Walking and Shopping

International Book Day coincided with our Grandchildren Day this week. Martha looked bewitching as the main character from Room on the Broom.

In fact, all her Nursery chums looked pretty cute too: The Tiger Who Came to Tea, Buzz Lightyear, Batman, Pirate Peter and Max the Brave. Elsa from Frozen sang Let it Go which you will now have going round and round your head too, for the rest of the day. One of the teachers was Little Miss Sunshine. We collected Martha at the end of the day, and while sitting on the stairs at home, taking off her shoes, she said “I had a wonderful day!”

We had a pretty good day with William too, though we didn’t get as far as leaving the house. Entertainment was provided by us, by the TV and by a fox with a big healthy bushy tail in the garden. The whole fox was in the garden, not just his tail.

I’m walking every day despite the crook foot, probably against sound medical advice, but I can’t let all my supporters down! As I hirple around the streets of Northenden, I take the odd photo, say hello to the odd passer-by, and some of them are very odd indeed, but they think very highly of me, I’m sure.

There’s not a lot of wildlife around here, but there are plenty of feral apostrophes if you know where to look.

The TV behind the reception desk was showing the latest news headlines: “Should all sports events be cancelled?” This is in response to the Covid-19 outbreak.

“If they cancel sporting events, they should close down all the pubs and clubs,” said receptionist number 1.
Number 2: “And public transport!”
Number 1: “But then we wouldn’t be able to get to work.”
Number 2, grinning: “I Know!”

Last week, a band from the 1970s and 1980s announced a reunion tour for later in the year. Not everyone is so keen on the idea, by the looks of this sign at the hospital.

And as I said to Liesel, I’m glad I didn’t have my heart set on seeing them, even though I was quite fond of their early work, with Peter Gabriel. I made the mistake of looking to see how much the tickets were going for.

To visit John Lewis is a great experience. To visit Costco is a marvellous experience. To visit both shops on the same day is almost too much fun for one person to handle.

We met Jenny, Martha and a sleeping William at Costco. Whereas John Lewis was so empty, we had four different assistants approach us at one point, in Costco we were in the company of hundreds of other customers, quite a few of whom were bulk-buying toilet paper.

I was playing around with my phone camera. I did have a quick look at the real cameras in John Lewis: the technology has certainly moved on in the decades since my last new one! Meanwhile…