We’re in lockdown, along with the rest of Spain. There are 5 cases on La Palma, which has about 83,000 inhabitants.
For the moment we’re fine. The whole family is young enough not to be in danger. We’re doing this because the government says so, but we’re also doing it for the vulnerable people. I have a friend in Germany, a life-long smoker in the middle of chemotherapy, and I’d really love it if the people in her town did the same.
My husband’s taking holidays, my son’s school is closed and I’ve got no tour guiding work because it’s all been cancelled. I’m self-employed, so no work means no income. On the other hand, since September I’ve been expecting to be seriously underemployed round about now for completely different reasons so I’ve been saving and also postponing a bunch of stuff I can now do.
It’s relaxing. I’m doing lots of writing. The second round of proof corrections for the 3rd edition of A Breathtaking Window is done and I’m writing a fantasy short story before I get serious about the Spanish edition. I had time to stock up on food and even some material to sew a pair of trousers. Over the next couple of weeks I hope to get loads of writing and spring cleaning done, and sew myself a new pair of trousers. I expect it’ll get a bit claustrophobic later, but I’ll worry about that if and when it happens.
I’m not worried that society is going to collapse. The people who need protecting are mostly to old and/or ill to be working anyway, and if 10% of the staff at the power station are sick all at once, the lights will stay on, right?
We just went out on our balcony to applaude the health service professionals. Apparently people did this at 10 pm last night, but lots of kids said they wanted to join in, so today it was 7pm in the Canaries, 8 pm on the mainland. It felt good to show apreciation.
We’ll get though this together.
