It gets to feel a bit like the film Groundhog Day: I get up and go for a run, managing usually to avoid the rain; it starts to rain not long after I return; some time later it stops raining again and we go for a walk. This is the pattern most days.
Yesterday was disrupted by the fact that we were expecting Amazon to deliver a parcel and so we stayed in despite the weather improving somewhat. We were expecting a new inner-tube for a wheel on our daughter’s all-terrain baby buggy. Unlike many standard baby buggies, this one has tyres which can be pumped up, probably because they might take quite a battering on rough tracks. One tyre kept deflating and all Phil’s attempts to sort it failed. It clearly wasn’t a puncture; we decided the valve was kaput and that a new inner-tube was needed. So one was ordered, the delivery was arranged to be at our house where we already had the offending wheel so that Phil could fix it.
It must be a generational thing. We oldies have our uses. I sort out the sewing repairs and Phil deals with mechanical stuff. Mind you, it’s reciprocal. Anything to do with mobile phones is dealt with by the younger generation.
Computers we can cope with - well, Phil can cope with them, as my longstanding refusal to understand anything more than how to do what I need to do continues - but mobile phones are a different matter!
Anyway, we put off going for a walk as we were expecting the parcel containing the inner-tube. And time went by and the parcel did not arrive. And suddenly it was time for my online Italian conversation class. The parcel arrived at some point while I was busy talking Italian. We considered going for a walk after that even though it was already going dark. And then the rain came back.
Goodbye Monday’s walk!
Phil fitted the new inner-tube. Our daughter will reclaim it after she collects her small people from nursery this afternoon. That way her partner can take the small people to meet the other grandparents in a park tomorrow morning - after tomorrow they won’t be able to do that for a while! In the afternoon, weather permitting, she will bring the small people, and maybe one of her bigger offspring, to go for a walk with us. Which we won’t be able to together for a while!
We are planning on being careful to stick to the rule of just one person from a household meeting just one person from another household! My brother-in-law, however, has been working on how we can manage a Chippy-Hike. Better weather is forecast for later this week. The chippy serves take-away food and so should be able to remain open. He has decided that if he drives over and becomes a walking-about meeting with Phil and if our daughter comes over with the small people, who will not be counted, then she and I can become another walking-about meeting - with unavoidable add-ons! - then we can go ahead. When we get our fish and chips we’ll have to sit at two separate picnic tables by the duckpond. That’s the theory, anyway!
Out in the wider world, voting should finish today in the USA but goodness only knows whether there will be a result at the end of the day. Probably not! France has seen a spate of supposedly Islamist attacks and now a similar thing has occurred in Vienna, Austria. As if the pandemic were not enough. France is already in lockdown and Austria, or at any rate Vienna, is about to go into lockdown. It’s very hard for governments to do more than try to control the virus, without extra emergencies coming along.
More cheerful nows comes from this report on studies going on in the cathedral in Santiago de Compostela.
One of the stonemasons working on the huge columns that support the edifice seems to have carved part of the head of one column into his own likeness. A stone selfie! The visiting general public can’t see it. You have to be up at the top of the column. However, an art historian investigating the structure of the cathedral and stuff like that has discovered it. What a nice surprise! And how nice that such work has been able to continue during the pandemic. On reflection, it’s probably easier to do it now while there are fewer tourists than in a normal year. A little bit of serendipity.
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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