Day 527 of Lockdown . The days have just disappeared and I no longer seem to want to count them . I dont even know where my walking has taken me. Probably across France but in what direction . Right or left out of the tunnel - who knows which way I would go. Are the disappearing days like toothache or backache ? You know you have it . You notice it for days or even weeks and then all of a sudden the pain has gone . You never noticed it going . It just was not there one morning when you woke . Days are like that . They blend into each other and this feeling has got worse with Covid . The country opened up but we never noticed it .It is September ... read more

I went to a football match today . It has been a long time but I found myself in the stands watching the beautiful game. Something different to travelling and the first event of the year where crowds have been allowed to gather to watch a football match. We were sitting up in the gods . Row X - we couldnt get any higher if we tried . We were waiting for the game to start . We had arrived early. We had little idea how many would be attending , what the car parking would be like and to be honest what sort of afternoon we would get . It is football not soccer so thats the first clue about our little football team. We were playing a friendly against Curzon Ashton whose game against ... read more

Just for once we were trying to forget Covid . We were out for the morning . We found ourselves sitting outside a pavement cafe in the tiny village of Malpas in Cheshire . The cafe seemed almost continental and reminded us of many holidays abroad . We had sat under umberellas like this one in Madrid, in St Jean de Luz , many an Italian village , in Geneva - the list went on and on. The sun was shining and we could almost be abroad . I thought about all the blogs I had written about sunny squares in Florence, in Siena , in the Tuscan countryside . Wine drunk in gites in Annecy and Dinan . It seemed odd to be thinking about those blogs from years ago sitting on the High Street ... read more

A year ago today the window repairer had come out to repair Gabbys windscreen. We had ordered our Tyre Pal and fitted them to Gabbys wheels . After a year one has failed but then a battery probably has failed . They don't last forever. We took Gabby for a ride. We were talking about an upcoming holiday. It was Day 130 of Covid. The last day of July. It is the last day of July today. The warm weather courtesy of the Gulf Stream has disappeared . It is far colder . Less warm weather . Weather more suited to Autumn rather than high Summer. A gun metal grey sky that promises rain. In a way little has changed in a year. Covid is still with us . We have had no holiday since Christmas ... read more

"A walk can make you bloody nosy " That is what the elderly gentleman tending his Petunias told me. I agree with him . I look in gardens . I compare them here with Wingerworth. I look at what grows both cultivated and uncultivated. I take pictures of the plants and of the wildlife and I probably notice more things than I ever did . Is that in spite of Covid or because of Covid I wondered ? It is Day 508 of Lockdown in Wales , Scotland and Northern Ireland and Day 6 of English freedom . "That field across there where you live used to be a field " He said . Yes I agreed with him. I had noticed many photographs of the village in the 1950's and early 60's before the mass ... read more