Just a normal day in lockdown – well, not quite. This morning I woke before 5am and remembered I had to do a covid test before 8am, because the courier was due to collect it between 8am and 6.30pm. As I was awake, I thought I might as well do it then; so I did. It was quite unnecessarily complicated, as it was the other half-dozen times I’ve done it – even the box you put it in has to be constructed, and I have to work it out painstakingly every time. If I was actually ill, I’m not sure I would be able to do it. But I’m not – I had been selected randomly as part of a study; so it took me well under an hour. I couldn’t get back to sleep, of course (nor could my wife), and shortly after 7.30am I received a text message saying it would be picked up between 2.30pm and 6pm. Very helpful. I wonder how many billion pounds it cost setting that up.

Now it’s just after 10am, and I’m feeling very tired. Dot is waiting for her friend Anne to come and join her in a walk, which is now legal, apparently. It’s not quite raining.

I’ve had a bit of a bad back for a few days, which is annoying. It got worse after we discovered the freezer had broken down. It was probably not the discovery, which happened late on Sunday evening, but the extracting of various items and shifting the freezer away from its slot in the boiler room. I don’t know why I did that. Anyway, we salvaged a few items, threw some away and cleaned out the waterlogged appliance. Dot did that bit. I took some fish cakes round to Judy’s, who I happened to be speaking to on the phone the next day.

On the way back I called in at the Rosary and found that the flowers on my parents’ grave were looking good, despite the wind and rain of previous days. The weather seemed mild, but when I went out later with Dot we found there was a bitter breeze. Misled, I had not taken my hat. We walked over the Julian bridge and into Mountergate, then did the small circle through the Close and into Bishopgate. Later we ate some fish from the freezer, and I did a quite detailed response to the latest idiotic traffic plan, which includes closing Thorpe Road to cars coming into the city and making St Matthew’s Road and Chalk Hill Road one-way (going up). It’s only a question of time before they make Aspland Road one-way.

Obviously the plans will make our journey home from the east longer and more liable to hold-ups, but that doesn’t matter if it’s easier for cyclists. Not very green, as I pointed out. Interestingly I had just had a chat on the doorstep with our local city councillor, a nice bloke called Ben, who is probably Green (strangely, he didn’t say). We agreed on just about everything, including the traffic plan.

Let me run through the last few days, which included the annually significant three – Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Thursday – some heavy showers – was the anniversary of my mother’s death. Friday – more showers and windy – was Phil’s birthday. And Saturday – same again – was the anniversary of my father’s death. On Thursday I walked up to the Rosary and for the first time I can remember since my uncle Paul’s, there was a funeral in progress. As it ended there was a particularly heavy shower, but happily by then I had reached the shelter of the chapel porch, where I chatted to a couple of workmen. Later I wrote my website piece and we watched the film Margin Call, which was about a Wall Street crash situation and was pretty good. You could almost see how it might have happened.

On Friday we took the car to deliver Phil’s presents (on the doorstep), then put a card through Howard’s door and drove up to the chemist to pick up Dot’s prescription. Afterwards we walked on Mousehold (the nearer side), which was bit muddy. I felt quite tired and had a bad stomach pain as we neared the car, but it was very short-lived. Later Dot had fish and chips, and I did an omelette. We watched a couple of films – Lady Macbeth (artistically excellent but not uplifting) and The Man Who Would Be King (a ripping yarn written by Rudyard Kipling and made a success by Sean Connery and Michael Caine).

Unusually we spent Saturday morning reading the papers. I walked on my own up to Bishopgate in the afternoon, and down a little path at the back of the bridge where I’d never been before. Got a couple of interesting photos. Later Amy FaceTimed us. I watched England beat France 23-20 at rugby – quite a good game – then we watched Another Year, a Mike Leigh film in which nothing much happened, but it was absolutely brilliant. Great performance by Lesley Manville as an office worker past her best (though she still looked pretty good to me) who tried desperately to fit in but couldn’t. The final scene, in which no words were spoken except in the background, was stunning. Highly recommended.

Sunday was strange. Still rainy, had a bad night and felt wiped out. I read in the bath for quite a while, then we watched Norwich beat Sheffield Wednesday 2-1, followed by the second half of India beating England at T20 (or toytown cricket, as Paul Henderson and I call it). As we had paid for a NOW TV pass, Dot then watched a bit of the Spurs match, in which they lost to Arsenal but scored a brilliant goal through Lamela. I led our Zoom service, and David FaceTimed, though not at the same time. We discussed a number of books. Watched the end of the Finnish thriller The Man in Room 301, which was pretty good, with a pleasing finish (ho, ho). The same could not be said of Bloodlands, in which setting up a sequel was obviously a priority.