Lockdown from Bridport - Part 3 - Day 14

An uneventful day unless you count watching no less than ten police paying a visit to a house along the street and a chance meeting with a couple contemplating buying a large property in France, whereupon I promise to drop them in a copy of my book Last Tango in Carcassonne which is about just that and more besides.

I make my way to the shop where the electrician is doing some work and am pleased to overhear a woman saying how pretty the colours are in the window display. There is a card on the mat saying the postman was unable to deliver a parcel. A stroll to the sorting office finds it closed. It is a grey day with a rawness to the air. There is nothing to hang about for so I head home.

I had forgotten how good baked beans on toast can be but this lunchtime they fitted the bill perfectly. Giving me a much needed boost I take up the dreary task of phoning Yorkshire Gas & Power to question yet another invoice. Had I have known they would be such a pain in the butt to deal with I would have avoided them like the plague. Their excuse is that its EDF at fault, the company owned by the French national provider. I'm supposed to tolerate their incompetence then whilst my bank account gets sucked dry. 

I twiddle my thumbs for a while feeling restless and useless. It starts to drizzle so I nip out to bring in some washing on account of refusing to use the tumble drier unless we absolutely have to. There is a rustling sound coming from the shed so I instinctively step forward thinking a bird must be caught in there. Out scurries Mr Rat looking in fine fettle with a spring to his step and neatly side stepping me nips down the drain, rattling the cover as he does so.

'The Undertaker' arrives home and I start to recount my day. He has an on-line meeting tonight with the Army so any slouching on the sofa and binge watching on Netflix together is off the cards. His phone goes. A Covid positive pick up. He looks unhappy and with good reason. 'Mr Ratty' is the least of our problems' he says. 

What really upsets me is the people still in denial out there, the ones who bang on about it being a conspiracy theory, usually from the comfort of their sofa with no idea of what is really happening on the front line. Stay criticising from afar then and when you are offered the vaccine do the decent thing and step aside. Let every front line worker, be it from the postmen, the delivery workers, the refuse men, the supermarket workers and everyone who has to work from behind the scenes keeping the country going for you, be jabbed first.