COVID World, Quarantine Day

Just to perpetuate the unfunny joke, the temperature descended to 0° this morning (-1° when I woke up). The air was still, so the cold didn’t bite the way it has other mornings. I warmed up effectively, had a good run (insofar as that’s not oxymoronic), and got home in 9:53. Even more encouraging, my recovery time (getting breathing and perspiration back to normal) has been diminishing precipitously.

I celebrated this morning with a big hot breakfast: two eggs, two rashers of (faux) bacon, and two hash brown patties. Today warrants a degree of exuberance, cos as of last night at midnight I am on study leave! Some of the students joshed me about this before… everything ended, noting that I would be permitted to leave off working and stay at home, as distinct from everyone else who would be… leaving off work and staying at home. There’s an element of truth to that, but my leave does mean that I don’t have to reimagine my Trinity Term teaching to work in online formats. I have no liturgical responsibilities (other than those that are canonically binding, or are consonant with my own piety). Nobody has full use of the libraries, but I still have time to work on the structure of my monograph and to draft the articles that I’ve committed to writing. I won’t have the atmospheric support of working at Rick’s or at the Bod, as I noted a few days ago, but I’ll do what I can with the materials at hand. And hey, I’m on leave! Woohoo!

Today also marks Margaret’s and my fourteenth day of (mostly) isolation. She has taken walks alongside — but distant from — Mel, but it’s been fourteen days since we raised the drawbridge and lowered the portcullis. Her cold lingers (unless, as she hypothesises, it’s just a distinctly weak strain of the plague, in which case it would seem as though she had dodged the bullet, and presumably I also since we have not been observing any isolating distance from one another), but my health feels terrific. Honestly, I haven’t been this fit in ages. Curse you, running, and all your blasted benefits!

In the afternoon, I turned my brain off and revelled in my freedom from obligations. Since my most productive time of day is morning, this was as much an admission of futility as a celebration of completion. Tomorrow morning I’ll resume reading, and look toward framing up some writing pieces.

Margaret cooked her delicious broccoli and semi-tofu-balls with almond butter sauce, and we watched more episodes of Spooks. As I was getting ready to turn in, we got video calls from Si and Thomas, and then from Pippa and Christian, and it was a great joy to see them all.

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