I think I’ve mentioned it before: there’s not much variety to my life these days. It really is like Groundhog Day.
I get up, I shower, I have breakfast, I write, I go for a walk, I write, I watch a bit of TV and I go to bed again.
There are no major changes, and so it’s the little things that I start to notice – things that I would never notice normally.
Little things become big things.
In our pre-lockdown lives, I think we took a lot for granted. I certainly did. I didn’t notice half the things I do now, or maybe that’s not right. Maybe I just didn’t appreciate many of the things I saw or encountered.
I’m sitting on my roof terrace at the moment. It’s a little cloudy, but warm enough.
I’m listening, and all I hear, apart from the odd car going past, are birds. I’ve never really noticed it before – the chirping is constant. Then I hear children playing – it sounds like two or three streets away. Then a light breeze crops up and I hear wires slapping against the masts of yachts. A dog yelps. Another dog barks. The church bell tolls half-past six, and then another bell tolls half-past six.
These are all sounds that I normally don’t hear, or maybe just reject from my conscious mind.
When I go for my walks now, I notice flowers, fish splashing in the water, more birds flitting about, the flamingos… well, not the flamingos. I’ve always noticed them – I couldn’t miss them!
There are other things that I appreciate more too: a message on Social Media from a friend, a call from friends and family, someone in the street smiling and saying “Boa Tarde”.
Yes, just a smile goes a long way.
When I walked around the Salinas today, a guy came running towards me. I’ve only seen him a couple of times before, but it was almost like we were long lost friends.
“Boa Tarde!” I said with a big smile.
“Ola!” he said with both a big smile – and a wave! Bonus!
As I said, it’s the little things.
But that also means that there are little things that annoy me much more than they used to, little things that I used to ignore. Yes, I’m finding myself more easily annoyed with things that really shouldn’t matter.
For example, I have a wifi-repeater in the house to extend the signal upstairs. I haven’t used it for a while but that shouldn’t have mattered. I plugged it in, but no joy. It didn’t work. OK, I thought, let me reset it and join the network again.
Excuse the jargon here, but I did all the necessary, but still no joy! I tried cables, I tried wifi, and once I’d connected to the repeater I tried pairing, I tried passwords, I tried everything.
Bloody hell! It was so annoying! Thirty years in IT and I can’t get a bloody repeater to join the network. Aaaaggghhhh!
I was close to throwing it at the wall, but I refrained from doing that – I’ve only just had the place renovated and decorated!
But like I said, it’s the little things.
Like going outside now – that is such a pleasure, until some moron decides that brushing past you is no problem, despite the fact that everyone knows that we need to social distance.
I went for a walk down by the beach a couple of days ago, along the boardwalk. It’s not very wide, and there was a French couple there talking to an old bloke fully kitted out in cycle gear, holding his bike and blocking the boardwalk.
He didn’t notice me coming, so I stopped a respectable distance away – far enough away to maintain social distancing, but not so far that he didn’t know I wanted to pass. The French couple motioned to him that I was there.
He turned, smiled at me and moved to let me pass. Well, he moved about six inches anyway…
Didn’t he know that we’re meant to be keeping our distance? Well, he obviously did, because as I squeezed past him, he pulled at the bandana that was around his neck, motioned as if to put it over his face, but didn’t. Instead, he just laughed and said: “Virus eh?”
He obviously thought it was funny.
Me? I normally wouldn’t have cared, but having spent 14 days in isolation, and now (on the whole) social distancing to the best of my ability, it really pissed me off that someone just thought it was funny, and had no intention of getting out of my way. In the current climate, I know people who would have smacked him one!
But that’s not my way.
On my walks, I also find that people still like to walk in groups, spread across the path. And once they’re in a group, they don’t seem to see why they should get out of the way of anyone.
The number of times I’ve found myself standing in the long grass off the path, just so that a family could go past four a breast – pain in the butt!
Phew! Well, luckily, I’ve got that off my chest. I can calm down now.
To be honest, I don’t normally get wound up at all, but as I’ve said: nowadays, it’s the little things that either make you happy or piss you off.
Amazingly, one of the things that now gives me most pleasure is seeing how little I can live on – or at least spend.
I’m not going to starve myself. I’ll also have a few beers, and of course, I have bills to pay (on two houses), but it’s still really good seeing my monthly outgoings plummet.
Especially since my monthly incomings are zero!
So how am I doing it?
Well, no meals out, no visits to the pub (or bar as it is in Portugal), no excursions, very few trips so there isn’t much to fork out on diesel (although the price of diesel has dropped drastically here, so maybe now would be a good time to fill up!).
But my most exciting discovery to date? How I can reduce the cost of beer!
Generally, in the bars here, a 33cl bottle of beer costs €1.20 to €1.50, but I used to like to frequent, in the good old days (well, the good old days last month, before the lockdown), the less salubrious bars where I would find a 33cl bottle of beer for €1.
Now that used to be a bonus.
As things stand at the moment, I can’t go to a bar, so I have to buy beers in a six-pack, for around €4 – so 75 cents a bottle. Now we’re talking!
But it gets even better! I’ve now found large 1-litre bottles of beer.
I’ve never been sure what to think about these bottles. I used to spend a lot of time in South Africa and the 1-litre bottles there (long necks they were called if I remember rightly) were almost frowned upon, at least by the people I knew.
However, in this brand new world, I’ve overcome this stigma, especially since I can buy a 1-litre bottle of Sagres for €1.59 up at the local supermarket. That’s 53c per 33cls! Blimey! I’ve almost halved the cost of any alcohol intake in one fell swoop! As I said earlier – bonus!
I still long for the time when I can wander out of my house up to the local square, or head towards the beach and sit down outside one of the shacks and have a social beer.
But in the mean time, I’ll have to accept that it’s the little things that will keep me happy.
And almost halving the price of beer?
Well, that’s actually quite a big thing!
If you want to read more about my experiences during the Coronavirus lockdown of 2020, click on the logo below – this will take you to viralchitchat.com
