Thursday 7th January 2021 Day 290

6.45   I have woken right up so I’m not going to dawdle in bed and I have taken this moment to decide on a whole new routine.  Getting to bed a couple of hours earlier and getting up early.  That way I might get a whole lot more done before phone calls, texts and lethargy set in.  I find it gets to about four in the afternoon and I don’t feel like starting anything new, probably a winter thing.  Anyway a change of routine will be good I am sure.

I wander into the bathroom and turn on the shower only to find the pump isn’t working. Looking at the fuse box I see one of the switches has tripped which means that several lights don’t work and nor does the land line and wi-fi.  Each time I try to flick the switch back on, it trips again and on further trial and error with switching various switches off to try and discover the culprit, I find, what I had begun to dread must be the problem, the switch for the pond pump.  It looks about minus ten outside, thick frost all over the lawn making pretty patterns on plants, which then alerts me to the fact that I forgot to put the greenhouse heater on….maybe I’ll just go back to bed, I can feel the lethargy coming on at a record seven o clock in the morning. At least with the pond switched off I can get the trip switch back on and have my shower.

9.30  Well this is very odd, apart from the time I spent trying to sort out the fuse box this morning, I don’t seem to be much further forward than I usually am at this time of day and haven’t even had my breakfast yet.  A quick glance at my Covid app tells me the figures have gone up again in Wealden but when I do my daily report in I see there is a new question which asks me if I want to have a vaccine, ‘Yes ,No, or don’t know’.  If it had asked me a couple of months ago, I would possibly have said No.  As things are, it is a very definite yes.

11.45   After a very long phone call with friend Jackie, where we have put the world to rights several times and tried to work out how life will actually be when this is all behind us, I can no longer ignore the imploring eyes and I get ready for a walk in what is now a lovely sunny day and a little warmer. 

I have decided that the pond is going to have to wait until tomorrow at least.  It’s bound to mean hands in icy water which is not at all appealing.  I would really like to bring all the fish indoors and give them a nice warm bath, maybe knit them some little coats but somehow, I don’t think they would appreciate it.  How can they stand those temperatures after the warm waters of the summer?

It’s nice to get out in the sunshine and today we are avoiding the mud.