Doing the RSBP Great Garden Bird Watch and all I’ve seen so far are five squabbling goldfinches and a great tit.
Last week someone in the next street called the council, claiming that gangs of huge rats were running amok in our adjoining Preswylfa St gardens. We all got letters advising us to take down bird feeders, among other measures.
After some consternation, sanity has prevailed. None of us has seen the rats (ok, maybe the odd one every few months) and it turns out the council letter writer has murophobia (had to look that up) so maybe not the best person to get things in proportion.
My bird feeders are staying up. One of the few solaces in lockdown is garden birdwatching. And, oh I’ve just seen a magpie.’
Last Monday I had my first Covid-19 jab. I got a phone call mid morning and the first appointment offered was the same evening, so I jumped at the chance. I was delighted to hear I’d be getting the Pfizer.
I had to do a bit of queueing outside the mass vaccination centre in Splott.
Then I was ushered inside, showed my photo-ID and was taken down a corridor by a soldier in fatigues.
Inside the vaccination hall, we sat on chairs until called into a booth for the shot.
I was fascinated by the amount of walking the vaccinators were doing: across the hall to pick up their patient, back to the booth to do the shot, right across the hall again to drop off the empty vial and pick up a new one, and then repeat. The girl who vaccinated me said she’d lost 15 kg since she started and people were regularly doing 20,000 steps a day. Who knew that vaccinating would be the ultimate workout?
I missed the chance to get a vaxxie (vaccination selfie). It never seemed to be quite the moment…
Leon’s been tracking the vaccination targets. He reckons he’ll be done by May as he has mild asthma, which counts as an underlying condition.
In the meantime, his and Lily’s cooking skills are coming on apace. They made delicious crab ravioli from scratch last night and Leon’s spent all his birthday and Christmas money on Le Creuset.
Yesterday I saw this post on FaceBook
If this is the way forward, my vaccination certificate is going to be a very precious piece of paper.
I’m longing to break for the border and get to Italy again, but content with my routine as well, now that the alarms and excursions of last year are over. I suspect I’ll look back to this restful period of limited horizons and small domestic pleasures with some nostalgia. But Procida does look lovely…
2022 and all that 