The days are increasingly a blur of walks, weird dreams, silent dinners, and telly. I stopped writing in my diary for nearly a week after last week's misadventure, and although there were things to write about, I avoided them, preferring to wallow in my feelings. Then when I wanted to write about them, I couldn't remember the events of those days, as if they had not occurred.

The first days of quarantine were so vivid, as were the rays of light on the sea during the first sunset the day after my father died. The uniqueness of the situation, I suppose. Only now this reality has become the new normal. Today would lack definition like the other days if not for the news that our friend had tested negative for Covid-19; it turned out the resident had died from natural causes. However, two co-workers and a resident, a 102-year-old woman, tested positive.

Today I marveled at all the cherry trees in town, heavy with blowsy pink blossoms and cinnamon coloured leaves, branches swinging upwards in the southerly breeze, like ravers let loose in suburbia. I passed the druggie house by the creamery, ivy climbing over its cracked paint, windows slightly ajar, jazz piano mingling with birdsong. Children played beside the river, and a dude fiddled with his car radio. Now it’s evening, post-dinner: more telly, and more strange dreams, weirdness and normality fused together.

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