New Year tunnel

Yesterday, I spend pretty much the whole daylight dayin the Yaris  repatriating Dau.II to the People's Republic of Cork. At about the same time The Beloved set off in the opposite direction running the same service for Dau.I. We did this because instructed to do so by the troika of NPHET, the HSE and Bill Gates. Old Bill wants us to distribute his Location Chips as widely as possible. I thought traffic might be like the last day of a bank holiday weekend, so packed a thermos and sandwiches. But I was wrong [as yet again!] and we sailed West on a truly gorgeous sunny winter morning. The sea was sparkling and the frost persisted only in hedge-shadow. We would, of course, preferred to run that trip after the New Year weekend but The Man mandated full metal lockdown starting in synchrony with Actual Brexit.

Bereft without the daughters.

But bitter tears butter no parsnips. I had phoned Sam Dennigan's Cork warehouse on Monday to discover a) they had taken delivery of their first truckload of Seville oranges b) they were open for biz until 2pm on Thursday. Their gaff looked truly shuttered when we arrived outside but there was a light in the office window upstairs and someone came down to let me in and carry off a 13kg fruit-box of potential marmalade. If we are not allowed out from home, I may as well do something useful.

I woke this morning <late, knackered> to a peculiar dream that resonated with the Annual Summer Camp we ran with/for the girls over seven years while they were still more children than adults: I was up the lane with a shovel tricking about with drains [as ever] when I heard a boinggy sound issuing from the 20m⌀300mm pipe that take the water under a gateway. After a short time a small boy, about the age of Gdau.I and Gdau.II, in now muddy white shirt and shorts, emerged grinning from the end of the pipe; followed by half a dozen similarly triumphant children. They'd been set a challenge, embraced it with gusto and carried it through to completion. There is light at the end of every tunnel! Looking forward to seeing how 2021 plays out: elbumps to all my reg'lar readers.