I also noticed that vitamins I normally buy for 2 euros are now 4.75. This was the first thing that we’ve found which has really been inflated in price.
And then our very old and under used exercise bike broke. Ian has pulled a muscle in his calf, which is hampering his running, so he was looking to use the exercise bike instead, however it sort of fell apart. So he looked online, and exercise bikes that were around 60 euros in Carrefour are now over 200!!! And there’s virtually no exercise equipment in any of the big online stores. Of course – with no one allowed out to exercise, people are buying what they can do do exercise at home.
So, while the majority of things are staying pretty stable, there are some things we have seen change, and I guess this will continue.
There are some other things we need to consider too – the car now hasn’t been used for 6 weeks. At what stage do we need to do something about it? Do we need to run it to keep the battery or whatever alive?
We are very lucky that Dia do an excellent delivery service and what we can’t get from Dia, we can get from Amazon. We even managed to get big sacks of dog food from Amazon. Interestingly, I noticed Amazon is selling sheep food. I am absolutely certain I would have noticed this before if it was something they regularly stocked, as I buy Horace’s food from Amazon so check the animal food section quite often. I wonder if they have started stocking this for farmers and shepherds who can’t go out. Although they would be allowed out to buy animal food, many will be older and would be in the vulnerable group.
Talking of the Dia delivery – they didn’t have the big tins of tomatoes we normally buy, so the delivery man came with some alternatives for us to choose from, which was certainly great service!
I’m still producing activities to do at home for our website, with mixed success (‘stay safe’ coloring pages still are doing well), and Google has picked them up – which is good news and at the moment, Google is the largest referrer to the site. Of course, this is a mixed blessing as we know through bitter experience, what Google gives, Google also takes away. But we’ll enjoy the increased number of visitors to the site while we can.
Children will be allowed out of the house from Sunday. Many people have been surprised that children have had to stay in, as they are less vulnerable to the virus than others. However, that’s not the reason they are being kept in – it’s because of fears of them introducing the virus into their household without them showing symptoms.
When I talk to my students in Madrid, they feel that things are changing and there’s light at the end of the tunnel. The big ice rink in Madrid was turned into a temporary morgue, and this has now been closed, which they think has had a tremendous positive impact on moral as it was quite a powerful symbol of how terrible the situation was – and correspondingly – how much better it is getting now.
So, here’s to hoping that we’ll all be seeing light at the end of the tunnel soon.