Well, it has been quite some fortnight.

Not last Thursday but the one before, I had exercise class as usual at 11.30. My beloved came to lunch afterwards with a couple of the guys. After this I drove us to the first in-person meeting of our book group at 2.00 pm. The latter was a rather sombre affair in that we were all masked, and spread out around a large U-shaped table. Afternoon tea, which used to follow the meeting, was cancelled on health grounds. In spite of these rather no-fun aspects, and the fact that most people (including me) hated the most recent book, it was a really good discussion.

The real drawback was that the book kit for the March meeting was not waiting for us at the library as usual. Meetings of the book group take place at a community centre, which also houses a branch of the library service. Normally, at each meeting, someone picks up next month’s books before each meeting. These copies can then be distributed at the meeting. The fact that this arrangement had fallen through made the distribution of the March book much more of a hassle — see below.

The day or so after the meeting the book kit was sent to the branch, whence I collected it. I had hoped that group members could pick up their copy individually, but this wasn’t possible. Book group kits are only loaned out in one transaction to the authorised person, i.e. me. Rather than make everyone come to our place to pick up their copy, I undertook to distribute them all the following week. I notified everyone of the date and approximate time of the the drop-off. When the appointed day rolled around I entered everyone’s address in the satnav of the GT, and set off on a mini-trek around the eastern suburbs of Melbourne.

It was a hot day again — thankfully, the air conditioning was working fine. The satnav turned out to have a handy feature by which one could sort addresses by their distance from one’s current location. This made dropping the copies off considerably more efficient. Even so, with Melbourne’s traffic, it took a few hours to distribute eight copies. I did stop for a chocolate ice-cream at mid-morning. This turned out to be a very generously-filled single cone, and gave me quite a boost. All except one person was at home, and everyone was thankful for the delivery. (I should add that my beloved, and another group member, had gone through the same exercise a couple of times last year.) Everyone just hopes normal service resumes from the March meeting onwards.

The following Sunday was a 4.00 pm performance of Das Rheingold, at the Capitol Theatre in Melbourne. This was the first opera that had been staged in Melbourne since lockdown began last March or so. (I crossed my fingers when I booked the tickets for this late last year.) Good on Melbourne Opera for giving it a red-hot go! For anyone interested, they are planning to do the whole Ring cycle over the next four years. After the performance, one of my oldest buddies (a fellow Wagner tragic), my beloved and I repaired to Southgate for a Chinese feed. Like the opera, this repast had a strong finish, in the form of deep-fried ice-cream. I think I have eaten more ice-cream in the last seven days than I did during the whole of 2020!

The only downside of the outing was that, on our way home, the headlights of the faithful Camry seemed occasionally to go a bit dim. I dropped it off at the garage the following week for a checkup. This found a fault with the alternator, requiring a replacement unit to be fitted. Given that the car is 17 years old, one has to expect that things will need replacing from time to time. Fortunately, this operation will not be affected by the latest lockdown — garages are considered an essential service. I am just glad that these two excursions are all done and dusted before we are all confined to barracks again.

This morning I awoke a bit before seven — a real lie-in for me. We were running short of some essential supplies, so I grabbed a coffee and a piece of toast, and whizzed out to the supermarket. This turned out to be a good time to go — there were only a few cars in the car park when I arrived. Some shelves looked a bit depleted, but not many. Everyone knows the drill by now! Keep calm and go shopping — in whatever form this exercise is possible.