Dawn Breaking on the Day after the Winter Solstice

I left the Dower House once again in the dark this morning to walk a mile and a half to the local Waitrose to buy my favourite peanut butter and some of my favourite apples thinking that I would beat the crowds, but I had forgotten about Christmas and Level 4 lockdown. I was taken aback to discover a queue of people waiting to get in to the shop at 7:40. I have never had to stand in a queue to shop for the whole of the last 9 months and was even more disturbed to fine the fruit and vegetable aisles clogged full of trolleyed punters. I ran to the peanut butter aisle grabbing a bag of apples and one of sultanas on the way and escaped.
To make matters more farcical, when I got back home I found my little local Sainsbury’s empty, and shelves bursting with produce, although I didn’t check the state of the toilet roll aisle especially after I saw an elderly lady staggering under the load of a pack of 10.

In the afternoon while making some chocolate chip cookies for a neighbour I poured into the mixture the contents of a small half empty packet of what I though were chocolate chips only to discover they were pumpkin seeds. Just at that moment my grandson arrived at the backdoor with presents. He must have been a bit offended that I wasn’t allowed to have him in the house to wait while I picked out the offending seeds and couldn’t speak to him for more than a few minutes.

The early morning walk back home was a delight as dawn broke and the rising sun lit the topmost flats in Quartermile making it look like an ancient city on top of a hill.