Tuesday 12th May
A cheerful start to the morning – a BBC reporter “jamming” with Bucks Fizz, “Making your Mind Up”, from the days when you could sing along to Eurovision Song Contest entries. I almost join in. It would have been Contest at the weekend, now cancelled for the first time in its history.
Working at home, the connection to the corporate network still proves unreliable. I have consulted on a proposal to develop first and second-floor bedsits. Normally this would involve a brief site visit to confirm the ground floor use, but this is not an essential journey. Fortunately, Google Street View has recent images showing a ground floor restaurant with an extract flue that will discharge kitchen odours into the second floor of the proposed bedsits. The submitted “existing plan” conveniently forgets to include this. The applicant will need a re-think.
Chantal prepares her foot for this afternoon’s second X-ray, washing and redressing it. I am not allowed to help. Can’t think where she gets this fierce independence from. Traffic during our journey to hospital is already busier than trips to Leicester last week. Later I note that the M69 is also busier than for a few weeks. Some workplaces may have already re-opened following Boris’s speech at the weekend, or maybe there is a general change of mood, a switch from a lockdown mindset to “just be careful”, maybe more relaxation than Boris intended.
We stop briefly outside our office, where Chantal has arranged access to collect some documents. Security are present to let her in and to accompanied her to our third-floor office. All personal access fobs have been disabled since the security company discovered a handful of employees busy at their desks, despite the office being 
closed, although presumably not locked. While waiting I look wistfully at the various adjacent sandwich shops, all closed, wondering how many will survive. Chantal’s hospital appointment is short, and I am recalled to collect her just as I pull onto our drive after returning home. The result will be discussed during a phone consultation on Thursday.
I am dispatched to the village Co-op for just three items. Locals manage to create a long queue, stretching across the shop-front, with just three people. Boris may be trying a new relaxed approach to social isolation, but the residents of Stoney Stanton are having none of it.
Technically we live in Oaktree House, but sadly the tree had to go.
We now have a thriving Oakstump at the front of the house.
