OYSTERHOOD is reclusiveness or solitude, or an overwhelming desire to stay at home.

— @HaggardHawks

The spoils of my unfortunate shopping excursion on Tuesday. I don’t always do breakfasts, but now the days seem so long that I manage to squeeze in three meals a day. Last night, the usual: a long gap somewhere around 3am. My TV guardian provided comfort and eventually put me to sleep again. I woke up to Glinka snoring softly next to my Marilyn Monroe pillow on the couch beside my lockdown bed in the lounge. Coffee. Live safari, but not for long. A little bit of reading, but I couldn’t concentrate. My mind was restless. On Thursdays, there are some regular chores to get through. So I got up earlier than usual nowadays and I did what had to be done.

And then I walked in the rain, humming the Pina Colada Song to myself. I haven’t moved much in the last two days of utter heaviness, so I needed to get out, and I remembered the emergency rain ponchos that they gave us at the magnificent Starlight Classics concert at Vergelegen – what seems like a lifetime ago, but was the end of February. No Smarties, hearts or leaves, just endless loops around the garden until about half an hour was over. I still keep glancing at my wrist where I used to wear my Swatch, but I haven’t put it on since 26 March.

Mozart never minds the rain, so he was out and about, helping me inspect our catnip/coriander crop. Glinka waited patiently at the entrance to the house for me to walk whatever I had to walk out of my system. Mozart couldn’t see the weird outfit, so he was not scared to be around me, but Glinka was quite obviously trying to figure out whether it was time to start seriously worrying about her human…

This could have been the last of the lockdown days, if the lockdown hadn’t been extended. Somehow, I no longer care whether it continues – officially – beyond the end of the month. I feel that I will extend it for as long as it needs to be to feel that I pose no danger to others or to myself by going out as I used to.

Lunch was chicken soup: today fuel for determination. It took almost the entire afternoon, but I finally finished the review I had been contemplating and writing for several days now. It is much too long, of course, and will need to be cut and edited accordingly tomorrow, but it is basically done.

A better day. Still heavy. My cheeks ache. There is a kind of emptiness in my head now that the draft of the review is written. I opened a bottle of Turkish red tonight, also a gift from my love. It brings back so many incredible memories of our Turkish adventure a year ago when we went into the Aladağlar Mountains in search of the Caspian Snowcock…

Memories are emergency ponchos for a rainy day. And rain, like the lockdown, is what is desperately needed to ward off the drought of an uncertain future.

Be kind to yourself. Be kind to others. Stay at home.