Day 2 of isolation. How grateful am I it’s only until tomorrow! Decided to do Joe Wicks followed by 20 mins walking to music, which apparently makes you walk a mile in 20 mins as long as you have the beat at the right tempo. My brother rang and we can easily talk for 20 mins so I asked him to excuse any odd sounds because throughout our call I would keep walking. Which I did. Great way to exercise . Time flew by. After call the heating went on in preparation for enough hot water for a bath. Meanwhile I went through the boat with a fine tooth comb, honing out any excess stuff that we do not need. Tomorrow I will take it home while Richard undergoes his procedure as I will have a few hours waiting. It’s amazing how much excess stuff you can easily collect and on a small boat we really don’t want that. I have learnt that china plates are heavy and cumbersome and really not necessary. Melamine is sufficient. However I do require a thin china cup for my morning cup of tea! R always said I had too many pairs of shoes so some of them are going, along with a printer that was useful at Christmas but most correspondence can be done by email. Sadly my guitar is going home. I haven’t played it at all since our trip started so perhaps I have to accept my guitar playing days are over.
Talking of home, quite alot has happened in our absence. Our son G and his girlfriend moved in. It was too cluttered and so G has systematically gone through the house tidying up. To such an extent that he touched his father’s sacrosanct desk and put all the papers in one pile, saying dad could sort through them when he next came home. Then he started on the kitchen, moving through to the dining and living room. Nothing is where it was and coming home will feel a bit strange I think. I am delighted to have had the help and yet slightly dismayed that my disorganised drawers and thirty years of family life have been on display to his girlfriend! To top it all G and brother P decided to paint a downstairs room that was definitely in need of an overhaul. However instead of painting it an inoffensive magnolia which was planned in my head, they went for navy blue! It looks great but I still feel a little miffed they didn’t ask me first!
My regular Friday zoom was as good a cheer up as ever and made more exciting by one of the girls remarking that a friend had a labradoodle puppy for sale. Another of the zoom friends said she was interested and before we knew it had rung to see if the puppy was still available. Her husband is deaf and although they had hoped for a hearing dog this has not materialised. Labradoodles are extremely intelligent and so this puppy may be able to be trained to be a helpful companion to J. To be deaf now, with everyone wearing masks and thus unable to lipread, must be so difficult. I remember the first time I understood how deaf J was. A group of us were staying at a youth hostel where someone’s toast set off the fire alarm. J didn’t bat an eyelid because he heard nothing whilst the rest of us were deafened by the sound. It was quite a sobering moment.
NarrowboatTLC 