Rip Van Winkle

Rip Van Winkle hasn’t got anything on us. We can sleep the day away. Well, we slept the morning away anyway today. We were only winkled (!!) out of bed when Michael phoned at lunchtime to see how we were doing.

The thing was that John had a restless night. That usually means I have a restless night too. It culminated in John going off to the spare bedroom at five o’clock in the morning after he’d had a couple of goes at kicking my shins. Not sure what he was dreaming about – saving a goal in an England match, maybe? Playing footie with Freddie or William? Or kicking the cat?

So we were both undisturbed from that moment on and we both snoozed our alarms, then just kept on sleeping. I started to read my book in bed about half past ten and was still doing that when Michael phoned at about 12.30. I called John through and we sat in bed chatting to the Sutton Sleaths, duly admiring William’s newly decorated bedroom that he proudly presented to us. We grinned inanely at Thomas and made cooing noises, and he grinned delightedly back at us. It was lovely.

Of course, we thought we really ought to get up then, so we did and looked ruefully at each other as we acknowledged that half the day had gone. We had breakfast at lunchtime and then set about trying to adjust our day. John was busy mending Freddie’s toy; I was busy making phone calls – either medical related or friend related.

We had agreed we would go for a walk this afternoon but at one point I thought we weren’t going to make it. We were tinkering and the afternoon wore on. We did finally manage to get ourselves out of the door however, and quite enjoyed our stroll. Although it has to be said that I took us down a muddy alley, and we got our shoes caked in mud, which I am not too sure whether John was altogether happy about.

Once we were back, John went and had a tinker with the Lotus while I cooked our evening meal. Had a lovely roast chicken dinner today, which was delicious.

After we’d eaten, it was pretty much time for Quiz Night, so we settled down for a good night in. It was great to see Caroline joining in, recovering from her knee operation, and looking so well. Malcolm had set the quiz today and what a good one it was. We did quite well despite some difficult questions. The ones we got wrong though, were mostly repeats of ones we have got wrong in the past. Made us giggle at our failing memories – I mean, just how many time zones are there in Russia? Surely we should remember the answer to that? There are loads.

So, all in all, there’s only half a day’s tale to tell today, so that’s about it. Except that we took a phone call from the furniture shop this afternoon and lo and behold, our new three piece suite is now in! Delivery next Tuesday. Oooh….. that’s a bit tight to get the decorating done, isn’t it? The plan is to paint the ceiling at least…. wish me luck. No laying in bed all morning tomorrow then. No competing with Rip Van Winkle now.

What with one thing and another we haven’t really concentrated on much of the news today, but we’ve picked up the headlines. Trump is impeached. That’ll be interesting to see how that unfolds, won’t it? I am quite scared for America right now. It’s a gunpowder keg, liable to be lit and go off at any moment.

On our own shores, the free schools meals situation still dominates the headlines, with Matt Hancock refusing to offer any regret for voting against continuing to offer the free school meals during lockdown in the House a few weeks ago. And, of course, the COVID-19 situation. The numbers of those infected is slowing, but obviously, with the two-week time lag the numbers of deaths is increasing. There’s still a lot of shrugging of shoulders and ‘what we gonna do?’ questions being asked. It feels very exasperating.

• 47,525 people were recorded as having tested positive for the virus today
• 1,564 people were recorded as having died from the virus today in the community
• 488 people were recorded as having died from the virus in hospitals over the last couple of days.

The figures for hospital admissions hasn’t been updated on the daily summary from the government today, but we hear locally that the hospitals are admitting a lot every day now. Certainly, the QE has 368 inpatients with COVID and Heartlands has 297 as of today. Let’s hope we can keep illnesses at bay until the corona crisis is over.

Take care everyone. God bless.