Self-Isolation - VI

Jessica, I love

Somewhere in my mind, I had thought I would be doing something different though it does not appear I knew what I should be up to, it is a Saturday after all. At other times, I might have gone out for a walk, found some inspiration for a blog I do want to write but cannot get beyond the first sentence. Writing is hard, difficult if not impossible.

There is no doubt I have other pleasures that occupy my Saturday if I am not having a lie-in. It is a marathon binge of watching Jessica Fletcher on Murder, She Wrote, literally all day until 9:00 PM. I cannot seem to get enough of it, even some that I believe I have watched over a decade ago that I can barely remember the plot anymore.

Counting down

I guess in all, I am on the home stretch of my self-isolation with 4 days to go after today. I cannot say how well I am coping though it would have been nice to get some Mr Kipling’s Manor House Cake that my neighbour said was not on the shelves. I don’t have any idea what the shops are like today, I have read of shelves shorn of fresh food and vegetables as a result of Brexit, who knows?

My test lab needs a looking at, a few upgrades, and some practice necessary for study and tests. I was sent a few piano lesson books the other day, I need to get my fingers and make something of the ebony and ivory keys. I am doing fine. Did I say I snowed this morning?

On the 8th day, the shop opened

Times are moving

One might just venture the idea that progress of sorts has come to my neighbourhood and that is in my local supermarket, 7 floors below my apartment and round the side to its entrance.

When I moved here just over 8 years ago, the supermarket opened for 6 days and closed at 19:00 hours, then a few years after it closed at 8:00 PM and soon after it closed at 9 ‘o clock.

The shelves were probably most empty on a Saturday night just as people rushed in for last minute shopping only to realise the goods had been cleared by those who shopped earlier in the day.

A different competition

If you found you had to shop for morning goods, you had to wait till Sunday morning for a shop opening 4 tram stops away.

Just about 2 months ago, a Turkish corner shop opened its doors on a Sunday and whilst you could not get the great variety of goods, it was nice to see that what you could get there was much different from the Dutch fare you got from the supermarket chain.

If I could muster the energy, I made the 500 metre walk to that store to feast my eyes of high capsicum factor peppers and other tropical foods I would have no idea how to for eating.

The look and the taste

The other day, I picked up what I thought were sweet potatoes only to peel them and find they were orange in colour, I was in two minds between binning or potting them, in the end they went in the pot and disintegrated into a pudding of sorts.

It reminded me of seeing “coco-yams” in an English supermarket and on cooking them they fell apart disastrously that the bin got well fed and I had an empty stomach, they were in fact dasheens.

Appearances are so deceptive, the grapes from my supermarket taste so different from the grapes in the corner shop, so synthetic as plastic behoves the beauty of supermarket chains over corner shops – food does not necessarily come from the farms without scientific intervention that changes it into something different and probably cheap too.

Open for the Sabbath

The perception of any of the Western European countries being Christian is slowly but surely gaining the spectre of secularism, very few shops except in tourist prone areas tend to open on Sundays and then we have Sunday-shopping days, usually once a month.

The Sabbath is losing its significance to Mammon, on the 18^th of April 2010 my local supermarket 7 floors below will be open on Sunday for the first time – I do wonder how many people in my neighbourhood would postpone their late Saturday shopping to brunch-time shopping on Sunday.

Forget the idea that Sabbath might be the Friday evening to Saturday evening, the Saturday or even the Sunday – man never seems to rest on any of the 7 days of the week, maybe we need an eighth day.

Is this progress or what?

Feeling like a Saturday morning

The daily grind

I am amazed at how I do Saturday, here I am, someone who has to be up at 6:21 AM precisely or thereabouts after hitting the snooze button a few times.

In fact, it is not so much a snooze button because I have to deftly select the 5 minutes reminder from a list of reminders on a smart phone – you then ask, if I could do that, maybe I should just get out of bed and get on with it.

I eventually do and I am out of the door somewhere between 6:55 AM and 7:05 AM with the view to catch the 7:22 AM to Arnhem so as to be picked up by taxi at 8:38 AM from the station to my office.

Five days a week, a routine unfolds like clockwork; I sometimes do not need the alarm to wake me up such that if it sounds after I am up and about, I am quite annoyed by the thing. In fact, I also have the alarm set for 1:20 AM on Tuesday morning to watch Ellery Queen [1] on BBC2.

Saturday is lay low

Then Saturday arrives and my body clock turns off, though I am up early, the duvet keeps me confined like in a strait jacket and the comfort of more slumber allows me to laze for another few hours.

I might be inspired to get up and blog if something strange comes up on television, but most of those blogs end up on the scrapheap of the unpublished – inspiration nipped in the bud by the desire to laze even more than engage in some cerebral gymnastics.

No itchy feet for so long

Suddenly, it is noon and the day is fast becoming history like yesterday is gone, I have to get out of bed, make breakfast at 13:00, then wonder about what to do during the day – a bit of shopping and all that, I cannot believe I have spent the last 3 months of weekends in the Netherlands.

I am prepared to stay in the Netherlands until I go off on holiday in just about 10 days, where I might just settle into 18 Saturday days - even then, I need to get out.

By golly, what I really do on Saturdays could make a boring vegetable of me – got to get out somehow and do something different and I probably would when it gets to Sunday.

Source

[1] Ellery Queen - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia