Another day that didn’t quite go according to plan…

That’s partially because I got up later than expected. Today was Dawn’s last day on holiday and as she was having a lie in I ended up lying in for a bit. Mind you, the fact our moggie had pulled a fast one and dived on the bed during the night didn’t help. Much as we love him, he’s a bugger for pinching the middle of the bed!

Getting up late meant the working day was cut short by a couple of hours, so I spent longer scanning old slides to meet my target and less doing other stuff. Even so, It was a productive day. I hate ones where I feel I’ve not achieved anything. One thing I didn’t manage to sort out was getting my new laptop working again. It’s been faulty since last week. Despite spending over half an hour on the phone to the Dell helpdesk there was nothing to be done, so another of their engineers will be paying me a visit tomorrow. Hopefully, this time the repair will be permanent. The old machine I’m using at the moment is fine for office work but as the battery is fried it can’t move far.

Away from work the day went well. Dee kept herself busy with her exercise regime and then got stuck into the decorating jobs she’s occupied herself with these past few days. Yesterday she did an excellent job of prepping the porch for painting. Today the task was painting the living room window cills and surrounding plasterwork. I love her enthusiasm for getting hands-on with tasks like this as it’s very different from her day job.

The weather’s defaulted back to a mixture of sunshine and cloud, with only the slightest smattering of rain, which was great as it meant that when I finally went cross-eyed through staring at a screen all day I could go for a stroll without getting soaked. I didn’t go far but stuck to the usual woods/promenade/park circuit with a slight deviation to the supermarket. I was surprised how quite everywhere was. I didn’t even have to queue to get into Tesco’s. There’s been a few signs recently that more people are pushing the lockdown envelope at weekends, but there was little sign of that today.

Hopefully, we can start to see the lockdown begin to be relaxed. Although it’s early days yet there are positive signs that the number of cases and death toll is heading in the right direction. I just wish it was possible to have greater faith in the Governments statistics. Quite what the gradual relaxing will look like is open for debate. Right now, I’m not making any plans. besides, I’ve more than enough things to keep me occupied.

Whilst the majority of us are respecting the lockdown and social distancing I saw that the faux ‘Eco-warriors’ from ‘Extinction rebellion’ who’re protesting against building HS2, the new high-speed railway, were displaying their usual weapons-grade hypocrisy by pulling various stunts and protests along the route. Using banners carrying the slogan ‘NHSnotHS2’ they blocked an HS2 site entrance at Euston long enough to get a media photo call. Meanwhile, they had a few useless protesters up trees outside Euston station. All Londoners, of course. Oh, wait a minute…

One of the people up the trees was a certain Larch Maxey. The very same Larch Maxey who (until a couple of days ago) was at the Crackley Woods camp in Warwickshire. It seems the lockdown rules and social distancing don’t apply to these hypocrites. The very same rules they rant and rave about HS2 workers, police and bailiffs not obeying…

Here’s a picture of Maxey taken from one of the protesters Facebook pages.

I wonder where the hypocrite will turn up next?

Needless to say, the protests didn’t stop a thing. They attracted some media attention but that was it. Work on Hs2 continued on sites from London to Birmingham with minimal disruption. This is the stupidity and futility of it all, the protests aren’t even a pin-prick to such a vast project which is gaining momentum all the time now that the main contractors are gearing up for what will be the largest construction project in Europe. You might as well attack a Rhino with a pea-shooter!

This evening has been more relaxed. Last night I’d cooked a tofu and tempeh veggie stir-fry, so I added some extra veggies to that to reinvent it for a second night as a quick and easy meal. Afterwards we spent time on a Zoom call with Dawn’s Brother and his family down in Farnham and her parents over in Huddersfield which makes the Covid lockdown more bearable and the distances between us shrink.

Tomorrow Dawn’s back at work and I’ll be kept occupied with scanning and paperwork. I’m hoping to catch up with some writing too (including the blogs I’d been determined to catch up with today!), so it’s goodnight from me with the intent of an earlier start tomorrow.