On Thursday 16th September, while the rest of our buddies were allowed to swan about in their Directive 19, we were on day 1 of #STFAH (unless it’s essential or to go to work) Directive 15. Of course I had no excuses to go anywhere so it was my day 22 of not going out unless it was to a hospital or clinic. I didn’t bother with the news as it was bad enough seeing that we didn’t have any recent cases in our village but we were still lumped in with the wider area for the new rules, which were to last ‘until further notice’. Captain Caveman decided to interpret the directive that he could go to work and go to do essential chores; go to the ATM, pick up his whisky from an empty house, pick up tablets from the pharmacy and buy some coffee and peanut butter, because we had ran out. I didn’t think he should really be doing any of this but it was within the rules. First I made us some bacon sandwiches, Captain Caveman made himself an egg to go on his too, for breakfast. When I watered the mushrooms there were quite a few new shoots on them so they were having a second wind. Captain Caveman did his errands but couldn’t buy any vegetables as they had run short in Phong Nha, and while he was picking up the ‘essentials’ he had lunch at Funny Monkeys and a coffee, while waiting for ground coffee, at Tree House. It was hotdogs for my lunch as a bit of a make do meal because, surprisingly, we had no more leftovers in the fridge. I had an update to say I was able to get my passport back tomorrow afternoon, my visa had been extended until 9th October and it was being sent with a driver to Duyet to pass it me tomorrow – all seemed straight forward there, then!
I was tending to my mushrooms again with Carrot, he’s started bopping me on the back of the legs with his nose to try to get attention, or a nibble of a mushroom. Captain Caveman arrived back in a chirpy mood, despite not having bought any fruit or veg but I think he was just glad to have been out cycling, he reported that the blockades and checkpoints had been removed. He’d also brought me back my decent red shoes, that I’d forgotten about, a notebook and my TEFL workbooks. Captain Caveman had spoken to Oxalis and he had confirmed my 2nd vaccine would be on the morning of the 19th September. If this came off it meant I could potentially get a PCR test on the 20th and fly on the 21st, I sent my idea of the schedule to Danny, the driver, to see if he could be on standby and he could. Ben messaged me to ask if we fancied a pizza delivering because the Phong Nha Farmstay kitchen was open again and it made my night, it wasn’t even a Friday! Captain Caveman took this as a reason for another ‘essential’ journey and went to pay our 9 day overdue Elements bill, while collecting the pizza. While I was waiting for the pizza and Captain Caveman to return I had a good video chat with my parents and it was looking likely that I would get to see them this year and that made me very happy! The Netflix film that night was State of Play which wasn’t bad and had some famous people in it who can act.
The pizza was good, we even had wine with it, after not having any for almost 2 weeks, I wore a dress so I could pretend I was going out, and as lockdown days go, it was a pretty good one.
joloyolo 