A Fishy Story

Thursday afternoon I ordered online from our local fish producers, here in Peel.

This morning, around 10 a.m. the delivery man left a bag of fish in the porch and rang me from his mobile 'phone to let me know that my order had been delivered.

1kg of fresh haddock, half a kilo of hake, 1kg of fish pie mix and two tubs of mixed crab meat.

All exquisitely fresh and wholesome looking and now divided up and in my freezer.

There was an invoice in the bag so all I had to do was go online and pay by bank transfer.

What a wonderful service!

 

Bear Hunt

Hang out all the bunting!

Come and take a chair

Daddy's gone a-hunting

He's gone to fight the Bear.

The Bear is quite invisible

He can't be seen at all

He seems to be invincible

It's been a long old haul...

But Daddy's got the vax, Dear

He'll jab it in your arm

So there's no need to fear, Dear

We'll all be safe from harm.

My sincere apologies for the truly excruciating doggerel but I wanted to do something to cheer myself up on a day when our island has had the highest spike in cases since the pandemic began last year.

The vaccine rollout here is supposed to be ramped up now as we are getting 10,000 additional doses from the UK this month.  Yippee!

My sleeve is rolled up and I am ready and waiting.

On And Off

P finally received his letter today inviting him to register for an appointment for his vaccination.  They have just got around to the over 70s here.

He is supposed to ring the helpline number 111 to register and they will give him his appointment details.

Well, he tried calling on and off from the time we received the letter, around midday, until he lost patience and gave up, around 5 p.m.

I was browsing the online news feeds late this afternoon when a post popped up from Manx Telecom saying, oops sorry, there is a problem with the 111 line which we are trying to fix.  By the time it was sorted out at 6 p.m. all the helpline staff had finished for the day so there was no reply.  

Hopefully we will have better luck tomorrow.

Oh, and another three week circuit breaker lockdown has now been introduced tonight due to another sudden spike in cases, most likely caused by the ferry company staff member who brought it here last week.

Cest la vie!

A Different Take Away

Tonight we were supposed to be having supper at our friends' house with a few other couples, around 10 of us in total.  Each couple (well, wife really) was going to provide a different element of the meal.  My task was to make a chocolate trifle, which I did with great care and considerable amounts of chocolate and Cassis.

At around 2 p.m. there came an announcement on the local news feeds online that a further virus outbreak had been identified and that all residents were being advised to remain at home.  A Government briefing at 3 p.m. said that although an official lockdown has not yet been put in place, further information will follow tomorrow, Sunday, once more test results were in.

So, our soiree was off but we all had huge amounts of food that had already been prepared and waiting to be eaten. We hatched a cunning plan.  At 6:30 p.m. we all convened in a local car park, where we could all maintain social distancing, and brought along plastic takeaway containers. We then visited each car boot where the food was laid out and helped ourselves to our supper then drove home to eat it.

It was delicious, and we didn't break any rules!

Wild

 Today we have severe gale force winds with gusts of around 65 mph.  A bit of a let-down after yesterday's bright, sunny weather.

P went to visit a friend this morning to play chess so I was home alone, but the weather provided me with a little entertainment.  

As the gusts grew stronger and stronger I looked out of the window to see that the sturdy plastic lockable garden store that our neighbours, Mr & Mrs Three-Sheds. had left lying around in their garden was being blown around by the gusts.  As I watched, it was sent tumbling head over heels towards our boundary.  It is quite a large, heavy duty box so the sight was pretty alarming. At one point it became lodged against the fence, then another gust lifted it into the air, ripped off both doors and flung them over the fence into our garden, where they rolled over and over before becoming wedged against one of the apple trees.  The box was still leaping and bounding in the air, trying to vault over the fence to join its doors.

Eventually the doors shook themselves loose from the tree and continued their journey towards our greenhouse. I grabbed my wellies and strode out across the bog patch that used to be our lawn. I managed to wrestle with the doors and dragged them up into the workshop beneath the house, locking them in for safety.

i returned to the house and nervously watched the box as it continued its frantic efforts to leap over the fence.  Suddenly, a particularly strong gust of wind picked it up and tipped it unceremoniously over the fence - into our other neighbours' garden where it lodged itself amongst their shrubbery. Phew!  A lucky escape.

When P returned home he told me that the road back from Peel was strewn with wheelie bins and other detritus from people's gardens.  Quite a danger to traffic I would think.

The winds are forecast to die down overnight, but I wonder what damage will be wreaked in the meantime.