Author: Contributor

15.12pm Sunday 10 May 2020

Glory Be.  I can finally say without any contradiction that Mrs Gimpy Gull has finally laid something of note across on the roof opposite.  She or both of them have now been nest sitting for over 24 hours. I believe they do share the chores but I don’t know when he takes over to give her a break.  Is it from the outset soon after she has struggled to produce another miracle of nature into this traumatic, fearful locked down world?  Or does he take over sometime later? Perhaps as late as when the chicks actually emerge?

I’ll be counting down now to see when these cute golf sized balls of feathers begin to strut their stuff across the roof.  Then in mid July when they seriously begin to exercise their wings by flapping and hopping up and down onto various roof top obstacles.  Then one day they are gone  Never to be seen again if these past 3 years are anything to go by.

15.30pm

My Sunday lunch has just been delivered.

17.15pm

Wow that was lovely for a take away Sunday lunch.  The desert was fabulous.  The dinner as a whole was a treat, leaving me with Happy Thoughts.

12.30pm Monday 11 May 2020

The only good thing about this morning was a phone call to my older sister in Exmouth to find out if she is coping.  She is losing her sight bit by bit so can no longer use her mobility scooter.  She is housebound, without the added extra of Lockdown.  Like me she is more used to being on her own and she has friends and family nearby.  One piece of bad news from her was the fact that her favourite grand daughter Sam, is in hospital with Sepsis.  I have never met any of my sisters family, her son or her daughters let alone their children  I never knew I had an older, older sister until about 20 years ago.  She, my other sister Sheila and I, are the children of her father Arthur who brought her up after stealing her away from my mother before the war.

So when my mum became pregnant with Sheila and then myself, she went back to Ireland so he could not take us as well.  Sheila stayed in Ireland and when she returned after the war she could not speak english.  By which time my mum had another daughter by someone else.  The three of us were brought up as brother and sisters.  Not knowing who our father was.  It was intimated he died in the war as with so many other children down our street.  So life was normal for all of us until Sheila got married and the priest called her by a different surname than the one we were all brought up with.  Secrets and lies as with many of us war babies.  I’ve yet to encounter any friends of my age who does not have some kind of question mark regarding their parentage.  Pat my eldest sister is ok.  She is happy as am I.

I am waiting for Boots to deliver my medication.  I was told it would be somewhere between 9am and 1pm.  Ten minutes to go then by my clocks.

The toner cartridge on my printer is getting low.  I bought a new one but until an hour ago was afraid to attempt to put the new one in.  I geared myself up and managed to expose the workings of the printer without doing any damage.  Fuck my old boots.  I have absolutely no idea how  to remove the old one let alone put in a new one.  I cannot even see the old one.  I have no idea what it looks like or how to change it if and when I do find it.  This is the main drawback of the lockdown.  I cannot ask any of my friends to come over to help me.  To show me what to do and how to do it. It just means I will be unable to print anything until such time as I can ask someone to change the toner cartridge for me.  On my own. Helpless as a kitten up a tree.

The violent dreams have returned.  I made the mistake of reading something about boris…….

13.00pm

The medication has just been delivered.

…… on Facebook.  I get so angry.  I cannot watch the news anymore and now I cannot even read the Facebook news clips.  If I have read an actual article I usually read the comments.  OK so those who make comments on any particular article are not necessarily my friends nor are they lesbian or gay.  I’m finding out there is a kind of cross over of people who read various articles.  What I find difficult to understand is the fact there are so many apologists for the actions of the present governments actions.  Paid party hacks to defend at all costs?  As they do on Yahoo’s comments on various news stories.  In Yahoos case I’m finding it difficult at times to immediately see if the posters are from the States or here.  Those commenting on British politics are nearly all far right wing.  These trolls took over all the first 10 comments spots during the whole period leading up to Brexit.  They monopolised the first page of comments.  I could not understand this at first.  Was Yahoo allowing them to fill these spaces?  Then it dawned on me that no these posters masquerading as common folk like myself were far from common folk.  They had to be being paid by some right wing focus group, working secretly on behalf of the tory party, to clog up any kind of discussion taking place online in these comments pages.  They followed a definite discernible pattern.  Particularly when any story concerned a woman.  The misogynist trolls came out in force.  Every single post were from men.  Heterosexual men who loathed women and did everything they could to attack the woman who happened to be part of the original story.  These same men would dump upon any story involving the LGBT community.  At first I got angry.  Then I told myself this was a golden opportunity to go troll hunting.  The troll hunting has  become a bit of a delightful past time these last two years.  It does however get a bit draining  because I am a single person picking off the Troll hordes one by one.  I could do with a couple of dozen more troll hunters to help me out.

14.31pm

YEEESSSS!  I was right.  I just witnessed Mr and Mrs Gimpy Gull doing a change over.  That is what I wanted to see.

14.58pm

In the middle of that my Waitrose delivery slot page popped up to tell me there were now slots available for Saturday afternoon between 2 & 3pm.  So I‘ve been food shopping. That is always a relief.  The underlying tensions in the past waiting for a delivery slot have been unnecessary.  I seem to have cracked the timescale for slots to come online.  I think about 3 days before I need the slot seems to do the trick.  I’m happy now.  I can relax.  Have a snooze even.