, I will have no-one left to look after me. If I get it then I wouldn’t want to go into hospital; that would be horrific, so I hope I would have the courage to remain at home and refuse hospitalisation no matter what. And I hope I would not be taken into hospital against my will. That would be game over for me either way I think.
We perhaps should be in total super isolation now but would have to get someone to pick up food and medicines for us. The purchase limit restrictions in the Coop frustrate things when you are buying for a neighbour especially a vulnerable person. There needs to be a way around this at the supermarkets as we want to discourage multiple visits that are required just to get past the well-intended but mindless purchase limit restrictions.
Doctor rang up to speak to Janet. She has sleep apnea and some years ago they gave her some sort of breathing assistance contraption- whatever it’s called, I forget. She couldn’t cope with it though so she returned it to the local hospital. Doctor said using this puts Janet into the super vulnerable category so she would have to super-self-isolate which means no going out shopping and Janet said govt volunteers would have to be bringing us a morsel of food every week! She explained to the doctor that she had returned the kit, so luckily doesn’t fall into this category. I had never heard of such a thing, but then I never watch tv. I wonder how many people fall into that category now just because they’re ill or in poor health generally, or are simply old. I suspect Janet is more vulnerable than me because she has diabetes amongst a host of other medical conditions. I have CFS and chronic pain syndrome (neuropathic pain) and neurological problems associated with my spine but I don’t know what that implies relating to COVID-19 vulnerability.
Doctor started giving me some drugs for anxiety and depression which luckily also give pain relief for neuropathic pain. Increased one of my drugs a lot and added a new one. The pandemic is not helping much with my anxiety; the other night Janet was listening to Sky News late at night while in bed and the news frightened me so much I asked Janet to listen on headphones. Since Janet gave me some additional drugs the other day, I’m feeling fine now; all anxiety gone.
We have been worried about Janet’s 93 year-old mum down in England, in Eccleshall, Staffordshire. Had a long phone call the other night. Last month we were trying to persuade mum to come up and stay here where she would be safer. She said no though; she perhaps didn’t fancy the journey even if we fetched her up in the comfortable Landrover Discovery rather than train or plane, and she wouldn’t want to be away from her many many friends and helpers who form a superb support network for her. Their help is especially valuable as we are so far away. We can only help by for example doing internet orders for her and sorting out administrative and financial things for her as she gets tired, yet has all her marbles- mind as sharp as ever apart from some small amount of nominal aphasia. Mum was going out to the local supermarket on foot a while back, can’t remember if she has still been doing so recently; she has vertigo and other problems and is liable to fall over, so walking to the shop is a really bad idea, never mind COVID-19 exposure.
You might recall I was trying to get Janet to agree to put in a good internet connection at Mum’s place - earlier thread - and give her an iPad suitably customised dedicated and simplified. But I couldn’t sell Janet on the idea for various understandable reasons. Given the current crisis I wish more than ever that we had set this up though. The one problem would have been getting one of her friends - ideally - to do some training on how to use the (simplified, stripped down) iPad. Bring able to do video calls to her would be great. One snag is the lack of upstream bandwidth at this end, only a mere 1.3-1.5 Mbps and a single flow with eg TCP might be much worse as some protocols don’t play nicely with multiple bonded lines where the rtt is weird presumably especially in the case where the links are not all the same speed and my line #3 always has slow upstream for reasons unknown. Mum would have incredibly fast FTTC at her end and her speed would dwarf ours making us the bottleneck by a long way and I can’t see how to fix our upstream. I just think that having video calls with Apple FaceTime or whatever would be very good for cheering everyone up.
Just now, I have two extremely large ex-kittens on my knees and in my lap: the two boys Somhairle and Pangur Bán. Somhairle is now two years old I think, just had his birthday, while Pangur Bán is somewhat younger, by a few months. Definitely now
ex-kittens but they don’t know that; still crazy playing, running, jumping out, climbing up the floor-to-ceiling cat pole with platforms on it. Having them sitting on me all the time is an incredibly good cure for anxiety, so I’ve found.