Derbyshire 65 - Chesterfield /it is that time of the day again / how I want to write something different to Derbyshire as the county and Chesterfield as the town

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It's that time of the day again. Blog time . Time to catch up on another 24 hours of similar news. In the same place , sitting in the same chair perhaps we think we ought to sleep in Gabby tonight. I have lost a sock in the washing. That is the excitement for the day. It will turn up. Probably stuck in between the bedding in Gabby. How I long to write a different heading . No longer Derbyshire and Chesterfield but somewhere else . Somewhere where I can see and hear the sea. To smell its distinct smell . To walk around a garden and smell the flowers. To get in Gabby and set off somewhere.Anywhere . Dont mind a bit of travelling . It feels though a long time before we will get on the road again. Campsites are closed with little sign of opening anytime soon. Folks talk about trying to get their yearly fee back from the Camping clubs . We received our Practical Motorhome magazine this morning . Nothing in it as always . Just an invite to get in our van and get out on the road . Something we just cannot do.

This morning the walk took me out into the countryside to the pleasant part of our village . I skirted the fields and saw no-one on my morning constitutional . Just me , the cows, the smell of the farm and the occasional sound of the train a long way in the distance. Never realised I could hear the train before . The noise of life masked it helped along by the fact I was never wearing my hearing aids. Without them I feel the sound of the train rather than hear it . Life feels anything but normal. My 45 minutes of reconnecting with the world outside my window. The refuse collectors came round . The sound of them emptying our bins reminded me that life does go on . For how long though. We are all going stir crazy. Hospitals are cancelling mammograms , not sending out bowel testing kits and suspending cervical smear tests . There will be mad rush to get these done if and when life returns to normal . How many lives will be lost because they are not being done? No doubt we will find out sometime in the future .

It is the second week of the lockdown. There are no children about despite them being off school. Is it that there are no children round here or is it that parents are keeping them out of harms way? The GP surgery rings me up to check if I am well enough to come for my blood test . They are quite happy to cancel it . I need to get out and see what it shows. The surgery is eerily quiet . Not many cars on the car park . No staff to be seen inside and no patients . Everyone ill are encouraged to ring and be triaged over the phone. I walk through the door . A chair stands in the way. A sign on it says "Go home if you are ill and leave your number " The staff will ring when they can . I am asked to wait in the lobby by the receptionist in her mask . She puts her hand up to stop me going in saying that she is on the phone and will come out to me. Every step I took opened the automatic door to the outside world and I found myself trying to hide in a corner out of the way. She rang the nurse who collected me, scrubbed my hands and took my BP . Shocked she told me it was higher than it usually is . She did it three times . She took the blood . It will be a while coming back . Much longer than usual as hospital staff are off, are ill or are on holiday . The doctor will contact me with the results but she had no idea when. It all felt strange .

A day of breakfast, dinner and tea. A day of trying not to go mad . A day of re-reading where we had travelled to in the past and a day of making plans of where we might go in the future . I am sure I will look back on these blogs in a year and hopefully it will all be just a dim and distant memory .

Go on you know you are waiting for some pearl like words of wisdom - Try this one for size "It is easy to believe we are each waves and to forget that we are also the ocean". Jon J Muth . Never heard of him. He is a new addition to the words of the east I read every morning .So who is he? Time to consult Mr Google . Turns out he is still alive and is an American comics artist and children's book illustrator who is known for his painted artwork. You learn something new every day or should I say you should try to learn something new every day.

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