A new day and I start to settle into my quarantine.

It seems like a good idea to establish a routine. I’ve decided to use Post-its to mark my days on then window, just in case anyone happens to look up to the 27th floor and cares about me. It’s a bit of a HK gweilo cliché now, but up here no-one really cares.

My objectives for the day:

Do some sort of workout

Wash some clothes

Work on the Bach

I’ve been checking out a walking pad to try and do some exercise. I’m only too aware of the impact on my fitness of the irregularity of opportunities to run since I left home. Combine that with the carb-padded diet almost devoid of fresh nutrients and the impact is already showing up around my waistline. Eventually the hotel manager tells me that the walking pad I had in mind, which WILL fit, despite what she tells me, is too heavy for her housekeeping staff to bring up to my room in the lift. Plan scuppered. Maybe the rest is just as well, I tell myself, with my ferritin levels the way they are the moment but I do need to do some exercise in order to tire myself out or I won’t sleep. Just as well I downloaded the Apple Fitness+ stuff then.

I do a dance workout, engulfed in hilarity at my reflection in the large mirror above my bed. My attempts at sashaying through the moves fall some way short of the grace of the instructors but in time I’ll get there. I then do a HIIT workout which is too easy so I add some more jumping jacks and aerobics to close my rings. At this stage I pity my downstairs neighbours. (I’m still sensitive to calling them inmates at the moment) Maybe I will reach the October Award target after all. I ponder this as I munch my way through the extra large bar of Lindt Milk that I bought at Vancouver airport. Yes, I will be back in shape again by Christmas. Bound to be.

I handwash clothes with the little detergent nuggets I bought in a panic in Vancouver, rinsing my clothes out under the shower. It’s only when I’ve wrung them out as my mother taught me – I shocked myself a little as I imagine strangling someone – and hung them up around the tiny shower cubicle to drip sulkily all around that I see the washing line on the wall above the shower fitting. I grab my desk chair and manoeuvre it into the shower and rehang. Truly, my silk and lace does not fit into this world. Top that first world problem if you can.

On, then, to the Bach. I am overwhelmed by the amount of music I was intending to learn at home but did not have a chance to look at while making the arrangements for my inlaws. I do hope I’m going to have time to get it safely under my belt in the next six weeks. I’m surprised by how much of the Mass in B minor has stuck in my brain but I’ve been put in choir 2 for the Osanna, a part I haven’t looked at once. I’m told that Soprano 1s are thin on the ground and I really want to sing this, the first HKBC concert in two years.

I left myself consider forfeiting the other choir’s concert. Their programme, whilst not as demanding, is almost entirely new to me and I don’t think I’m going to manage it now. As for my solo singing: I really need to pull up my socks on the Handel after two embarrassing lessons, when I’d not managed to look at the music and had to be note bashed through it. Honestly, at my level! The hot flush in the lesson the day after the funeral really did not help. I decide on my priorities.

Food for the day is…still a novelty. I start on my sculpture of “lemon tree drink” boxes. It’s already becoming clear that this diet is almost devoid of fresh nutrients and I feel glad that I have ordered a fruit salad and some orange juice from Pret for the next day. The raisin bread plait supplied for my breakfast looked great but was disappointingly stale. I check my privilege as I confirm to myself that the food supplied on this all-inclusive holiday package is on an all expense spared basis. I wonder how long it takes for a person to die of scurvy.

Jenevieve has kindly brought down some supplies from Marks and Spencer. They include nuts and avocados and 70% chocolate, ordered by my husband, who knows what’s good for me. I binge on the nuts; keep the chocolate until I have finished my lovely Lindt milk choc bar and realise that I have no knife to cut the avocado. Oh well.