Sky-poodle

My friend A was due to come over for a walk at noon. I got up and made brownies for her, because she has to marshal vaccination queues in the cold tomorrow morning. When she arrived we did our usual book and present swap, then set off into the sunshine. The ground was still very frosty in places, and, combined with mud, this made for some treacherous passages. We went up the Horns valley near our house, up the side of the hill to the lane at the top, by the enormous estate of Middle Lypiatt. From there we walked along a footpath to Nether Lypiatt, the haunted -looking mansion, then continued behind the house to Mackhouse wood. Once through the wood, we went into a meadow and eventually found ourselves on a green road. This led us to an actual tarmac road, which we walked down for a while, until we found a path by some houses, overlooking the village of Brimscombe. We sat on a bench and it was there that I spotted the poodle-cloud. After the footpath, we were back on another tarmacked lane, that led downhill to Bourne lane, that became Thrupp Lane, that eventually took us to the London road and home again, back uphill once more. We were just in time to hit the pub/corner shop for hot freshly made pasties. According to my friend's step-counting app, we had covered seven miles.

Clean Steve and I had lunch, or tea, in the garden but the weather was on the turn by then. We drove to Gloucester Royal Hospital for my CoVid vaccination, first jab. Never thought I'd be excited to see the outskirts of Gloucester, but it's a long time since I went anywhere, apart from Stroud!

The jab itself was fine, the process and system running smoothly. The whole thing was done in 45 minutes, with a lot of form filling and standing on taped crosses in queues, or waiting to be processed then sanitising one's own chair after use.

On the way home we listened to Cheltenham town Vs Man City. Cheltenham gave Man City a run for their money! The final score was 3-1 to Man city. 'The boys done good', as a manager might say.

Now we're watching TV (steam trains, although Steve is asleep) and recovering after our enormous curry for dinner. No side effects of the Pfizer vaccine so far.