Sunday 7th March 2021 Day 348

6.50   Another beautiful morning thank heavens.  Cold though, there is a sparkling frost out there full of diamonds in the sunlight.

I’ll go and make a cup of tea and come back to bed for half an hour I think. There is a furry black face sitting at the bottom of the stairs, head cocked on one side, I must have left the kitchen door open by mistake last night or I’ve had burglars.  Worry grabs the moment to parade back and forth on the top stair, just to show Audrey that she gets preferential treatment in being allowed to roam the entire house.

10.00  Always a mistake to take tea back to bed and I stayed there too long so I’m only now just about ready for the day.  I’m going to spend the day trying to tame the garden a bit, I need to be outside remembering what the real world is like and getting away from a bit

of a head full of ‘stuff’. Thank goodness things are going to free up a little at the end of the month and children back to school tomorrow. We’ve all been cooped up for so long, so different from the last lock down, I think we are going to be a bit like rabbits caught in the headlights at first.  Three of my school age grandchildren have said they don’t want to go back to school, bar one who is excited to see his friends, I doubt they are alone in this but please God I hope all kids will be resilient and pick up the threads again quickly and happily.

16.00  I have come in from a reasonably productive day in the garden, another couple of barrowloads of dead wood and overgrowth.  What a difference the discovery of a pruning saw makes!  I was working in the shadow at one point for quite a while and it felt so cold my fingers and toes went numb but as soon as I was back in the sunlight the temperature changed quite dramatically to warmth.

There used to be two pubs in Blackboys, the lovely Blackboys Inn still survives and hopefully will continue to after Covid.  The other one on the High St., The Crown Inn, closed many years ago and became home to Landscaping designers but alas they have gone and now we are to have a handful of new homes there.  The screens have gone up outside to protect us or maybe to protect the modesty of a historical building as it is transmoglified into modern, hopefully not soulless dwellings