Monday 7th September 2020 Day 167
6.45 I can hear repetitive music coming from somewhere and then realise it is my phone alarm. Note: change alarm tune to something that isn’t going to stay in my head the whole day.
Today I am going to venture out to meet a dear friend in a plant nursery café, unbelievably this is only the third time I will have visited a cafe since March and I don’t really feel any more comfortable about it now than I did on the previous occasions, especially as we are told that the Covid 19 numbers have gone back to where they were in May but my feeling is that we have got to start moving forward before we all stagnate.
No time for musing now though, I have a grocery delivery due between eight and nine so I must get moving on the day.
8.59 Groceries arrive, note: could have had extra half hour in bed. The only time my groceries ever arrive early is when I am really hoping they will arrive late for some reason.
My café meeting is arranged for ten thirty with a half hour drive, so I have ample time to take Audrey out first but the phone rings, one of my daughters and it is a long call so Audrey will have to
wait till later. She is looking resigned already and I haven’t even told her the bad news yet. I leave at
10.00 feeling very guilty.
10.30 It’s great to meet up again and we follow the twisty yellow arrowed paths through the nursery in order to get to the café. In pre Covid days this popular café was always very full at this time of the morning with, mostly, ladies meeting to get things off their chests to each other and eat cake – possibly not in that order of importance. Today it looks like musical chairs, the music has stopped and another one has been removed. There are about ten spaced out tables and only two of them are occupied. The large doors to the terrace and to the front and the side are wide open and it is like sitting in a wind tunnel, no air borne Covid germ would stand a chance of staying long enough to cause any harm, I wondered at one point whether I might get swept out with them.
We drink coffees and eat cake and talk hind legs off donkeys, a very pleasant interlude.
12.30 I pick up two of my grandchildren, both of whom are going back to school this week and an excited Audrey and we go exploring locally for new footpaths to try. We start off ok following the yellow arrow from the road but there are no more arrows where the path splits and we have to give up and return. I think I would be a resounding failure if I tried the Duke of Edinburgh Awards youth programme.
15.45 Driving back through my village which isn’t really a village any more now that all the shops and garage have gone, leaving only our magnificent ancient pub, I go past one of the last remaining white wooden sign posts. There used to be a wooden signpost just down the road from my house but it rotted away and after a few half-hearted attempts to repaint it, is now replaced by a ‘Not suitable for HGV’s’ cold looking sign. Why does everything have to be abbreviated? Are we so busy these days that we don’t even have time to say whole words? It wasn’t so long ago that people wouldn’t have known what an HGV was. Actually, what does it mean? ‘Not suitable for Human Genetic Variation?’