Friday 30th October 2020 Day 220

6.30   It’s raining it’s pouring and Worry is snoring, she must have been prowling around the house in the night and having her sleep now.  I am just glad it is morning after one of those nights.

9.00  I am up dressed, housework done, washing put away, dishwasher emptied, all set for the day, except that I have nothing planned again today other than starting to put together the family calendar that I do every year and no excuse not to carry on with that myriad of boring but necessary jobs around the house.  We will have to wait for a break in the weather before venturing out.  Well I have ventured as far as the dustbin and realised that it is now also very windy.  It is a bit worrying to walk in the woods now, there are many trees down already due to the extremely wet soft ground and now the wind.  Perhaps I worry more than some

some would, having had a tree fall on my car last year as I was driving my granddaughter home from an orthodontist appointment one afternoon.  She saw the tree was about to fall and shouted but it was too late for me to stop, we were very lucky that the bonnet took the full brunt on that occasion and we came out of it unscathed. Although I couldn’t say the same for the car.

11.00   I decide on a different walk around Laughton and come across an old barn whose roof is starting to bend with age, very rustic giving it a charm of its own.

What can you write, stuck at home on a rainy day that isn’t banal?  So it is time to resort to the good old Irish Post and as always it hasn’t let me down.  A good headline is: ‘Clothes are not essential’ says Irish minister – following Government’s non-essential retail list   Personally I consider them extremely essential, especially at this time of the year.

And then Tony Holohan (who is obviously a born optimist, or subject to flights of fancy) who says ‘If Covid-19 cases drop we could be in for a decent Christmas’   I don’t think anyone would argue with that as a fact but there can’t be many who think that could even be a remote possibility.  The only thought I had was that if this grim weather persists, it will keep a lot of people apart, maybe helping a little towards a drop in cases.

I have just been looking through the contacts on my phone (another measure of the sort of day it is) there are two hundred and ninety one names and probably about a quarter of them I don’t have a clue who they are but one that stands out is Monsieur Calvet, the owner of a gite Ray and I rented in Provence many years ago.  The place was so remote that we couldn’t find it and I had to phone him. After about half an hour and a phone call from a very basic mobile phone, trying out my rusty French, A very elderly man came wobbling into view on an ancient rusty bicycle.  He came to a shaky stop and introduced himself as Msr Calvet, his clothes were immaculate, smart suit, cravat, etc.  He was charming and apologetic and asked us to follow him in the car, he turned the old bike around and we followed at about four miles an hour for half an hour, back the way he had come and to our gite.  I am glad I kept his name, that was such a sweet memory.