Happy Easter.
If you can call it Happy.
If you can call it Easter.
It’s certainly the strangest Easter I’ve ever known.
It’s Sunday 12th April. In the UK, that’s the date lockdown was supposed to end – but it won’t. We don’t have an end date now.
The police are actively preventing people travelling for non-essential reasons. There are signs up on the motorways saying things like ‘The Lakes are Closed’. The best sign I’ve seen (not in real life – it was posted on Facebook) was ‘If you can read this, go home’.
The store I work at will be closed today – even stores that normally open on a Sunday have to close on Easter Sunday. As an atheist I find this completely pointless – and even more so as we’re in a town with a large Muslim population. But rules is rules, so there we are.
I’ll be working anyway, doing admin – at least I’ll be sitting down, that’ll be like a holiday in itself!!
I should have been on annual leave next week, but that’s been cancelled. I’d planned to meet my son in London on Tuesday, but we realised quite a while ago that it wouldn’t be happening. I’ll be able to take my leave once this is all over. That’s going to be an issue in itself – everyone who was due to take leave will be allowed to carry it forward, so we’re all going to be wanting to be off at the same time, we just don’t know when yet!!
There are a lot of ‘should haves’. I have a list of the topics that I should have been writing about in this blog – it reads like the timeline of a parallel universe now. I’ve kept it as a sort of memento of what life used to be like. Who knows – one day I might come back to it.
Today I’d planned to write about the fact that today would have been my 40th wedding anniversary if I’d stayed with my first husband. Funny old world.
And it’s funny how quickly you get used to things. I spend my six hours a day at work shifting stock – after three weeks of it, I’m stronger than I’ve ever been, and tireder than I’ve ever been, but it feels normal now. If tireder isn’t a word, it should be.
When I get home from work, instead of washing my hands and making a cup of tea then wandering upstairs to get changed, my routine goes like this –
Boots off at the door and leave them there. Wash hands. Straight upstairs to the bathroom, uniform off and left on the floor (which is washable), into the shower (or bath if my muscles ache), change into clean clothes and put my uniform to the wash. Wash hands again, as I’ve handled my uniform. Make a cup of tea. Make another cup of tea. Hang uniform out to dry. Fall asleep on the sofa.
Despite the tiredness, I don’t always sleep very well – last night was an example. I’d slept really well the night before (in bed for 9:30, didn’t wake up until 6am!!), but last night I just couldn’t drop off.
I’d had a bit of hassle with a customer, and it was playing on my mind – could I have handled it better? And of course all the killer one-liners that I wish I’d said. My favourite so far, ‘I’m sorry sir, it’s company policy not to serve twonks’. Closely followed by ‘You’re absolutely right sir, I do have an attitude. It’s because I’m quite tired. I’m actually due a break right now – I’ll be back to serve you in 15 minutes.’
It was gone 1am before I fell asleep, and I was awake again by 5. Hopefully that’ll mean I’ll get a decent sleep tonight…
Happy Easter to you all – I hope the Easter Bunny has made it to your house, and that you’ve been able to salvage some sort of normality out of this strange life we’re living for your holiday weekend.
STAY HOME
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