Continuing Warm Weather

We have all been enjoying the unseasonably warm weather - Mr Boo was out sunning himself today - leaning against the box John had made for Chivers as a shelter on the day that Chivers sadly died so he never got to use it.  Sometimes Charlie will go inside but rarely.  Today Mr Boo was outside making the most of the sunshine.  I was out in the garden waiting to hear from Mum who was having the first part of her Covid vaccination today at the General Hospital.  She had been one of the lucky octogenarians to get their name on the list for today before the batch of vaccines had all been allocated.  She was fine after the jab thankfully although as the day wore on she said her arm began to ache but I think that was something several people had experienced.  It was also my godmother Janet's 86th birthday today and I eventually managed to get to speak to her.  We cannot believe what has happened in the world since this time last year - I had managed to get over to the UK on 15th January and spent a lovely afternoon out with her a few days later as a slightly belated birthday celebration.

My poor garden doesn't know if it is coming or going - there is talk of rain next week and cooler temperatures going into February which would be more normal but until that happens things have been lulled into a false sense of security and are blooming early.  

About lunchtime we caught the strains of the President giving his address to the nation regarding the new restrictions.  As we had already expected we are to go into lockdown like we did last March - it comes into effect at 5.00am on Sunday giving us a couple of days to get ourselves organised.  Unlike last time we will be allowed to request permission to leave the house for essential trips twice a day rather than just once although unless we need to go shopping we are unlikely to venture out other than for exercise.  With that in mind I asked John if we could nip to the garden centre for some potting compost so that I could get on with jobs in the garden during what is to be an initial three weeks' of stricter measures.

We went to the cemetery first to check on Dad, David and Elena - giving the plants that needed it a bit of water and we have decided to leave Dad's Christmas plants in situ for a while longer as they look bright and jolly and when we were up at the garden centre chose a pot and a lovely Verbena to go in it.   I shall bring it on at home for a week or so and then take it up to the cemetery.

Marina informed us that they are allowed to remain open which is good news for them and for anyone in the locality wanting to brighten up their garden.  They have an amazing array of plants including some hanging baskets with petunias flowering in them.  When I said I thought they were flowering early Marina explained that this is a new winter petunia with smaller flowers and more compact leaves.  I was rather tempted but don't really have anywhere for them where we wont bash our heads on them!

We popped into Paps for a few essentials and checked the tyre pressure on the Pug and filled it with fuel - whilst Jacob was doing that I noticed that there was a promotion on to collect stamps for insulated glasses.  Now I have some chunky ones which I use at Christmas for mulled wine but thought some taller ones would be excellent for a summer G&T because being insulated the ice wouldn't melt thus keeping the drink cooler and not diluting the contents.

I asked Jacob what we needed to do in order to get the glasses and he said not to worry about the stamps - if we wanted some we could simply buy them at the reduced promotional price and he would sort the stamps out because lots of people don't take them - that was brilliant because it meant that John and I could get a set of two G&T sized at a bargain price (I know because I looked them up on tintyweb afterwards and we did indeed get them at 75% off).  There were a number of different sizes and we may well get a couple more if the offer is still on when next we need fuel (which isn't going to be for quite a while!).

Friday night has been restored as date night and so I had, at John's behest, made onion bhajis which we were going to have as a starter and then we were having the remainder of the Bangladeshi chicken curry I had made yesterday.  I also made some fresh lemon pickle as we are on our last scrapings and I expect Bobby is in the same boat so one of the jars is earmarked for him.  As it happens there was enough curry left to pack up a meal for Les so he will have benefited from several meals from us this week which is just as well as he had forgotten to order his EasyMeals although he did say he had several in reserve in the freezer.   

We splashed out on a bottle of Grifos 1 for tonight - it really is such a lovely smooth wine but pound for pound or rather euro for euro you really cant beat Agios Onoufrious and our loyalties will always lie with the local winery because they have always been so very good to us - particularly in the last lockdown when they notified us as soon as they were able to sell us a box direct from the premises but it is nice to have a change every now and again.  

We also decided to have a fire tonight although it really isn't that cold.  To give you some idea when we went to bed our bedroom was a balmy 16 degrees without any heating at all and I have known it to be around 7 degrees at this time of year and we spent hours trying to decide if the bedding was damp or merely cold and probably it was the former.

John burned about 3 logs this evening and it was soooooo cosy.  We watched a couple of episodes of the truly bonkers series called Ratched which we are enjoying - only two left so we will have to start thinking about what to watch next.

Tomorrow I am walking for the last time this side of lockdown with Rachel and Nicky.  Although we are very careful about spacing ourselves out we are arguably three people walking when it should only be two and once the new restrictions come in this is just the sort of thing the authorities will be looking out for and it could make for a very expensive bit of exercise if we were fined.