I looked out at some point late yesterday evening. There was a bright bit of waning moon in the crisp, clear sky. This morning there were elaborate frost patterns on the skylight windows. Very pretty! At least they were on the outside of the windows, not on the inside as used to happen to the bedroom windows when I was a child and double glazing and insulation were still mostly a thing of the future. There were frost patterns only on the westward facing skylights. On the other side, where the sun was already at work, the roof was steaming! The sky was still clear and blue!
Later in the morning I tried to rally the gang as we had half a plan to go and visit granddaughter number one, go out for a walk with her dog and stop off for coffee and cake at some point. Having some difficulty contacting my daughter (it later transpired she had gone into work, despite it being her day off, to listen to her class sing in the school Easter assembly. She had then been further held up as a colleague was taken ill and they were waiting for an ambulance.) I arranged to catch a bus to my granddaughter’s house and then play it by ear.
So my daughter sorted herself out, collected her small son and her second eldest daughter, and came to join us. By then, granddaughter number one had decided her slightly arthritic feet were not up to a long walk to her small sister’s school and back. But there really wasn’t time for a shorter walk and still leave the time margin to collect the small girl from school and so we had a chat, entertained the smallest grandchild by letting him see the menagerie of pets his big sister has and eventually set off by car to do the school run, leaving granddaughter number one to her own devices.
It was just as well we had not done the long walk because it started to rain and sleet on us as we parked outside the school. Clearly the fine sunny day had deteriorated! Then the rest of us went for coffee and chocolate Guinness cake at a small cafe near the local small Tesco. When first I saw the label of that cake I must say I was rather put off but it turns out to be an excellent chocolate cake!
Sunshine and sleety weather have alternated ever since. Strange weather!
Meanwhile, someone in the social media group Campaign to Rejoin the EU, has posted this:
“Using Bank of England figures that Brexit has cost the UK £440 million a week in lost growth. the total cost so far is a staggering
SEVENTY EIGHT BILLION QUID
Don’t you wish we’d had that money to spend on the NHS & schools instead.”
And people are still suffering the consequences of businesses falling apart. Elsewhere I read that most countries of the world are recovering from the economic effects of the pandemic, apart from the UK, the only place having the double whammy of Covid and Brexit.
At the other end of the economic scale, I hear that the shirt worn by Diego Maradona on the occasion of the ‘Hand of God’ goal, is up for sale and is estimated to sell for £4 million! We no longer purchase holy relics connected to religion - well, most of us - but a surprising number of people still seem prepared to spend (i.e. waste) money on ‘relics’ related to famous people. The irony is that if VAR had existed at the time of the ‘Hand of God’ goal, that goal might have been disallowed as a handball!
And in the time of foodbanks is so many countries of the world, here is a story of some sea lions who took the law into their own hands and found their way into a salmon farm in British Columbia, helping themselves to easily available stocks of fish.
I completely misread this paragraph in the article on first reading:
“Local conservation groups, who oppose the fish farms and only learned of the breach on Sunday, have warned the sea lions themselves are in danger the longer they spend inside the farm.”
Initially I had an image of caring conservationists lecturing the sea lions on how dangerpusnthisnundertaking was for them!
I also learnt a new word, new for me anyway: “pinniped”, a sea mammal whose 4 limbs are all flippers! As opposed to a “fissiped” an animal which has its toes separated from each other. I think some journalists include such terminology just to show off.
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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