POST 364. LOST TELEVISION RECEPTION.

FOR FOUR NIGHTS.

FOR A SCORE OF PAVING STONES. Well it was a tall van and the television disc is sited on the driveway side of the property. The little guy whose momentary lapse of caution left the disc slightly less receptive than an old cat's whisker radio detector, afterwards wheeled the stones to the car park behind the house. Roz, who had ordered them, later transferred them one at a time to her newly seeded lawn area beyond the car park, and there they are in the picture. Look good, don't they? In time that path may lead to a gazebo: which will cost a bit. So maybe next year.

Meantime, she prays for rain for her grass and an absence of it for her long walks in almost empty countryside with Buddy. Fingers crossed.

AND WHY FOUR NIGHTS? Simple. Reception was lost on a Friday morning, none of us could resite the disc, and the nice guy at Sky (after an unsuccessful try at talking us through the problem} said we would need a Sky engineer; and the first one of them available to us would be next Tuesday. So that was that.

WE WATCHED old recordings and Netflix and YouTube. We now know more about many long departed actors than we know about ourselves. It was at first interesting and at length pointless. Incredibly, I missed BBC news. The Sky engineer was customarily efficient when he got here and I am now back to cursing the giftless somnambulists who produce 'reality' television. Ah well.

THIS IS STARK REALITY. After weeks of encouraging us to get out on our doorsteps and clap NHS staff and other carers (many of them on appallingly poor pay) who have risked, and in far too many cases lost, their lives to Covid 19 for us, the government of England has now decided that, when the pandemic is over, charges for hospital car parking will be reintroduced and managed by the same profiteering shits who have for years been screwing parking fees from those visiting the sick and, worse still, from the hospital staff who work there and tend them. So it will be back to square one.

Just a couple of questions:

(1) Is that the way you and your obsequious underlings repay those who saved your prevaricating, back-stabbing life, Johnson?

(2) Where, you vainglorious buffoon, did the gratitude go?

STILL AT HOME.

A pleasant young guy from our sole remaining hospital came here this morning to take blood from me. A non-fasting test. He wore a mask and told me I didn't need one, which was reassuring.

Whole procedure took no more than twenty minutes. The personal touch has to do with my age and possible vulnerability to the dreaded virus. My GP, a charming lady from somewhere across the seas who I have never met face to face, was not inclined to push a four month lockdown patient straight back into the virus front line.

The latest news on that score (just as the country is being urged back to work) is that recovery from coronavirus may not preclude you from catching it again.

So don't be careless, don't be complacent, and don't be irresponsible. Though why I write that I don't know. If you are reading this you will not be any of those things.

Mind how you go on the pavement: and keep an eye out for any silly sod riding a one-wheeled electric monstrosity – especially if his name is Jeremy.

Enough is enough.