There was uncertainty this morning as to what we were going to do today. We didn’t rush this morning so, after a slow start, I checked with the Sutton Sleaths how things were, and an excellent report came back, so we said we’d pop over to help out and do more on the ‘man-shed’.
It was actually three hours later when we got there. What had we been doing? We have no idea whatsoever! It just took us that long to cook and eat our Sunday breakfast, gather together all sorts of foodstuffs and tools to take with us, and then collect the ‘clicked’ items from Screwfix on Torrington Avenue, before we were finally on our way.
That last bit was exciting. Mindful of the consultant’s advice, John was all systems go and champing at the bit, to buy bits and pieces for the work on the electrics to the ‘man-shed’. I reluctantly agreed he could ‘click and collect’. I think it was OK – although he had to wait in a slow queue for a while before he went in, and I was anxiously watching whether people were staying the requisite meterage apart and had donned their masks. All seemed well and, with the items collected, it was the sanitiser routine in the car and then we were finally on our way.
We didn’t do anything unusual this afternoon – although I did ride the rapids in the ‘river’ down by the side of the decking, and then transformed into a helicopter while William transformed into a boat. We both then transformed into aeroplanes and, wings out, flew down to the bottom of the garden to see how Grandpa was getting on. I also ate a lot of ‘chicken and chips’ and ‘hamburgers’ followed by ‘corn on the cob’ and drank ‘lashings of tea’.
In between times, Grandpa did lots of electrical things and William joined in, once again asking a lot of ‘Why?’ questions before coming back for more ‘river crossings’, fighting crocodiles and digging the silt out of the river. In the latter activity I had a leading role, having transformed into an excavator. I was charged with clearing a channel for the transformed ‘boat’ to sail through.
Michael studied. Danielle busied herself with sorting out the kids clothes ready for the holiday to Jersey next week. Thomas did a lot of sleeping. Of course, when he wasn’t sleeping, he was feeding and then being wide-eyed and alert to the general hubbub around him. Cuteness personified.
While Grandpa had hold of William, I cooked the Sunday roast. I did a lot of panic-mode cooking. Not having my familiar utensils in my hands and an unfamiliar oven which had a mind of its own, with a ghost hand changing the temperature every so often, I fought a battle with myself to get a decent meal onto the table. It was OK in the end, but this is what lock down has done to me. No faith or confidence in any of my own abilities any more. Aarghhh…….
Naturally, some days are better than others in the confidence stakes, so I just had a weird one today, but I wish I didn’t have such days. They are not nice.
Anyway, all’s well that ends well, and everyone was fed and watered. After we’d eaten, we played a bit more with the children and William used Michael and me as a climbing frame for a while. Michael was particularly impressive, doing press-ups with William on his back. Oh, to be young and strong again!!
We left Michael bathing William and Danielle feeding Thomas. Happy, contented family scenes. Long may they continue.
I only watched the news late on this evening and even then missed half of it, so I am not quite sure of the latest, other than there’s still a lot of anger about the ‘A’ level exam results, with people gearing up to be angry about the GCSE results later on this week. The reporting on the virus in the UK seemed not so prominent, which is probably a good thing as we are going to have to learn to live with it snaking its way through the population for a good while to come. The focus was on the high numbers in places like India, Brazil and Spain.
In England, the NHS reported one death yesterday from the virus, and the government reported 5 in the community, with 1,040 people confirmed as infected.
It’s Monday tomorrow – have a good week everyone!
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