Hanging in there…?

It’s Day 232 since we first locked down in March and shielded. Now, we are just being very careful before lockdown number 2, starting this Thursday.

Having managed to do my blog early yesterday I was in bed and tucked up before midnight. I had switched the light off and might even have been asleep before the bewitching hour, for a change! Certainly, I slept well (although John didn’t) and I woke up quite refreshed for once this morning.

First job was to nip over to Coventry to Mum’s house to do the annual inspection. Mask on, two metres apart and windows open. All good and it took all of ten minutes. Fingers crossed that the tenants want to stay there for the foreseeable.

Just as I was on my way there though, the phone rang, which I couldn’t answer as I was driving. However, when I checked later, I saw that it was Harriet, letting us know that Freddie was hankering after a picnic in our back garden this afternoon. It was an INSET day and he was at a loose end. Well, I wasn’t going to say ‘no’ was I?

Once I was home, I cleaned up the windows in the front door after my little painting job yesterday and then we had lunch before the Kenilworth Sleaths arrived. I had thought I might phone them to say “It’s raining, here in Balsall Common,” but in the end, decided not to. And I am glad that I didn’t because the sun came out and it was absolutely wonderful out there.

To be fair, it was drizzling a little when they arrived, so the picnic was taken in the porch with the door open. Bless him, Freddie nipped to the loo and ended up with his jumper and jacket adrift from his trousers. With his back to the door and the draught seeping in, he said, “Brr… I’m cold!” No wonder. Trousers were pulled up to meet the top half of his clothes, which warmed him up and no harm done.

With the picnic eaten and drinks drunk we were pleased to see that the clouds had galloped away and the sun had come out, so we hot-footed it into the back garden. There, we wandered about as we do, admiring the fishpond, fishing out the duckweed and the seemingly millions of leaves that had drifted into it, checked on the stones that had been previously gathered and so on. We ended up half-way down the path and were just stood chatting exclaiming at the mounds of leaves on the ground, when I decided to grab the leaf rake and the ‘big hands’ and we started to gather them up. Freddie was in his element. He absolutely loved it. He was beside himself with excitement at finding all sorts of bugs and worms and things under the leaves, and was very busy using the ‘big hands’, then a specially-devised tub to gather the leaves and put them in the compost heap. We really did have fun.

We ended up near what Freddie calls his ‘tree-house’ and found a fair few dry twigs lying about, so we gathered them up too, and decided to light up the chimenea. That took a fair bit of doing and Grandpa had to come to the rescue as the twigs were clearly not quite right for kindling. But, you know, it was so beautiful to watch Freddie helping to light the fire and get it all set up. Reminded me of when the boys were little and did the same thing.

The adults were chatting by now and Freddie was getting bored so started being a bit daft, so we played a game of ‘chase’ round the garden. That was great fun too. And it struck me, as we were giggling our heads off at each other, that all I had heard all afternoon was Freddie chuckling or being positively excited at the afternoon’s activities. A game of Freddie roaring at me, and me pretending to be frightened, had him chuckling so hard and with such a belly laugh that it made me chuckle too. Oh, such bliss.

Just after four o’clock though, I thought we should call it a day. I wanted to shoot over to the paint shop to pick up my order which had come in. I also decided I needed to get the paint and wallpaper for the lounge in before lockdown as you never know whether it’ll be easy after ‘D’ day, do you?

We didn’t do much this evening although John has been busy sorting out the ‘office’ area in the lounge, where we had two desks and now we only have one. He dismantled one of them the other day in order to streamline to area so that I can have my library. Ooooh, I am so excited! It’s been a dream of mine for ever and I am hoping that the dream may now come true. We’re working on it any way.

On the COVID front 18,950 people have been confirmed as infected with the virus today and 136 people died from its effects in the community. 109 people died in hospitals on 31 October and 1 November.

Stay safe everyone. The nasties are out there to get us if we’re not careful! God bless.