The poem is a tiny, strange sketch of a solitary life stretched thin. The speaker goes alone to church, but the odd phrasing "in a stone" makes the building feel less like a welcoming community and more like a hard, cold shell. Then comes home, and a car, and a journey of "five or six days" just to reach supper. That time span is clearly an exaggeration or a distortion, and it makes ordinary distance feel enormous.
The title, "Austerity measures," suggests that everything has been cut back: company, comfort, even time that moves normally. The speaker doesn't complain outright. The tone is flat and dry, almost deadpan, which makes the loneliness sharper. Judging by the imagery, the mood is bleak but faintly wry. Life feels pared down to a few bare movements, and the next meal seems impossibly far away.