A quiet day!

So Rishi Sunak has done his budget speech, telling us over and over that this budget “gets things done”. I suppose time will tell. One commentator said he sounded like a future prime minister. So it seems that prime minister material means being able to make speeches full of sound bites.

In the meantime it seems we have a pandemic to deal with. It’s going to get worse before it gets better. I don’t know that speeches will improve matters.

Life goes on. And today being Wednesday Ingot up and ran to the market in Uppermill. The bridle path was very muddy but at least the rain had stopped. The sun even came out at one point. It was a very depleted market made up of little more than the fish-man and the cheese and biscuits lady. Had the rest been frightened off? One lady queuing up at the fish man’s stall with me said she thought the fruit and veg man was in hospital having his wonky knee sorted out. She was a bit surprised that non-essential operations are continuing in the light of the crisis. But of course we don’t know that that was the reason for his absence.

The bus service was disrupted once again today. Judging by the amount of roadworks underway at present, I should say the local council is using up money before the end of the financial year. One of these projects is going on in the centre if Uppermill, slowing down traffic with temporary traffic lights and bus stops taken put of action. So I had to walk along to the next stop to catch the bus home.

This was mild compared with my adventures with buses yesterday evening. I arrived at Oldham  Mumps on the tram from Manchester just in time to see my bus for the next stage of my journey waiting at the stop. I swear the driver saw me running and waited until he was close before he set off. So I went and caught a taxi. At one point my taxi went past the bus I had missed, seemingly broken down. Maybe it served the driver right for bis earlier rudeness.

Later in the morning, after my semi-fruitless ( well, vegetable-less) trip to the market,  my daughter turned up at my house with the small people and the suggestion that we go off together to visit her eldest daughter. The latter was ostensibly working from home. She did not seem to do much while we were there but presumably she meets her deadlines.

Home again, I caught up with some washing and tidying up.

 And that’s another fairly quiet Wednesday over and done with.