The sun has got his hat on

Woke up to the most glorious sunshine today. And wasn’t the sky blue? All day! Fabulous.

We had a slow start to the day but soon got a wriggle on when we remembered we were doing a ‘virtual house viewing’ at ten o’clock. This is a house, next door to Paul and Harriet’s, that Paul wondered whether we’d be interested in.

We logged in and it started well. However, after a little while, the estate agent was saying, “…..and this is the downstairs bathroom…” Hang on a minute, our video hasn’t caught up yet! “Oh, yes, I see that your connection is orange. I’ll wait for you to catch up. There you are, you’re green now, can you see the bathroom?” Err….. no?

And this is how it went, on and off for about forty minutes. Eventually we decided to go downstairs and log onto John’s computer, thinking it might be the internet connection on the computer upstairs. No sooner had we logged on and the estate agent said, “…..so, we’re upstairs in the loft space….” Well, we weren’t. And it definitely wasn’t our internet that was the problem. “Okay. No worries,” she said in her sing-song voice, like it was no trouble at all. “I’ll wait for you to catch up.” And then we had a power cut. What a palaver. “Shall I send you another link and we’ll carry on tomorrow morning?” the estate agent wondered. Yes, OK.

But actually, now that we’ve had chance to think about it some more, we think maybe not…..

We decided to take advantage of the sunshine and sit out in the garden with a cup of tea after all the faff of the virtual tour. Bliss. The birds were singing their hearts out, and that made us think about a recently-arrived parcel. A monocular. To view the birds if we can. Neither of us seem to be able to get on with binoculars, so we wondered if a monocular might be better. We are excited about it because you can attach your camera to it and take photos if you want.

However, I was ready to throw the thing in the bin. I couldn’t get it attached to my phone properly, nor could I focus the darned thing. Mr Technical Fingers took over, however, and sorted it out. We have yet to work out how to focus the bloomin’ thing though! Flowers at the bottom of the garden? Maybe.

Fired up by our ‘virtual tour’ of a different house, we thought we’d do a bit of research into what’s available locally. We looked at bungalows because, you know, at our age….. After a while, I looked at John and said, “Why are we looking at bungalows? We don’t want to live in a bungalow!” John nodded, true, true. We started looking at houses in our price range instead. Oh my goodness. No, thank you. John shrugged. “I don’t think we’re ready to move yet, do you?” Relieved, I replied, “No, I don’t think we are.” So that’s that for now.

I am not sure exactly what we did this afternoon – I did a few chores, tidying up, putting the washing on, writing an email to Mum’s new care home, chatting to Michael and Danielle; and John sorted out an important purchase on the internet: some hedging. That was very exciting and burned a big hole in our pocket. Expensive, hedging, isn’t it? Not only that, but it’s going to burn our muscles planting it, too. I hate digging holes.

This evening we watched TV and that was our day. I did a few minutes stargazing as I locked up for the night, marvelling at a waxing crescent moon, creamy white in the sky and so very bright. I also admired the little fairy lanterns I’d bought recently that were twinkling in the dark. Lovely. Chilly though. Roll on the warmer weather!!

And, after an insistence by the government that it was safe to travel to and from India, they have now decided to put that country on the ‘red’ list – but not until Friday. Honestly, I have no idea how their minds work. COVID and any of its variants, clearly won’t be infectious in between now and then, will it? Heaven help us all.

• 2,963 people tested positive for the virus today
• 4 people died with the virus in the community in the last 24 hours
• One person died on 18 April with the virus in hospital

• It’s Day 22 since the lifting of Lockdown 3;
• Day 8 of our new, limited freedoms, where we can play in each other’s gardens;
• Day 392 since Lockdown 1; 
• Day 398 since our self-imposed Lockdown 1

Make the most of every day, folks, and keep safe. God bless.