Deuteronomy 314/84: Get Well Soon ... Week 3 to April 18th
Spring in our steps … First things Monday … we needed to check Avril in at our GP's Surgery so we did that and booked a telecon with Dr Taylor Friday PM and Blood Tests [1] for the following Wednesday. Good news telecon from Kettering's Cardiac Follow Up also after Monday lunch to talk through Avril's medication. There are five drugs to take, some AM some PM, but they are clearly having an impact on her normal. The telecom appointment [2] details arrived as well for April 26th @ 17.45. We soon settled down to draft a list of things to remember to ask Dr Taylor on his Friday telecon which Avril duly achieved …… and she's been able to walk short distances outdoors because the weather has really improved. She's been doing 60% of the cooking too including the MacGonagall prune sponge gluten free dessert for lunch on Saturday. It's a change from soup? Gordon's got the allocated jobs of helping a little with housework, the immediate shopping, beheading dandelions in the garden and do all the driving for four weeks … including next week's 300 mile excursion Wednesday PM/ Monday AM to Weymouth.
Monday PM saw Mathew come visiting. It's a long drive, 300 miles all round, but we were delighted he could demonstrate his 'new' Skoda and spend time with Avril; and the weather was OK outdoors! He not only bought some lovely roses but a gluten free chocolate cake with its own billboard! He left behind snowy Ilkley, with icy roads as he set off and Kathryn of course back to school that day too. He was doing even more by Friday when he and Maureen and Francesca and Kathryn all headed to Filey and Flamborough Head and more … they took a nice cottage, # 51, for the weekend and as can be seen had their pub beer outdoors under eased restrictions! Not till we get to Weymouth for Avril and I …..
Nicola Strikes Again in Scotland …. … with all the talk to persuade Boris to reopen ahead of his Road Map dates for England, Nicola Sturgeon brings forward inside dining [no alcohol] at The Gothenburg to April 26th. We are still awaiting the Government's Funding of Hospitality in Scotland to give the resources needed to restock the kitchens and the bars so we've winged £10K in advance to Calum and Michelle.
Jane Shilling on form again too … …. exploring her expectations when non-essential shops are really available once again. She honours, as Avril always does, the pleasures of browsing rather than tick box online shopping. No chance to pick up and read the labels and feel the texture or make the choices between these or those tomatoes. The achievement of a lockdown delivery service and Click & Collect has been brilliant although the strategising and testing had been done well before the pandemic. But it all has limitations as well as strengths. She goes further reaching MacNair's Wheel of Retailing to reflect on how since WWII the large stores had overwhelmed most of the family shops but that now, with the collapses of the large stores and/ or their reconfiguration, the opportunities for an enriched High Street are coming.
Getting the Town Hall story out to the media. Sharon Saunders was keen that we work with ELC 'Comms' as we tell the tale so Martha has been in touch with them. Much excitement amongst the Heritage Network in PSG of having a Hub at The Town Hall....ouch! What they'll have is access to our spare capacity not a dreamtime partnership where we meet the costs of trading and they jump aboard for a free ride, and tell us how to organise it. Since we've asked PSG for a generous grant to get up to speed we'll have to see how it all goes along in the early days until their decision date on giving us support.
Arran gets a photo of the Jacobite Orchard. He'd promised it when he had the opportunity; it runs from the Forth up a footpath to the battlefield and was planted some 15 years ago by a team led by Shona Brash and Annemarie Allen. We are intending to encompass its maintenance with the green lung of the battlefield strategies in 2021 and beyond.
Manor House invited us to Coffee and Cake …. on Thursday, as both grandsons went back to school too. Friday saw Laura off for her first Moderna vaccination, the youngest and therefore last of our family's adults … and she's got a date for her second follow-on; she's just hoping that might make Spanish holidaying a possibility this summer! … and so to Sunday Dinner …. … which meant we had our roast beef and mashed potato for our Saturday Dining In Night for which I was 75% proud chef. It earlier fell to me to head to Tesco on Friday; and I handed in my own prescription and the two picture chips to Max Speilmann's that need hard copies for the archive we've been keeping throughout collecting Saturday morning. But ………
…. everything on Saturday was of course eclipsed by the
Funeral of HRH Prince Phillip, Duke of Edinburgh at Windsor Castle. We watched it from 2.45pm with BBC on tv and the sun shone for him and his family and the 700 military personnel deployed. His coffin came on a Land Rover as he wished draped in his ducal banner. As can be imagined the media have been full all week with the details of his life and on Sunday the newspapers gave magnificent coverage; we spent the whole day reading them.
Miscellany is probably the best way to begin to describe this Get Well Soon Week … … just as we've also got the news that our great friend Carol is needing some breast cancer surgery at Northampton General on Monday … we're certainly thinking of her … whilst over in Collingtree Gill and John are back outdoors … shopping and golfing ….
Published Date: April 12th 2021
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