It’s Day 234 since we went into hiding in March. People have been to rescue us on many occasions and will do so again, but will the world ever be the same? Watching the scenes and listening to the rhetoric over ‘the pond’ in the USA, I am beginning to doubt it. The world is shifting…..
Today has been peppered with newsflashes of who might or might not be winning the two-horse race over in the USA to elect a new President. Predictably, Trump is crying foul because he is not yet in the lead, claiming that the voting was fraudulent. It’s a little bit scary how he wangles things to his own advantage and I am not convinced he won’t yet to do it. I’m watching with bated breath. And, whoever wins, I think there are likely to be riots.
In the meantime, we are continuing with our humdrum lives here, anticipating lockdown at 00.01hrs tonight, Thursday 5 November, not having had our firework party. In the end, I transported the finger rolls and sausages for the hot dogs, the toffee apples and the Bonfire cakes to both the Sleaths in Sutton and Kenilworth so that they could have their own jamboree in their own back gardens at their leisure.
John wasn’t feeling so good this morning, made miserable, I think, by the re-visiting of the ‘stay home’ order and the constant attention by the medics. He took yet another phone call today from the radiologist at Solihull very kindly inviting him to attend another something or other – x-ray, CT scan, MRI, who knows? We have no idea what it’s in aid of, but needless to say, he’ll be there at the appointed time of 18.55, and we’ll look forward to finding out the results in due course.
John decided he’d come with me on the trip to Sutton because he’d got a desk to deliver over there. Danielle is making lovely trinkets and needs a good wide working area – we have a desk spare, so off it goes to its new home. The only trouble was, we couldn’t really get it in the car, despite it being in three pieces. “You’ll have to put the roof down,” John declared. So I obliged, and we slotted the pieces in onto the back seat. We turned the seat-heating on to full, switched the blower from AirCon to Heat Up and donned warm clothing before we set off, roof down, on what seemed like a little adventure.
Thankfully, we arrived all in one piece and much to Michael’s surprise. He hadn’t known we were going over, as I’d made the arrangement with Danielle. Hearing the dog barking like mad, he came up from his office at the bottom of the garden to investigate. “It’s only us!” Crikey, I feel like we’re in a bit of sitcom. We’ll be ‘yoo-hooing’ next!!
Desk safely delivered, baby Thomas cooed over and a quick cuppa later and we were back on our way home. John was a bit more cheerful. It’s all about purpose isn’t it? We had had a purpose and achieved it. We had a delightful chat (yes, honestly!) to Thomas who continues to ‘talk’ to us and grin and chuckle at us, which filled our souls with love. We had an equally delightful chat with Michael and Danielle which satisfied our intellectual needs. And I’d had the double bonus of already having been to Paul’s and been filled up with all that love and brain stimulation there as well.
So we went home cheered up. Once we were back, John busied himself preparing the evening quiz. I busied myself inspecting the back of my eyelids again. I had been watching the election unfold but I’d clearly got bored and my eyes drooped and there I was, asleep.
Had a lovely time with everyone as we did the quiz this evening. John was Quiz Master and he set us some questions we’d had before, some we really couldn’t answer and some that were controversial. All of which made for an enjoyable and varied evening. The question on our lips, as a result, was: Are masks effective in preventing infection transmission? What do you think, folks? Are they? Or not?
Whatever the answer, I’m still wearing mine. I don’t want to be a new statistic nor infect anyone I love. And the statistics, today, are that 25,177 people have been confirmed as COVID-19 positive and 492 people have died. Sorry, I’ll just say that again….. Four Hundred and Ninety-Two people. As someone said – that’s a jumbo jetful of people who’ve died from the virus in the last 24 hours, not to mention the additional 156 who died in hospitals on 2 & 3 November.
So, apart from having to ‘click and collect’ my shopping tomorrow as there were no delivery slots, we are not going out. I have bought enough paint and wallpaper and wallpaper paste to keep me going for months, and we have a list as long as your arm of the jobs that need to be done here on the Forth Bridge – oh, sorry, I mean, here at home.
God bless. Look after yourselves – don’t become a statistic if you can help it. Please.