I haven’t watched or read any news today. I’ll have a look for tennis related news items for tomorrow’s diary post.

Everywhere is still very quiet round here. Actually there was a house party last night but not from any of the usual offenders. They were further down the dark side of the street. I didn’t go to bed until around 1 am and they were literally screaming at the tops of their voices.

I shouldn’t really criticise anyone not following the rules. I realised a couple of days after we visited the grandkids that the rules don’t allow grandparents to hug their grandkids. Did we break the rules? Yes. Do I regret it? Honestly, no. I’m one of the boring gits who follow most rules most of the time. We have followed the lockdown rules pretty much to the letter all the way through. Three times I took the dogs out twice when we were only supposed to leave the house once for exercise. (What a rebel!). In my defence I was led astray by Sue on Tuesday. While I had a 3 year old running towards me Sue told me we were allowed hugs. It’s all her fault. She used to get me in trouble all the time. Years ago there was a guy using our parking space outside the flats where we lived back then. After a couple of days of that Sue went out in the dark with a screwdriver and stabbed all his tyres. I was horrified. Whenever we went out for a meal in the early days of our relationship when we got the bill she would always say we should “do a runner”. I was never totally convinced that she didn’t mean it. One time she did actually do it. She thought I was behind her. I wasn’t. I was still sitting at the table. She phoned me a few minutes later to ask what happened. I explained that I had not lost my fucking mind, that’s what happened.

It does feel like the lockdown has been lifted. The government are basically saying to do what you want but be careful. I went to Tesco this afternoon. It seemed a little strange to not have to join a queue to get in. They still have separate doors for entering and leaving the store. The plastic screens are still at the checkouts but everything else seemed back to normal. They were using checkouts that face one another. That won’t be ideal if the store is busy. There isn’t much room between the queues. The store was very quiet for a Saturday at 2 pm.

Before I left the house Sue asked me if I would pick up some fish and chips while I was out. I didn’t really want to queue in the fairly small shop with the people who had attended lockins at the pub round the corner since the first day of lockdown. They may well still have the social distancing measures in place. I didn’t check. They are decent guys that run it so they probably have kept them in place.

The car was back on the road yesterday. The ClickMechanic guy turned up on time with the new battery. Now I just need 3 new tyres.

From next week I think we have some better exhibition events in the tennis. Thiem’s Seven has been ok this week although they had rain delays yesterday and again today. Exhibitions can be tricky to predict but a rain delayed exhibition third place play off match should really be avoided.

Two day’s of peace coming up as Sue is working Sunday and Monday. Her and her colleagues are getting themselves stressed about being moved off their ward. There are only 2 patients on the Covid ward so they can’t expect to all be left on there. I think what they are upset about is that when they have been short staffed during the worst periods of the virus no one would go onto their ward to help. I’m not sure that I blame them. The management at the hospital are not great at people management. The ward manager is off sick but no one has gone onto the ward to thank them for all their hard work and to talk to them about moving to other wards. Maybe they could have been allowed to take a few days holiday. They just feel like they have been left to get on with it. It doesn’t help that when they turn up on other wards some of them have been treat like shit.

The staff from the Covid ward are just moaning to each other instead of complaining to someone who can do something about it. I get quite frustrated with that. I feel like I am always asking the same questions. Why haven’t you complained? Every time I get the same response that the messenger always gets shot. In fact on the few occasions when I have got through to Sue and she HAS complained or gone to speak to someone the response has been positive.

I also asked if they had complained to the union. They won’t do anything apparently. No one has actually talked to the union rep. I asked why they were all paying the monthly subs to be in the union. It was quite hard to bite my tongue this evening. I have a saying in life:

Accept your situation or do something about it.

If you choose to do nothing about it then don’t bloody moan about it!

Thy won’t do anything about it.

Stay safe.