Quarantine Diaries, Day 29
15:00 Sudden temperature dips notwithstanding, it felt late enough today to wash, dry and pack away my two mufflers1.
Mufflers
While folding them, I was reminded of this bizarre conversation we had with a total stranger at a pub a few months ago. We were paying our bill at the bar when this gentleman, who had had one drink too many, asked me about where I had got my scarf from (the one that looks like they were going for German flag). I told him it was a pretty ordinary mass manufactured thing from Uniqlo. He then went on to tell us how he had one exactly like that in his school days and asked us where we were from. It’s pretty futile to answer that with Amsterdam because inadvertently the question comes back as “But where are you originally from”, so India was my answer. At that point he told us about his love for tennis, Vijay Amritraj and asked me if we knew which James Bond film he had appeared in. I told him I hadn’t the foggiest clue (and till I looked it up later, I didn’t!)2, said polite goodbyes and stepped out.
Funny that an article of clothing should tug at a random dormant memory.
14:00 The combination of sunny days and easter holidays got people out of their homes in numbers greater than governmental bodies monitoring the adherence to lockdown would like. They had to stop trains between Amsterdam and Rotterdam yesterday and tell people to get off because they had gotten too full. The trains here have been running less frequently and our national rail service has been requesting people to ride only if strictly necessary. When reduced train service doesn’t deter people from taking a ride, it creates precisely the conditions that social distancing is meant to avoid.
11:00 It finally happened today. The wife’s enthusiasm to give me a haircut met my increasing annoyance with bits of hair beginning to cover my ear. Since a trimmer has been hard to come by, she used a pair of scissors and comb to chop the offending bits of hair. It took us quite long to get through it, mostly because I kept giving her an earful to not chop bits of my ear.
09:30 The temperature dipped from a balmy 22ºC yesterday to a nippy 9ºC today. The cool spell is going to last a couple of days. I hope we get some rain too. While the winter last year was quite wet, we are off to a very dry start to the spring/summer season.