Busy table!

The last remaining cards are to be posted by Saturday. The last date for 2nd class mail.
Lots of gifts still to wrap. Ordered on-line and delivered here.
The washing machine refused to do anything this morning!
So we checked the filter which meant laying down our two outsized beach towels before we opened it.
Water flows out immediately so we were prepared.
Nothing wrong with the filter or the draining pipe which goes into the sink.
An hour’s wait on the phone for an appointment to come and fix it.
But it is the run up to Christmas and the latest lot of advisory and mandatory advice coming out of Westminster has affected firms, and so has this latest virus.
A third of London’s population are not vaccinated at all. I make no comment on the rights or wrongs other than to say most of the hospital beds there are taken by non-vaccinated people.
Someone is coming out on Christmas Eve. I nearly said to Stephen to cancel it feeling sorry for the engineers. But the next available date was almost January.
I then had an early lunch and went up to our local shopping centre to the hair salon. They are all really worried there about what will happen next.
A lot of them are in their 20’s and 30’s with families and husbands who work too. (And believe me they need two incomes).
It is like the whole country was looking forward to a better Christmas this time in many ways, and someone pulled the plug on the lights.
So stay safe out there.
More people up at our local shops we’re wearing masks outside as well as inside.
My French friend Thierry is tearing his hair out today about the French Government’s directives. The number of times the rules have altered about tests and quarantine makes it so hard and expensive.
He’s due to fly out from Bristol (cheapest flight he could source) to Grenoble, to see his elderly mum and his sister and family, on Friday.
He has dual nationality.
Just had a long email from him.France has closed its border to UK citizens as from Saturday, with some exceptions and French citizens still allowed in.
How much we need real HOPE at this end of another ravaged year which was on the cusp of slowly seeing more normality.
“The world is out of joint…..” To misquote Hamlet.