Five months of social distance, and counting

Many of our friends are beginning to meet up again. A friend is having a baby shower (in a park) next week. A local charity is arranging socially-distanced trips out for families. The local home education group is having a resources sale. But we stay away.

It's not that we don't miss our friends - we do! The kids ask for certain friends almost daily. And us adults, we have to say no to those social engagements like baby showers. We just don't think it's safe, not for ourselves so much, but particularly for the kids' grandparents. They must be our priority at this time. For three months they couldn't see their grandchildren and everyone suffered! Now we are able to see them again, we must take the responsibility for any germs we may bring to them.

In practice, this means we continue to spend a lot of time going out to parks and nature reserves. Archie's owner now feels more able to get out, so we have lost him, but the upside of that is that this gives us a bit more freedom to go exploring other places. We've been to a lot of places near our house during lockdown, when we couldn't drive, and now we're branching out to new places to explore.

We'll miss Archie!

We have met up with friends very rarely, and only outside, but have never really felt at ease about it. So - please - bear with us. Don't forget us, we're still friends. But we probably won't get back to a semblance of "normal" until a vaccine or effective treatment is found.

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