Is it Day 6 of Lockdown 2 already?

Gosh! Doesn’t time fly? Almost a week done – just three (ish) to go. And, to be honest, apart from not seeing the kids, nothing much different for us. We keep beavering away in our little abode, hoping to make it a beautiful home before we have to sell up and downsize at some point in the future.

Feeling my age today. I got up all enthusiastic because there was more painting to do and I had realised, overnight, that I had the requisite paint for the first coat on my Dad’s bookcase, after all. So I set on and did painting and various jobs, only to have a gradual dawning that I am so slow and it will take me until doomsday before I have a neatly decorated home – if ever!!

Don’t get me wrong, I did manage some of the planned work today, for example: my father’s bookcase got it’s first coat; as did one of the skirting boards, and the shelf above one of the windows had an unexpected lick of paint, too. Although it looked a bit startled to be getting some attention, if I’m honest.

In addition, we popped into Solihull to collect the paint that had been ordered, and I nipped along to the local shops to post the parcel John so lovingly wrapped yesterday. Between times, we had a lovely chat to George who so kindly looked into the problems on John’s laptop. And I cooked. And made cups of tea. So I wasn’t lazy, or sitting twiddling my fingers. But I was slow – and messy.

Anyway, here’s a pic of the floor-to-ceiling bookcase for your delectation, with my Dad’s little bookcase peeping put, proudly wearing its first introduction to a paint job. When it’s all finished (ha!) it’ll all link together nicely – I hope. The books are just shoved on the shelves for now – more to be gathered from the rest of the house where they have been lurking for the last few years, and then it’ll be done. Some areas of the house will breath a big sigh of relief, I think.

John has felt a bit under par today though, in my opinion. He always says he’s alright no matter what, but he was quiet with not a lot of ‘get up and go’ for the early part of the day. He got up late-ish and intermittently chatted to George, who had remotely logged onto his laptop to offer it a bit of TLC, but then spent a fair bit of the afternoon snoozing on the sofa, before venturing out into the garage.

Once in the garage, his aim was to cut, from aluminium, some spacers for the Lotus. The trouble was, for a little while, he had to hunt for the original ones as a template to work from. “I know they’re in here somewhere…..” Of course, neither of us can see for looking these days… He’d had a good look in the storage area where he has carefully put all things Lotus, with nothing doing. Came back to it a bit later after we’d been to Solihull and, voilà! There they were. In the place he’d expected to find them earlier. Typical. I wonder where they had been hiding?

With regards to cooking, you may recall that we took delivery of an exceptionally large pumpkin, courtesy of Michael and Danielle. Several of you offered recipes – thank you very much – which I haven’t had time to try yet. In the meantime, we have eaten roast pumpkin every day since and we now look like pumpkin. However, with most of the recipes calling for pureed pumpkin, we roasted the last of it today for puree-ing, ready to be inserted into the various recipes soon. Maybe tomorrow?

So, we have pottered about in our little bubble and hopefully not come into contact with the dreaded lurgy, which has killed 532 people in the community today and 148 people in hospitals on 8 & 9 November. This is the largest number yet – which we were expecting, but it’s shocking, nonetheless. 680 families bereaved and heartbroken in a couple of days and similar figures to come – it hardly bears thinking about, does it?

With the news of a vaccine soon to arrive on our shores there is hope, but in the meantime, we think of those who are ill – 20,412 confirmed as infected today – and pray that they recover well.

Take care everyone. God bless.