Tuesday July 28 2020

07:00 Lois and I tumble out of bed and into the shower, earlier than usual, because the man from Blade Honda is coming at 8 am to take our little Honda Jazz over to Gloucester for annual service and MOT test. He’s a nice man but arrives kitted out in PPE (personal protective equipment: mask, gloves, white coat, the works) – what a crazy world we live in !!!

Trembling with fear, I hand him the car key with my bare (right) hand and then give it [the hand – Ed] a good wash: what madness!

"the man from Honda...

 ...is like a restless wind
A restless wind, that yearns to wander,
And he was born the next of kin
The next of kin to the wayward wind" (copyright Gogi Grant)

13:00 The Honda comes back with its MOT certificate – it passed the test easily although Blade Honda think the tyres (the original ones from 2012 (??), but we don’t do much mileage) will all need replacing next year.

We had planned to leave the car untouched for a couple of days after it came back from the Honda dealership, so that any viruses could die off. However, unfortunately there are so many vehicles parked out front at the moment because of work on our neighbour Nikki’s driveway, that the man from Honda cannot park outside our house, and instead parks in front of our other neighbour Bob’s house – and we know Bob doesn’t like other people parking in front of his house, so I have to put on a pair of gloves and a mask, get into the driving seat and move it – damn!

Let’s hope I don’t die as a result of Nikki’s driveways being resurfaced. I’m only 74 – I’m too young to die!!!! Help !!!!!

Nikki next door is having her driveways resurfaced today and tomorrow – we chat to the guy who owns the company doing the work – he can do ours and the one on the other side of Nikki’s as well, he says: he would do them both in the same week. We’re thinking this over and we’ll probably go for it. We don’t want to be the only house in the block with rotten old driveways with weeds constantly growing through them. The shame would be too much.

a nightmare vision of what our driveway could look like

in just a few weeks' time, unless we act - yikes!

Nikki's front garden and driveway as it looks the following morning

- all ready for the new paving to be laid down.

20:00 We spend the evening watching TV, the first episode in a new series of Joana Lumley’s travels – “new” series, however, in this case means stuff selected from previous series including outtakes. The networks aren’t producing a lot of new documentaries at the moment, so they’ve obviously got a lot of staff looking through bits of old ones that haven’t been used and cobbling it all together – what madness!

Joanna is tonight in the Far East taking in Japan, Hong Kong, China and Mongolia. 

It’s interesting that she lived in Hong Kong as a small child, when her father’s regiment was posted there in the late 1940's. At that time the tallest building in Hong Kong was only 6 storeys high – my goodness!

Hong Kong in the late 1940's - what a difference!

It's sad to look at what has been happening in Hong Kong in the last year, with China finally cracking down on all their liberties, but Lois and I are so relieved that our son-in-law Ed was not successful a couple of years ago in getting a job there.

Hong Kong in the 1980's - in happier times:

Maggie Thatcher and Dennis tour the colony in a double-decker bus.

Come back, Maggie, all is forgiven !!!!!

22:00 We go to bed – zzzzzzz!!!!!