Danskcolin: Thursday July 23 2020

Lois and I have now had four months of lockdown, and today has been a very quiet typical lockdown sort of day, to put it mildly.

But we have finally started to plan what we will do when the lockdown finally ends, keeping our fingers crossed that we don't get tragically struck down by a legacy stray coronavirus when we finally emerge from hiding after 6 years of lockdown, thinking incorrectly that the danger is now over.

We have been inspired by the amazing story of local woman Helen Sletski (source: the influential American news website Onion News).

By daring to make bold, less boring choices with her wardrobe ahead, local woman Helen Sletski announced Tuesday that if she survived the coronavirus pandemic and the ongoing lockdown, she would go ahead with long-delayed plans to wear a hat in public.

"Life is too short - I see it now - and when it's all over, I'm finally ready to just go for it," Sletski said as she sorted through a box of unprocessed berets, fedoras, ball caps and beanies that had been purchased over the last decade and relegated to the back of her wardrobe before she had actually worn them anywhere.

“I never appreciated the freedom I had to just throw on a bowler, go outside and hold it upside down through brunch until that freedom was snatched away from me. I no longer take my denim bucket hat and spend an hour wondering what everyone will think of it, or worrying about it making my face look too round. F*** it. Next time you see me, I'll either make this wide brown curved sun hat work for me, or I'll be dead!

At press time, Sletski was overheard muttering she was fooling herself if she thought she could pull off a fez without looking like a "big fat idiot".

Hail to thee, Helen – you kept us out of war! We admire Helen’s courage and are looking round for something similar to vow for ourselves. This is something we believe everybody should now do, as a matter of urgency.

For me it’s definitely going to be to finally have the courage to go out wearing a selection of my large collection of novelty hats.

The tricorne hat I bought 37 years ago, and which I have

never had the courage to wear since, apart from around the house

My “on-me-head-søn” Danish novelty hat from Christmas 2015

10:00 Today’s highlight for us has had to be uncoiling our garden hose, which was unaccountably all tangled up, and filling the big rainwater butts at the bottom of the garden with tap water, before watering our vegetables and shrubs. This was not immediately necessary as it turns out, because some light rain, not in the weather forecast, passes through the area in the afternoon: this was while I am in bed having a nap and Lois is out taking a walk on the local football field.

I showcase the bigger of our two rainwater butts

Lois has been plagued by insect bites from her gardening work during the last couple of weeks. Luckily her 2 packs of witch hazel gel have now arrived by post from Boots.com . So tonight should be a quieter night for both of us.

20:00 We spend the evening watching TV, the second episode of an adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma.

An entertaining episode, with one of Austen’s most memorable quotes: a quote which, it’s no exaggeration to say, has changed the world and empowered all quiet people everywhere and for all time!

Emma and her brother-in-law, John Knightley are invited to spend a winter evening at a get-together at Mr Weston’s house, but John comes most reluctantly, riding in the coach with Emma. He doesn’t want to leave the comfort of his own home and family.

The quote was a ground-breaking denunciation of the inconvenience of having to go out in the evening, and as such, an empowerment of all other reluctant dinner guests around the world to turn invitations down if they really don’t want to go, and would much rather stay at home in peace and comfort!

The preparing and the going abroad in such weather, with the sacrifice of his children after dinner, were evils, were disagreeables at least, which Mr. John Knightley did not by any means like; he anticipated nothing in the visit that could be at all worth the purchase; and the whole of their drive to the vicarage was spent by him in expressing his discontent.

"A man," said he, "must have a very good opinion of himself when he asks people to leave their own fireside, and encounter such a day as this, for the sake of coming to see him. He must think himself a most agreeable fellow; I could not do such a thing. It is the greatest absurdity—Actually snowing at this moment!

The folly of not allowing people to be comfortable at home—and the folly of people's not staying comfortably at home when they can! If we were obliged to go out such an evening as this, by any call of duty or business, what a hardship we should deem it;—and here are we, probably with rather thinner clothing than usual, setting forward voluntarily, without excuse, in defiance of the voice of nature, which tells man, in every thing given to his view or his feelings, to stay at home himself, and keep all under shelter that he can.

Here are we setting forward to spend five dull hours in another man's house, with nothing to say or to hear that was not said and heard yesterday, and may not be said and heard again to-morrow. Going in dismal weather, to return probably in worse;—four horses and four servants taken out for nothing but to convey five idle, shivering creatures into colder rooms and worse company than they might have had at home."