On the A14….

Well, we were both on the A14 today – but separately. John had to go over to Corby to see a man about a house; and I had to go to Cambridge to see a man about moving house….

John’s task was to establish what else he needed to do for the red tape brigade. He and Paul have a house there that needs this certificate or that certificate; this monitor or that monitor and this sort of door, please. Right, OK. Thus apprised, John made his way home again. An hour on the A14, half an hour chat to the bureaucrat, and an hour and a half on the A14 home again. Job done.

I was a couple of hours on the A14 before I arrived at my destination: Andrew’s flat, from which he was moving today. It needed a bit of a clean-up before departure and a few boxes transporting to the storage company. “I reckon there’s only about an hour of cleaning to do, Mum,” says Andrew. Right……. you reckon? Nah.

As it turned out, I arrived at the flat only to find that Andrew wasn’t there. He had taken his bed to his new place and slept overnight there. His phone had died and there had been no alarm to wake him up.

The landlady answered the door, “Oh, yes, Andrew said his Mum was coming to help with the cleaning. Good luck with that….” and, with a raised eyebrow, she opened the door to his more-or-less empty room.

Ah….. I could see what she meant. Where Andrew had had his bed, the paint work was a bit grubby and worn. I knew it was a forlorn hope to remedy the issue, but I was game. I had a few goes at it and did make it much better-looking, but even I could see it would need a new paint job. “She’ll have to charge for re-painting that bit, Andrew,” I said. He shrugged and supposed so.

We managed to clear the rest of his flat and the kitchen where he had all his various pots, pans and caboodle. And the cleaning only took four hours. I mean, we had to wait a bit for solutions to work – things like the limescale remover on the shower door, for example. In every day use, it’s easy to forget that water can build up residue, isn’t it?

Anyway, it was all spick and span; and we took the rest of Andrew’s belongings to the storage company before he handed his keys in. The landlady was generous and hardly charged him anything for the repainting, so that worked out well.

We toddled off to the pub then, for our ‘lunch’ – at 4.15 in the afternoon……. A few hours later than we’d anticipated.

I then took to the road and had another couple of hours on the A14 to come home – the sun shining straight at me. A huge, orange orb in the sky, hanging just above the horizon, cloaked on one side by a very, very dark rain cloud. The cloud was burnished by the sun and presented a very pretty purple….. until it dropped its load on the road. It fairly lashed down. Everyone had to slow down – not only was the sun still shining straight at us, but the windscreen wipers were struggling to keep up.

I got home about half past seven – almost twelve hours since I’d set off. “I think might have a long soak in the bath, John,” I said. John nodded. “Good idea.” he said, and then very kindly brought me a heater as the bathroom was pretty chilly. How kind.

In the meantime, I wondered if John had had chance to see what might be wrong with the freezer. This morning I’d found that everything was defrosted – including John’s eye serum, which is a bit of a disaster as he’s only just taken delivery of a new batch after a delay due to short supply. “Yes,” he said. “I switched it on.” Eh? You mean it was switched off? Not broken? “Nope, not broken.” Well, neither of us has a clue as to how the thing got switched off, but I am glad the mystery is solved anyway. Pity about all the food we’ve had to throw away though……

On the COVID front (cos I know you’re dying to know), there were 33,869 people who tested positive for the virus today; 166 deaths in the community and 46 in the previous 48 hours in hospitals.

Take care everyone, whatever you are doing. Look after yourselves and your loved ones. Tell them you love them. God bless.