My Quarantine Diary - days 9 to 14 - the End!

 Day 9

The excitement of passing the halfway point has passed and been replaced with the realisation of a whole day isolating without work to provide a distraction!  Luckily, it’s a nice day, so a fair bit of time was spend relaxing in the garden.  Today is Fathers’ Day in Brazil, so I got a call and some messages on Instagram, though to be fair, we already had Fathers’ Day (the UK version, when I was in Brazil!)

 

Day 10

I can almost smell freedom!  It’s another work day, so plenty to keep me busy, but not long to go!  My new mobile arrived today, just a week after ordering it!  I’m getting used to things working like they are supposed to!

 

I picked up the hobby of making sourdough bread last year, just in time for our lockdown in Brazil!  It was great to buy a few bags of flour then make bread throughout the week to save continually buying bread.  Oh, and the pancakes, can’t forget the pancakes!  So I decided to start a starter while I’m in quarantine.  It takes 10 days to get it going, so giving it a bit of attention in the mornings and evenings (with a mask and sanitised hands of course) means I’ll be able to make some bread and pancakes while I’m here and then take it to Oxford.  The tradition is to give your starter a name, so, in honour of Forres, I’m calling it Macbeth (or if I’m feeling superstitious, the Scottish Starter.)

 

Well, that’s enough excitement for one day, time for bed.

 

Day 11

Another day, another step closer…

 

Day 12

It’s Wednesday, mid-week and after today, only two more days of quarantine.  This morning the news has been going on about how the UK is in the biggest recession on record – no shit… Half the country not working, no one going out, buying only essentials for nearly five months, no one saw this coming…  On the plus side, it’s kind of a business-as-normal news report, going back to having kittens about the economy and recession, it’s a brief break from all the COVID talk (which is still going on in Scotland, after players from Aberdeen and Celtic broke the rules.)

 

Today was the day the Scottish schools started after summer/lockdown, hopefully everything goes smoothly, not least because that number includes my nephews and niece!  It gives me hope that the English schools will return as normal, although it seems like every day there’s someone on the news suggesting that schools take a one week on, one week off approach to schools, to keep the class sizes low.  While that would be fine for social distancing, I can’t see it being that good for the kids’ education. Better than no school at all of course…  I don’t think that will happen; the powers that be seem pretty determined that schools will return fully in September. 

 

Day 13

Penultimate day of quarantine!  Just one more day to go and I’ll be free to do things like go downstairs without wearing a mask, go outside, go to shops, get my hair cut!  That last one is urgent; after 6 months, my hair is just massive!  Hopefully I won’t have to wait ages to get an appointment and then my head will be free from all this excess hair!  Then there’s the more mundane, but necessary things I need to do, such as changing my address at the bank, renewing my driving licence… exciting!  Well, after 2 weeks of quarantine, it almost is!

 

Day 14

That’s it!  Done!  After today, my quarantine will be over!  I can’t wait to make breakfast without a mask, or hang around downstairs without assuming I’m unclean!  Obviously, once I can go out into the big, bad world, I’ll be taking precautions, wearing a mask, washing my hands etc, but at least home will go back to being a safe space!

My Quarantine Diary - Days 4 to 8

 

Day 4

Not much new to say about today.  It’s my second workday and just continuing the routine; work upstairs, after work pass time reading, listening to music or watching Netflix in my room, with mealtimes being my only trips downstairs.  It does get me thinking about the people that complain they have to wear masks in the supermarket – oh boo hoo.  Any time I get fed up of wearing a mask (such as 11 hours on a plain which got pretty tiresome) I just think what it’s for, how many lives would have been lost if no one socially distanced and wore masks?  And then the doctors and nurses, working ridiculous shifts wearing full PPE (if they were lucky enough to get it) not just a loosely-fitting fabric mask for half an hour in Tesco.  So I don’t complain about wearing a mask on the few times a day that I see my parents.

 

Rant over.

 

The news continues to suggest uncertainty around when the schools will go back, if the track and trace system is sufficient.  I really hope they will be open when the girls arrive, it would be such a shame if they arrive and we’re in lockdown so all they do is swap a house in one country for a house in another! 

 

Also frustrated waiting for news on my wife’s visa (long story!)  Hopefully not long to go…

 

Day 5

The thing about being in quarantine is that each day tends to resemble the day before, except for the finer points of work.  Still following the same routine, mask and alcohol to go downstairs, stay long enough to eat and talk a bit, then back upstairs.  Yawn…

 

Then there’s the news.  The Scottish schools are expected to start back soon, they’re the priority over the catering industry, but in England, it seems the catering industry is the priority.   I guess it’s because the school start in September in England, so they want to get the economy moving.  Though with the news that Aberdeen is going into lockdown and cases are rising, who knows what’ll happen next week, let alone September!  Fingers crossed.

 

Finally, had a video call with the Brazil crowd; the girls are really excited to travel, bought some new headphones for the plane (honestly can’t remember whether they had headphones available on my flight – I used my own) and new comfortable shoes to travel. 

 

Time for bed now, good night!

 

Day 6

Thursday.  Wake, shower, breakfast, work.  Lunch, work, dinner, tv, reading, bed.  Each step divided by hand sanitisation and wiping down surfaces.  Nearly halfway there!

 

Day 7

Halfway through the quarantine!  Only 7 more days and then I’ll be free!  Presuming COVID cases don’t increase, starting a new lock down, of course…  Fingers crossed!

 

Today I did my paperwork for (re)starting with the UK branch of my company.  After years of Brazilian bureaucracy, it was so much easier!  Instead of CPF, RNE, work booklet etc, I just need my national insurance number.  To sign up for the company health plan, I just need to put my name, date of birth etc on the form, sign and return it.  And I could digitally sign it!  No more going to the office to fill out a dozen forms by hand, each one with my name, my wife’s name, dependents, address, parents all the numbers in existence then signing them so they have it in original ink!  Andy holidays when I want (within the limits, of course) but crucially flexible!  No more blocks of 20, 25 or 10 days, no more collective holiday, just a simple, common sense solution where I’m trusted to make the right decisions for myself!  On Monday, I wrote about feeling institutionalised; now, on Friday, I feel free!

 

Day 8

It’s  Saturday, and I’m now past the halfway point, 6 days to go!  The only problem is that being the weekend, I don’t have work to occupy me, so I worked out a strategy.  Start off lying on my bed listening to a podcast, switch to my office for a bit of sketching, a bit of tv then back to my bedroom to read for a bit.  Swapping room from time to time and a cuppa to keep me going!  And a bit of time looking at cars.  When my quarantine ends and I go to find a house, I’ll need transport so it’s back to the car hunt.  That will use up some time!

My Quarantine Diary - Days 2 and 3

Day 2

I woke up with a headache and a sore throat – not what you want after travelling halfway around the world in a pandemic!  Once the doom and gloom thoughts had melted away and common sense took over, I realised that the headache is probably from jet lag and the sore throat from the dry air on the plane.  Besides, I’m going to continue with the assumption I am contaminated until I know otherwise.  

 

After a cup of tea, some breakfast and an ibuprofen, both the headache and the sore throat went away, so all is well.

 

It`s my birthday today and my parents have given me a corona virus testing kit!  A bottle of whisky and some British chocolate – if you can smell and taste the whisky, then you’re ok for the moment and don’t have corona virus symptoms!  (I’m obviously being facetious…)  It turns out I didn’t need it (yet!) the dog farted and it was enough for me to leave the room!  Sense of smell clearly intact!

 

It’s been a strange birthday.  While I want to spend time with my family, I have to limit the time I spend near them, so I’ve spent most of the day in my room, listening to music and reading.  Feels like I’m a teenager again!  I go downstairs for meals, but I wear my mask until it’s time to eat, then sit across the room from them to make sure we are adequately distanced.  Never mind 1.5m or 2m, I’m not taking chances.

 

Tomorrow, it’s back to work.  The first time since 2011 that I’ve been employed by the British entity of my company, though I’ll be doing the exact same job as I was doing last week; same colleagues, same manager, different time zone!  It all feels a but surreal.

 

Day 3

I’m a UK employee again!  It feels weird not to have all the extra bureaucracy of working in Brazil bearing down on me; I guess I’ve been institutionalised!

 

I’m settling into the routine of wiping down surfaces of things I’ve touched (I don’t think the taps and door handle of the bathroom have ever been so clean!) and making sure I thoroughly wash my hands before touching anything else.  While extra handwashing and using alcohol gel has become second nature throughout the pandemic, it’s weird getting used to the extra steps in the house.  Generally, I’ve treated the outside world as potentially COVID-y and myself as potentially infected when outside, but in the house with the family, I could always lower my guard a little.  Here I have to be extra vigilant.  I caught myself (or rather dad caught me) putting on my mask to talk on the phone yesterday!  Considering I wipe it down afterwards anyway, that was a bit excessive.  I can’t help but wonder how neurotic about cleanliness I’ll be once this all blows over!

 

I found a way to get some exercise while I’m here; there’s a mini exercise bike – I guess – in the room I now call my office, basically just the pedals, so I ‘cycled’ a bit while I worked!  Then a kick-about in the garden with Tess (the dog) who, it turns out, is quite good at football!

 

On the news, there’s talk about the number of cases of COVID rising in some areas; hardly surprising when you see pictures of pubs an people without masks and no social distancing.  I can’t understand this; it’s all well and good thinking ‘I’m young, I’ll probably be fine’, but do these people not have families to think of?  Elderly relatives?  Hopefully this is just a blip and can eventually controlled. 

My Quarantine Diary - Day 1

It's been a while, so here's a quick update:

We decided to leave Brazil and in the middle of planning and trying to sell our apartment, we were found a match for adoption and have adopted two beautiful girls.  So now we're an Anglo-Brazilian family, but still moving to the UK.  Then along comes the corona virus to make things complicated.  We decided that I would  go first, as arrivals need to quarantine for 14 days, then I can find a house and get everything ready.  So here's my quarantine diary.

Day 0

The day has finally come, after 9 years living abroad, I’m coming back to the UK!  True to form, the year 2020 has taken our carefully laid plans, suspiciously coughed all over them and caused a massive rethink.  Well, not to be beaten, the day has finally arrived, if 3 months too late and I’m in Scotland, isolating in my old bedroom!

 

The flight was ok, but a bit of a surreal affair.  All the airport has social distancing reminders everywhere, and marks on the floor to remind people to stay 2m apart (or 1.5m in Europe), but people don’t seem to pay attention to it.  Boarding the plane still appears like boarding at any other time, with people so eager to get on board that they don’t think how close they are standing.  Interestingly, the Amsterdam to Aberdeen flight was worse for this, no regard for social distancing at all!  For the Sao Paulo to Amsterdam flight, people appeared to be (for the most part) following the separation marks and disembarking row at a time as requested. 

 

The airports were also very strange.  Joinville is tiny, so not much to say about it, but Guarulhos – Sao Paulo’s international airport – was a ghost town!  I’ve seen it so quiet when catching one of the last flights at night, but my flight was at 15:05 on a Friday – it should have been heaving!  Then I boarded and saw a half-empty plane.  I was lucky enough to have a premium economy seat (a big ‘wow’ dripping with sarcasm) and there was hardly anyone in that section; I had the 4 middle seats to myself with an unobstructed view to the window, no one in front to put their seat back and no one behind for me to worry about putting my seat back and limiting their leg space.  Best of all, no queue for the toilets!  The service was a bit limited, but they did their best in the circumstances, straight after dinner, they dropped off a ‘goody bag’ with some chocolate, an apple, a cake, a can of coke and a bottle of water to make up for reduced service during the flight.  It’s not like normal KLM service, but with all the e-mails they sent about reduced service, it was more than I expected!

 

I was surprised that there was no health screening on arrival in Amsterdam – I was expecting at least a temperature check, but there was nothing but a constant reminder to wear a mask, wash your hands and keep your distance.  Thus began my 10-hour layover…

 

If you have 10 hours to kill in Amsterdam, I can heartily recommend catching a train into the city centre and passing the time there.  If you’re not in the middle of a pandemic and travelling from the country with the second worst number of COVID 19 cases and deaths (2.7M cumulative cases, 94,000 deaths) it’s not the best idea, so I tried to make myself comfortable.  Big mistake.  Schiphol – Amsterdam Airport – is one of the better airports I’ve been to and they have a good provision of comfortable seating, including some pleasantly reclined seats.  After an 11-hour flight with limited sleep, it wasn’t long before I found myself dozing, not something I would recommend when you’re on your own with no one else to look after your belongings!  So I got a coffee and spend the rest of my time between sitting, walking, eating, drinking, sitting, walking and sitting a bit more. I love travel, but airports are always a low point.

 

Day 1

Finally, the home straight, the short hop to Aberdeen.  After all that time, I inevitably slept most of the way there.  I put my jacket on to get off the plane, it’s summer, but I can suffer a bit of warmth to make it easier to carry my cases.  Who am I kidding, warmth?  IT was colder than when I left Brazil, a chilly day in winter and this is Scottish summer!  Home sweet home!

 

Again there was no real health screening beyond a couple of hand sanitisers on the walls and reminders to keep your distance.  On arrival in the UK, it’s obligatory to enter your flight details into an online form along with the details of where you will spend your 14 days of quarantine (unless travelling from an exempt country) so I showed my printout and that was that!

 

Although I spent almost all my time since the start of the pandemic in isolation (except for the occasional necessary forays) and despite wearing masks and my hands consuming more alcohol in a day than I drink in a year, I can’t guarantee that I didn’t pick up COVID on my travels, so I assume I am contaminated and am taking every precaution possible.  It has slightly dampened my homecoming, but the last thing I want is to pass this nasty virus on to my parents, so it’s masks and distancing until I know I am not contaminated.  So I sat in the back seat of the car, like a taxi passenger, for the trip to Forres.  I then sat at the other end of the room, wearing a mask to talk to my parents, wiping down everything I touch.  Most of my time will be spent in my old bedroom, or the other bedroom which has been deputised as my home office.  No hugs or anything, no going out and definitely no going to see my Nan.  Two weeks to go…