Pussy willow

We are having a run of bad luck at the moment. Yesterday the technician who fixed the wifi throughout the house (some routers have died and some ethernet points had never been connected) decided to also upgrade the software that runs some of the systems in the house - being a new house our house is a 'smart house' with many of the systems automated. However after he had left and it got dark I noticed that the lights were not working. We phoned him and he had just reached his home in London but he came all the way back here to sort the lighting system - it was a simple thing he had forgotten to reset but he needed to come back here to do it. I cooked supper in the dark but by 8pm we had lights again!

This morning we set the alarm for very early as the Gaggenau dishwasher technician was coming to repair the dishwasher, and we got a text to say he would be arriving between 6am and 8am! Yikes they start early - he arrived at 7am. As we have only lived in this house for three and three quarter years, you would not expect an expensive dishwasher to break but it did - the repair cost half of what a new dishwasher would have cost but we had it repaired as he had the part with him (we had given him the error code on booking so he knew which part to bring). We have also had some other minor things going wrong so I hope that is now the end of that!

Early this morning I heard helicopters flying in our area and then I saw a message on our neighbourhood whatsapp group to say a man had parked his car at the woods last night and he was missing so the police were searching the area, and to keep a lookout for him if we were walking in the woods. Sadly his body was found this morning. This is the second suicide in our local woods in the past few months. All we hear about in the news is the people dying from Covid but they do not publish the figures of the rise in mental health issues due to lockdown. If there is a third wave and summer holidays are cancelled this situation will only get worse. 

Lockdown has been manageable for middle class families sitting in their comfortable homes, but for many it has been an extremely challenging and difficult time. Think about those who have to sit on their bed in their bedroom as there is no where else to work, sitting on their computers and zoom all day, and now the message from our government is forget about booking a summer holiday. 

More sad news - the seal that has been spotted in the  Twickenham/Teddington area was attacked by a dog while it was basking in the sunshine on a canoe slip, and despite people attempting to fight the dog off and help the seal it has died (one person was also bitten in this rescue attempt). 

The pussy willow is looking beautiful at the moment - so called because the tiny furry nubs look like cat's paws, and then they burst open looking like fireworks exploding.