Hello Sunshine

Gosh, what a glorious day it’s been today, weather-wise!! I was expecting the fog to roll over us all today at some point, but it never did and the sun stayed shining the whole day, which lifted my mood no end.

We were out in the sunshine relatively early this morning, trundling over to Heartlands Hospital for John’s routine haematology check-up and he was again given ‘a clean bill of health’, with the advice to get his fourth vaccination as soon as he could. Having been part of a trial recently, John is keen to get in touch with the staff carrying out the trial to see what’s what before going ahead, so it’ll be another phone call to see if a trip to the hospital is necessary. Fingers crossed John can simply just go down to the surgery – that would be a bonus.

This afternoon we were on grandparenting duties for the recently-moved-in Kenilworth Sleath grandchildren. They are not yet at nursery/pre-school so this week is a juggling act in child-care.

The children were absolutely delightful, with William entertaining us to a running commentary on his play most of the afternoon. It was lovely. Thomas toddled about and pointed at stuff with a nod of the head and enquiring eyes, which absolutely told us what we needed to know. This toy, that book, that biscuit, his drink, ‘let’s go upstairs’, let’s go downstairs’, ‘let’s put some music on’ or ‘let’s dance’. Who needs words, eh?

We spent a while outside in the garden and had a really enjoyable hour. Although after two minutes William declared the grass was too wet to play on and promptly took himself onto the patio where, naturally, Thomas followed. After half an hour, Thomas had had enough and insisted on peering in through the patio windows at Grandpa resting in his armchair. Simply attracting Grandpa’s attention wasn’t enough and he then insisted on going back in to be with Grandpa and play indoors. William and I stayed outside, happy in each other’s company, very companionable as he played in the sand pit and I sat next to him dead-heading the lavender plant. Bliss.

Thomas meanwhile, had managed to persuade Grandpa that water play was required, so he stood up at the sink ‘washing up’ and having such a grand time that Grandpa opened the window to let us listen to the deep-throated chuckle that Thomas let out every few minutes as he enjoyed pouring the water from one container to another. It was rather lovely to hear Grandpa chuckling, too.

This evening we had a cracking time with the Quizzers, who were all on top form both in knowledge and in humour. We spent a great deal of the evening giggling at this joke or another and, for once, we kept on chatting until gone 11 o’clock because we were so enjoying each others’ conversation and company. I was the first one to crack and say goodnight however, pleading the blog to write and a bed to get to, as we plan to have the grandchildren for company again tomorrow.

Not a bad day all in all – and the sun shone for all of it so the world was brighter.

129,587 people tested positive for the virus today; 398 people died with it in the community today and 96 people died in hospitals in the last 48 hours; 2,049 people were admitted to hospital.

Take care everyone – I hope the sun shone for you wherever you were today.