April 2nd - Happy Anniversary Mum

Today would have been Mum and Dad's 65th wedding anniversary but, as readers will know, Dad is sadly no longer with us and poor Mum is in splendid isolation down in Emba so it cannot be celebrated as we would have liked.  We have however, arranged that one of our video calls to Mum today will involve the raising of a wine glass or two!!  Lord knows what Dad would have made of the current worldwide situation but he would, sure as hell, have had an opinion.

We have all sorts of entries coming in for the Lockdown art challenge from friends far and wide and friends of friends who will now, under these extreme and bizarre circumstances, also become friends through art and adversity!!!  There is no prize, just the pleasure in taking part in something which is keeping us amused and extracted.

Mum is punctuating her day by tackling a jigsaw or two but her progress is being severely hampered by Fred who gets a bit jealous if her attention is being taken up elsewhere and of course from that position he gets a better vantage point of what is going on outside.

We have found out that we have a parcel sitting in the village post office so after doing our shopping today, and the shopping for Isobel and David (who are still waiting to hear when his stent op is going to be) we drove quickly up to the village and John parked up at the Hotel carpark.  It is unbelievable to think that only a couple of weeks ago we were enjoying my 60th birthday with an overnight stay there along with our friends.  It is sad to see it closed up and empty.

The local stray cats thought we had come to feed them but they were to be disappointed on this occasion - we have actually bought some cat biscuits to give to Irene who is feeding them but we didn't want to disrupt her routine by giving them extra.  I have to say they are all looking very well and several of them are really lovely looking cats.

The post office was shut - we should have warned Marina we were coming - we aren't desperate for the parcel but it would just be nice to have checked.  We didn't hang around - our 'pass' was for a reasonable amount of time and we had to queue to get into Paps for about 30 minutes because they were being very strict about the number of people in there at any one time.


Pearly words of wisdom from the Ration Book
if we think things are bad now...
During WWII you couldn't strike a match in the street during the blackout
Rear more pigs than agreed with the authorities
Waste petrol by deviating more than 800 yards from your allotted route