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Day 51 Of Self-Isolation in Switzerland – Only Two People At A Time

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Today I went in to a shop without knowing that the limit was two people at a time. Paradoxically there were not two but five people in the shop because if you’re a parent with a child you’re allowed to be two, so there were four people. I saw no sign on the door because the door was open so I didn’t know. The shop in my village doesn’t have that rule.

It seems stupid to ignore the rule for two parents and their kids from separate families. I thought that I would walk my traditional summer route today but of course that was a mistake. A trio of three people from one family were walking lined up making it impossible for me to pass them without them entering my two metre exlusion zone so I waited by a petanque field for them to pass.

A girl and her mother were distracted doing something and the bike began to roll down a slope and I questioned, “How do I help without touching the bike. I thought of running and stopping it with my foot but as it gained momentum I ran out of time. It rolled into the road.

I was thinking “How can I help the mother walking with her children and I came to the conclusion that the safest part of the bike to grab and place it back on the pavement was the down tube. Saddles and handlebars are always touched but it’s unlikely that people, in normal circumstances would touch the down tube.

These are the things we need to think about during a pandemic. Helping someone as a spur of the moment thing is temporarily out of the question as a moment’s kindness could lead to tragedy, not that I expect either of us to be at high risk of catching the virus from each other. According to a recent article there were just 40 new contaminations yesterday. Now we’re even further into the long tail of the pandemic.

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