An awful day weather-wise - non-stop rain from midday. Lois manages to get a walk in during the morning, while I do the exercises that my NHS physiotherapist Connor has scheduled for me today. Lois was supposed to go round to our neighbour Frances's house this afternoon to look at her vegetable beds and greenhouse, but Frances rings Lois at 3 pm to say not to bother unless the rain suddenly stops.
Frances (back row, fifth from left) - a recent picture
What madness!!!! Is this the merry month of May? If not, I think we should be told haha!!!!
the rain falling on part of our patio - it's actually
raining on the whole patio, but you can get the general idea
from the above photos - it just needs a bit of imagination (not much!) haha!
At least we haven't had any hail or thunder today - we've had both of those "extreme weather phenomena" earlier this week.
What madness !!!!! [You've said that once already! - Ed]
16:00 I speak on the phone to my sister Gill in Cambridge. Gill, who turns 63 on Saturday, has just had her first coronavirus vaccination. It seems like Cambridgeshire is a bit behind our part of the country: here in Gloucestershire we're doing the 40-somethings at the moment. [Remember - you promised no boasting today! - Ed]
flashback to May 2015: Gill and Peter's 30th wedding anniversary: (from left to right) Tom and Maria (who will be getting married in July 2021), Chris and Zoe, Lucy, Gill, Gill's best friend Jill, Jill's husband, and Peter (in the wheelchair)
Maria and Tom on their visit to Cambridge 2 weeks ago,
their first visit since October because of the lockdowns
Gill and Peter's eldest daughter Zoe, who works for CRUK (Cancer Research UK) at Manchester University has already had her first dose of vaccine - they had some extras going spare in the city and she was invited to get her first dose early.
Maria, Gill and Peter's youngest daughter, actually caught COVID a few weeks ago but was back at work after a week. The family couldn't work out how Maria could possibly have caught it, because she works full time from home and never goes anywhere; they eventually came to the conclusion that Maria's partner Tom, who goes into shops, must have caught it and transmitted it to Maria, but remained asymptomatic himself. What a crazy world we live in !!!!!
Maria and Tom are planning to visit Gill and Peter on Saturday to celebrate Gill's 63rd birthday, but they will have to meet outside in the garden, and the weather is proving unpredictable at the moment, to put it mildly: oh dear! The lockdown restrictions are due to be eased on Monday (17th) but that will come too late for Gill's birthday, which is a pity.
flashback to 1960: me (14) with my little sister Gill (2)
in the back garden of the family's house in Bristol
17:00 The rain is still falling - let's hope the weather is a bit better for the next two days. On Friday (tomorrow) Lois and I are supposed to be attending an outdoor full-immersion baptism of a young woman wanting to join Lois's sect - the ceremony is going to be in a hot-tub, but spectators/witnesses will be shivering (and/or getting drenched) on garden chairs, I suspect - brrrrr!!!!!
Then on Saturday we're supposed to be meeting friends for lunch at the Plough Inn in the village, the first time we've done that kind of thing for nearly 2 years. Apparently it'll be in the garden behind the pub, but under some sort of cover: a marquee perhaps.
It would be nice if the sun were to put in an appearance, though, to put it mildly!!!!
What madness !!!!!!
flashback: the garden of The Plough Inn in happier times
flashback to 2018 - Lois and I visit The Plough with
Sylvia, Lois's cousin from Melbourne, and Sylvia's partner Rod
flashback to 2014: we take our twin grandchildren Lily and Jessie
to the garden of The Plough: for the past 5 years they have been
living 9000 miles away, in Perth, Australia: sob sob!!!!
20:00 We settle down on the couch and watch a bit of TV, the first programme in a new series of "Motherland", all about harassed suburban mums.
I think it does Lois and me good to sometimes watch these Generation X sitcoms, where elderly parents are often the butt of jokes - they teach Lois and me not to overstep the mark too far with our own children haha! At one point in tonight's episode, harassed mum Julia throws her elderly mother's walking frame out of the front door and into the front garden - my god!!!
Often the most entertaining part of this sitcom is the conversations that go on in the afternoons outside the school gates, between the harassed mums and stay-at-home-dad Kevin.
Enough said !!!!!
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzzz!!!!
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