Friday April24: Another clear, hot day. Busy morning editing videos of me reading

Phoney face… high-tech toddler

Danny for #UKCBCfest20. Emailed isolating elderly friends for a catchup. 

… Went for a forecourt sundown beer and started Ben Kane’s Lionheart. Sun still beautifully warm.

Daughter Facetimed. Fuzzy Grandson calling out the names of his new collection of farm animals, his stocktake punctuated with spurts of frantic dancing. Menagerie includes duck, pig and anatomically impressive horse.

He can identify them all but pronunciation is still half-formed. Horse comes put as ‘ourrrse’ with a zoider drinker’s slur.

He’s so keen he even shouts it out when he sees a Lloyds TSB Bank sign.

Grandson, not yet two, has greater tech skills than many adults I know and is fascinated by the special effects on his mother’s phone. Makes for some weird calls.

Hospital deaths up 684 to 19,506

Animal magic… grandson’s new collection

Saturday April25: Up around 10ish. Gently ejected bee worrying away at my sash window pulley. Cloud soon cleared to give another sunny day. Read papers, checked tablet. Bangers-eggs-shrooms for brekkie. 

… Saw the Walking Man a few doors down where I now know he lives. Waved. Soon after he came up, hair wild and spiky and a hospital band on his wrist. Long story short, he’d looked unwell when I last saw him sitting on his wall and had said he didn’t think he’d see out the pandemic.

Shortly after he had collapsed on the pavement and was whisked to hospital by ambulance. Leaning on the car for support, he said he’d tested negative for Covid-19. What he does have is lung cancer which will kill him in three to five months. He was discharged last night and sent home with 17 different medications. 

As he talked a massive white SUV cruised by. It stopped, driver’s window glided silently down and a big-faced man with a thick accent asked if I wanted my forecourt paved. Said no and returned my attention to WM.

He plans to clear his bedsit and move back to his wife. He’s lived in this terrace converted into four bedsits for 11 years. When he moved in he asked about the ground floor room but was told it was occupied.

Later they found the tenant had been dead 7 months, the room stinking. They stripped it, fumigated and redecorated but a new occupant claimed it still lingered and spent his first three weeks sleeping in a tent in the garden. WM is going home because, as he told me, if he dies in his bedsit no one will know. 

At least clearing it out will keep him busy. I wished him well.

… Later, went walking. Then home for beer and reading on the forecourt. Later, took pix of a sliver of crescent Moon rising below Venus.

Hospital deaths up 813 to 20,319

 

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