Well here we go with Week 14 of lockdown with the pubs opening and our holiday cottage being able to open from week 15 on 4th July.
Fri 26th June - you will recall that I posted my blog early yesterday as I wanted to watch the ‘mighty’ Saints and have a few beers. Well I had a few beers but the Saints certainly weren't ‘mighty’! Why is it we can't play at home? I was reading today that we are bottom of the league on our home form but 6th in the league on our away form!
I have sent yet another email to our wonderful local MP Michelle Donelan, this time prompted by the fact that she was one of the 300+ Tory MP’s that voted against the front line NHS and carers having weekly Coronavirus tests. How can she hypocritically clap them and tell the world how wonderful she thinks they all are then ‘stab them in the back’ by voting against an additional layer of protection for them. Whilst writing about this I have also asked why she has not had the courtesy to reply to my Dominic Cummings email of 23rd May and my subsequent chase up mails of 28th May and 11th June! Whatever your political views you would expect that your MP would have the courtesy to respond to their constituents.
Had a bit of time to check out the Visit Britain website to complete the ‘Good to Go’ COVID-19 certification then printed the certificated to display in Dorset.
Asked Russ and Deb & Steph and Dave around for Friday evening drinks, poor old Dave was working nights so couldn't attend but we still had a few for him.
Sat 27th June - down to Owermoigne for a few days to prepare for opening. Went to The Range in Dorchester to get some exterior wood paint and roof felt clout nails. They never had any decent paint for what we needed and the 20mm roof felt nails were too long, I wanted 12/13mm. So then a trip to B&Q in Weymouth. It was busy but fairly well organised. We managed to find the paint we required but they had sold out of clout nails! Typical. Back to Owermoigne to sit in the sunshine for an hour with a couple of beers before the football and heated up left over curry which we’d had in the week.
Sun 28th June - set alarm for 8am, we were looking to get the whole of the underside of the veranda plus the upright posts painted in one day. Having started just after 9, between us we managed to get the whole lot done by around 2pm. In desperate need of a shower and covered in paint as usual, I cleaned up and we needed to get to Tesco before they shut at 4pm to get a few bits for dinner. We bought my mother some flowers and had previously got her some ice cream tubs from the farm shop so dropped round to socially distance chat and pass them over. She still can't get her head around shielding, she has made a hairdresser appointment for next week at home. Both my sister and I have told her she can't do this until August as she is shielding but she insists on carrying on!
Couldn't hang around much as it was back to Owermoigne to watch Saints play Watford. We were by far the better side winning 3-1 with a brace from Danny Ings and a superb free kick from James Ward Prowse. Yet another away win, one day we will win at home!
Anna decided she would make dinner of chicken in a cheese and mushroom sauce, this is the first meal she has cooked for ages, as usually Josh does the cooking with my help. Unfortunately after taking a pan out of the oven with her oven glove and putting it on the hob she then proceeded to move it but forgot to put the glove back on! She burnt her hand quite badly and spent the rest of the evening clutching cold cans of drink from the fridge. She soldiered on with making the rest of the meal which was very good.
Proceeded to watch more football in the evening with Man City v Newcastle in the FA Cup, a
comfortable win for City. After which we watched a bit of old Glastonbury line up with Niall Rogers and Chic, Amy Winehouse and David Bowie, some fantastic old nostalgia.
Mon 29th June - another busy day lined up. I cut the grass first thing then I cut down all of the overhanging bushes which were growing over the neighbours fence and over the top of my shed. The Shed had been leaking and needed re-felting for some time but the bushes had to be cut down first. We filled 4 large garden waste bags with the different clippings and then I decided to go to the local ‘Aladdin’s cave’ hardware store in Wool to get my clout nails. They had them whereas I couldn't get any in the national chains in the locality..
I then decided upon return to tackle the Shed re-roof. I was a bit apprehensive that the roof may not take my weight but it must have been built well as I am still here! I was covered in black sand from the roofing felt, it sticks to you and was hell of a job to wash off.
I was totally knackered after doing this lot so had a quick snooze followed by a nice meal and tv for the evening.
Anna has blisters now on her hand from her pan burn, not that she mentions it!!
Tues 30th June - a rainy day so couldn’t do anything else outside. We decided to go back home later after Anna finished work at 5pm. Spent the morning just tidying up, putting away the winter duvets and replacing with lower tog summer quilts, stored out a few more bits and pieces ready for Raf & Jade’s visit next week.
As I didn't have much to do in the afternoon while waiting for Anna to finish, I had a couple of hours snooze on the sofa! Woke about 4pm in time to load up the car with 5 bags of garden waste, my hedge trimmer and our luggage etc.
Left at about 5.10pm and stopped off for fuel at Shaftesbury but still managed to get home in less than 1.5 hours. I proceeded to jam as much of the garden waste we had brought back into our green bin as they are due to collect on Thursday. I couldn't manage to get one bag in and as it was raining I thought I’d leave that until tomorrow.
Josh had made a great Lasagne which went down very well.
Wed 1st July - while we were in Dorset, Anna realised that our driving licences had expired after checking, this was following a warning on the Martin Lewis TV show which said that many had expired without any notification. We are supposed to be sent a reminder but neither of us received one. Due to the virus it did confirm that they would grant an extension to certain expiry dates, including ours. I arranged for the replacements online as I don't think the Spanish car hire companies will accept our word that we have an extension if we hadn't renewed by the time we next go out, probably in September.
I have been attempting since our Ryanair flights were cancelled in March to get a refund, there were 2 different bookings totalling over £170. As we are looking to go in September we thought that we would do them a favour by rebooking the new flights using these funds. What a nightmare that is, trying to sort it out online is a nightmare, you wait for ages to talk online to an agent when eventually they just connect you to an ‘automated’ Q&A!
I also sent a reminder to Virgin Atlantic CEO as they had originally promised our refund by last Friday but then sent an email to confirm that it would be delayed by another week. They thus have promised to pay up by this Friday, 3rd July, I just thought I would give them a gentle reminder of this, do I think that we will get this on time? No chance!
I managed to cram the extra bag of garden waste into our Green bin for collection tomorrow.
An evening of football followed, looks like Norwich are definitely down and Bournemouth do not look to have any confidence. I think that West Ham will just about stay up.
Thurs 2nd July - another week goes by without hearing from Michelle Donelan, our hard working MP!
One more day left for Virgin Atlantic to keep their promise to pay up, obviously no response to my email yesterday.
It's a horrible rainy day and guess who’s turn it is to do the weekly shop!
Yet again another case of the Boris’ friends and family doing their own thing in ignoring government advice. His father Stanley has ignored Foreign Office advice which states that you should only fly abroad for essential travel. Also Greece are not letting in anyone from the U.K. at the moment so to get around this he flew into Greece via Bulgaria. Was it essential travel? Was it my arse! He reckons he is COVID-19 proofing his villa in advance of the holiday season! Yes i’m sure you will be donning your marigolds Stanley to clean down the house! This comes just after news came out that he has applied for a French passport! Again another case of the chosen few doing exactly what they want to do and another rule for the downtrodden ‘plebs’.
I went off to Lidl for our weekly shop, it was not very busy today, the old people won't go out in the rain! No major disasters today, I managed to get a large trolley and everything fit in it without problem!
Josh discovered that Grunters opticians are going to start taking online bookings from next Monday, great! That’s me booking in for a sight test then as I now get it free being over 60! I will then proceed to try on most of the glasses in the shop then take a picture so that I can get similar ones in Specsavers for half the price! Grunters is so looking forward to me coming in!
We had a Ghanaian spicy ‘soup’ for dinner, it was fairly spicy and more like a stew than a soup with chicken thighs, sweet potato and white cabbage.
As we are moving out of lockdown perhaps this should be my last weekly diary blog! Nath reckons that I will have more to rant about with the more things we are allowed to do. Josh said I should carry on for a couple of weeks to do my ‘holiday blog’ from our planned week in Dorset from 10th.
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