The great Diggle Chippy Hike was abandoned yesterday after all. For a very brief time in the late morning it looked as though things were brightening up, but then the rain came back again, not torrential but sufficiently present to make us all opt to stay at home. Somehow the prospect of sitting on damp wooden benches by the duckpond with the drizzle making your fish and chips all soggy lost its charm. So we are looking at next week when those of the family involved in education are on half term. The forecast, however, is pretty dismal for the whole week.
Yesterday’s rain did ease in the late afternoon and so we had a family walk around the village, more or less my running route but missing out the mud-puddles. The sun even came out for us, amazingly. But by the time we were almost home again the rain began to return. So we said our farewells and the various bits of the family went our separate ways.
Today began with a dry spell so that I was able to run less soggily - how convenient! - but the wind brought the rain not long after I returned. Tomorrow currently has a sun and cloud symbol on my weather app so perhaps more extensive family adventures can be embarked upon. We shall see!
Tonight we turn the clocks back an hour. I’ve got the right dates this time, having tried to do so several weeks ago! This means that the afternoons will be shorter. We’ll have to set off on our family adventures a little earlier. No more wandering around until the early evening. Winter, it seems, is coming!
Phil and I are usually in Figueira da Foz in Portugal at this time of the year. This has been the case for about the last 10 years. Phil plays in their chess tournament and I walk around the small town and stroll along their magnificent beaches. With very few exceptions the sun has shone on us. We have always found interesting places to eat, usually very good fish! This year we were in two minds about going. The tournament was organised but we were unsure about travelling. And then Coronavirus cases spiked over here and over there and the whole question became academic. We hear that the tournament had probably been cancelled. Another thing to put off until next year. Rather like Christmas!
I was reading about how the lockdown has messed up a lot of people’s sleep patterns in Australia. It’s not just insomnia. Some people are sleeping more, using sleep as an escape. Others have been having, and have been remembering, strangely vivid dreams. Is this a consequence of having a strict lockdown during their winter months? We went into lockdown as the days were getting longer and we had a spell of good weather making it more tolerable for those who have gardens to escape into. So have we also had sleep problems? I wonder.
My brother-in-law has been bombarding me with messages about the meanness of Tories. It’s all about their making large expenses claims while voting against the provision of free school meals during school holidays. It’s his indignation at people who won’t tolerate helping immigrant children, or refugees in general, because we should “help our own first” and then not being willing to “help our own” in their time of need.
One MP in particular has been criticised for tweeting that vouchers given out for free school meals during the summer had gone straight into the coffers of drug dealers. He withdrew his tweets about this apparently but I saw him on TV last night, still blustering about parental responsibility and explaining that it is wrong to expect the state to feed people’s children. He is, of course, being called on to apologise but I really don’t think an apology will serve any useful purpose. We see too many apologies along the lines of “I am sorry if you felt hurt by what I said or did”, always with an implied “but I still really stand by what I said”. Sorry is not the hardest word when you have your fingers crossed behind your back.
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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