Life goes on day after day

Life goes on day after day
Hearts torn in every way
So ferry ‘cross the Mersey
’cause this land’s the place I love
and here I’ll stay.

Yes, there’s a lot of sadness around at the moment, a nasty virus and a government that’s doing OK but could be doing so much better for us. On the other hand, we don’t have a leader suggesting we mainline Dettol while sitting under an ultraviolet lamp.

We’re doing our best to continue looking up, up, up while being locked in, in, in. For example, last week, I decided to go for a new look. I combed my hair back instead of forward for the first time since 1971.

I tweeted (twat?) a joke and it became my most popular tweet ever: I think it went viral, in modern parlance, but I’m trying to avoid using the V word too much at the moment. Obviously, I’m pleased that so many people got the pun, and retwat (retweeted?) it. Here is a list of people who asked for an explanation: (no, not really, that wouldn’t be very nice).

Needless to say, I won’t be taking up this kind offer from Royal Mail. The postmen and women who are still out on delivery are all heroes. Unless things have changed a lot since I worked there, there is just no way the workers can ‘socially distance’ while preparing their walks in the delivery office. We know the company isn’t supplying protective clothing. So every day, each postie is potentially touching 500+ gates and 500+ front doors while delivering mail. This includes all the junk mail, the pizza menus, even though many of the pizza shops are now closed. Meanwhile, the boss, Rico, is living the life of riley in his Swiss eyrie.

We’re still going out for a walk every couple of days.

Thank goodness we now have a new shop in the village. I don’t think it even opened before the lockdown, but it’s nice to see some competition for Tesco, the Co-op, Nisa, the corner shop just up the road and the Spar at the nearby service station. A song came to mind as I was waiting to cross the road.

Northenden Superstore
Sells booze and fags
And a whole lot more.

I wanted Andrew Lloyd-Webber to write the music, but I realised, he’s already done so.

What else have we been up to?

Liesel completed this jigsaw puzzle in just a few days.

Martha coloured in this rainbow fish for her nursery class.

This bloke was enjoying some solitude in the sunshine on Didsbury Golf Course.

The river, in fact it’s the Mersey as mentioned in today’s introductory song, albeit much further upstream and away from the eponymous ferry, is always a good place to walk. Except on those occasions when there are just too many people to keep away from.

Yes, we have a different class of fly-tipper here.

I wonder if the rest of the vehicle has been deposited somewhere in the river?

At last, months after my first sighting of this elusive bird, I managed to take some pictures before he flew away. In fact, he was so still, I did suggest to Liesel that he was just a cardboard cut-out, like the one we saw at Hampton Court all those years ago.

This is where the M60 crosses the Mersey and its supports are being reinforced, a long-term project. The path on that side of the river is closed to pedestrians while the work is undertaken, showing how determined someone was on the day they decided to throw their old furniture into the river.

One of my birthday presents arrived late (a nice surprise, thanks, Pauline), but I had a fun afternoon in the kitchen, melting chocolate and modelling a London taxi, a London bus and the Queen Elizabeth II Tower, sometimes known as Big Ben. The first instruction was to put on the chef’s hat, which protected my new coiffure. The chocolate London was of course consumed within two days of its construction: we didn’t want it to melt in what is rumoured to be the hottest April since records began in 1659.

Meanwhile, in another universe, but just a few miles away…