April 27

The council water is on and it tastes disgusting.  I wonder if they don't deliberately put so many chemicals in it that no one will drink it.

Today we have to face the strong possibility that schools will not open next week as they are due to and that we will be teaching, and learning, online.

For us, as a family, this presents numerous challenges.  The obvious one is the Internet which is not only erratic at times, but also very costly.  If Sian, Ellie and I are all online for hours at a time, we are going to eat up a lot of megabytes.  I will also have to divide my time between teaching my pupils and helping to teach my children.  Sian will be OK, but Ellie will need some supervision.  The thought of spending hours on the net is not an inviting one.

Home-schooling accentuates the divides between people quite considerably.  For the majority of children in Zimbabwe, the idea of using even Whatsapp for communicating with their teacher is far beyond their families' capabilities to provide.  It is more than likely that they will miss valuable months of learning and do nothing besides sit at home.  Even those children at private schools will struggle.  Not everyone has wi-fi at home and not everyone has access to their own laptop or ipad.

At Ellie's school, competition has already begun to see who is most prepared for online learning.  Some parents are rushing out and buying each of their children a laptop.  No doubt they will soon be launching their own satellite in space and connecting to NASA. Some have set up special rooms in their houses, constructed rigid timetables that WILL be followed and even devised a system of merits and demerits that will be announced at the once a week 'home assembly'.  It is, of course, very necessary to keep that competitive spirit alive whilst rugby is out of the question.

I wonder what will happen to all the carpark mothers who gather every morning in their spandex and gold jewellery to discuss all the things the teachers are not doing to help their children's learning difficulties, behavioural problems or inability to pay attention for more than half a second.  Perhaps they'll form their own Zoom group.  I'm glad I'll have other things to do.

April 26

On my publisher's advice, I set up a Bookbub account to promote my books.  This involves linking the kindle version of This September Sun with Bookbub.  For the first time in a very long time, I have a look at readers' reviews of This September Sun.  I used to look at them almost every day, revelling in the positive ones and writhing in agony over the negative ones.  I have on more than one occasion wanted to contact the reviewer to give them a piece of my mind.

Writing a book is no mean feat and, perhaps especially in the case of fiction, it is very personal.  It is not just the hours that go into writing the book, but it's the anguish: the lying awake at night planning what happens next, the rewriting of a scene or a chapter, the times when you cannot think of one thing to say, when you just feel like giving it all up.  When someone criticises your novel, it's like listening to a tirade of abuse from your child's teacher, being told how stupid or limited they are. It's not something you take lightly.

Of course, the person on Amazon doesn't know me at all; they are just expressing their opinion which they are free to do.  However, there are some comments that annoy me, such as 'no mention of wild animals' or 'very narrow in its coverage of life in Zimbabwe' or, the best yet, 'I had hoped to learn more about Mugabe from reading this book and I was very disappointed.'  Comments like this only serve to show the narrowness of Western perceptions of life in Africa.  Any book set on the continent must include the roar of lions, wildebeest striding majestically across the plains or poverty, famine and slum life.

These are the things that Western readers might look for and expect, but this is not the only side to life in Africa.  The very point of This September Sun was to capture the narrowness of colonial life and also to show how much our lives were shaped by British culture.  There may be dust, but there are also gardens stocked with English flowers; there may be poverty, but this is also structure; there may be hunger, but there are also beautiful tree-lined streets, roads named after long-dead British prime ministers, poets and empire builders, and parks, museums and art galleries.  Africa is not paused interminably in the world of Isak Dinesen but nor is it the Africa of Things Fall Apart.  We are a mixture of so many things and this is what our literature needs to strive to depict: the shades of reality, not one fixed and ultimately flawed, view.

April 25

Elizabeth is not happy.  Elizabeth wants to go to church, but cannot because of the lockdown.

'This government,' she laments. 'Even Mugabe let us go to church.'

I try for the umpteenth time to explain the reason for the lockdown.

'Ah, madam, you don't really believe it, do you?  They are saying someone can cough on you and then you die.  I don't believe it.  People often have colds and they don't die.'

I don't really know how to reply because, to be honest, we haven't had infection figures anywhere near suggestive of a pandemic.  Could it be that the climate, the lack of pollution and a younger population than Europe has meant that this virus will not take off in the same way in Africa that it has in countries such as Spain and Italy?  On the other hand, we could just be lagging behind.  Winter is still to come and maybe we will see a sudden surge in cases.  It's hard to know, but it's best to keep safe.

Elizabeth glares at me crossly as though I personally have given orders for the lockdown.  Her other grievance is that my dad is sweeping up leaves on the drive.  Khulu, as she refers to him, should be sitting on his throne, waited on hand and foot.  I have tried to explain to her that my dad needs something to do and he needs to feel useful.  He cannot spend the whole day sitting in his chair.  Last week she berated me because she said my dad needs a bigger mug for his tea. Why he can't have one the same size as the rest of us is not clear, except that he is Khulu and, being Khulu, he must have a bigger mug.

Dad speaks to Elizabeth in chilapalapa.  When he worked on the mines in South Africa in the late 1960s, he learnt to speak Fanagalo which is a mixture of Zulu, English and Afrikaans and chilapalapa is very similar  It is now largely not considered politically correct to speak it, but I don't think either Elizabeth or my dad is aware of that and, as it provides an opportunity for them to chat and have a laugh, I really don't see that it is a problem. When Eunice comes to work - she hasn't been for six weeks - she, Elizabeth and my dad have long conversations that usually end in shrieks of laughter.  What can be bad about that?

April 24

I am hoping to finish a proofreading course I have been doing by the end of the school holidays.  I am halfway through and must admit I did not know it was going to involve so much work.  However, with the cottage not being operational and the terrific rate of inflation in Zimbabwe, our finances are a little dire so it would be great to be able to earn some money by doing proofreading.

Nearly three years ago, we went to the Honde Valley for a couple of days and whilst we were driving along, we saw a little sign on the side of the road next to a hut, advertising dried fruit for sale.  We stopped and asked if we could buy some and were told in true Zimbabwean style that it had finished, but they did have coffee for sale.  We bought some beans which have sat in a container on the shelf in the kitchen ever since.  However, with all this time on his hands, John has very diligently sat and, with a little help from all of us, shelled the beans.  He googled roasting coffee beans and read that they should be roasted within three months of picking so we did not hold out much hope for them.  However, today he roasted them in the oven and we had a truly delicious cup of coffee.  I felt like I was in a cafe in Paris.  All we needed were the croissants which I hinted at considerably but had to be content with a Lobels chocolate cream.

April 23

Today is Shakespeare's birthday, although there is some question over this - and the day he died.  It is also St. George's Day, but there is hardly anything about this on the news or social media.  It is not PC to be proud of being English.

John goes off to work on his favourite Wolseley.  A few days ago, he disputed the fact that he can do whatever he wants, but I am continually hounded by Sian and Ellie if I try and squirrel myself away somewhere on my own.  He insists this is my doing and that I should be more strict.  When he announces he will be working on the car for a few hours, the response is:

'Enjoy yourself, Dad.'

'Have a wonderful time.  Take as long as you like.  As long as you are happy, dear father, we are happy, too.'

OK, this might be a slight exaggeration, but he certainly never gets accused of not spending enough time with them, neglecting them in their early childhood years or driving them to become drug addicts or alcoholics in later life.  I continually remind Sian and Ellie that Enid Blyton saw her two children for an hour a day when they were allowed to have tea with her.  Otherwise, they weren't allowed near her.  Agatha Christie toured the world when her daughter was very young and left her in the care of her mother and sister.  When she joined her husband on archaeological digs, her daughter was at boarding school so she could be gone for months at a time.

I decide we are going to have a morning of gardening and that this is a perfect way of spending time with my otherwise bored children.  However, as soon as I mention the idea, it's amazing how quickly both of them find something else to do.  I start on my own, clearing the flower beds and digging up old roots.  Ellie joins me and then Sian eventually does, having spent about half an hour doing some mysterious. but apparently vital, exercises to keep herself fit.  

The sun is hot, but it is a lovely day and we plant quite a few succulents.  We try to fill up the spaces in the flowerbeds.  It is going to be hard work without any water, but we do recycle all our bath and kitchen water so there some to go around.

In the afternoon, the girls make a cake by blending a whole lot of biscuits, adding baking powder and milk and then baking it in the oven. It comes out really nicely and so we have a reading hour: cake, tea and a book.  What could be a better way to spend an afternoon?

April 22

As I said a couple of weeks ago, my email has been inundated with coronavirus advice from all sorts of sources.  Lately, I have received a number of messages from CIMAS (my dad's medical aid) with exercises to do at home to build up immunity. I suppose they are afraid they will be inundated with bills from hospitals should the virus take off.

Econet sends a phone message to ask us all to donate money to buy equipment and protective wear for hospital staff.  Sorry, Econet.  You take too much of our money anyway.  You could probably afford to renovate every single hospital in the country so don't come begging.  It really annoys me that so many people see Econet's owner, Strive Masiyiwa as some sort of demi-god, when he is a man who has made money out of poor people. If I was to meet him, my first question would be why do you live in England?

The funniest message I have received to date is from Ecobank:

Dear Customer, in need of urgent help during the lockdown?  Call us toll-free on ... OR call your Branch Manager/Relationship Manager.

I feel like phoning and telling them that I can't find any decent wine that I can afford.  I wonder if they would agree to a wine loan? Or perhaps I'll tell them that I have locked myself in the toilet and can't get out.

What on earth is a relationship manager?  The branch manager of Ecobank is the last person I would approach with a relationship problem.  She looks like she could do ten rounds with the current boxing heavyweight champion.  I can't imagine calling her and saying: 'The romance has gone from our relationship.  We just don't talk any more.'  Nor can I imagine her suggesting candlelit dinners and time together to rekindle any old feelings of passion.

Ah, Ecobank.  My first and only love.

April 21

It is the second day of our two week extension of the lockdown.  Sian and Ellie are getting bored and I can't blame them.  The worst thing is that we will likely go straight from a lockdown situation into school, but both of them are looking forward to seeing friends and Sian is really longing to see 'her' horse, Hercules.

They have been very good together and there have hardly been any arguments between them at all.  When I say this to them, they look embarrassed.

'No, we don't get on well,' says Ellie.

'We are always arguing,' says Sian.

They have read a lot and become very good at roof tennis and they have also learnt how to knit.  They have planted their own vegetable seedlings, painted, tried to train the dogs (a complete failure), cleared and cleaned out their rooms, baked, cooked, played the piano and the violin and done holiday homework.

We have also played numerous board games.  Usually, after lunch we play Scrabble with my dad and in the evening we might play UNO, Cluedo, Time Flies, Skyjo or Monopoly.  

We have even come up with a couple of songs.  One is called 'Famous Five - The Musical' and the other is 'The Cluedo Rap'.

'The Cluedo Rap' goes something like this:

Doctor Black

Invited his homies to his shack (wiki, wiki, wiki. Wiki, wiki, wiki)

How did he know

He'd get a dagger in his back? (wiki, wiki, wiki.  Wiki, wiki, wiki)

Has Colonel Mus-tard

Put poison in the cus-tard? (wiki, wiki, wiki. Wiki, wiki, wiki)

Has Professor Plum

Got a dagger up his bum? (wiki, wiki, wiki.  Wiki, wiki, wiki)

Is Miss Scar-let

A bit of a uh har-lot? (wiki, wiki, wiki. Wiki, wiki, wiki)

And why is Doctor Or-chid

Lookin' pretty aw-kward? (wiki, wiki, wiki. Wiki, wiki, wiki)

We definitely have too much time on our hands.

April 20

The telephone rings.  We all stop what we are doing and stare at it.  The landline is ringing and it is such a rare occurrence, it must obviously be:

a) a wrong number
b) the PTC seeing if the line still works
c) our friend, Brenda, who phones every time we hold a film night, to say she's on her way.

It turns out to be a man John did some work for recently.  He is the only person I know who does not have a cell phone of any kind.

So here's my topic to talk about today: the telephone.

These are the things I remember:

1. The fact that you could never have a private conversation.  The whole family always listened in.
2. About five seconds after saying, 'Hi, how are you?' one of my parents would shout: 'Not long on the phone now, Bryony.  Calls are expensive.'
3. My mother having long conversations with family or friends which seemed to about to come to an end, but would then start up again after one of them said 'Ooh, nearly forgot to tell you . . .'
4. Trying to ask her a question while she was on the phone and having to use a whole range of hand signals to get the message across while she waved me away or mouthed 'five minutes'.
5. You phoned someone to have a conversation, not like nowadays when you only phone if you need the answer to a specific question.
6.  Waiting for some prospective boyfriend to ring - the agony of it.  Then hearing the phone ring and feeling your whole body tense while you waited to see who the call was for. If it was Prince Charming, the difficulty was trying to affect a tone of nonchalance.
7. Listening in on party lines.  I got into trouble often for doing this.
8. Phoning people up and speaking in a funny voice or saying something like: 'Your take away order is ready.  Please come and collect it.'
9. Having to book long-distance calls.  I remember my dad staying up until midnight as he had booked a call to the UK.  The operator would then ring you and put you through to the other end.
10.Going through the shared telephone bill at university and trying to identify which numbers were mine.
11. My gran phoning me from a phone box as she thought having a phone at home was the height of decadence.  We always had to talk fast in case her money ran out.
12. People answering the phone by giving their phone number: '239485 Good evening, Mr Rheam speaking.'  Actually, my dad always answered the phone 'Evening, Rheam here.'  Invariably the caller then asked, 'Is that Mr Rheam?'

April 19

I am really absorbed in reading this book - Gardening in Zimbabwe. I am doing research on roses and I find myself leaning back in my chair and reading on.

We all have different ideas on death and what happens when we leave this life.  My personal belief is that people we have loved stay close to us and can give us signs that they are still around.  You may think I'm nuts, but to be honest, I don't really care what other people think.  

I have been thinking about hedges for quite a while - types of hedges, their names and what grows in Zimbabwe and what doesn't.  This is all to do with the book I am writing. I kept getting a strong feeling about looking for my mum's gardening book so I went into the room in which we keep her things and on the shelf I saw a different gardening book - Gardening in Zimbabwe.  I opened it where there was a bookmark - and it was the section on hedges. That to me is a sign from my mum. The section on roses is also really comprehensive and it is this that now keeps my attention.

The writer prefaces the book with the words, 'Gardening is one of Life's Pleasures.  I hope that this book will help keep it that way.'  Throughout the book, I can hear this lovely, gently cajoling voice.

'There is no flower more popular than the rose, and probably no garden subject more talked about than roses.  They can be grown throughout the country, yet not all gardeners succeed.'  What a lovely man this Philip Wood, the author, sounds.  He goes into everything in such detail, giving little hints and pieces of advice. I also love the adverts at the back of the book: Kia Ora Nursery Proprietor: G.W. Smith, Telephone: 734532.  No one speaks of proprietors now and Whatsapp doesn't carry the same weight as 'telephone'. 

The book makes me realise how gardening is a lot of hard work and how knowledgeable one has to be.  Now all I want to do is get our compost heap going properly and give the garden a lot of nourishment.

The book speaks to me of long, sunny afternoons in the garden, digging deep into the soil, watching seedlings grow bigger and more hardy, the joy of seeing a flower's first bloom.  I used to love going to flower nurseries with my mother and choosing plants, and when I was 18, I worked in a nursery every morning of the August school holidays.  I think I was supposed to be studying for my A Levels, but I had just been introduced to Virginia Woolf.  The combination of Mrs Dalloway and the beauty of the flowers was so exquisite.  I remember this feeling that the whole of life was in front of me and it was wonderful.  

April 18

Today is Independence Day.  It is the 40th anniversary of the birth of Zimbabwe.

Despite my vivid description of the 18 April, 1980, in This September Sun, in reality, I have a very, very vague recollection of the day.  It may even have been the day after.  We were living in Redcliff and there was a small side gate leading into the garden.  My memory is standing here while my dad showed my older sister and I the headlines of the newspaper that said that Zimbabwe was now Independent.

My grandfather did not burn the British flag, but he certainly could have if given half the chance.  Instead, he wrote long letters full of dire warnings to various British newspapers.  He was an old colonial hand, forced to leave India in the dead of night due to all the political trouble there after the partition, and he expected the same thing would happen here.

In many ways he was right: there was a lot of political trouble in the 1980s, especially where we were living in Matabeleland.  I don't remember very much of the Rhodesian bush war.  I remember travelling in convoys and the day we missed the convoy home from Kariba.  My dad told my sister and I to lie on the floor of the car and we drove the whole journey home like that.  On another occasion when we were living in Mhangura, we had to hide in the corridor of the house as some minor gun battle was fought outside.

The times when I was most afraid was during the Gukuruhundi era in the early 1980s.  We lived on a mine, 30 kilometres from Bulawayo and attacks farmhouses were very common so i feared the mine might also be a target.  When I was nine, a girl in my sister's class and her older sister were taken hostage with their grandparents in their farmhouse, tied up and shot dead. It is only looking back at my life that I realise how traumatised I was by this event and the deep anxiety it inculcated in me. I used to lie in bed at night, planning what I would do if we were attacked and driving myself mad, checking the security fence.  It is one of the reasons I have never been able to play hide and seek.  Even as an adult, the thought of someone trying to find me when I am hiding from them, makes me very uneasy.

Today we actually forgot it was Independence Day; it was only when Elizabeth did not come in to work that it dawned on us.  Elizabeth herself had also forgotten and was only reminded by her grandson.  These days, every day is like the one that went before and the same is true of the life of Zimbabwe.  Everything has changed, but everything still stays the same.

In the afternoon, I take Sian for a driving lesson in a big deserted area near us.  A young boy is there with his mother and it is obvious that he is also learning to drive: his mother's face has that fixed look of practised calm disguising sheer terror that parents have when teaching their children how to drive. Sian does well, although the lyrics of a-ha's Stay On These Roads spring to mind more than once as she tends to look at what is going on outside the window rather than concentrating on the road ahead.

Just before I fall asleep I remember a t-shirt my sister had.  It was red and it had the Rhodesian flag on it and the words: 'I'm a Rhodesian Rebel'.  My mum wouldn't let her wear it after Independence and I think it got cut up and became a floor cloth. There's an analogy to be made there, but at this point, I don't know what it is.

April 17

The kettle is not working.  I repeat, the kettle is NOT working.  Kettles are not allowed to not work; they are part of the essential services that keep us going. I try all sorts of things: filling it right up, only putting enough water for one cup of tea, half filling it.  Eventually, I resort to talking loudly, and in no uncertain terms, about what happens to kettles that don't work.  Every now and again, I steal a look in its direction to see if it has taken the hint, but it hasn't. This is not a good start to the day.

It is not the only thing that isn't working.  The printer decides it is going to print out blank pages despite having a brand new printer cartridge installed.  I don't know what's going on here.  It's some sort of electrical equipment insurrection.  Perhaps we have been at home too much and we are over-working these things.  The kettle, I can understand, but the printer has no excuse whatsoever.

I spend an unjustifiably large portion of the day trying to get the printer to work and then trying to fix my fountain pens, none of which is working.  I write best when I write freehand.  There is definitely a better connection with my brain or soul or wherever it is I write from and I love writing with a fountain pen.  There is something infinitely romantic and meaningful about it.  Even a shopping list would take on a superior air if written with a fountain pen. But, honestly, the amount of time they take up to get to the actual point of putting pen to paper is phenomenal.  When they get clogged up, you have to take them apart and soak the nibs in warm water and then you have to fill them.  Only one of my fountain pens has a cartridge, the other two have to be filled with ink.  By the end of it all, my hands are black, I'm rather ratty and only one of them actually works.

April 16

Today, Ellie decides she would like to make some ginger beer and finds a very simple Jamie Oliver recipe that doesn't involve any kind of yeast, fermentation, or the danger of exploding bottles. But she does need soda water so we go down to Spar to forage for a bottle.  I say forage because that is what it feels like.  The shelves are incredibly empty and we find the bottle of soda water right at the back of a fridge as though someone had either hidden it or forgotten about it.

While we are there, I have a look at the wine which has become obscenely expensive.  According to the prices on the shelves, the cheapest bottle there is something called a Freeberg red.  Well, can I find the Freeberg red?  No.  I don't think the Freeberg red exists.  I don't think it has ever existed.  I think the shop puts these random price codes up to make you feel there was something you could afford but you missed out. Therefore, it's your fault you have to sell your car to buy the next bottle up on the price range.

My eyes wander over to the likes of Green Valley.  When I was a teenager, we used to call it Death Valley.  It was the kind of thing you bought a litre of for the sole purpose of getting drunk.  I don't believe you could even use it to cook with, but I am sure that it has more than once been used as an anesthetic.  It's the kind of stuff they used to force feed cowboys who had been injured in a gun battle and had to have their arms or legs amputated.

But that was a long time ago. Is it fair to still judge Death Valley on its infamous reputation?  Perhaps we should give it a go? Hmm, I am not convinced.  What about Autumn Harvest crackling?  What on earth is that stuff and why does it crackle?  Altar wine?  That's the cheapest of the lot.  It reminds me of the chaplain at Peterhouse when I worked there who used to turn up to communion completely sozzled. He phoned my dad once and asked if he could marry me.  It's a long story.

Ultimately, we leave with the bottle of soda water only - but I'll be back.  I promise.  It's not the last anyone has heard of the Freeberg red.

April 15

Today, the water will be back on - for one night.  An air of excitement pervades the house all day.  In Bulawayo, we have water twice a week - Wednesday night and Sunday. We are very lucky as we have a tank and so it is not as though we cannot have showers or that we need to fill bottles up.  However, we are still very careful with our water consumption and one of my recent domestic triumphs is managing to reduce the washing so that we only put the washing machine on twice a week. This means being quite strict about what we wear; I am now wearing my clothes at least twice and encouraging the girls to do so as well.  

Wearing shorts all day every day is becoming a little bit monotonous and part of me feels I should put my work clothes on for at least part of the day to make me feel more motivated.  I am even inclined to don a long evening dress, complete with feather boa, high heels and cigarette holder, just to give my day a certain panache that appears to be missing.

In the evening, we watch The Crown again and this time, besides marvelling at how many cigarettes they each get through, I wonder if anyone really enjoys being part of the Royal family because it certainly doesn't seem that way.  Prince Harry is by no means original in wanting to break away, but at least he appears to want to do something meaningful.  

The Duke of Windsor (former Edward VIII) didn't seem capable of doing much except spending large amounts of money on entertaining. and looking soppy every time Wallis Simpson glanced his way. I really wonder what it is like to not have a job and not need a job either, to just spend the day entertaining and having no real focus to your life besides that.

April 14

The days have this regular rhythm to them.  I get up and edit my writing for about an hour and then everyone else gets up.  We have breakfast and then all go our own separate ways until about 11 o'clock when Sian and Ellie, getting bored, begin to close in on me.  After lunch, someone might bake something to eat, we do some watering of the garden or take the dogs out for a walk.  Then it's evening and time for supper after which we either play a  game or watch a DVD.

Today, John is up early and goes out to collect our milk and cheese order from Sedgemoor and get some vegetables.  One of the difficulties that life in Zimbabwe has presented us with is finding cheaper alternatives to some of the things we eat.  Breakfast is a good example of this.  Because things like Weet-bix and corn Flakes have become so expensive, we tried switching to porridge.  Oats then became mealie meal and occasionally I have bought packets of various things like strawberry flavour instant mealie meal which have not gone down well.  Over the past couple of weeks, we have tried to finish off these half-used packets and John is now working his way through 2kgs of sorghum porridge.  As I said yesterday, he eats anything - even if he does make a face as it goes down.

I don't feel great today.  I have a bit of a headache caused by eye strain and I didn't sleep well last night.  I feel much better after I have had an afternoon nap, something I really cherish as they are impossible to fit in during school time.

In the evening, Sian makes supper again. This time, it is vegetable fried rice.  We watch another two episodes of The Crown.  It strikes me how much people used to smoke in the past.  Every time someone speaks, they light a cigarette.  Old Queen Mary lies in bed, puffing away and then complaining about the effects of lung disease.  I almost coughing myself by the end.  Both my grandparents on my mum's side were very heavy smokers and I think I can credit them with the fact that I do not smoke.  I remember their yellow fingers and the heavy smell of cigarettes that followed them everywhere.  

In the episode we watch, it is December 1952 and London suffers from a four day fog which kills off 4000 people.  At the end, we are told that modern analysts think the figures were more like 12 000.  12 000 in four days in one city!  It certainly puts the coronavirus into perspective.

Watching The Crown makes me realise that my gran could still be alive now as she was the same age as the Queen, but she died when she was only 68 - but not, strangely enough, of anything to do with heavy smoking.

April 13

After the lull of the last few days, there is much busyness about the house.  John gives the swimming pool a really good clean, my dad sweeps up the frangipani leaves, which are currently dropping in their multitudes, from the driveway, and Sian and Ellie hoover the car.  I take the opportunity to work on my book.

The girls then appear in the lounge and hoover the carpet and Ellie has great fun polishing everything.  It's amazing how a vacuum cleaner and a tin of spray polish can bring such enjoyment to the morning.

Recently, I told them of my first job in the UK, which was as a chambermaid in a hotel in Wales.  I actually quite enjoyed cleaning rooms.  I don't know what it is about the feeling, but there is this sense of having completed something which you don't always find in other jobs.  I started the job just before Easter in 1993.  I hadn't done very much on my own up until this point so everything was a big adventure.  I changed trains in Swansea and took a little train that went along the coast.  

I remember the guard asking me if I was sure I was getting off at Saundersfoot and not Tenby and I assured him I was.  The reason he asked was that it was really just a siding and the train didn't stop unless a passenger actually asked to be dropped there.  I found myself in the middle of nowhere with my bag and my suitcase.  It was about six o'clock in the evening and quite light so I started to walk along the road.  A woman stopped and offered me a lift and that's when I learnt that hardly anyone got off at that station.

The next week, my sister came to visit and we walked along the clifftop path to Tenby.  The weather was glorious; to our right, were hedges of wild flowers and to the left were the cliffs; below us was the sea and a beautiful golden beach.  I felt I had just walked into one of the books I had grown up on. I was even excited to see a stile - Enid Blyton books always had a stile in them, but I had never seen one before.

The other thing I remember about that Easter weekend was that my sister was a strict vegetarian and very much into 'green' things and she kept telling me how Easter eggs contained some terrible E number that was actually animal fat.  I remember her also talking about the greed of people who boasted about buying massive Easter eggs or receiving twenty Quality Street eggs.  I was so disappointed as I really wanted to try the eggs.  Having been brought up on Charons Easter eggs, the idea of a Quality Street egg was beyond dream like.  I can't quite remember what happened, but I think I may have waited for her to leave before going out and buying one!

                                                                                                                       

In the afternoon, Ellie and I attempt making hot cross buns, but I think the yeast must be out of date as they do not rise at all. When I show John the pot of yeast that we used, he says, 'Oh dear, you didn't use that one, did you?  That doesn't really work.'  I wonder why we have bothered to keep it then, but John is someone who hates throwing things away.  Besides my dad, I have never known anyone able to eat literally anything, even if it is about to grow legs and walk out the door. It's all very noble in a world in which people throw good food way because it will 'expire' in two days' time, but I do feel that keeping dead yeast is pretty pointless, though.

In the evening, Sian offers to make supper - spinach and tomato pasta - and afterwards we start watching The Crown.  Series 1, I hasten to add.  I am sure we are behind most of the world, but we enjoy it anyway.  I know that factually there are things that will not be correct, but I like this way of learning about history.

April 12

The day begins early with John and I hiding Easter eggs in the front garden.  The Easter eggs are a hit and I must say that we would never have found such nice ones in the shops.

It is a beautiful day. The weather is absolutely perfect, the gladioli are out and we have Easter lunch outside on the veranda. But there is, as there often is with beauty, a sense of sadness. There is an empty loneliness to the day and I wonder if it could ever be possible that you could grow to hate beauty. Perhaps that is the wrong word, but I cannot think of the right one. Peace? Quiet? Is there a point when it becomes overwhelming? Not just monotonous, but suffocating.

I know my sadness is linked to my mother not being here.  I have this odd feeling of having laid a place at the table for someone who hasn't turned up. For dessert, we make an old family favourite, something my mum made all the time, coconut fridge tart.  The girls talk a lot about Sunday lunch at my parents' house which they really miss.  At some point, Sian comments on a smell which reminds her of my mum's.  I really feel my mother is close by.

Rolo disgraces himself by jumping up on the kitchen counter and eating the rest of the coconut fridge tart. I could really throttle him as we used our one and only tin of condensed milk and a packet of tennis biscuits bought in Botswana to make it.

In the late afternoon, I try and do some yoga and Ellie joins in.  It is fun and she is interested, but she does steal my mat so I end up doing all the exercises on the carpet.  Sian is very scornful of my yoga and meditation so Ellie challenges her to do one of the exercises which she does find difficult.

'You see,' I say.  'Who's going to be 75 and still flexible?'

'Mom,' she replies.  'You're 45 and not flexible.'

She has a point. 

April 11

The highlight of the day is going

to fetch our film projector from the house of the man who has fixed it for us.  He is an elderly man whose workshop is akin to an operating room in a hospital.  It is scrubbed clean and everything is arranged neatly.  Every single tiny box is labelled: '4" nails', 'washers', '2amp plugs'.  When he hands over the projector, I expect to be given a prescription and told to keep it off activities for a week.

Yesterday, John gave Sian her first driving lesson and today she is keen to show me what she has been doing so we take Chugga to a very deserted place in the bush and drive up and down.  Ellie, of course, is also very keen to learn and so John puts the seat as forward as it can go and she has a turn bouncing along the road.  John shows Sian how to do a three point turn which I think is jumping the gun.  It reminds me of my dad showing me how to do emergency stops and hill starts before I had even learnt how to move into second gear.  It must be a man thing.

Ellie writes a letter to the Easter Bunny and Sian has one of her 'quiet words' with me in which she insinuates I am dragging the Easter Bunny myth out a little too long.

'We don't want Ellie to be one of those people who believes in the Easter Bunny when they are 21,' she says, with a very serious look.

I assure her that I don't think she will be and that I haven't heard of any 21 year olds, or older, who still believe in the Easter Bunny.

Due to the absolute non-existence of Easter eggs this Easter, John has made some using a mould he bought in the UK a few years ago - and never used - and a few bars of Pascal chocolate that we managed to find at PicknPay.

April 10

I don't like Good Friday and I never have.  My parents weren't churchgoers at all, but they were very conventional and of the opinion that nothing whatsoever should happen on Good Friday. You couldn't go and watch a film or have a sleepover or do anything that produced more than minimal enjoyment.  I lived through the day with the great weight of Christ's death hanging over me, dealing with my guilt by being as gloomy as possible.  I have never reconciled myself to Easter.

By far the funniest Good Friday I have ever had was three years ago. John was working in the UK, both our cottages were very busy with people coming and going and we had just had a very, very wet rainy season.  I had made a great error in taking in a private booking and not blocking off the dates on booking.com with the result that I was double booked.  The second person to book was a Chinese man, travelling through Africa.  On the Thursday, I wrote to him and apologised that I would have to cancel his booking.  However, he was not easily put off.  

'I am coming,' he wrote. 

'But we don't have anywhere for you to sleep.'

'I am coming anyway. Please, I have nowhere else to stay.  Everything is booked.'

'I am sorry,' I wrote back, 'but we have someone staying in that cottage on Friday night.  Are you able to come on Saturday?'

'Do you have sofa or tent for me to camp in?  Please, I am coming.'

Eventually, I gave in.  Sian said he could sleep in her room and she would sleep with Ellie.  The man was arriving on the bus from Harare and would not be in Bulawayo until around 5pm so I gave him my phone number and asked him to ring me when the bus arrived.  We were going to be at my parents' house for lunch so I would leave when I knew he was in Bulawayo.

The day had not started very well as Rolo had killed Ellie's rabbit, totally by mistake, I believe, and I had had to bury it in the back garden. I made lunch and took it to my parents' house and we had only just finished when I got a phone call from the man to say he had arrived.  We then had to dash back home to let him in, only to find that he was already here.  We normally lock the gate, but it must have been left unlocked as we discovered him standing in the garage (it is not concrete, it just has 'wire walls'), looking out - and Rolo waiting outside, licking his lips.  He said the taxi driver had dropped him off and he was a little 'unsure' of Rolo, he decided to close himself in the garage.

We showed him the room he would be staying in and he asked if he could put some food in the fridge.  I saw him put in an enormous Russian sausage along with a few other things.  The next thing was that he emerged from his room, looking very perturbed and said that Rolo had taken his 'foffage', which I took to mean his sausage.  I was so angry with Rolo, but at the same time, I couldn't understand how he had managed to open the fridge.  I ran outside to look for Rolo and found him slinging the man's sock - his foffage - in the air and then attempting to rip it up. 

The next thing that happened was while I was talking to him.  He was standing in the doorway to the kitchen and I saw Rolo walk past in the background with the man's shoe.  Luckily, Sian and Ellie had also seen him and managed to rescue the shoe and put it back in the bedroom without him noticing.  That wasn't all. In the middle of the night, Sian's poster above her bed fell on his head and he thought he was being attacked by robbers.

As soon as he moved into the cottage, his life became much more uneventful.  He went out to Matopos and the museum and seemed to have a very good time.  He spent hours walking around the garden and taking photos of Rolo to send his wife back home.  

'I see ones like this in Serengeti,' he said to me once and I still don't know if he was joking or not.  He told us about the tiny flat he lived in in China and how he and his wife were hoping to move to Australia where his daughter was.  He was such a nice man; really relaxed and someone who seemed to enjoy everything and everyone - even Rolo.  He gave us a review of 10/10.  

April 9

It is my turn to go shopping.  I have not been out for nearly two weeks, but it is as though I have been away for five years.  The prices of food have shot up astronomically and I walk around open-mouthed or muttering, 'I can't believe it.  I just can't believe it.'

Besides the prices, the other thing I notice is the lack of imported goods.  Most of the things for sale in the supermarket are Zimbabwean.  There is not one bar of imported chocolate to be seen. The shelves near the tills are covered in the Zimbabwean made Pascall chocolates: nut log, milk chocolate, mint crisp and snack bars.  Somebody once told me that these are made with pigs' blood and I can well believe it.  You have to be Zimbabwean to even go near these bars of chocolate.  Many a diasporan will wax lyrical about nut logs, but anyone else not brought up on cheap chocolate won't even glance in their direction. One of the benefits of growing up in Zimbabwe in the early 80s when South African goods were banned is that you can eat most things and find them quite delicious.

I know I go on about the past, but it makes me cry to think of all the Zimbabwean industries that have come to nothing over the past few years. Every Easter, the shops would be full of chocolate eggs of all sizes and Easter bunnies, but now there is not one Easter egg on the shelves, not even the Charons marshmallow eggs and this is not to do with the coronavirus. Easter hasn't happened in Zimbabwe for a long time.

Outside the vegetable shop, I see the COVID-19 response vehicle which is just a white truck with a handwritten sign stuck on it with Sellotape. We all have to queue to go in as only five people are allowed in at one time. However, the queue is long and there is less than half a metre between everyone. The lady letting people in is also the lady who checks people's receipts on the way out. She is also the hand squirter (bottle of meths diluted with water with hole in the top) so she is quite busy, especially as she has to keep her friend selling newspapers entertained and buy milk from a man selling it from a cooler box. A multi-tasker indeed.

At the roadblocks, I am asked where I am going and where I am coming from. The policemen then give me a long, hard stare (perhaps to see if I will crack under pressure) and let me go. I wonder what the wrong answer is. On what grounds would they pull you over and ask you to get out of your car?

I manage to buy one packet of mini hot cross buns at PicknPay - they are choc chip buns so I assume they ran out of raisins - and at Spar I join a queue for a packet. The two women in front of me are very excited when the buns come out and pile up their trolleys. The baker looks very concerned when I only take two packets and says he can get me some more if I like. I joke that he might spark a hot cross bun riot if he is seen to favour me, but afterwards I wonder if that could ever be a reality - imagine the government brought down because the bakers ran out of hot cross buns.

I am glad to get home and lock the gate. The situation is not a nice one anywhere in the world but here in Zimbabwe, it is compounded by the terrific rise in prices. I consider myself a very, very lucky person and I always tell Sian and Ellie to be extremely grateful for waking up in a warm bed with a roof over their heads, for having three meals a day and snacks in between and for having space and a blue sky and good health. I do not know how the majority of the population survives.

April 8

For the past few weeks, one of the things that has really annoyed me about some of the comments on the coronavirus, is the emphasis placed on the fact that many of the people who have died have been elderly and were therefore 'going to die anyway' - as though they were all set to depart this life, just hanging around waiting for the best way to present itself.  Actually, all of us are going to die anyway so this very dismissive sweeping aside of a couple of generations of people doesn't really hold much weight.

Then there's the other bit of the argument - the younger people who have died have all had some underlying health issue.  I cannot believe that even if someone is asthmatic or has a weak heart, they would have 'died anyway' of the first dose of flu coming their way.  I don't believe that someone like Boris Johnson would have ended up in ICU 'anyway' with normal flu.  I don't believe that we would be seeing the number of doctors and nurses dying 'anyway', like it's a normal occurrence every year.  Surely, everyone can see that this is more than just your average case of flu.

Today is a difficult day.  I am lacking any sense of accomplishment and every day is beginning to feel exactly like the previous one.  The death of the Bulawayo coronavirus patient raises a number of alarm bells. It seems he went to see his doctor with all the symptoms of the virus and was admitted to hospital when he did not get any better.  He was put in a general ward and only tested for the virus when he was transferred to ICU and died before the results came back.  Quite a number of people are therefore now at risk.  I didn't know him, but I know people who did.  It all feels a little too close to home.

April 7

The day begins with a round or two of roof tennis.  Roof tennis requires only a tennis racquet, ball and slanting roof - no net.  Hit the ball onto the slanting roof and watch it come back to you and then hit it again.  Great tennis practice, but you do need to watch that you don't hit the ball onto the flat roof, because then it doesn't come back down.  Ellie hits the ball onto the flat roof and John is called to go up the ladder and bring it down. He goes up for one ball and comes down with five.

Ellie decides she would like to learn how to knit and digs out my mum's bag of needles and wool.  I cast on ten stitches for her and painstakingly show her how to add a row.  Two minutes later, I am unravelling it.  This happens at regular intervals throughout the day.  Knitting should be very straightforward, but it hardly ever seems to be.  My mum tried to teach me, but I gave up.  Like Ellie, I would start with ten stitches and end with 52.

Yesterday morning, we found a shoe outside on the grass and our first thought was that we had had a burglar who had been disturbed and run away, leaving his shoe behind (not a very good burglar!).  This morning, the shoe has disappeared, but nothing is missing.  It turns out it belongs to Elizabeth's grandson who she says has come to stay.  John is very angry about this as Elizabeth is supposed to tell us if anyone besides her and her husband are on the property.  Moreover, it also shows that she does not understand how the coronavirus is spread.  She keeps saying that her grandson is not ill.  She says that where he was staying, the police are being very brutal and he had nowhere else to stay. It's ironic how the police actually work against the people they claim to protect.  I really wonder if this shutdown can work in Africa.  I manage to find a video explaining the coronavirus In Ndebele, but it does not seem to really explain the concept of social distancing.

By the time I am unravelling the scarf cum teapot coaster cum winter jacket (that was Ellie at her most hopeful) for the fifteenth time, I am wishing that Sian would teach Ellie something new on the piano.

The day ends with the news that the first person diagnosed with the coronavirus in Bulawayo has died.

April 6

John often asks me why I get up early in the mornings, even if it is the weekend or school holidays.  There are two reasons: one is that it is the only time I have to myself the whole day and I can get quite a lot done.  The other is that I love early morning.  I love the dawn and watching the sun rise, that feeling of newness that lies over everything.  The garden is flooded in a beautiful golden light that highlights millions of delicate spiderwebs strung between branches and leaves.  Looking to the right, there is something primeval about the lush green, the great cluster of trees that leads down to the bottom of the garden.  The birds are already up and busy and it is easy to close your eyes and imagine a jungle setting with parakeets flying about and monkeys swinging from tree to tree.

I usually work in the lounge; it is my favourite room.  There is a strong, warm feeling, especially in the morning and I love writing here.  This morning when I woke up, I thought about all the people who live in flats and tiny houses without gardens.  It must be terrible to be confined to one room or to be in an abusive relationship with nowhere to hide.  I imagine many people just have the tv on all day or don't even bother to get out of bed.  When my mum was 13, she spent a year in a sanatorium with TB.  She wasn't allowed to get out of bed and so for the rest of her life, she hated staying in bed.  I think I have inherited this from her.  I don't like unmade beds and I don't think I have ever slopped around the whole day in my pyjamas.  I find there is something very depressing about it.

Ellie seems to have lost interest in playing the piano.  Partly, this is just Ellie who gets very excited about something and then isn't interested.  Partly, it's because she is stuck with the same song which is why I feel Sian should have shown her how to play the piano step by step.

John goes shopping with Ellie.  They are not stopped on their way into town, but on their way back, a roadblock has been put up and the policeman asks them where they are coming from and where they are going.  Not sure how this helps anyone.  John is very generous and buys me four PLASTIC 200ml bottles of gin.  He has worked out that this is cheaper than buying a large bottle.  The label isn't even stuck on straight and all that's missing is a brown paper bag to carry it around in.  Sigh.  The Lives of the Rich and Famous.

April 5

It is Sunday - at the end of a week of Sundays - and everyone is bored.  I take Sian and Ellie out for a drive around Burnside.  They are excited, although Burnside on a Sunday during lockdown is much the same as Burnside at any other time; quiet.

When we come home, my suggestion that we wash the car falls on deaf ears.  I take the girls to see John.

'This man,' I say, 'who occasionally walks through the house, is your father. He can also be called upon during moments of extreme boredom.'

The result: John offers to do some woodwork with Sian and Ellie.  Ellie is going to make a secret compartment and Sian, a shoe rack.

In the afternoon, Sian, Ellie and I watch 'Sad Cypress', one of my favourite Poirots.

And that was Sunday.

April 4

About four years ago, I gave my family food poisoning by not boiling some butterbeans enough before making them into burgers. We laugh about it now and joke about The Great Butterbean Murderer and The Case of the Poisonous Butterbeans or Death by Butterbeans.  However, it was not at all nice at the time and we were all violently ill.  As a result, I have been very hesitant to use any beans that don't come in a tin.  Recently, when thinking of how to survive if we weren't able to go to the shops, I bought some nyimo beans and today I decide to give them a go.  I have soaked them overnight and changed the water three times and now I put them on to boil.

I am doing really well with my writing when I make the huge mistake of stopping.  I have found this often when I write, although I have failed to learn a lesson from it.  I get into this lovely comfortable state when everything is going well and ideas are just flowing and then I make the terrible mistake of deciding to have a cup of tea.  This time, when I come back, John is using the laptop and, even though I hover about like a mosquito on a mission, he ignores me completely. 

I decide to use the time to look up the names of roses.  My main character is a gardener who loves tending a rose garden.  The difficulty that I have is that I need to mention the names of roses, but, because the story is set in the 1930s, I have to use names that were around then.  This may sound very picky but, believe me, there will always be that Know It All who writes and says: 'Dear Ms Rheam, I'll have you know that hybrid roses were only introduced in Rhodesia in late 1952, fifteen years after the time in which your novel is set.'

It takes two hours to get the laptop back by which time it is necessary to start on the nyimo bean supper.  I decide I am going to make burgers out of them, but the mixture turns very soggy and they look more like grey omelettes.  I throw in flour and give one to John to try and he suggests they 'need something' so I throw in an apple and the mixture turns soggy again so I throw in more flour and so the process continues.  Supper seems to take an inordinate amount of time to make and I begin to wish we were all raging carnivores - a piece of meat is SO much easier to cook.

Everyone tries the burgers rather hesitantly as though they are going to suddenly choke and writhe around on the floor.  By 9pm, we are all still alive though and I have got my laptop back.  Just in time to go to bed.

April 3

The day begins with the news that alcohol is to be banned as people are buying it and then drinking in groups.  It seems a very roundabout way of addressing the problem and is only likely to make the sale of alcohol go underground and become expensive - but it won't stop people drinking!

John sets off into town to see if this news is true - I have rarely ever seen a man so bent on a mission.  I work on my book and the girls take turns playing the piano.  Sian has been teaching Ellie how to play and she is doing well, even if the lessons are somewhat haphazard.  Ellie's first lesson begins with her using both hands and includes things such as b sharps.  I'm sure I remember starting with one hand and the tune was cdcdcdc cbcbcbc. 

John comes back from shopping, totally deflated.  There was a roadblock near the Trade Fair entrance and he had to wait fifteen minutes for the policeman to get down the line to him only to tell him that the centre of town is closed.  This means he couldn't get to the vegetable shop we usually use and had to go to the much more extravagantly priced Food Lovers' Market.  Prices, he says, have shot up astronomically since Monday, although the rate of the bond to the US$ has come down.  I just think that retailers here cannot imagine prices coming down.  

At Spar, one of the employees says he has never seen alcohol go so quickly all his years working there.  I wonder if this no alcohol ban isn't a scam put out by a brewery to get everyone to panic buy.  I can just imagine that Delta Beverages is owned by the Honourable Minister of such and such and he thought it might be a great way to boost sales.  Personally, I don't feel that the Zimbabwean government does anything at all with the interest of the people at heart.  There is always, always, always an ulterior motive.

April 2

I find the directive that we are not allowed to take any exercise outside our homes or walk dogs a bit extreme.  When we people go for a run or a walk, they don't usually do it in large groups or stop to talk to others.  Ironically, there could be no better place for social distancing than Hillside dams as hardly anyone goes there during the week at the best of times.  

Instead, people are still allowed to go shopping.  At one shop that has closed its doors but provides an ordering service, there was a great clump of people all vying to get their orders first.  They may have arrived by car, they might have been on their own and they might have been wearing a mask, but they certainly weren't queueing and they definitely weren't a metre apart.

In the warning from the police that was forwarded to me, the public is warned that there will be roadblocks and at these roadblocks, our licence discs will be scanned so the police will be able to tell how many trips to town we are making and whether it breaks the lockdown rules or not.  Now, I simply cannot believe that ZRP has this kind of technology.  This is a country where every government department generates handwritten receipts for everything.  And when I say handwritten, I mean to say painstakingly handwritten for those receipts contain everything from full name and address to document numbers to date of issue and time of day.  To get car clearance to take your car out of the country, you take it to the drill hall where you fill in a form and come back in a couple of hours in which time the man in charge has supposedly looked through all his records, which are not kept on a computer, and checked if your car is stolen or not.  In reality, it is just a formality.  I don't think anyone has any idea at all whether your car has been stolen or not.

April 1

It is April Fool's day and I know that Ellie has been planning a host of practical jokes, so I put the clock forward so that when she wakes up, it is past midday.  The joke backfires on me as Ellie bursts into tears when I tell her she has slept through the morning and April Fool's is over.  For the rest of the day, as I feel so mean,  I submit to having plastic eyeballs put in my coffee, pepper and chilli sauce in my tea and a 'cracked screen' on my phone, amongst various other practical jokes.  Ellie asks if it can be April Fool's day all day as we are stuck at home. Agreeing is also part of the penance I pay for upsetting her earlier.

It's my last day of 'school'.  From now on, I am going to concentrate on my writing and finishing a proofreading course I started in January.  

My publishers write and ask me for a photo of myself for my new book, All Come to Dust.  The one they were planning to use is not of a high enough resolution so I ask John to take some pictures of me.  It is a painful exercise with John telling me turn one way and me saying that I'll be looking in the sun if I turn that way and then him getting annoyed with me as every photo has me either squinting or looking as though I've just woken up. I don't like photos and I am not photogenic at all. People have told me it's because I am too self-conscious, but actually the worst photos of me are the ones people have taken when I have been unaware.  I don't know how it happens, but it always looks as though I have been pulling a face; my teeth are sticking out or my mouth is pulled to one side, my nose scrunched up, my eyes looking in different directions.  It is all just far too weird.

Sian stands at her bedroom window, making faces at me which doesn't help.  I try my hardest to look sophisticated and authorly, but it does not work.  Any attempts to look 'mysterious' or 'literary' only make me look like I have been at the gin. Eventually, John manages to get a couple of photos which I send off to my publishers. 

March 31

My life, I feel, is approaching a crisis.  I am so inundated with messages and e-mails that I am struggling to do anything else except plod through endless jokes, warnings, videos, games, discussions and general banter.  Something has got to give so I take the plunge and remove myself from a number of whatsapp groups and unsubscribe to various emails.

I have written about this before, I know, and little has changed since I did so (why did no one follow my advice?). In Zimbabwe, whatsapp groups are used for everything; it used to be that every group was flooded with 'petrol messages' so at four o'clock in the morning, my phone would ding and there would be the message: Fuel at Trek, 3rd Avenue.  Taking swipe and cash.  Short queue.'  Of course it's a short queue!  It's frigging four o'clock in the morning!  I did learn that the best thing to do is mute certain groups, an action that has partly backfired because I tend to miss out on the valuable information that actually is put on those groups while trying to dodge all the other stuff.

On the second day into the shutdown, everyone is stuck at home and bored and of course the one way to communicate is to pick up their phones and forward millions of jokes.  I spend a lot of time wading through rubbish and deleting it and I just feel that it is taking up an inordinate amount of time.  There is also something very odd about the disparity between some of the messages.  On one hand, there are all the coronavirus jokes, on the other dire warnings about certain doom.  I even get a message inviting me to a worldwide meditation to lift the world into the fifth dimension.  I didn't even know we were in the fourth.