I just woke up in front of the computer screen. It’s 11.27 and if I can’t stay awake while I’m writing a blog it suggests that the post isn’t worth finishing.

My alarm was set for 6.30 this morning as I had a blood test. Naturally I woke at 6.12. That is a bad time – too soon to get up and too late to have a nice warm snooze. A bit of lateral thinking and I went back to sleep with the clock now set for 6.45. Good plan, but poor execution as I then slept until nearly 7.00.

Next bit of bad planning – the car has been parked up for five days. It started, but with an outside temperature of -4°C and a five day coating of ice and frozen snow, it took a bit longer to de-ice than I had planned.

The Road through Clumber park

Non of this actually mattered because when I got down to Phlebotomy, there were two phlebotomists looking very lonely. The one by the door actually told me not to sit in the waiting area a they were ready for me. It took two attempts, the car parking is still free and, unlike the last few weeks, it was actually light. There are no actual flowers out now, but the snowdrops are on the verge of opening. It was not a bad blood test, all things considered.

The trip into work was uneventful, though there did seem to, be more traffic than you would expect from a lockdown. This agrees with the figures about the number of people in work, compared to the first lockdown. I didn’t find any figures when I looked for them but I did find a story about the problems of hippos in Columbia. They  are taking over the waterways after being introduced, via the private zoo of Pablo Escobar.

In the Mencap Garden

Currently, after waking up, I am trying to concentrate as workmen build a drum in next door’s drive. It was meant to be a wooden garage, but the noise indicates it is a drum. A big one.

I’d better get some work done as this could be my last day in lockdown.  Tomorrow I’m going to the shop to work on my own – I offered to do it because everyone else is working and it seems a bit unfair not to do it. I will wipe everything down before leaving.

Then next week it looks like I will be back in work. By Monday I will be at the end of the self-imposed 14 day quarantine. I still don’t see why we are going back to work, but the owner has paid us full wages through three lockdowns and I suppose he’s getting fed up with it. This is known as Pandemic Fatigue, and is not to be confused with the fatigue that lingers after Covid. That is Post-Viral fatigue.

Off the Coast at Southend on Sea.

The photographs are some I have dredged up from old memory cards – some really good memories. They are random, and nothing to do with the content of the post, but I hope you like them.