The ninth vaccination?

I think this beautiful morning marked our ninth covid vaccinations - I've been counting on my fingers because cracking into my records online seems harder than safebreaking. Anyway, the photo above was once more taken first thing in the morning, but I wasn't hanging out of my bedroom window: we were up at the Community Hospital along with a string of people of similar decreptude, most of whom seemed to live in our street. There was a great deal of banter as we sat briefly in a row waiting, and still more as we trooped back out in what seemed like an insanely brief time - these nurses are so speedy at mass vaccination these days. Outside, while a man with a spectacular long grey beard mowed the grass with a massive lawnmower, a group of us spent the recommended 15 minutes before driving chatting in the morning sunshine before heading home - in our case at least - to finish the breakfast we'd started some time earlier.

The next excitement was washing masses of laundry and hanging it all out on the new whirligig - a bit of a misnomer, as it has a square peg (the pole) in a round hole, so that it sort of ... grinds round. By the time I'd finished washing the clothes, all the towels, bath towels and all, were crisply dry, which is the way I like them, with that unmistakable fresh air smell. And I have to confess that there was so much underwear that you'd have thought we were a couple of caterpillars - I never actually knew I had so many pairs.

That apart, I did Italian, giddy with my position at the top of the league, then went - with Himself - to Morrison's for my weekly shop before the car went into the local garage for its service and MOT. It was hideously busy, though I got into an amusing conversation with the two women behind me in the queue while Himself did all the packing away of the stuff. Once home, I picked all the bits off the chicken we'd had last night and popped the carcass into a pot for stock before throwing together a probably rather meagre but tasty lunch of cold chicken, crisp lettuce leaves, tomatoes, garlic mayonnaise and olive oil toast bits. After that, I took the paper out to read in the garden, though because I was too idle to get out a comfy garden chair from its covering I just sat on the strangely rigid weatherproof wood bench and ended up feeling more tired than ever. 

We went down the road after that, for a brief walk along the front because I didn't want to sit in the sun all afternoon. We met a couple we'd known since she was the Head of the Primary School attended by my pair and decided that yes, we were all much older, but left them and set off along the East Bay. By this time the jags were taking effect, however, and we soon retreated to a bench in the West Bay and watched people swimming in the sea as well as paddle-boarding. 

The full force (I hope) of post-vaccination horridness struck mid-evening, but our spirits were raised by the news that our younger grandson has been selected for the Scottish team in the Atlantic Youth Cup (touch rugby) in Ireland this summer. How did I come to have such sporty grandsons? 

(You don't need to answer that ...)