Freedom

The price to pay for moving to the edge of the world in these difficult times has been to self-quarantine for 14 days, days which alternate between speeding past and dragging on interminably.  The glorious gift of the internet is not something that is bestowed on us out here without any strings, so one has had to make do with a mobile wifi device and a pre-paid plan, a far cry from the unlimited fibre-optic broadband I enjoyed for the past three months. As such mindlessly watching Netflix or Amazon Prime has not been an option. Shades of living in Nigeria in the dark days before proper internet arrives you could say.

For food, I have had to ping WhatsApp messages back and forth with the chap who manages the camp diner, iteratively arriving - via pictures and explanatory texts - on a semblance of dinner. Bread and eggs have been a salvation of sorts. The downside to all of that though is the blandness of everything which led to me retching over a toilet bowl one afternoon after one too many meals comprising of bread and eggs.

I shudder at what the weight numbers will look like when I exit this, as the odd run around my largely empty living room apart,  its been days of sitting, lying and more sitting.

A wall of hot air hits me when I step out to drop off the rubbish, or pop into the garden to get my Vitamin D from twenty minutes of the baking sun. Under normal circumstances, I’d be wary of stepping out of the comfort of my house into the baking sun, but given what things are, I find myself anticipating just that. Pain and boredom are the two enemies of human happiness after all.