Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow

Another long, lazy lie-in and, looking out of the window, in for another disappointing day weather-wise. The sky was leaden and we didn’t feel like getting out of bed. My phone pinged by my bedside and I slowly released my arm from under the warm covers to sleepily look to see who was texting. It was Danielle, with a gentle little video of the snow falling in their back garden. Harriet followed suit. Then, wonder of wonders, it started snowing here, too.

It lay thick enough in Sutton for the boys to go sledging on the field, and in Kenilworth for Freddie to play out in it, and here in Balsall for me to admire it dusting the lawn. You should have heard William chuckle his little head off as he hurtled down to the bottom of the hill on his sledge, and Freddie chattering about the snowflakes as they fell from the sky. Fabulous.

Despite being awake, I decided to stay in bed some more and read my book, which I did until lunchtime. John was already up and catching up on a Netflix series called ‘Narcos’, which is based on a true story of how drugs and drug barons flooded Miami, and the fight to clean up the town. I joined him while I had bite to eat, and then, despite my best intentions to do something active this afternoon, I whiled away the time by scoffing lots of chocolate biscuits, playing a scrabble game on my phone, scrolling social media and doing my jigsaw – which is resistant to any amount of coaxing. Not got awfully far with yet, as you can see. It’s all very brown…..

While I cooked our evening meal, John went to scrutinise quiz questions on the computer, ready for our Quiz Night tomorrow. John is Quiz Master this week, and he’s determined to make it a good one if he can. Especially as it’s the New Year coming up.

Not that any of us are going to be out celebrating, are we? We haven’t had the feed-through of numbers of infections from the Christmas period yet, and already we are at 53,135 people confirmed as infected with COVID in the last 24 hours. I nearly dropped my cup of tea when I heard the figures on the lunchtime news today. I certainly spluttered into it and waved my arms about a lot as I gestured my dismay to John.

That does it, then. I have been thinking about putting us into stronger measures of lockdown since the news of more and more people catching the blessed virus has been filtering through. And today’s news just confirmed it. No going out to the shops or non-essential journeys for us for the foreseeable. The hospitals are getting busier and busier, and if we can avoid being one of the many at their doors that will be a good thing – so safety first.

The news isn’t very cheerful at all, now that I have come back to watching it a bit, what with earthquakes, Brexit, our borders being iffy and the rise of COVID cases. I wondered out loud to John how we could have got it so wrong on keeping the infection rate down, but he thought that being a small, densely populated island we would always being fighting an uphill battle. I suppose, but it feels shitty. Can I say that?

So the figures are as follows:

• 53,135 people confirmed as testing positive for the virus in the last 24 hours
• 414 people have died during the same period in the community.
• 2,322 people were admitted to hospital on Monday 21 December – no new figures, but, for a week ago that’s a lot
• 213 people have died in hospitals on 27 & 28 December – mostly the over 60s
• We are on Day 13 of Tier 3, Part 2 and Day 28 of Tier 3 total
• And it’s Day 286 since the beginning of our original lockdown in March

All the scientists are imploring us all to stay at home, keep our hands washed, wear our masks and keep well apart from everyone else. I know the politicians have a different view, but I’m ‘following the science’ – how about you? Hope so!

Stay safe everyone. God bless.