Wednesday 9th December 2020 Day 260
6.45 I am up ridiculously early for me. I mean properly up dressed and ready for the day and I have just discovered a problem. The hot water upstairs is powered by pumps and the pump for the sinks and bath has stopped working, only the shower pump works. This is the sort of problem I dread because I have no idea what to do, get someone in to look? Buy and new pump?
Audrey will be so pleased to see me at this time. Usually when I get downstairs, she is sitting patiently by the door and I feel badly for taking so long. I open the kitchen door, no Audrey. I look across at her bed and there she is, sound asleep, completely unaware that I have come into the room and I find myself creeping about so as not to wake her. Eventually one eye opens and she hauls herself unwillingly off her bed to come and say good morning. I shall stop feeling badly if I am a bit late down in future.
8.00 I text my son to ask advice about the pump. Luckily he spent the night on his boat and is not working today so says he will come and have a look later.
11.15 We have just got back from our walk and my son has arrived all masked up and so I follow suit and we chat for half an hour with our expressionless covered up faces. I know eyes can be expressive but it’s not until two people are trying to converse behind masks that you realise just how important a smile, or expression of sympathy or surprise or interest can be when all you rely on is your voice, different again to a telephone call because that is a different kind of remote communication.
As we look out of the kitchen windows, a large heron lands next to the pond. He was there yesterday as well. I haven’t seen him for a while and though large in stature, he is looking much leaner, river food is obviously becoming scarce. The good old duck weed is still covering the majority of the pond and after a while he loses interest and lifts his large ungainly body, spreads his wings effortlessly, and glides away. He will be back, I have no doubt.
12.00 My son has inspected the offending pump upstairs and asked me for a three amp fuse. Whilst I have made it my business to learn a lot of things I used to leave to Ray, somehow plugs and fuses I cannot seem to take any interest in, so the idea that I would even know if I had such a thing as a fuse, completely eludes me. He gives up on my pathetic searching through kitchen drawers and quickly finds a packet of them in the shed, changes the fuse and hey presto I have a working pump, great result and for good measure he straightens up my wonky kitchen cupboard doors.
I was trying to work out last night whether the pun Boris made was intended or not when he was talking about the vaccine and told us it was ‘a shot in the arm’ for Covid, I actually don’t think it was.