Happy Birthday Emily…Don’t Burn Down The House!

As I mentioned last week, Louise and I are homeless this weekend whilst Emily has friends round to do birthday things, so I am trying out a fandangled way to schedule this post that was written a couple of days ago. The pace at which things are changing means that it will be even more irrelevant than usual but at least I tried.

Perhaps I should stick to safer ground than having any sort of opinion on the shambola of COVID and travel. It’s been a scorcher hasn’t it? It has looked lovely outside and the temperature almost matched that of my laptop that I have been chained to for almost all of the week.

Sleeping has been intermittent with the duvet abandoned for a single sheet and the precious fan we possess being trained on Oli rather than ourselves as we are big stupid soft buggers.

As mentioned above Emily has her birthday tomorrow and will be 26. Hard to fathom of course for many reasons…

1. She was 12 last week
2. She pretty much still looks 12
3. I look far too young and athletic to be having daughters over 25.

But 26 she is and time marches on and the only constant is the appearance of the usual photos to commemorate the date. We start with a rare “not at WDW” photo from the archives.

OK, on to the elephant in the room and the crushing and incessant shitefest that is the hunt for an international holiday. Nobody could have predicted of course that case numbers here would rocket with daily deaths now inevitably following…oh wait…yes everybody could and that, very understandably led the US to put the UK on its “DO NOT DARKEN THE DOORS OF THESE IDIOTS” list. Whilst I long gave up trying to second guess what may or may not happen nobody can say that is a positive move at this stage.

The totality of the plan in the UK seems to be this.

Maybe if we believe hard enough the virus will recognise that we’ve had enough now and pack its bags. The trouble is, even with packed bags no other country will allow it in as it is travelling from the diseased centre of the world the UK.

With the news of the UK being put on the US naughty list I have to say our collective hope for October lies in tatters currently. I just cannot see an end to this. I was going to put a timeframe on the end of that sentence but it seems pointless to do so.

Sigh. I miss holidays, Florida, WDW and generally not being in the UK.

Louise started a new job this week, still working in Community Nursing but with a new team. It’s always a strange time, with new things to know and learn, and a never ending pandemic won’t help. She appears to have survived so far.

My working week was an overwhelming cavalcade of too much to do and not enough time to do it with a highlight midweek of presenting to “the board”. These are the non Exec folks who preside ethereally over the company and unless you are made to present to them, you’re never really sure they exist. I remain employed so how badly could it have gone?

As we stand right now, Mustard (remember them?) are due to recommence gigging on July 31st. I say that cautiously, as between now and then is time for several U turns, backtracks and incompetence to put an end to the party we are playing at. We’ve put a decent amount of work into a new line up and a new set so that would be a shame.

So I hope this scheduled post thing worked and as you are reading this I will be out and about trying to find things to do until we are allowed home again. Modern technology is marvellous isn’t it. If it didn’t work then, you’ll be reading this much later than usual I suppose.

Till the next time……