It’s one of those times of the year when there seem to be birthdays galore! First, it’s Graham’s (last Friday), then dear George (on Saturday) and now Paul’s today.
We celebrated Graham’s remotely when we Skyped on Saturday morning; we sent greetings to George and will see him at Fran’s birthday celebrations later on in March; and, of course, we celebrated Paul’s yesterday face-to-face with a Sunday lunch. The lunch and celebrations were so lush that I had too much pop and went to bed early without blogging.
The family were all there except Andrew, who wasn’t feeling well and had a zillion things to do to prepare for a flat move today/tomorrow. We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves; everyone was on their best behaviour (including the kids!) and we toasted the Birthday Boy in style. Champagne anyone?
I may have been a little hung-over this morning, which put a delay to my planned visit to Dawn’s by about a quarter of an hour. It was a wedding-outfit-fitting morning and, once I realised the time, I hot-footed it round to her house as fast as I could.
All was well however, and the fitting was going very smoothly as I arrived. Just a tuck here, and a nip there, and it’ll all be perfect. We had been angst-ing over appropriate material for a blouse and I had found a few samples for Dawn to look at. None of them were quite right however, but Jacqui, the dressmaker, came up trumps and we were all in agreement: “That’s the one!” as she flourished a beautiful piece material before our eyes. Hurrah! Job done. Dawn is going to look gorgeous.
John had spent the morning resting while I was out but, as I came through the front door, I could see him labouring away in the kitchen digging out the dish-washer from yesterday’s marathon food-athon. I joined in and put things away before grabbing a bite to eat.
Once I sat down though, it was fatal. We were just watching a bit of the news when the Sandman came calling…. all afternoon. You know the sort of sleep? The one where you are sort of conscious of things going on around you but there’s no way you can join in….until I was sufficiently awake to be irritated by the dialogue of an American programme that John was watching. “What is this rubbish?” I blurted out. Only one of John’s favourite programmes – ‘Billions’. Oh. He was mildly offended, switched the TV off and went to work on the computer. I went back to sleep, having put in my two pennorth.
At tea-time, Harriet phoned to say could we return their car, please? The Kenilworth Sleaths had also had too much pop yesterday and chose to get an Uber home, leaving the car on our drive. So we hopped in their, and our, car and nipped over to take Paul’s birthday gift and drop the car off. We spent a lovely hour or so together with a cuppa and a parcel un-wrapping ceremony much to Freddie’s excitement. Forgot to take a photo though…..
The latest news from Ukraine isn’t great with loads of Russian troops heading for Kyiv and thousands of refugees fleeing. Talks are being held, but really, in my view that’s just a tactic for Russia to up the ante: ‘we tried to to talk but they wouldn’t listen…’ and blame the Ukrainians for a further escalation of war. John says I’m all doom and gloom….. but I mean, Putin’s got his finger on the nuclear button, hasn’t he?
Susie’s Word of the Day is ‘pertolerate’ (17th century): to endure steadfastly to the end.
Anyway, enough catastrophising for now…. Take care everyone. God bless you, yours, your friends and friends of friends everywhere.
The government data has now changed to being published weekly. This means maths is involved, in which I am not greatly skilled and would be likely to embarrass myself in front of all you scientists if I tried. I have yet to sort out what’s what on the ONS data too, which is also weekly. For the time being therefore, here is the weekly government data. 22 February – 28 February: 234,103 positive cases of the virus; 752 people died; 7,873 people were admitted to hospital….. Get the picture? It still seems a helluva lot to me…..