Today is day 11 for us. I am rapidly going to lose track of how many days it is and I certainly have to stop and think about the day of the week. The last few days have brought some highs and lows.

First positive was the discovery of one and a half toilet rolls. Ok, so they were in the almost never used outside toilet and covered in cobwebs but someone in the household is willing to use them. Actually, we have sufficient toilet rolls but the absence of any online shopping slots in the next three weeks is worrying. I do have a slot booked for two weeks’ time but very little of my potential order is currently available. I was feeling quite down about this yesterday morning but first our wonderful community shop, run by volunteers, delivered a few essentials such as bread and milk and then a massive box of fruit and veg arrived, ordered by Rebecca in lieu of Mother’s Day flowers. Under current circumstances, better than any flowers, there might have been a tear or two. A parcel arrived from BeingEdward for Mother’s Day. I Skyped to say thank you. He has been making resin jewellery with his mum. He had given me a necklace with half a heart shape and was very excited to show me that he was wearing the matching other half, cue more emotion.

I am eternally grateful for ‘online’. I’ve helped Edward lay out a family tree. I managed to access Zoom for the first time to chat with other genealogy types and used Skype to meet with my authors’ group. I think Martha, Lucy and I are planning a family music recital later in the week. On the downside, I have a totally unintelligible communication from the US tax people, or possibly from Amazon, relating to my meagre Amazon sales to the US. I fill in my own UK self-assessment forms with ease. This is unintelligible, as is the website it directs you to. It seems I am a ‘non-resident alien’ (that may explain a lot) and I may need to visit my US Embassy for a tax form – like that’s going to happen. Or I can write to Illinois, ditto at present – not going to make a non-essential Post Office visit. So now I am worrying about being hauled off to some federal prison for non-payment of taxes.

Thanks to my co-isolatee, my lawn has been mown and even the shed is looking tidier. We planted some seeds. They are pretty antique but archaeologists have got Roman seeds to grow right? I spent an hour cancelling various aspects of our planned holiday to Ireland – hopefully we will be able to go next year instead.

I dropped in on #AncestryHour on Twitter. The lovely Daniel of Daniel’s Genealogy has interviewed me. Ah there’s another new novel clue for you – it does mention #Ancestryhour. I am still finding it very difficult to concentrate on anything, particularly writing and everything is taking longer than usual. Nonetheless my new One Place Study booklet is finished and with beta readers. You cannot imagine how long it took me to get Word to behave so that the pages that I wanted to have numbers did and that they were the correct numbers.

I am starting to get to know my next batch of students for my Writing and Telling Your Family History Course. I feel some of them may have more time than usual to devote to this. Still time to sign up if you want to join the merry throng – it starts on Tuesday – providing any of us can actually remember when Tuesday is!