Chronicles of the Virus Day 43. Walking and History.

Yay! We're going to be let out of our gilded cages!

Last night, the Prime Minister came out and said that, if the numbers of infected people keep going down, on May 2nd people can go out for walks and solitary sports. Finally! 

I'm not really a sporty person. (I write that after eating a warm croissant my husband brought back from the bakery, along with the Sunday loaf of bread.) I hate bouncing my body back and forth in organized or disorganized sport of any kind. But I do like walking. Long ago, when in my early twenties I got angry at the clothing manufacturers for keeping only ugly clothes in sizes above sixteen, I decided to lose weight by walking. Instead of taking the elevator, I walked. Instead of taking the bus, I walked. I would go downtown on Sundays and walk. I even went on one of my excursions, to Ipswich, on the commuter rail. From there, I walked to Crane beach and back. 

Since I've lived here (more than half my life, now), I've gone walking to lose weight from time to time. I've been walking since about two years ago, a few months before I started to take a pill for hypertension. I've lost from ten to twelve kilos (it's fluctuated), and I love seeing how nature changes from day to day along my routes. This time last year, I was sometimes walking for an hour and a half most mornings. I was feeling good, and my tummy had gone down a size. 

This year, I feel like the Goodyear blimp. Since early March I haven't moved. Walking around the house and garden don't count, because I don't have the stamina to walk in place for an hour. That's why I don't want a treadmill or a static bike. They're boring. Walking through villages and along the road is stimulating. Ideas pop into my head. I talk out scenes in my mind. That's how I got the idea for the book I'm trying to write. It's almost like when I go driving. When I drive, I also start thought threads. I don't have that experience when I'm staring at the same wall for an hour. I don't do gyms for that reason.

I can't wait for May 2nd. It better not be raining that day.

Things were happening in the world these days. Yesterday was the Revoluçao dos Cravos in Portugal, the Carnation Revolution, in which the old dictatorial regime founded by Salazar in the 1920's was silently and peacefully overthrown in 1974. It was also the day the Italian fascists were run out of the country at the end of World War II. 

Today is the sad anniversary of the bombing of Gernika in 1937, during our Civil War. The Luftwaffe got all the data it needed to later bomb other European countries. It is also the anniversary of the accident at Chernobyl, which I do remember, in 1986. Almost forty years later, some of that radiation is being re-released into the air by forest fires that, hopefully, have been contained.

Along the lines of revelations, today is Melania Trump's birthday. She's fifty, by the way. 

And, while most of us are whining about being locked up in our homes, future generations will look at us in awe when they learn we lived through the great Covid-19 pandemic of 2020. Just like we look back at all the lucky folk who survived the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918. 

Heroic is also the guy who found the narrowest of parking spaces. I, too, have found that one sweet space, parked, and found I couldn't get out of the car. Only, I then would leave and go to find another space, generally far from where I wanted to park in the first place. I never thought to leave through the trunk like this guy. 

Those that hit the newly opened beaches in Florida might find themselves face to face with the Grim Reaper. Literally. This man is willing to copy the Swim Reaper, a man dressed up as Death who patrols beaches in New Zealand. Not a bad idea. The fright itself might help to empty the beaches. Desperate times...

Life continues.