Saturday 25th April 2020

May this day be forever remembered as the day freedom was in sight and progress was made. May this be a day that is known for giving hope and a loosening of lockdown, because today was the day Sanchez made his announcement that in just seven days, we’d be allowed to do exercise for one hour a day.

If you’re reading this at home thinking, “exercise for an hour… so what? We can already do that”, then you’ve Bren lucky (or unlucky) depending on how you look at it. We’ve lived in one of the toughest lockdowns in Europe, and arguably the world, but I think it’s been the right decision. As soon as it arrived and starting taking lives, the entire country went into lockdown. No messing, no reason to be outside unless you’re doing a weekly shop, a key worker (a smaller list than most countries) or the pharmacy. In this time, children have ended up all being homeschooled by video calls, not even key worker children can go to the school on a staff teacher rota. Children weren’t allowed out at all for the entire duration, and only one adult could go outside to do the designated activity. I’ve been massively grateful for technology during these times.

The police have been doing some lovely things during lockdown. From singing to kids in apartment blocks and the elderly in care homes, to driving along kids streets for children under 12 singing happy birthday to them and creating diplomas and colouring pages for them. By the time you’re reading this, children with one parent, will be allowed outside to play for the first time in over 40 days. Most of these children don’t have a garden to play in. Although they have a whole new set of rules to adhere to, I reckon they’ll be thrilled with it.

Some of the beaches will also open tomorrow to allow children to do their daily exercise on the beach, however not in our area. It is determined by the local town halls now and all of the town hall as in the marina baixa have said no. Although they’re not allowed to play with other children, they are allowed to use their scooters or bikes or a ball. But the adult isn’t allowed to use their bike or scooter. It’s going to be weird to take Rio for a walk and see children out on the street playing. A good weird. A step towards normality.

They’ve also started discussing potential ways to open during the summer season. One of the scenarios they’re concentrating most on at the moment is allowing European residents to travel to Spain, if they have a second residence. The idea is that there are thousands of European residents who have a home somewhere on the Costa and that increase would help tourism without requiring hotels. They’re also discussing ways that social distancing could be adhered to in bars and restaurants, wearing masks and gloves was put forward, or glass screens between tables. I’m not sure I would go to a bar yet if it meant I had to wear gloves and a mask. How do you sip a mojito through a mask?

But it’s all progress.

It’s all steps towards a new normality in the world and a chance at a new lifestyle.

The day started off relatively busy for Alex. He was up making bacon sandwiches, took the dog for his little walk, then he was off on his supermarket run. When he came back, he’d picked me up malteaster truffles and a Starbucks Frappuccino which was nice. He always picks up loads of goodies too, because after all, they are lockdown essentials.

I wasn’t in a get moving sort of way today. I think I’d burnt out from coming up with book ideas and doing bits for the cake business and writing blog posts so I didn’t move for a while. I read a little more of the book that I’m reading. It’s really quite slow and I can’t fully get into it so after 2 days I’m still only 20% through, and played some brawl stars with Alex.

Around lunchtime, the grey clouds and the rain were still in full force. It was definitely going to stay like this all day so luckily, even though it was Saturday, I had no desire to go outside or any reminisce of being outside. It’s been so long now that we haven’t left our street that it seems funny to even think about leaving our street. I’m exciting for May 2nd when we’ll be allowed to walk around a little more, maintaining social distancing.

On Fridays, Disney adds the new episodes to Disney plus so it’s normally on a Saturday we end up watching them. Before our meatballs lunch, we watched The Imagineering Story. Although the whole series has been so interesting and it was cool to see Pandora, Stars Wars and Shanghai Disney made, I felt like it was rushed. It had moved at a relatively good pace throughout and then the final one was jammed into one hour long episode when it could’ve easily been two or three. We didn’t get to see any of the problems during construction or design like we had to everything else, we didn’t get to see the opening day reactions or anything like that. For three such huge projects, it seemed strange that it was diluted down.

We sent our friends a Pizza Hut pizza for lunch and it really blows my mind that the internet just lets you order food for anybody else anywhere in the world. Isn’t technology incredible? I was planning to send them the same day I sent to our family but I wasn’t sure how long the delivery would take and didn’t want it to wake their daughter if it came later.

Alex finally joined the world of TikTok today and I think he’s slightly obsessed. We learnt some of the dances and learnt the Monica and Ross dance and Alex tried the toilet roll ten touch challenge. We did the plank challenge too. I obviously put a few videos of Rio on there too, as all I ever used to post was Rio. My username is @imlaurenbate if anybody wants to follow me on there. We spent two hours watching TikTok videos on Alex’s phone before he made dinner.

Just as we finished our salmon, rice and chilli, spinach and peppers dinner was when I read the announcement about exercise being permitted from May 2nd. I had a right little celebration. I was getting a bit emotional to be honest, and outside I could hear the clattering of saucepans and people cheering. It seemed everybody had come to their balconies to celebrate with each other.

It was getting late and Alex was still watching TikTok videos in the living room, but I realised I hadn’t done my yoga, or my langauges yet. Alex had finished his exercise earlier so it was just me to go. I did my 6 minute abs, which are starting to burn and then did a quick yoga flow for loose hips.

It was a relatively exciting day in lockdown, not because we did lots but because it brought the message of hope and happiness. It was a happy day in Lockdown. Laughs doing the dances, laughs watching the TikTok videos and the excitement about the announcement. Even though it means our lockdown will be more or less the same as the U.K. lockdown and we’ll obviously still be in lockdown, it’s a real huge step in the right direction.

Keep safe

L x