Nine Feet Underground

The third day of 2021 ushers in a return to all the mundane things that quotidian life has to offer. Given the insane covid numbers that are now being recorded - apparently worse than the peak back in March/April - we're going to get shopping done and out of the way before it gets busy.  Son #2 and I get it done without any fuss and even a trip to the pharmacy to pick up my meds is achieved without encountering any other customer.  That's the best sort of shopping at the moment. Saturday morning unfolds as any other Saturday for the past nine or ten months, with only conversations with the carers and postie bringing any real colour. After a late-ish lunch I have got most of the tedious tasks complete and so I find time to read the papers. Son #2 is with me, revising for a Microsoft Azure exam on Monday.  Apart from the odd question about security principals and landing zones, I read uninterrupted. I suggested we go for a walk, which at least he agreed to (not sure if...

All too soon the weekend arrives and, blink and you'll miss it, soon it'll be the working week again. Lots of tedious stuff to do this morning: food shopping, washing, cutting the grass, trimming bushes and other overgrowing areas. Son #3 came shopping with me, and he was rewarded by the return of Costa to the precinct, his reward being a bacon roll, mine a bacon roll and a rather less enjoyable flat white made with coconut milk (too sweet, too overpowering a flavour) owing to the non-delivery of their order of lactose-free milk.  If nothing else it was a novelty, though the Costa counter is now more like a high-security bank. Sons #1 and #2 departed not long after #3 and I returned from the shops - they're off out for a walk with friends around Inkpen and Wash Common, a favourite area for walking of ours in the olden days.  The walk is supposed to be 35km, slightly shorter than the last one they did, but this time they've decided to wear walking boots rather than...