More of the same….

It’s a Monday and what have we got to look forward to? Oh, another hospital visit! Mind you, this one was a success!

We both felt a bit grumbly at having to trot off to the hospital once again this morning, but this appointment promised to be fairly innocuous – and so it proved, or rather, it proved to be a positive experience for a change.

A while ago, John had visited a standard optician to see if he needed new glasses. The poor optician was so frightened by the state of his eyes, that she decided she wouldn’t do anything until he’d been referred back to the hospital. She wrote a rather good letter to the consultant whom John sees, and the upshot of that, plus a discussion with said consultant, was that an appointment was made for this morning with an Ophthalmic Optician.

Woohoo! She confirmed that a prism in his glasses would help with his daily vision. She duly dispensed a temporary prism which is now firmly fixed to one of the lenses in John’s glasses – and Bingo! The ol’ man can use both of his eyes to see. Result!

Once home, we drifted about for a bit wondering what to do with ourselves. John is feeling a bit low after his hospital stay and extremely frustrated at his lessened ability to do the DIY jobs he so loves. Everything takes a lot longer than normal and generally it takes a big effort.

I offered various options for entertainment, but nothing quite thrilled, so we opted for more DIY – frustration or no frustration. John tackled the lighting under the cupboard that he’d recently put up, and I tackled a bit of painting in the utility room.

I had originally abandoned the duck egg blue I’d been so enamoured of, and had gone out and bought a boring beige instead. However, I was persuaded to carry on with the blue when both Andrew and Michael said they liked it. I took me a good hour in prep as usual, but I did get a full first coat on all the walls and a final second coat on the bits of skirting board that I’d missed out previously ‘cos they were tricky.

John had great success in fixing up the lighting and did a fair bit of pottering about planning and prepping other jobs, too. So not too bad a day really – even if it was more of the same…….

There are more people testing positive for COVID every day – today it was 34,471, with 6 deaths in the community and 4 deaths in hospitals on 11 July. There’s still a lag in the data for hospital admissions – 563 on 6 July – but the vaccination programme is still storming ahead: 87.2% of the adult population having had their first dose, 66.2% having had both doses.

We are expecting advice from the government to plop through the letterbox any day soon, or maybe into the email Inbox, telling John not to go inside any public areas from next Monday – so, no meals out, theatre/cinema trips, gym visits, holidays in hotels, etc. Oh, and also to avoid anyone who hasn’t been inoculated. That’ll be the children then….. Grrr…..Grrr….and double Grrr…. Freedom? Not sure that it looks like freedom to us.

All for now. Take care everyone. God bless.