Metaphorically speaking, of course. The weekend lockdown starts tonight so the GF and I decided to take Friday as our weekend (well, I did anyway; the GF just moved his working day to the evening). It was a lovely sunny afternoon and we went to get supplies for the next couple of days, having decided that the only way to endure a weekend indoors is to indulge oneself. So we got cakes, chocolate, biscuits and a stockpile of tea rivalling the toilet paper stockpiles that made the newspapers earlier in the year. Well, not really, but we have a wide array of teas and tisanes (my desi Lipton for mix chai; English breakfast for our shared evening tea; some Earl Grey for the GF as I can’t abide it; lychee tea, again mostly for the GF; Turkish green tea as an experiment; linden flowers in case we get the coronavirus; hibiscus to remind us of Upper Egypt; and assorted substances that can be made into tea such as lemons, mint and ginger). We also had lunch out, in the park in Cihangir, and picked up a little meal from one of our favourite places, where they were so delighted to get customers that they made us tea with a little plate of milk jam, and also gave us a salad and dessert as an extra. I hope they survive this time. Same for all the cafes. Another thing I’ve decided is to make sure the GF and I patronise lovely little places like this even though neither of us much like takeaway or drinking coffee from cardboard (Admittedly, I have not yet got around to getting reusable cups, so that is my fault, and I should certainly carry my own cutlery). Anyway, hopefully they will still be there when we emerge on the other side.
It’s been an unusually communicative couple of days for me. Today I spoke to a friend in Multan who is down with the plague along with some of her family, one of whom has been fairly unwell. I spoke to my father, who was delighting in his dinner of street-style coal-roasted sweet potatoes and a chicken sandwich. I had a little correspondence with a cousin who, astonishingly, turned 50 — I was supposed to wake up for a group call but didn’t quite manage it. Then, the last couple of days have been full of meetings on Zoom for a magazine I am working on with some others. Plus, this morning I met our contractor to collect the permits for our renovation, and we finally worked out a viable way of communicating: he texts me, I run it through Google Translate and translate my reply before texting him back. This is viable for now, but I’ve determined I must take lessons, this is not on.