Weekly Chat (Non-Osprey), 24 January 2021

Glad that you are happy with your new blinds, LINDY. You are so lucky with the view from your home.
'Our' shop did better yesterday, thank goodness. Son and I had a long talk this morning. He feels so sorry for some of his friends in the restaurant business. It seems crazy that you can't eat in a restaurant, socially distanced but can go into a supermarket with nothing except advice to distance, which is ignored by so many customers.

Of course I understand about essential shopping, etc and the need to stay at home. It's just that I've observed folk meeting up in supermarkets and was it entirely by accident? One has to wonder, there will always be those who get some kind of kick out of circumventing rules !

HEATHER Glad your son had a better day. We now do "click and collect" at Tesco. I wish M&S did the same.

We are just back from an afternoon walk with Benson. We hadn't gone far when he started to play up, refusing to go left or right or straight on so we headed back towards home. Turns out he had spotted a ball in a garden and decided he wanted it. Well we couldn't let him pick the ball so home we came. We thought afterwards we should have let him take the ball and walk all the way round with it before dropping it off on the way back. Maybe tomorrow, if it is still there!!

View of blind, and the view! The blind is not as dark as it appears here. 

Amber loves her snowman - they only got snow today.

Morning all:

Lindybird: You'd have to be young to want to hug a block of ice!  The blinds are nice - a bit of pattern but not too busy.

dibnlib/SunnyKate:  I'd probably leave the jigsaw out longer if I didn't need the space.  Jigsaw Planet is good, but I like being able to touch the pieces - a bit like reading actual books rather than using a Kindle.

Heather:  Ha! Good try! I'll let you know how my list goes, but must confess I spent a lot of time thinking about what I should do before I sat down and focused on the various categories (House/Garden/Office/Out-and-About, etc.,). Things became more 'real' and somehow attainable once I wrote them down. Glad your son's shop had a good day.  I guess the rationale behind closing restaurants is that people can't eat with a mask on and inside dining just makes it worse.  We can only get take-out here with even outdoor dining banned at this point.  I can't imagine how those people are coping.  Just this week we lost a favorite local restaurant that's right on the beach; it had been there for 36 years. And my favorite bakery has just abandoned its original downtown location which did a roaring lunchtime trade thanks to its proximity to the courthouse, associated buildings and other downtown businesses.   

Sunny and bright but cool here today but lots of lovely rain en route.

Goodness, Lindy, it took a lot of snow to build a snowman as large as that. We had about half an hour of really heavy snow with great big flakes. It looked very pretty for a little while, and then the snow turned to sleet and it washed most of the snow away. Wouldn't even have made a decent-sized snowball! I saw on the news people tobogganing on quite thick snow only about twenty miles away from here. The snow has more or less disappeared now. Wonder if we'll get any more?

I went into a local supermarket yesterday, having not been inside a shop since the beginning of December. I was disappointed with the way people were behaving - not keeping socially distanced, stretching across other people to reach items they wanted, going the wrong ways up aisles. I did give someone The Glare when she stood about a foot behind me at the checkout! I suggested as politely as I could that she should stand behind the line on the floor behind her ...

Its disappointing how soon people seem to forget once they are inside a shop. You were right to point it out, Pat - quite often the staff have to police the checkouts, as some folk ignore the lines on the floor.

Heather, hope business is picking up for your son. There are several restaurants near here which I'm sure will not be opening their doors again, including one which had only just opened during the break between the first and second lockdown and then had to shut up almost right away! Goodness knows how much money they lost on their venture.

Its gone cold again here tonight, after not thawing out much today so the old snow is still on the hedges and trees.

I do agree with the cartoon!

Haven't looked further back - still sleepy a lot of the time, but certainly many things better than they were. A tough weekend here as someone special from church is seriously ill - major surgery today, so very much on all our minds.

Weather cold and sunny. Been having good moments watching two woodmice taking bird food into their "cave".