Delivery, Sir? Madam?

I groaned. The alarm had gone off and I didn’t want to get up. I knew I had to though, because Mark was coming to cement in the bits of the porch where the render had dropped off when he was doing the windows. John was awake too, so he said he’d run down and be around for when Mark arrived. Ooh, I was pleased. Another hour in bed, thank you very much.

Once I was up, I did a little more washing for the Sutton Sleaths, having collected another load yesterday. And, for a treat, I thought I’d iron the bedding and the trousers. I don’t know about you, but we hardly iron at all these days. The tumble dryer sorts the creases out and if you fold the clothes immediately they’re dry, there’s no creases at all. However, there are some things I do like to iron, and that is bedding. Nothing nicer than getting into bed under nice, crisp sheets.

A few house-work-y type things after that and then the door bell rang. An exciting piece of equipment was being delivered. John had ordered an all-singing, all-dancing car ramp to lift the Lotus up electronically. That’s going to be fantastic once he gets that going. He does love a toy.

John spent a fair bit of the day doing his sums. He was sorting out his finances to be able to report in to his financial partner and our eldest son, Paul. Eeh, I love it when there’s an equality between us and our boys.

A bit later on in the day, we had another delivery. This time, some radiator covers. Historically, we haven’t had those but we thought, being posh now, we’d hide the manky radiators. Of course, there’s a little bit of adjusting to do, so John will be as happy as a sandboy sawing them to size.

We were just preparing our evening meal when the front door bell went again. Another delivery. This time, it was cat beds. We are hoping to keep the cats out of the lounge for fear of them sharpening their claws on the sofas (which they did, many years ago, when our other sofas were new). Denied entry to the lounge they are at a loose end and wander about wondering where to settle. Fingers crossed that the new beds work. Shadow has sniffed one of them…. is that a hopeful sign?

After we’d eaten, we sat to watch some TV, catching up on things we’d recorded. It has to be said that we both nodded off temporarily every so often as we watched. But we had to stay up because we were waiting for a late-night grocery delivery, which finally turned up at 9.15. By the time we’d washed the shopping and put it away, we were good for nothing and flopped on the settee, too tired to get ourselves up the wooden hill to the land of nod.

With a row over the COVID vaccine deliveries with the EU, more Brexit shambles looms and I wonder what the morrow will bring. We’re falling out with our former partners already and we’re not yet a month in! I tried to get some information about when to expect John’s immunisation today but the surgery weren’t able to tell me. “It’s the community nurses who are doing the home visits.” the receptionist said. Ah, yes, we know that. “Do you have their number then, so that I can contact them and find out?” No….. of course not. So we’ll be patient and wait. Or impatient and wait.

The numbers of people infected with, and dying from, the virus is steadying, I think, so I am really, really hopeful that by Easter things will have eased just a little bit.

• 29,079 people tested positive for the virus today
• 1,245 people died from the virus in the community in the last 24 hours
• 430 people died in hospitals on 27 & 28 January

In baby news, young Arthur is still responding to the treatment on offer, and we saw a wonderful video of him today, stretching out his legs. There’s now a debate as to whether he’s going to be a footballer or a rugby player. Dawn thought his action looked just right for dropping a goal in rugby, but Ben thought that he looked like he’s got a mean right leg for shooting at goal in footy. My money’s on the footy.

So Day 24 of Lockdown 3 and Day 316 of the long lockdown draws to a close, and I am thankful for our blessings.

Take care everyone. God bless.