Exeat: Day 101/84: 'Taking a Leicester' from 3 Shires ... Canada 'Confederation' Day

… on 'Taking a Leicester' … aka 14 days additional lockdown which having my hip operation at 3 Shires on July 16th will require. Avril and I will be back to self-isolation and asking the Dolphinstouns once again to help with the shopping when Click&Collect doesn't cover it. The 'green light' strategy at 3 Shires is that no patients get admitted who haven't Taken a Leicester + three days before entry have a Covid19 test as well. We are regarding this weekend's visit to Weymouth and -40 degrees Maserati to Peterborough, all by just the two of us, as Taking a Cummins. I'm intending to sustain these Blogs but return-title them Boarding @ Home rather than the more joyous Exeat for the duration of this 'Leicester' lockdown and any requisite follow through therefrom. That's our version of 'common sense'. The medical cycle began today at 'Green' 3 Shires with a repeat of the PreOp Test sequence/ Physio Briefing that we did in February before the operation was postponed. Truth is they are just getting back somewhere near to normal routines but certainly not quite yet! Began with a temperature test before entry but after that my Physio and Nurse both did the routines as experienced before. What's left is getting a time slot for the Covid19 Test which it transpires is a DriveThru' at Northampton General Hospital Car Park … three days before the operation; and a time of day for the operation itself … Avril has to Leicester/ self-isolate along with me.

Upbeat message from Edmonton is that today is Canada Day. Public holiday and just some parties …. It's the anniversary of July 1, 1867 the effective date of the Constitution Act [originally called the British North America Act] which united the three separate colonies of the Province of Canada, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick into a single self-governing Dominion. At that moment the 'Province' was subdivided into Ontario and Quebec Provinces. Newfoundland & Labrador Colony remained separate becoming a dominion in its own right in 1907 but eventually joining the Confederation in 1947. July 1st is also Memorial Day in Newfoundland & Labrador in remembrance of the decimation of its Regiment on the first day of the Battle of the Somme in 1917. Albertans Stephen, Wendy, dog and family went to Medicine Lake in their new camper! [See their Facebook!] The lake is a geologic anomaly in the sense that it is not actually a lake but rather an area in which the Maligne River flowing from Maligne Lake into the Athabasca River backs up and suddenly disappears underground as a losing stream. During the summer months during intensified meltwater runoff the lake, which during the winter months is a meandering frozen river, fills to fluctuating levels with the runoff events. The underground system is one of the most extensive in the world.

Good refrigerator news … The engineer from Nene Refrigeration Services called. He's the only one offering such service in Northampton and was in the Final Edition of Yellow Pages paper guide we still have. He was a wise and experienced man who removed the refrigerator from its built-in casing, changed the gas evidently, de-iced the base and more …. all with a satisfactory end result; lower temperatures in the fridge; the freezer was still working ok. And, I have my white wine fridge back and it looks as though we'll have no more sour milk. Whilst all this was happening to Avril's delight, I shopped at Morrisons and the Grange Park Co-op en route home; not too much because tonight at 6pm we have Click&Collect at Hunsbury's Tesco. P.S. Henry & Elliot announced they very much liked their Arnott's Australian TimTams I got amazon.com to deliver for them.