Day 20 — Sunday 12 April 2020

Another calm and quiet morning whilst on my walk with ‘Pip the Dog’. A slightly different route this morning. To my delight I saw a tiny Easter Bunny! Was that just for me? Luckily Pip didn’t spot the small rabbit.

Clair and I spent most of the rest of the morning in our Kitchen with the TV on. First it was Andrew Marr and then Sunday Brunch. It’s quite unique to see people also in their kitchens and front rooms hosting their TV programme or being guests from their home. In some cases you can see how terrible the video and audio is and that’s likely via the internet via Skype or Zoom. In other cases the video and audio quality is excellent and in those cases you know that they have a proper camera in their home and a big lead to a can outside, which has a transmitter on the top of their roofs. I feel for the camera and sound people who are obviously super busy having to make all this external remote transmission work. Big hand clap for them! 👏👏👏

We did have some Easter chocolate and feeling fat as a result of it. Still wondering why I bought it!

Clair needed to do wash her hair and also colour it. Not being able to go to the hairdressers or go for a manicure, has meant that she has had to become self sufficient and she’s doing a great job at that. Whilst she was doing that I watched a few episodes of Pandemic on Netflix. Considering this documentary must have been made years ago it’s release obviously is very timely. I connected with Jake (Jacob) Glanville on LinkedIn and he accepted! A remarkable man with a vision to save billions of lives. Just a shame that his universal vaccine wasn’t ready as yet.

We also watched the film ‘Darkest Hour’ about Churchill and the Dunkirk rescue. At first we thought we had seen it previously but actually we hadn’t. There was a previous docu-movie about Churchill we’d seen not that long ago, in fact it was called ‘Churchill’ and just looking on IMDB, it says both movies actually came out in 2017. Very strange indeed.

We decided not to watch the daily news briefing today, as it would be repeated during every news bulletin anyway. It’s a depressing picture still and although it may look like the trend is flattening, it will likely continue for quite a while even if it is flat.

We then decided instead to watch some comedy on Netflix instead. Cuckoo with Greg Davies, which is quite ridiculous but hysterical. We have quite a few episodes to catch up with there.

Stay sane everyone!

Michael de Groot


ps. Clair reminded me the other day that my Dad who obviously was Dutch and was an only son, hid in an attic for the duration of German occupation during World War II. Just think, being isolated for 4–5 years, not knowing when it was going to end. No freedom to walk the streets, go cycling or shopping and no FaceTime either!