Rick's b.log - entry 2020/10/28

Lockdown blues

To that end, as of midnight tomorrow (that's Thursday into Friday), France will enter another lockdown until at least the 1st of December.

It will be a lighter lockdown, schools for teenagers and younger will be open (but universities closed, because everybody knows it's drunken frat boys spreading the virus, not the asymptomatic tweenies...) and factories will remain open, as well as public service things such as the post office.
Non-essential businesses will close, as will bars and restaurants. Again.

This is annoying for me personally as I had everything worked out. Tomorrow afternoon, somebody was coming to pick up Felicity, take her up to Rennes. A friend was picking me up to take me to work on Friday (she can't even visit me - like ten kilometres away but in a different region). Felicity would have her major service and all the bits changed. Then, I'd be taken home and my car would arrive shortly after. I'd hand over a cheque and everything would be done.

Only now, that plan's pretty much dead.

I had wondered about changing the oil myself, but there doesn't seem much point given that I don't have access to an oil filter. I'll need to look into that. Air filter too.
The gearbox oil would normally be changed, but I had it done out of sequence when the replacement variateur was fitted earlier in the year, so it should be good for another 5000km.
The drive belt is supposed to be changed every 10,000 as well. I'm less worried about this, as I have a replacement (and a replacement fan/cooling belt) in the boot. It'll be a pain to replace, but it ought to be just about doable with the tools that I have (actually, the tools in the boot "just in case").

But, for now, all I can do is carry on driving her. As long as I get a booking soon after things open up again, I might only have put on around 700km extra. I have a leeway of about 400km (I'm not right at 10,000), so fingers crossed.

Elsewhere, I had pretty much expected this. Most of the country is on special alert status. It's not in a region or "over in the east" like last time. It's now everywhere. So the logical next step was to lock down again. To that end, I went shopping. Bought extra bottled water, long life meals, tinned chili and meatballs (!), and a six-pack of UHT milk. So if I should happen to be put on temporary unemployment like last time, I can manage at least two weeks without leaving the house.
Of course, I don't wish for that. We are, currently, going into our busy period in the run up to Christmas. It's a little quieter this year than in the past (<sarcasm>gee, wonder why?</sarcasm>). Don't quite now what this is going to do with respect to all of that.

As for everybody else - I can imagine a few lives will be ending over this. Whether the failure of a small business, or the loss of a job... to the things that some of the girls at work had mentioned - one of whom said she hates her husband and if the (first) lockdown went on any longer she'd kill herself. Or him. She wasn't certain which outcome would be better, but somebody would end up in a coffin.

The thing that I wonder is... we've been here. We've done that. France implemented one of the strictest lockdowns earlier in the year. Now it has one of the worst infection rates, necessitating a second lockdown. Will this work, or will it be a stop-gap until we have another lockdown in, say, May 2021?

You know... I feel like there's going to be a reckoning soon. And it isn't going to be pretty.

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