08:00 Lois and I roll out of bed. We can't stay where we are because Budgens, the local convenience store will be delivering our groceries for next week any time after 9 am - yikes!
I see on my smartphone that our elder daughter Alison, who lives in Headley, Hampshire, with Ed and their 3 children, Josie (14), Rosalind (12) and Isaac (10), has put a charming photo up on Instagram of the two girls, in school uniform, holding the two piano awards they won yesterday at their school's Young Musician of the Year competition. Josie also won the solo award in 2019, so it's becoming a bit of a regular event for her - I don't think she's any less pleased about it however!
a complicated pose: Josie (left) has a hold on both the solo and the duet
shield, and Rosalind just a shared hold just on the duet shield.
You do the math haha!!!!
08:30 I see also that Hungary has entered a new phase of reopening of stores, restaurants, hotels, parks, cinemas, hairdressers, tattoo parlours etc, now that the milestone of 4 million vaccinations has been reached, according to Daily News Hungary. The total population is about 9.8 million.
Hungary has been doing much better than the average EU country, when it comes to vaccinations - the government quickly grew tired of the delays caused by EU mismanagement and made use of non-EU-approved vaccines like the Russian and Chinese products, although Western vaccines are now available also.
It's interesting, however, that my Hungarian penfriend, Tünde, thinks the Government are being far too hasty. She says that the Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán, tends to play down the severity of the pandemic in the country, talking only about the number of vaccinations and skirting over the number of deaths etc. But the crisis is far from over - the Daily News reported today that 161 Hungarians died of coronavirus just in the last 24 hours, and in the same time-period almost 2000 new infections were reported.
Orbán has badly mismanaged the pandemic, she says. He was late putting the country into lockdown, he reorganised the health service after the pandemic had begun, causing chaos and alienating doctors. And he is wasting money on a host of "prestige" projects that enrich him personally, and also his friends and supporters.
What a crazy world we live in !!!!
11:00 I go up to the bedroom to do the exercises that Connor, my NHS physiotherapist, has scheduled for me today.
Meanwhile Lois goes out to take a walk on the local football field. I encourage her to take her phone and practise taking selfies and other photos of the "Play Park Experience", as it unfolds for her today.
When she comes back we sit on the sofa with a coffee while we do a "lessons learned" exercise on the photos she has taken.
a tense moment, as we prepare to dissect the photos Lois has taken today
and use them for a "lessons learned" exercise, with a chance to bring out
a few pointers for her future work
First we go through a set of interesting "nature" pictures:
some interesting and contrasting colours on a local copper beech bush
a good selfie with a ceanothus bush-come-tree in the background
a bit of apple blossom poking through from an adjacent property.
And now a couple of "doggy" pictures - an example of a large breed. Lois spoke to the dog's owner and she said it was a "leoberger" (not further identified). Apparently it's a good-natured breed that won't attack you under normal circumstances, which is good. Lois and I are cat-people rather than dog-people, so we like to know these things haha!
(seen on the left of the picture with its owner)
danger over: the enormous dog and its owner have moved on
towards the tennis-courts (phew - that was a close one haha!)
Quite a good, and varied, set of pictures, we think, even if we do say so ourselves!!
18:00 We're not by nature nosy neighbours but we notice some psychic guy has parked his mobile consulting booth outside our neighbour Nikki's house - what a mystery!
20:00 We watch a bit of TV before turning in to bed early, last night's edition of "Have I Got News For You", the comedy news quiz.
Some surprising revelations tonight. The quiz's contestants are asked to decide whether lockdown has been good or bad news for a series of products: mostly it's been good, so heartening, to put it mildly - good for the economy, certainly! Good for corn beef, for instance, because people have been turning to nostalgic foods from their childhood.
It's also been good for naturism, apparently.
Lockdown has also seen a rise in websites for naked participants, including "Naked Kitchen With Pam", where viewers are promised a "tantalising glimpse of Pam's flapjacks".
Pam was even invited onto Eamonn Holmes's mid-morning show "This Morning" the other day.
Pam (second from right) being interviewed on Eamonn Holmes's
mid-morning show "This Morning"
And who knew that dolphins hold grudges?
That's one in the eye for dolphin-worshippers, isn't it! My god! Never cross a dolphin haha!!!
I think I'd rather have a leonberger for a pet than a dolphin now - my god!
21:00 We turn in early - zzzzzzzzzzz!!!!!!
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