A better night’s sleep. The spring clean seems to have done the trick. Perhaps it’s psychological….who knows?
Once again, we took our time getting going this morning, shilly-shallying around and generally not wanting to get into our jobs today. John was semi-keen on shifting stones today, in that he wants the job finished, but it’s jolly hard work and he wasn’t so keen on that. That being said, once he did get going he really stuck at it, and it’s almost there.
I faffed about with clothes washing and a bit of tidying up before I ran up to the Post Office with the key to the Norfolk house all parcelled up ready to be sent off to Nuneaton, following my abortive attempt at its delivery yesterday. While I was at the shops, I wanted to collect my prescription too, but it wasn’t prepared, so would I like to call back later? Oh, yes, I said blithely, then bought a couple of visor-masks, which promptly wiped my memory. Have just spent fifteen minutes this evening puzzling over what the heck I did with the tablets I ‘brought home’, and thinking over all the steps I’d taken once I had walked through the front door this morning. It’s only just dawned on me that I didn’t bring the darned things home at all! I’d forgotten to go back for them, hadn’t I? Eeeh, but this ‘lockdown’ fever is very worrying…… my brain is definitely addled.
In other news, I had done a ‘click and collect’ order from Waitrose, due for collection at lunchtime, so I toddled off to the Kenilworth branch, where I was disappointed to find that I had to actually go into the shop. I wasn’t best pleased about that. In Norfolk, where I’d had my first experience of such a novelty, there were members of staff on hand outside the shop at the waiting area, to run in to collect your ‘click and collect’ order for you. And not only that, the staff member dealing with my request here, promptly helped herself to fingering my phone!! I was holding it out to her to show her the order number and she just started scrolling through it without so much as a ‘how’s your father’. Goodness me, keep your hands to yourself, luv.
I brought the shopping home, dumping all of the bags onto the kitchen floor and just had time to wash and sanitise the fridge stuff before I took myself up the hill to church, where I was meeting the ‘Exploring Faith’ discussion group. One of our members, Kaye, has sold her soul to get us access to the church hall for our fortnightly meetings and, on pain of death, we must sanitise every square inch that we’ve been in and certainly not touch anything we shouldn’t. Or go to the loo. I only realised that half-way through the meeting, when the children were streaming out of school and a random child tried the hall door to get in to use the toilet. Christine B said, to no-one in particular because, of course, the child couldn’t hear her, “No, you can’t use the toilet. We can’t, so you can’t either.” Kept my legs crossed for the rest of the meeting and, at the end of it, ran home very fast.
With the shopping order I had bought a few things for Mum and, as I hadn’t actually visited her since we got home on Tuesday evening, I thought I’d better drop the groceries round this afternoon. I had thought this morning that I would contact the manager at Mum’s accommodation to check how things were before I got there but, in fact, she beat me to it. She phoned to let me know that Mum was beginning to wonder where we were. And that she’d run out of loo rolls. And cake.
Mum was surprised, but delighted to see me. She said she wondered what had happened to me as it had been a while. I admitted that we’d been away on holiday and I also admitted that I hadn’t told her beforehand. She nodded and said, “Well, I think that was probably wise. I think I probably would have worried every day if I’d known you weren’t here.” Crikey. Could have knocked me down with a feather.
Mum was very well and quite happy. Even happier when she knew I was the bringer of all things good in her eyes. “Ahhh…. toilet rolls!!” and her eyes lit up, “I was needing some of those.” she said with a grin. “Oooh, and cake!! Oh, thank you!” Thrilled, she immediately tucked into a couple of mini bakewells with her cup of tea.
I stayed for a little while, and was still there when the ‘bedtime’ carer came. It’s the first time I’ve met one of the girls and she was lovely – bright and breezy and teasy, and knew just how to manage Mum. So I left then with three bags full of washing and some shopping ‘returns’ – “I don’t like Shreddies, so you can take those away, and I’ve got enough cheese for now, thank you.”
Back home, it was time to finish the ‘shopping washing’ and think about eating. John had suggested we might have a curry take-away this evening and, at the time he suggested it, I’d turned my nose up. However, the thought of having to get cooking didn’t appeal, so I stepped out of the front door to shout over the sound of the stones being riddled and jet-washed, and let John know that I’d changed my mind, and we’d have the take-away. And. by the way, did he know it was already ten past seven and he really should be calling it a day now?
A bit of a funny old day really, one way and another but the essence of it has served to remind me to be thankful and stop belly-aching about perceived hardships. So there we are.
And here we are – 4,322 people infected with COVID-19 today and 21 deaths in the community and three in hospitals yesterday. And Wolverhampton now on the ‘lockdown’ list. I think my brain might implode just thinking about it…..
In the meantime, I’m looking forward to meeting the Kenilworth Sleaths in Abbey Fields tomorrow and the Sutton Sleaths in Sutton Park on Sunday.
Take care everyone. God bless.
Hehe Anne, my very first experience of click-and-collect was the Kenilworth Waitrose.
It was one of my first forays out of the house, on 1 May. I was nervous.
I toured round the Waitrose carpark in the car for ages. I was confident that the spectacularly safe, remote-from-store, totally-al-fresco click-and-collect-station would be perfectly obvious once you’d clocked where it was.
But it didn’t exist.
Like you Anne, I was a tad discombobulated to find that I had to go inside and stand around waiting. It seemed to make a nonsense of the efforts I’d been taking to keep Geoff shielded – but at the same time, I was hungry!
Outside, there was a beautifully social-distanced queue of responsible Kenilworth citizens, wearing masks and waiting to enter the store. An efficient person was monitoring the situation with military precision and filtering them in periodically in a highly responsible way.
The problem was that as soon as they were allowed in, they all had to walk within 6 inches of me to get past, as I’d been told to wait in the absolutely busiest spot in the entire store. I jostled around trying not to get in people’s way, but wherever I stood someone breathing heavily wanted to be there too. I waited for ages, dealing with numerous not-very-distance-conscious staff, who seemed to find my order bizarrely puzzling and problematic.
Fortunately, I later found the splendid high and airy click-and-collect tent on the edge of the Canley Sainsburys carpark, with its excellent hands-free tannoy.
But that one visit to Waitrose wasn’t fruitless. I scooped the seeds of one of the tomatoes I bought there into some compost, planted the seedlings in the garden, and they produced some very fine baby tomatoes in August.
All good wishes
Ha! Ha! I will follow your lead Simon – Sainsburys might now be favourite…..
Hoping things are looking up your end. Will email you tomorrow. 😘