Proud Parents

Even when your kids are full-grown adults, you can’t help but be proud of them at different times of their lives, can you? Well, today is one such day. Michael has completed his PhD studies today. Our hearts are bursting with pride at the way he has stuck at it and, with Danielle’s support, overcome all the obstacles along the way.

Mind you, the formal announcement will not come until tomorrow… or maybe Monday? Or one day next week? This is because the Award Board has had to postpone its meeting to authorise the publication of the degrees. I think someone had COVID…. so the meeting is scheduled for tomorrow. The day after the course finishes….. eeeh, you couldn’t make it up, could you?

Anyway, to celebrate, Michael has swanned off to Manchester with the members of his cohort. Danielle hasn’t felt very well but certainly wasn’t going to prevent a once-in-a-lifetime celebration, so I went over to help out with the grandchildren this afternoon. I had a lovely time – although Thomas is still teething and miserable with it, and spent much of the time clinging to Mummy.

He did allow me to look after him for a while though. Poor Danielle couldn’t eat her tea because Thomas was so fretful. I’d finished mine, so I said, “Let me take him down to the bottom of the garden for a walk, while you eat.” She looked doubtful – and I wasn’t sure, either, that he’d let me but, after a bit of wail as we left Mummy behind, he finally gave in, gave me a very serious look and accepted the situation.

We had a great time together listening to the evening birdsong and watching birds swoop by. As we had left the dining room, William had offered me some words of advice. I was to look out for the wood, which had crashed down. Oh – OK.

I didn’t immediately clock on to what he was telling me but, once Thomas and I were standing halfway down the garden looking back at the house, we saw exactly what William had been describing – accurately as it turned out. The poor old pergola was perished. Passed away, plopped into the pond……

While I was at the Sutton Sleaths, John was beavering away at home designing this, modelling that and setting up the other. He’d had a busy day, in fact, and was worn out by the time I got home. Bless him – not only was he busy with his own projects, but I’d left him to receive the shopping. “The fridge is full,” he observed, as I walked into the kitchen. “You’ll have to do a bit of re-arranging to get anything else in,” Ah… right. Lovely. But actually, it wasn’t as difficult as I thought it might be – there were one or two things that were no good any more and needed chucking out, so that made space.

Meanwhile, I note on the ‘chucking out’ stakes, that the government has also had a rearrangement and one or two that were no good anymore needed chucking out. I wonder if the new lot’ll be any better? Hmmm…..let me have a think….

On the COVID front, the rate of infection continues to decrease – still a lot of people, but fewer – with 26,911 people testing positive for the virus today. 158 people died in the community and, the previous 48 hours, 68 people died in hospitals. 836 people were admitted to hospital in the last 24 hours, which contributes to a rise of 2.5% over the last seven days.

Let us hope that a downward trend continues – we sure need it, don’t we?

All for now folks, take care everyone, and be as kind to yourself as you can be, as well as those around you. God bless.