Uh-oh….

I nipped off to Yoga this morning but, as I set off, I heard an ominous rattle on the car. I drove slowly to the church hall, thinking maybe it was a stick or something. Anyway, the rattle didn’t go away when I was on my way home either, so I mentioned it to John when I arrived back.

Ha! John gave the car a ‘hard stare’ and a rigourous test drive and there was miraculously no rattle. Hmmm….. my imagination?

Anyway, when it was time to collect Freddie from school, I drove gingerly ‘just in case’ – and hey, voila! There was the rattle again. And it wasn’t only me who could hear it – both Freddie and Lily could hear it. So I drove gingerly to their house where we have left the sickly thing, with instructions to the garage to collect it on Monday to take a look at it.

Of course, having lent Andrew the VW yesterday, we were now car-less….. “Erm… Paul? Do you think we can borrow your Volvo for a day or two, please?” The answer was yes, of course we could, so I have driven gingerly home in that one, too, ‘cos it’s not mine.

It wasn’t the best start to the day really because we had had a hiccup already, by the time I’d set off for yoga. There was an alarm showing on the new solar panels app on John’s phone. Oh, blimey.

I texted the electrician to see if he could advise and, as luck would have it, he called me just before I got home from yoga telling me to give him a call. “I’ll see if I can talk you through it on the phone.” he said.

I scrambled into the loft and switched all the switches he told me to switch then left the system for a while with my fingers crossed. An hour later, I was up there again, on a WhatsApp video call checking all the buttons and switches and levers and so on. We had got it working OK. Phew!!

Meanwhile, John had had an exciting time while I was out. He did his medication routine and then took himself off down the hill to the surgery to take a sample to them. Then he had to make it back up the hill. I am not sure how long the walk took him in the end, but he came home quite chipper. He had done a mile and beaten the hill.

This afternoon John did some more work on his beloved Lotus while I collected the children from school. Freddie and I had a lovely wander across the top of Abbey Fields towards the car, imagining making dens and defending our territory. Here’s Freddie inspecting a branch that might make some good camouflage…

When we got to Paul’s, he was already in and inviting us for tea. “Don’t you remember the discussion on Sunday?” he asked. Oops, no…… I had no recollection of the conversation at all. Mind you, I had had a little bit of fizz by then. “I haven’t brought Dad with me,” I said, apologetically. No worries, Paul would go and fetch him.

So we had a lovely tea round at the Kenilworth Originals – courtesy of Freddie, who made all the pizza toppings. Delicious.

And that’s been us. Thank the Lord for family, friends, good yoga teachers and bailers-out who manage to put us back on track, that’s all I can say.

The news on the new wave of COVID, by the way and just so you know, is that, according to the latest study: ‘Omicron evades previous immunity (even if previously infected) in both antibodies and ‘T’ cells better that previous variants. And reinfection with Omicron doesn’t necessarily stop more Omicron reinfections….‘ Professor Christina Pagel summarises.

I have bought new all-singing, all-dancing masks……

Take care everyone. God bless. It’s a Strawberry Moon tonight and, as I write and look out of the window, it is very, very beautiful. Get picking your strawberries, folks!!