During the second week of lockdown this is what I did

With cloudy skies today I decided to tackle cleaning the bedroom, the only thing left on my list to do (except perhaps window washing). My to-
do list is shorter and I am on top of things like I haven't been in a while. The gardening is coming along and if all the seeds flower and produce grows we will have a riot of a garden this year. I have things growing on saucers and in pots to experiment.

My reading pile is gradually receding - I'm down to only one pile on the bedroom floor but there are books in a drawer and on a shelf still to read. I've been trying to cheer up a member of choir who is elderly and whose internet keeps playing up. He is so frustrated and fed up. We email a lot and we maybe moving into WhatsApp!

I have decided that virtual classes are not for me. I have tried with both my writing group and choir, but I don't think I'll be continuing. I particularly did not enjoy choir, but I am keeping in touch with a few people from there in other ways. I feel guilty in saying that now I've accepted that this is how things are, I am quite liking this slow life. While the weather is good I have the garden. When the weather is bad I do the chores and work on my laptop catching up with courses or viewing gallery exhibits. I save many links from Facebook but so far I've hardly used them. I take each day as it comes and try not to think about the future.

One scary thing I did was cut my own hair. Having tried to layer the top and sides I asked my hubby to use his beard trimmer (which has the largest cut comb) to do the back for me. There are a couple of longer bits still to fiddle with but I am really happy with it. I do prefer short hair and once the fringe starts to get into my eyes it has to go as it irritates me. I'm sure hairdressers will have lots of problems to sort out after this, still there's nothing like a challenge.

I am struggling in the last five weeks of my poetry challenge but am still on target. I often write poetry with a bit of a story, but one I wrote last week turned out to be more flash fiction than poem. I decided to take out the line breaks and put in speech marks to convert it into a flash. Perhaps I could add a bit more detail now. Anyway, I thought I'd share this one with you. Take care all.

Lions

He said he’d had an invitation to the Tower. I said, ‘You don’t get invited there, you get taken’.  He said this was different, he was going to see the lions washed.

‘Oh pull the other one,’ I said.

‘It’s true,’ he said. He was going with his brother.

So, I gathered my five children and walked the two miles by the smelly Thames, brown as human waste, which it was, and the little ones squealed delight as the turrets came into sight. ‘Will we see the King?’ asked my youngest.

‘I doubt it,’ said I. George probably had his eye on another castle, the one his wife was imprisoned in for laying in another man’s bed.

We arrived at the Tower of London keen to see this spectacle. A small crowd mingled, but fewer than I had expected. Some jeering rang out and a Yeoman strode over, his menacing looks made me squirm.

‘You’ve missed it,’ he said.

Some scruffy lad piped up, ‘So, where are they?’

The Yeoman pointed upwards to the spikes where two heads were impaled, blood still dripping.

‘They ain’t lions,’ said the lad. ‘We wanted to see them washed.’

The Yeoman laughed, ‘No lion washing today, but if you like you can see them. They have not been fed yet, though prime meat, you are not, more skin and bone than flesh. Still, I don’t think they will be fussy.’

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(The first April Fools joke is believed to have been in 1698 when several people were tricked into going to the Tower of London to see the lions washed)