Covid Redux

There was an outbreak of gastro in the Mount Clear aged care facility a couple of weeks ago. Stella and Jim both managed to dodge it. So did I. I have been absolutely obsessive about hand washing ever since I did a food handling course some years ago, and was fairly fastidious before that. I am even more so when the people around me are sick. (Even so, my watch keeps telling me off for not washing my hands for the full 20 seconds!!!!!!!)

Alas, both Stella and Jim have succumbed to the current covid outbreak at the facility. They are both on an antiviral treatment and are both as vaccinated as it is possible to be and so far they seem to be doing ok. I don't believe they have shut the facility completely down but I think you are not able to visit people who have tested positive. Even before that, you had to wear proper PPE to go in:

Stella said I look like something from outer space
I think it's more like a creature from
20.000 leagues under the sea!

Stella isn't answering her phone, which is highly unusual but the staff assure me that she's ok. Jim doesn't have a phone to answer!

I also am as vaccinated as I can be. There is a booster dose available in Australia, but for people who have had neither a vaccine nor a dose of covid in the last six months. It's only three months since I had covid. I hope  I am still slightly immune and that I will dodge it this time. I  am expecting to go to Japan in just over a week and I don't think the Japanese authorities will be very pleased to see me if I rock up covid positive!

I am still making my way through that box of fruit. I baked the remaining plums and have been eating them for breakfast with raspberries, plain yoghurt and toasted oatmeal. Very delicious. Plums and apples now all gone.

I roasted some of the peaches with a chicken. Some of those I put into the stock pot with the chicken bones and other stuff. It made, it must be said, a MAGNIFICENT stock. The others I have been eating mixed with a Geraldton waxflower and lemon myrtle dukkah, and seasoned with a little sumac, as an accompaniment to chicken or beef. Also delicious. I have eaten a couple of the nectarines fresh. So now I have half a bowl of peaches and most of a bowl of nectarines left. Not the worst of problems to have. 

Rupert and Hugo were VERY pleased when I turned up yesterday with these:

Hugo, waiting patiently, at a polite distance

Rupert - looking longingly but knowing
much better than to help himself to one!

They are very pleased that the bakery has finally re-opened!

PS I went to the care facility this morning to see if we could sort out Stella's phone. Much to my surprise, they let me in to see her, fully kitted out in anti-viral protective gear. She says she doesn't feel very well, she has a headache and a bad cold but she's not too bad. And the phone is working again now. It was on silent and the vibrate facility was turned off. She had 33 missed calls and several messages of various kinds. She definitely can't complain that no-one cared that she wasn't well!