Lady Dawn Annandale - The Lockdown Diaries

L ast Christmas, my beloved surpassed himself. Well accustomed to my delusions of grandeur, he asked Santa to bring me a title and an elephant. Actually, as a descendant of King Robert the Bruce I should really have gone the whole hog and opted for Queen. Anyhoo, I am now, wait for it, officially Lady Dawn Annandale through the marvellous work of Scottish Heritage and the lovely people at Dunans Castle. In exchange for a few quid which aids the restoration of this beautiful building, and, as befits my station in life, I am now the proud owner of a square foot of Scotland and Im a Lady! Oh...the elephant didnt actually come and live with us here in Portugal because that would just be silly. We called him Noel and decided he was better off in Africa with his mum so we just send some pennies to the World Wildlife Fund to feed him. Funnily enough, Noel quite likes fermented fruit which isnt that surprising really.

H ello, Im Dawn. I live in the Algarve with my beloved, Rodney, between four and six cats and varying numbers of transient children with or without their partners who we will hereinafter refer to as Brat no insert as appropriate. There are six of the little monsters, all with their various entourages. Im not the maternal type so please dont ask me their ages or even names because at my advanced age its an uphill struggle to remember my own name let alone all that horrid lot. And, it was a long time ago I chose their names so how am I supposed to recall something from twenty-five years ago when I was most probably drunk?

2020 will forever be one of those memorable years. I can see us now; wrapped up in a crocheted blanket in a nursing home with my friend Rachel, repeating ourselves for the thirty-seventh time to our great-grandchildren. We were there - ooooh, and we even ran out of loo roll or equally exciting anecdotes which encourages the kids to reach for a pillow and up the morphine. 2021 continues to be another very peculiar year with Brexit, Covid, Trump, Bojo, aliens and general Book of Revelations stuff. Personally, we try not to let any of that stuff interfere with the more pressing, daily struggles such as what shall we have for supper? and weve run out of cat food.

I started writing this in March (I think) when the whole death, doom and destruction thing started. Actually, it was probably after running out of loo roll, wondering why, then turning the telly on to watch the news and seeing a rather rotund orange chap talking about Chinese flu.

Our little bubble of sunshine and pussy-cats hasnt really changed that much because we are generally lazy, anti-social, old (although we like to pretend were terribly hip and groovy), we are in fact probably a tiny bit vulnerable. Rod doesnt want to have a vaccine because he thinks Bill Gates will turn him off when hes seventy via some kind of chip injected with the vaccine. That would be rather a shame as he hasnt finished the extension yet. Personally, I dont think Bill knows who Rod is so Im still looking at new curtains and bathroom tiles. I had a fairly yukky bout of breast cancer and all that gungy stuff that goes with it I looked like Uncle Fester at one stage then progressed to a loo brush finally moving on to a Kevin Keegan perm circa 1975. So, we use that as an excuse to stay in bed and watch all manner of rubbish day-time telly and call it resting when its more lazyitus.

The following diary entries are a combination of philosophical musings and utter tripe which I hope will a) educate you as to the inner workings of a middle-aged, menopausal woman and b) give you something to laugh at.