It’s been a painting sort of day today. And John has been on the computer researching special equipment to help me make a nice, neat edge between the wall and the ceiling. In the end, crazy ideas and crazy prices later, I said, “I’ll just borrow Pete’s Peter Painter, again.” He has a lovely little device, with little wheels that run along the wall/ceiling, that I borrowed before when I was doing the kitchen. Let’s not spend any money on a new-fangled thing, eh?
So, the wall-to-ceiling bookcase is finished. The ceiling above the bookcase has had one coat of paint which may be enough. The skirting board and the wall behind the bookcase have had one coat of paint and will need coat number two tomorrow, when I should get on quicker. I won’t be stopping every five minutes to watch the news.
I was like a cat on hot bricks. What’s the latest in the USA election? The figures stayed the same for a long time: 253 to Biden; 214 to Trump. Pennsylvania, what you doin’? Who you votin’ for? As it turned out, I missed the moment of excitement as I was in the middle of a very tricky bit of the painting exercise, so it was John who said that the result was being announced. I was a bit disbelieving, because the vote count hadn’t/hasn’t finished. But everyone’s celebrating anyway. Well, 50% of the American population is celebrating, the other half is litigating.
It’ll be interesting to see what unfolds. The Democrats are not so much our friends it seems, so the ‘special relationship’ that we need so badly now that we’re out of Europe may not be so ‘special’ after all. Difficult times ahead for the UK? We’ll see.
In between the excitement of the election over the pond, John was tackling a broken cistern in the bathroom. The thing had decided to give up the ghost the other day, so John rummaged for spare parts in the garage (or was it the man-shed?) where he found a brand new replacement piece. Yay! That’s good news. Something is going right for once.
He dismantled the cistern, I cleaned it all up and then the moment of truth: would it all go back together and work? Ah…. no. That brand new replacement piece wouldn’t seal. Oh dear. So, I know it’s lockdown but John had to shoot out for a ‘click and collect’ piece of plumbing from Screwfix. This time, the brand new replacement piece did seal and it looks like it’s fixed. See? It went right in the end – and the ol’ man is useful after all!!
Later on, we had a lovely time this evening chatting to Pete and Dawn on Skype – during which Pete said ‘yes’ to me borrowing the Peter Painter piece of equipment. Thanks, Pete. Walls and ceilings – watch out! Here I come!
The Skype session got off to a bit of a stuttering start though. Like last time, we were late to the party as John’s laptop really didn’t want to play. We spent a good while looking for the mouse, to start with. That had gone walk about. Once it was found, John logged on (although it’s still a bit slow) and attempted to find the Skype app. Ahhh….. the menu wouldn’t load up. No Skype app to be located. Nope. No matter how he tried nothing doing. Frustrated, we ended up in the computer room upstairs instead, and…(drum roll) I managed to log into Skype all by myself. (Does a little dance).
And, other than that, there is really nothing much else to report. The family have been in touch – Micael sent us a video of William in his birthday suit which he was refusing to change and made us all laugh – ‘a rare sighting of the lesser-clothed toddler’; Paul sent us gorgeous photo of Freddie, who was a picture of concentration, and Andrew said all was OK in Cambridge (phew!). Christiana joined in too – she’s loving the baubles that Danielle is making and is planning to order one. Hmm…. I think I should, too!! They are very good. This one’s a cutie, don’t you think?
And so to the reason why we’re all cooped up (in theory anyway – we seem to have been out through one cause or another……. ) – today’s figures: 29, 957 people have been confirmed as infected today. That’s almost 30 thousand people!!! And 413 people have died with the virus having been mentioned on the death certificate. 170 people have died in hospitals on 5 & 6 November. Numbing numbers…..
Take care everyone, God bless.