Shielding: Day 130

Turned out to be a very good day today. Had a lie-in, treated myself to my favourite breakfast of berries and yoghurt for breakfast before braving it to go and get a key cut for Mum’s patio door. Then I went out for a little toddle along the ‘Yellow Brick Road’, before coming back to sit in the garden for a lovely chat with Pete and Dawn for a couple of hours. The perfect morning really.

The weather was great, with the sun making its presence felt every so often when it was scorchingly hot, before hiding itself behind clouds and cooling down to a pleasant heat. Exciting to see Pete and Dawn in the flesh rather than on Skype, and we had a good old rant, put the world to rights and had a giggle all at the same time.

After they had left, I had a niggle that I had heard my phone ‘buzz’ while we were chatting, and had I missed a phone call? Yes, I had. It was Michael. He was studying, now that his paternity leave is over, and Danielle wasn’t feeling very well, so what did we think to the idea of going over and keeping William, at least, occupied in the garden for the afternoon? I never need asking twice. Yep, we’ll be there in about an hour…

And so, we whiled away a fabulous afternoon, playing all sorts of games with William and rocking the baby in the pram. The weather stayed very warm and we were well happy out on the decking and in William’s play house. Made us laugh in the play house, “You sit there, Grandma (or Grandpa, depending on who was there with him at the time) in the blue chair.” OK. Except our bottoms were just a bit too big for the chair of course, so we got stuck in it every time. Getting up to go out of the play house, the blue chair stayed attached to us and we needed William to give it a good old tug to set us free. Chuckle, chuckle.

John made himself useful while we were there, too. Michael is setting up some slabs at the bottom of the garden in readiness for the erection of a ‘man-shed’, so John thought he’d lay a couple to help out. After he’d done one, which was quite difficult to lay and get even, he thought he’d have a break and a cuppa. At which point he thought twice about laying the second one. Them slabs are heavy!!! And, anyway, a more cerebral challenge lay in store as he discussed the intricacies of what they should do with the front drive. Conclusion: no conclusion. It’s a BIG job…..

We left at tea-time, knowing that we had done a little something to relieve the situation for them. William wasn’t keen on us leaving and showed us a very sad little face and a wobbly bottom lip as he said goodbye. Tugged the ol’ heart strings, I can tell you.

We had a good run home along the M42 and, letting ourselves in through the front door, heard a ‘beeping’ coming from the answering machine. It was the warden at Mum’s sheltered accommodation. My heart sank. Could we phone them back, please? Well, it was too late by then, so it’ll have to wait until the morning, but I don’t think it can be anything serious as the carers had gone in this evening and left Mum happy and well by seven o’clock. Fingers crossed anyway.

We ate our evening meal on plates on our laps in the lounge, watching the TV. How nice it was to do that. Haven’t done that for….. oh, let’s see now….. about four months. (Does a little skip and a dance.) We also opened a bottle of Friday night wine. Helloooo, the weekend!!

We addled our brains watching celebrity Master Chef, and then I watched, while John snoozed on the sofa, last night’s ‘Imagine’ programme about Lemn Sissay. Fascinating stuff.

And there we have it. One more day on our road, on our journey. For a shielding day it wasn’t too bad at all. How was yours today?

For some in the country, of course, there’s still heartbreak as 123 people died from a COVID-19 related illness and 770 people were confirmed as infected today. Seven deaths in a hospital setting were reported by the NHS for Thursday – which seems to be a day out now.

Have a good weekend everyone and take care of yourselves.