It’s Sunday morning (or rather, what’s left of Sunday morning). We are heading out in an hour or so to a surprise destination with the kids. The local rugby club has started serving a barbecue at weekends, with socially distant tables, and an outdoor bar. You have to book tickets in advance, and we have a family ticket!
Somehow we have managed to keep the nature of the surprise a secret from the kids – I’m not entirely sure how, because they are usually pretty relentless when any sort of secret involved.
So what’s been going on for the last few days?
We went out yesterday to a Natural Trust property called “Hughenden Manor” – the home once upon a time of Benjamin Disreali – the prime minister during Queen Victoria’s reign. There are several options for walks around the grounds – we chose the longest option, which added up to about five miles through fields, woods, and riversides. For the most part we saw nobody throughout the afternoon – until we reached a riverbank near the end, and discovered a sizeable group of covidiots.
You can tell covidiots from a mile off – they visit places, but can’t be bothered to walk any distance, so congregate at the closest point to the entrance – happily infecting each other. We kept a very wide berth from them. While wandering past, not quite believing what we were seeing, I saw two teenage boys under an old oak tree by the riverbank. While everybody else enjoyed the sunshine, the river, nature, fresh air, and their own ignorance, the two teenagers hid under a tree in the dark with a bluetooth speaker, trying to record TikTok videos of each other.
I wonder what the TikTok generation will do when it gets banned? Move on to the next thing I suppose.
The rest of this week has been consumed with work – a major project is kicking off. I’ll only be involved for the next few days though – I have two weeks leave booked. I found myself in the crazy situation of not having taken any leave all year, and found myself with 24 days to use up in three months. I booked the last two weeks of July off as project managers were trying to schedule me, and still find myself with a number of days left, and no easy way of using them up. I’m allowed to carry ten days into next year, but that still leaves almost a week. I’m going to be furious if I lose them – particularly as I’ve essentially worked straight through the COVID19 period – while many co-workers were furloughed.
Anyway.
I better go get ready for the surprise outing.
