06h30. It’s barely light as I tiptoe downstairs to ‘powder my nose’ and let Pesto out. I open the front door and in shoots Bigi, the little cat who lives opposite (well most of the time she’s here with us but her ‘official’ owners live opposite).
Pesto hates Bigi and is rather unpleasant to her when her territory’s threatened (which is pretty much every day). She spits at Bigi and suddenly I find myself trying to separate two fighting cats as I endeavour to restore peace.
I’m not ready for this. I’m standing with the front door wide open, naked as the day I was born. Pesto spits at me, I put them both out, close the door and go back to bed.
The start of a day that is not going to end well.
Rumours are flying around that we’re about to go into another national lockdown at the end of the week. Macron is making an announcement this evening at 20h00 so we’ll have to wait and see what’s in store. Those in the know say he’ll be swift to take action.
Not feeling very motivated this morning but bearing in mind this could be the last day of human contact for a while I headed into Amboise to meet up with my writers’ group. We meet once a week in the local coffee shop and try to encourage each other with our individual projects.
I say we meet once a week but in fact this is only the second time we’ve managed to get together since the first lock-down.
Sounds rather grand doesn’t it? My writers’ group. Don’t worry, we’re just a group of English speaking women from different backgrounds. We share a love of writing (and reading) and meet up to give each other support. It’s been good to have that this past year.
You’d think that writing would have been easy during 2020 but for many of us it’s been hard. The uncertainty has been very dampening upon creativity.
We did a small writing exercise and agreed we should keep on meeting up virtually if we go into lock-down. It’ll be something to look forward to.
Dinner this evening was supposed to be delicious but it was anything but.
I managed to practically incarcerate the duck legs to the point when they were blackened and barely recognisable. It was supposed to be an easy dinner. A roasted duck leg cooked with thyme and sauté potatoes and a side of fresh buttered spinach.
I blame Macron. I was so preocuppied with tuning in to see his speech that I forgot all about it. The spinach was great, fresh and buttery. I resorted to eating the duck leg with my fingers (no chance with a knife and fork).
And so, yes, we’re going into a second confinement. From midnight on Thursday until December 1st.
See you on the other side. Or maybe at Christmas? Or maybe next year?
