It’s been a bit milder over the last couple of days. Today it’s sunny at the moment, but there has been plenty of rain in the last week. We’re waiting for Linda to come and do our hair, and hoping she hasn’t forgotten (she didn’t) – especially as they’re threatening a new nationwide lockdown in view of the latest Covid figures. There was another dismal scientist on radio this morning, enjoying the limelight cast by projections of disaster.
By way of compensation we’re watching an excellent series on Netflix called The Queen’s Gambit, about a female chess prodigy. They’re doing a good job of portraying what happens in chess tournaments, though of course it’s impossible to reflect the subtleties in the actual play.
I thought the shower room was finished, but last Tuesday Dot did a painting job on her table: looks pretty good. We also went and picked up my pills and dropped off two black bags full of stuff at the charity shop. The garage is looking a little emptier, but not much. In the evening we had Zoom Compline in the absence of Claire (working) and Dot and Eleanor (watching Brentford and Norwich draw 1-1).
Wednesday was the big day. We left just after 10am for Aylesbury in good weather and enjoyed the journey via Woburn, where it started raining. We had an interesting end to the journey, arriving at the wrong Swan Close, which fortunately happened to be en route to the correct one. We realised what had happened before we got there because of the satnav timings, and Oliver confirmed that there had been confusion before – they had had a pizza delivered to the wrong Swan Close. Odd to have two so close together.
We had a lovely two and a half hours with Oliver and Amy. Vicky was in work meetings most of the time, but we did have a chat, and caught a glimpse of Matt too. Amy opened her presents and seemed very pleased. Interesting discussion on politics and music, interrupted briefly by a snap thunderstorm. Took our own food and drink, but Oliver actually made us tea and coffee.
Journey home was fairly straightforward, though not quite the same as the route down between Aylesbury and Woburn, and the weather wasn’t too bad. Fair amount of traffic, but not excessive. We shared the driving both ways. Had a FaceTime chat with David when we got home.
Thursday was a miserably wet and grey day. Des brought us the shopping and I got round to restringing my guitar and doing the charity money. Had a surprise phone call from Jenny Baxi in Coventry, asking about Andrew. She seemed to have lost touch; so I filled her in and promised to write – which I did, sending her a couple of pictures. My e-mail correspondence with Ann Rumsby over her family tree continues. We seem to have filled in some gaps. In the evening we watched a TV drama called The Sister – all four hour-long episodes! It was a pretty good thriller and (obviously) compelling.
Yesterday we went to Morrisons to buy soup for the evening meal – we had Caren and Phil Gazley round. Had a lovely meal (salmon), and interesting conversation – they stayed till nearly 11pm! Caren seemed very interested in our DNA; so we raked out the results we had from MyHeritage, and we told Dot’s mystery story again. I’d forgotten that though I’m 61% British and Irish, I also have a sizeable chunk of Eastern European and smaller chunks of Italian and Spanish. Very EU. Caren had the most amazing mixture, coming from New Mexico and having traces of different parts of Africa, Native American and Irish, among other things.
Earlier we discovered it was mild enough to have wine in the street: amazingly we had to remind Des, but the four of us were joined by John and Mark, and a good time was had by all, despite our talking about politics much of the time. All in the dark, of course. Earlier still I rang Lily and Kristine, both of whom are surviving, though Lily has fibromyalgia and Kristine is still missing David after three years. She is very busy, however. She promised to Zoom us when her broadband was fixed ( = became reliable).
Sadly I have just discovered that another cousin has died. Reg’s daughter Brenda apparently died in June – I don’t know what from. I learnt the news from Ann, who’d had an e-mail from Jonathan in response to an inquiry about family trees.