New Year, New Variant

Great Dixter, July 2020

It's been an unsocial yet comfortable time at Lola Towers over the Feast Days - I allowed myself quite a lot of chocolate and ended up feeling slightly sick, which is a first. When all the plans made for this time period had to be called off and I wasn't at work I reverted to hibernation mode, broken only by phone and Zoom calls with friends and family. I even made the effort to get dressed, just for these highlights.

Given the long stretch of nothing over several days, I managed to tackle a job that has been waiting literally for years - my Lasting Powers of Attorney for both health and finance. While not all that difficult to create given that the Government website sets it all out in a very straightforward way, the main barrier is with the 'Certificate Provider' (who agrees that I'm sane and not being put under pressure) and the witnessing arrangements, given that we're not supposed to meet indoors and I don't want to involve anyone at work.

Then I got ambitious and embarked upon another long-postponed task - the Advance Decision (or Living Will) which outlines my wishes should I lose mental capacity but need life-prolonging treatment. Alongside that lives the Advance Statement, which gives all my preferences should I reach that state of loss of capacity, so why not do that at the same time? And, since my divorce was finalised in November, why not look at my Will as well?

Since nothing else was going on I knuckled down and printed all the paperwork ready for signing. 

On Monday I'd been so bold as to arrange a socially distanced walk. Surely that couldn't be called off? and no, it wasn't. Three of us wrapped up warm - snow flurries were forecast. A whole lot of other people had the same idea, the paths were two inches deep in mud, and there was quite a lot of dodging around puddles and people and avoiding getting pebbledashed with mud from all the loose dogs. My two companions were also kind enough to sign and witness all the legal documentation, which was no trivial task. And it felt good to go outside even though my knee started to complain towards the end of the walk.

I had been feeling bad from not moving enough - both my body and my mind start to complain when I've been sitting down too much. I've mentioned before that my knee was playing up and I couldn't run any more, so I had the great idea to do a bit of skipping, with the bonus that it can be indoors. It seemed to go well and the knee didn't hurt at all, but it turned out that I was using muscles that hadn't seen much action since badminton stopped ten months ago. I was crippled for nearly a week afterwards.

So that's the end of a pretty bad year, when isolation and solitude (usually my good friends) conspire to turn me into a recluse, relieved only by going to work, seeing mum and dad, and Zoom calls with friends, family and Buddhists. There has certainly never been another year like it, but we will have to wait and see how soon the vaccination programme will make a difference, and what that difference will be.