The Daily Echo: Day 192

I thought I might get out for a walk today and got up, full of good intentions. Only to watch the rain pouring down and thinking, “Oh, I’ll go in a bit when the rain has cleared.” The rain did clear, and it was a quite a good afternoon with the sun trying to poke through the clouds, but I never got my walk. I was too engrossed in having a good go at the kitchen.

I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I don’t know if it was yoga yesterday that helped clear my brain-fog but I have felt better in myself today, wanting to get a few things sorted out. I didn’t feel the lethargy of the last few days today, having had a reasonable night’s sleep and waking up relatively refreshed.

The reality, of course, is that everything takes for ever these days though, and the simple task of tidying and cleaning the kitchen took me all day, what with one thing and another.

John, however, was feeling less perky, having worked hard on the garden yesterday and having had great success with it. Once he was up, he slid onto the sofa and stayed there almost all day – the only break being a visit to the doctor’s surgery for some treatment. I think he did some good telly viewing though and probably caught up on a good few programmes.

He was delighted to receive a little note from the neighbours this afternoon, congratulating him on the job he’d done out the front. Gosh, that was a surprise, but a delightful one.

Then he spent some time researching gates on the internet this afternoon, which is going to be the next bit of the project. Many years ago, John built beautiful wooden gates to go across the driveway and the pathway, but they eventually rotted away and had to be ditched. And when the business was operating from the house, gates would have just been a nuisance. But replacements may now be in the offing. This time, however, we may go for something that won’t rot. We certainly don’t want to be fiddling about with painting, oiling or creosoting wood every year now!

After our lazy/busy day we got ourselves ready for quiz night this evening and, once again, we had an hilarious time. Some of the questions we’d had before, but naturally, we argued about the answers because we all remembered them differently. Sometimes we got them right having remembered correctly, and sometimes we got them wrong, absolutely adamant that we remembered that this was the answer. Only to be surprised that we’d actually remembered the answer wrongly. Such great company – nobody minding whatever the answer we come up with as it’s light-hearted fun. Well, for most of us, anyway. It’s just Nigel who takes it so seriously………makes us laugh and he laughs at himself, which is a good thing.

We had some shenanigans with the internet though, with Linda and Brendan’s connection not working well and they had to resort to the picture being projected from Linda’s computer and the sound from Brendan’s. Nigel and Hazel’s screens kept freezing every so often, although only momentarily, but it meant that crucial information was missed, leading to lots of repetition and general hilarity. Great fun and such light relief after the ‘down’ of the local lockdown. Thank the Lord for good friends.

A bit of excitement today though. In the clear out, John had come across the trickle charger that I’d borrowed from Malcolm during the first lockdown, so I thought I’d better return it as I no longer need it. Texted Malcolm, with no real expectation that he’d be packing to move house this week, but hey presto! Yep, moving on Tuesday. Crikey! That was unexpected and quick!! Very sad that they will no longer be resident in the village. It has been so comforting to know that they are just round the corner. Ah, well, times change, don’t they? Although they aren’t going far just yet, so we’ll have them around for a bit longer. But not only that, Nigel and Hazel have their house on the market too, so they’ll be off soon as well. Both couples moving to be nearer their children who now have children of their own. It’s a generational thing, isn’t it? But not us, not yet…..

Not really going anywhere much, and wondering whether we should be going out at all now. Why? Because 6,178 people have been infected with the virus today. That is a lot of people. 37 people have died. 1,469 people in hospital – 134 of them new admissions today and 211 of them on ventilators. 10 of them have died in the last couple of days. The question is, should we be risking the exposure now and should we be locking ourselves in again? Locally, there are between nought and two cases according to the app so maybe that’s OK…….

Take care all. Do what you’ve got to do, but stay safe.