Appointments

I made a nice chicken curry last night with Bombay potatoes, rice and peshwari nan breads. It was ready for Mrs Pudding when she walked in from her day's work at  the health centre - just after six o'clock.

After the meal, we settled down in the front room with the television set on. I don't know how it cropped up but she suggested that I should check out the COVID vaccine booking system. Maybe they would have started  on appointments for people aged 65 to 70. To tell you the truth, I would have just waited for an official letter inviting me to have my shots via my local surgery.

Sure enough, it appeared that bookings for my age group are now being accepted. With a small amount of technical difficulty I managed to secure my first appointment on Monday afternoon. My second vaccine appointment will be on May 3rd. 

Of course I am delighted and relieved to have reached this position. My vaccinations will happen in the Sheffield Arena - a huge concert and exhibition venue in the Attercliffe area of the city.

I wonder if I can still skip? I have not tried for ages but if I can still skip I will skip into The Arena singing, "I'm getting the vaccine! La-la-la-la-la-la! I'm getting the vaccine!" And I do not care a damn if Q-Anon have put microscopic chips in the syringes to track my movements. 

My daughter and son-in-law would like to visit friends in Toronto, Canada in October but with everybody having to have two shots they may not have had theirs by October. Besides, Canada may be operating restrictions that involve quarantining. Somehow I would not put money on them being able to go.

In other "Daily Pudding" news,  I spent a couple of hours yesterday morning in the presence of Little Miss Poo-Pants and just for a change I sang "Mary Mary Quite Contrary" to her. Did you know that this famous nursery rhyme may refer to Mary Queen of Scots and the years she spent in imprisonment? However, there are other theories about its origins:-

Mary, Mary, quite contrary

How does your garden grow?

With silver bells and cockleshells

And pretty maids all in a row

And pretty maids all in a row

At the age of four weeks, Phoebe seemed unconcerned about the verse's history.

from Yorkshire Pudding https://ift.tt/377MNyo

Grace

 Give me peace

A life full of Grace

And mercy

For my every

Mistake

from R's rue https://ift.tt/3rM3veK

I Rather Than We

Rachel Phillips said this in her blog of today


“ All you people who wake up in the morning and write about "we this" and "we that", spare a thought for those who it is "I this" and "I that" when they wake up and for the rest of the day“


I heard and understood her loneliness so well this morning. The loneliness of lockdown and the loneliness of living on your own is sometimes a difficult one to deal with and although I think I can speak for Rachel too when I say we are not banging on about all things singleton it’s nice to acknowledge that life is sometimes just a bit tougher when it’s only you at home when the doors are shut and the curtains are drawn.


Last night my friend Ruth popped around for a night in. We have been in each other’s bubbles since the start of lockdown and so it was her turn to organise dinner.
I was online completing my Hitchcock - The spy films lecture when she turned up laden down with food , and so, for a change she pottered around the kitchen preparing a delicious salad to have with Waitrose pizzas, wine and garlic bread as I worked away online.


Seeing someone else in the cottage, albeit in the background of my zoom box made me feel part of something a little bigger from what I have.......and to eat in companionable silence with someone after conversations of interest and light was a treat much more savoured that it ever used to be , because of its rarity .

We watched a film together and someone else but me cried “ oh no” when Dora left Josuè at the end I walked the dogs, whilst Ruth had a cigarette in the garden and this morning I made coffee and breakfast and loved the fact that two plates were on the table rather than just one.


I’m not banging on, I’m not saying poor me..I’m really not ...and nor is Rachel , or Libby, or Sue in Suffolk or Weaver or any of us singletons at home on this cold Friday in February ..but today I understood Rachel so well when she said what she did without self pity but with a certain sadness,


“spare a thought for those that have to say I rather than we”

from Going Gently https://ift.tt/3tS65Ss