14.05.2020 Reset! Day 1 Of Self Isolation II. Director's cut. "A New Journey Begins."

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Thursday 14th 38F, bright sunshine and breezy but more cloud is promised again. Lumps of cloud are traveling across my field of view like rogue, passenger liners, in quarantine, looking for a friendly port.

A walk to the lanes into a cold headwind. The usual cacophony of birdsong to put up with. Some of them even flaunting themselves shamelessly in the roadside hedges. Well, you have to stare, don't you?

A deer stepped though a gap in the hedge and cantered across the road. By the time I reached the junction it was a hundred yards up the hill. It decided I could not be trusted and disappeared through another hedge. Coming down the other way was a hare. It almost reached me before it recognized me as a potential threat. Then turned and lolloped back up the hill.

OMG! There is Wood pigeon calling in the garden! Miss Betsey Trotwood and "donkeys" do not even register on the Richter scale. Not where THG and pigeons are concerned! I think She was triggered by Fred Dibna's run in with a pigeon soiled cap in a rooftop puddle. I keep explaining that, no, you can't buy 1GW laser bird scarers on German eBay [in English.] Not even on Amazon Prime! But it's water off a duck's back.

Yesterday I was prodded out of the Under-gardener's Gate with a specially sharpened [regulation, 1 meter long] gardening cane by THG. [Aka. The Head Gardener] My mission [whether I chose to take it or not] was to return with enough potting compost to ward off a famine of the same. 

THG has countless tiny plants, growing on from seed. But has no remaining soil to plant them in once divided. In previous years it would have been a mere trifle to obtain more soil from the most desirable source which She [THG] hadn't yet fallen out with. The Jinping Pandemic has ended all that.

Sewing compost is a touchy subject in these here parts. Each bag of peat is highly individual. [Allegedly] Even if it all comes from the same, endangered, organic, Swedish peat bog. You can't buy John Innes over here for love nor money. Particularly in rural, lock down exile. It's like speaking a foreign language if you so much as dare to ask for a bag of No3. [Cue Fawlty jokes about being from Barcelona.]

THG's endlessly recycled, assorted pots are neatly arranged in high, tottering stacks. Just as they always are, unfailingly, in this annual season of renewed, gardening optimism. Meanwhile her seedlings are jostling for room and therefore, quite unable to maintain safe, social distancing. Not even by the relaxed, New Rules & Regulations P.2 with Additional Paragraphs. You can't just run red tape arbitrarily across a crowded pot and expect immediate obedience. Fines or no fines!

So, I used the lame excuse that I needed to take a trailer full of hedge hackings to the recycling yard on a weak [sic] day as my exercise routine. Luckily, my fears that there might have been a shortage of garden waste, because of the pandemic, were soon confirmed. The disposal area was looking severely depleted by pre-Jinping standards! So it was lucky I had timed my arrival to perfection.

There had been a total ban on recycling yard <cough> "congregations" after a most unfortunate, early incident of non-social distancing. By a now infamous couple of Twirlies. Who were duly, but not entirely unfairly, character assassinated online [in Danish.] They have been enjoying celebrity status as Infantile Twatter "influencers" ever since. It's an ill wind.

They obviously hadn't been monitoring the Danish TV news. Just in case of a world-changing event. Like a [chance] Jinping Pandemic attack of "Pearl Harbor proportions" causing an outbreak of social distancing. Quite what they would have made of a sudden presence of aliens in the street is quite another matter:

"Oh, no! Not more, scrounging, bløødy immigrants! You mark my words: They'll be taking over the drugs trade, opening takeaways and building bløødy pyramids on every street corner!" [Or words to that effect.]

It took me all of ten minutes to undo my usual "abundance of caution" in the way of old ropes, bits of netting and tired ratchet straps. Then I was finally able to slide several cubic meters of stiff privet cuttings straight out of the trailer all in one go! Even I was impressed and I have much to be impressed about in my [long] life. Though nobody else really cares. So I shan't burden you with a list.

The next stop was The Garden Center. Where they had obviously decorated early for Christmas [by 7 whole months!] With much red tape and more sharpened canes. Perhaps they were expecting jostling crowds of over-eager gardeners? Each with that strange glint in their eyes [spring sunshine] and clutching a sun-bleached, cat-gnawed, debit card in their soil-ingrained and sweaty mitts. 

The Garden Center's ancient, manual card reader had clearly been replaced in my absence. By a shiny new remote, radio-controlled jobby. So I waved my card as casually as possible over the screen and was handed a pass.

To be let out by the heavily armed sentries at the heavily reinforced gates. Watched from on high, by further, specially hired, village mercenaries. They glared down at me from the machine gun towers surrounded by heaped coils of razor wire. They must really take social distancing seriously in this village!

The previously emptied trailer now sported my [carefully spaced] bags of sewing and potting compost and some larger grow bags. Achieving balance is still important. Even if you must space them a full meter apart. We don't want any unwanted "wheelies" in the high street, do we? Or they'll be talking about me for generations to come!They will anyway but it is worth mentioning.

So now you know the full sordid [sob] story of my breaking quarantine after two whole months living alone with THG. Apart from the time when I had to collect parcels because of an acute failure by Danish online businesses to adhere to the laws of the land during the Jinping Pandemic! 

BTW: You'll be glad to know that the rubber bands on my 3M dust mask broke as soon I pulled the mask slightly away from my face. This was to speak to the staff on The Garden Center counter.

Mind you, the mask was years old and heavily soiled by sawdust and probably a bit of "shed mould" if the truth be known. So, if I start coughing unexpectedly you know Who to blame! The lengths I will go to for her recycled pots of Salvia officionalis "Unobtainium," eh?  😷

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