Back Home at Last
Our drive back to our home in Surrey that day was very easy indeed; I do not think we had ever seen the M25 traffic free before and I doubt we ever will again so that was one positive moment to come out of lockdown.
We had already decided to enter our house via the back door so our house sitter would not come into contact with us.
Although there were no official quarantine laws in the UK at that time we had decided that we would self isolate for two weeks so as to ensure that if we had picked up the virus on our travels we would not pass it onto anyone else.
Our House sitter was grateful for that as he would be returning home to an elderly mother later that day though we were sorry not to be able to see him and thank him for all he had done for us since he had arrived at the house in February after our American friends left.
Our luggage had already arrived which was extraordinary; we didn't expect to see it for at least another month.
Luckily for us it was dispatched during those final few days before lockdown in both countries so it narrowly missed all the delayed freight deliveries which ensued at that time when lockdown brought everything to a standstill.
We spent most of that first day deep cleaning and disinfecting the main areas of the house which we would be using that day.
The entire house would be cleaned in a similar manner over the course of the next few weeks but on that arrival day we focused on the kitchen, utility area, living room, our bedroom and bathroom.
The process took us the entire day; we were glad indeed to have filled one of our checked in bags with cleaning materials and toilet paper or we would have found those first few days difficult indeed.
Food wise we were pleased to see that our house sitter had secured us a weekly farm box with seasonal vegetables which would enhance our pot noodle suppers as purchased at Cole's in Bondi Junction just a few days before.
We became quite adept at creating interesting and tasty meals with pot noodles, rice noodles, brown rice and fresh vegetables.
The following morning we had to return the hire car to a Hire Car outlet in Sutton as Gatwick Airport was fully closed by then so we did wonder whether we would be stopped and questioned by anyone.
Fortunately we were not but we did struggle to find the industrial estate this hire car office was on.
After this final outing we did not go out again properly for at least 4 months.
We went for longer and longer walks as we started emerging from our own self imposed quarantine at home, I signed up for several aerobics, dance and Zumba classes online and like everyone else everywhere we only communicated with family and friends via zoom.
At one point we even participated in several zoom quizzes on a weekly basis, though we soon got bored with that.
We had never been avid gardeners before that first very long and dreary lockdown but from April to August 2020, we discovered the rewards of growing ones own food at a time when it couldn't have been more appreciated.
During those first few months in lockdown, we missed Australia and New Zealand more than we ever thought we would
Obviously we were very pleased to have made it back home even though the battle to secure any money at all from our cancelled flights and insurance providers was far harder than even we imagined it would be.
It didn't help that their already closed phone lines did not re-open until late July.
In the end we had to claim all our cancelled flights from our credit card provider (thank goodness we paid for those flights by credit card and not debit card).
The various airlines all tried to appeal against it claiming that the flights had not been cancelled but we could prove that they had been or at least should have been in the case of Scoot Airlines who still operated their flights to SE Asia knowing full well that anyone arriving would have been marched straight off into a quarantine facility.
What helped us survive those first few desperate months of lockdown was the excellent spring and summer weather which seemed to stretch across the whole of our area of England from early April onwards.
It rendered our newly found passion for gardening even more pleasurable and rewarding. An experience not repeated in 2021 when the summer weather was as unpleasant as any we had ever experienced.
But even more important than that, it was the decision to write this blog where I could re-live all those precious moments from our travels in Australia and New Zealand which now make the memories of those long lockdown months far less unpleasant than they may otherwise have been