It’s Saturday morning. I’m sitting on the couch with a cup of coffee and a dinosaur cookie. The last one. And that reminds me of the closed border with Belgium; I always get these classic cereal cookies there, preferably the ones with dark chocolate, yum. ‘Kleine plezierkes’ (small pleasures) I’d call them. But unfortunately that’s not an option at the moment, but I enjoy this one nonetheless, after a short dip in my coffee, which I can definitely recommend.
Downstairs, at the parking lot of the supermarkt, yet another 1.5-meter incident is being ‘settled’. A special police unit could be set up just for this, as often as I see a car driving by during these times. It is and remains special how something as concrete as a distance can lead to so much discussion and there isn’t even any parking involved! This time a burly guy with a soft-pink shopping bag and a lady with a short haircut who says she has a tape measure in her car to show the man how far 1.5 meters reaches. In turn, he says he can completely deprive the lady of her sight for length at all. Lovely. I close the balcony door and get ready for a workout.
The morning has a zumba class via Zoom in store for me. Normally I wouldn’t bother to get out of bed for such a digital class, but now it is one of the few ways to get a bit of that ‘group class’ feeling. After an hour of sweating, I move myself into the shower, knowing that I soooo want a bath. Especially now. That’s one of the things I enjoy so much: steaming in a divine warm bath. With the temperatures I put my tap on, corona will die for sure. Two birds with one stone. But we have to do with a shower, no bath tub in this house. After every fiber in my body starts to show wrinkles, I curl up in my bathrobe on the couch with a book. ‘Hoe ik talent voor het leven kreeg’ (How I developed talent for living life) by Rodaan Al Galidi, about the bureaucracy in our system and a glimpse into a life in an asylum center. Reading books almost always makes me sleepy. Doesn’t matter whether the book is thrilling or not; with a bit of bad luck the thing will fall on my head sooner or later. This occasionally happens with my phone too. The latter gives more painful dents.
A friend will come by this afternoon. Many people around me have temporarily decided not to meet up anymore, but fortunately some friends are still happy to meet and that is very important to me; my social life is vital to me. I’ll quickly fix some tasty strawberries and snack tomatoes for when she’s here. That means a visit to the supermarket. Where the store employees first took the lead in cleaning the carts and assigning them to the next customer, you now have to do that yourself much more often. By using a spray bottle. Now. Think. About that. You disinfect your cart with a bottle that all those people are touching. So you will not be infected via the cart but via the handle of the bottle. And no one thinks about that. You see bizarre situations of people who wear mouth masks and who put them on their heads for a convenience(?), just like sunglasses. Or people with gloves who scratch their nose for a bit. No problem, because with gloves you are safe. Or as the owner of a sex club put in an interview (when they were still open, ed.): “We advise the ladies to not shake hands during sex.” Bizarre and hilarious. You should just sit back and watch people for a bit in and around the stores, for fun. Terraces are not an option for that anyway.
Love,
Bridget