As I predicted, last night was a quiet one, with no significant incidents. I joined the second call with the team at 10pm as planned, but once again had little to add and everyone on call appeared on top of things. Of course even though it was a quiet night, I still found myself up until past midnight and wide awake at six. I suspect it will be an early night tonight.
Despite waking early, I just about made it to the desk on time. The first job of the day was to review my caseload and identify those patients who live in care homes. Why the upper management needs to know this, I’m not entirely sure, but I searched my list anyway.
While I was doing this, I received a quote from a removal company to pack up and store our furniture. It seems reasonable, so I am sure we will be going with them. Given the announcement today that house moves go ahead, I suspect we will be moving out and in with my parents temporarily fairly soon. I did wonder today whether this would provide a second suitable end point for the lockdown blog, after all we would have left the house we are in lockdown in. I will have a think about it, but given I ignored my last endpoint, I might well just ignore that day too…
After joining the team huddle, I spent the rest of the morning responding to some important emails. Before I knew it, it was lunchtime, and Sarah and I decided to take a walk (and for the first time in 50days it did not have to be our only walk). It was clearly busier out, and we walked past the local garage to see a large number of people filling their cars or buying supplies. Clearly people have taken the easing of restrictions to heart, and I hope people can stick to the social distancing rules instead.
This afternoon was taken up with a few phone calls, including finally managing to contact a patient who has otherwise been ignoring calls from the team since the start of April. Fortunately they are doing well. I finished off the work day with a call to Alwyn to catch up and provide supervision.
Once I had finished work, it was off for the weekly shop. Sarah had a meeting which ran over today, so I went on my own. No queue today, and the shelves appeared a little fuller and with more variety of products than I have seen for some time.
Dinner this evening is spaghetti with prawns being prepared as I write this by Sarah. It smells delicious, and is making my stomach rumbling while I wait.
The plan for this evening is to finish Viking Economics, before starting my new book. I have finally figured out what it is about Viking Economics which I find infuriating. A couple of years ago I was a tutor at the University of Leeds. One of the roles was marking assignments for the first year medical students. Fresh out of school, the first assignment was generally of mediocre quality, often a little disjointed, with little attempt to link the points they were trying to make. This is what Viking Economics reminds me of. It is as if a student has written the book as an essay, and I know the author is certainly not an eighteen year old student. While the content is interesting, the book simply does not flow. I will finish it as I said at the weekend, but I will probably pass on any future books by the author.
My next book will be The Way, the Truth and the Dead by Francis Pryor. I received this signed copy after supporting his pledge to get the book published through crowdsourcing. Francis is an archaeologist who I first came across watching Time Team as a teenager, and when I saw he had written a book, I knew I wanted to support him. It is a murder mystery, which I’ll admit is not my usual genre choice, but a quick flick through the first couple of pages suggests it will be an enjoyable read.
Self-Indulgent Twaddle 