Murky Waters

Monday is my birthday and, as a treat to myself, a little lockdown birthday present to myself arrives - a set of Sonos speakers for my ‘new office’. I receive a keg from Daughter to go with my two from L. At the same time L’s new Garmin watch arrives, that I’ve contributed to for her birthday in two weeks’ time.

Later we both go for a run, dog free, meet up with Daughter, and run through the deserted city centre which actually isn’t anywhere near as deserted as I thought it would be.

By Wednesday the Government is further muddying the already murky waters that are the Covid-19 death figures by including care homes in the number for first time and presumably back dating them but I can’t find any official figures that would confirm this.

Meanwhile the angry folk on the internet don’t know how to deal with everything that is going on. The virus seems to not only be racist but quite possibly sexist as well. Outrage. By the normal way of things the virus should have both apologised and resigned by now. Sadly, for the angry folk, it doesn’t even appear to be on Twitter.

Throughout the week I binge watch ‘Normal People’ which is the new TV series everyone is talking about. Oh how it is to be populist for once. L gives it a brief disparaging eye and leaves me to it. She’s read the book but didn’t rate it. Obviously I haven’t read the book but I watch all twelve half hour episodes over three nights.

It does start off with you wanting to club both of the main characters around the head with progressively larger and more painful objects. Of course this may be why people can relate to it. I can recall plenty of people who extracted that particular desire from me as I passed through the School to University to Post-University period that the series documents. Then it slides more into my traditional territory as it gets progressively darker and miserable in the second half.

We have a wet few days, so the Lad doesn’t get a run until Thursday. The joy of not having any plans is that I can run whenever and not just when there are gaps in my schedule. Schedules are so last year. Naturally, it starts to rain five minutes after we’ve left the house.

We’re back in time for Jay’s Quiz, which is still going strong, but The Times quiz doesn't reappear having, I think, disappeared under the weight of its own technological failures. 

(Friday 1^st May)

Room Full Of Roses

The next day our friends go out for a drive, looking for castles. We stay in bed, get up, have breakfast then go back to bed again. There’s plenty of time to go out and about later.

We do eventually head out for walk and to survey the sights but rather predictably we end up in a bar. This one’s a good one, Café Rose Red which actually has red roses aplenty suspended from the ceiling. We have a couple of beers before heading back to the hotel and then later heading out to meet our friends.

After having a few false starts finding a decent bar we take the safe option and end up back at Café Rose Red. Like we did in Brussels we feast on plates of meat and cheese alongside the excellent beers. I think we’ve settled in for the night but our friend wants the Flemish Stew he didn't opt for last night. So we find somewhere that does stew and the rest of us have waffles alongside a Leffe Brune.

The search for another bar takes us to T’Brugsch Bieratelier which coincidentally seems to be right near our hotel. The bar is a rarity in Bruges in that it only does beers on tap and has twelve of them. Suits me, always prefer draught to bottled even if it is only keg.

(Saturday 4^th June)