Through the olive screen, and down the plughole

This morning I mostly let time slide, as golden syrup once slid from a spoon and decorated my breakfasts of childhood.

GG came round at one. I was distressed that I couldn't find my leather walking boots but it turned out we didn't need them, because rain stopped walking. (The sun only came out later, when I took this shot in our garden). We headed off to a farm shop and plant centre on the way to Gloucester, because I'd been given a voucher for afternoon tea for two. What tea it turned out to be! Rounds of sandwiches (gf for me), scones with jam and cream (I took mine home for Steve), enormous slices of cake. We took home more than we ate, in doggy bags. It would have gone in the bin if we hadn't!

While I was showing GG my Christmas card samples in the marquee, another customer from a different table pitched in and ordered several packs! She also told us her life story, which GG did not find very interesting. I think she was lonely. Just shows, you can work for the King of Malaysia (as she did at one time) and still have a lonely life in London and Gloucestershire. So many students I taught when I was a teacher of English as an additional language had a very difficult time getting established in London, running several jobs at once, and that was thirty-odd years ago. Now I also run several jobs at once.

Another cultural/ social history note. A friend of mine, another G, who is South African, is looking for a flat to rent. Because she has a disability, it must be (1) on the ground floor or be accessible by lift; (2) must have parking; (3)must have a walk-in shower.
I found one such flat for her online today, but it was unfortunately too large and too expensive. She said she couldn't see why it was so difficult to tick all three boxes in one property. I replied that showers are a fairly recent addition to British homes, therefore over-bath showers are more common, with standalone showers featuring only in properties with more than one bathroom, or a tiny bathroom. We had a discussion about all of that. It was only in 2007 that the council.houses in our road were upgraded to the 'decent homes standard' with upstairs bathrooms. Fifty years before that, some houses in the UK might not have had an inside bathroom at all. I thought it remarkable that my grandmother B's house, a Forestry Commission house, had an upstairs bathroom in the 1960s. Ok, so the outside wall was damp, and the paint inside turned black on a regular basis, but it WAS an upstairs bathroom, and there was a downstairs loo, too, by the back steps.

(Well that was a rabbit hole. Where were we?) CoVid cases are rising again. I've taken up doomscrolling once more, and got the ad-free version of the Guardian again. I can't believe I'm going on a coach holiday with Dave tomorrow. It seems the worst possible time to go to another part of the country, though of course it is my half term, and therefore the only possible time I could go away for five days.