A toy off the rack – 27 July 2022

It was coming today, but not until evening. Who would want to be a DPD driver.

It was an early rise for us lazy folk. The lady with the long cotton bud and the questions was coming between 9.30 and10.30am.

She arrived right between those times, and this was to be her last visit to us because from now on we’ll get a sampling kit sent to us and once it’s been used we’ll post it away for checking. The questioning will be done online. All those folk who’ve stood in the rain with masks on, dispensing the sampling kits and asking the questions finish work at the end of the month. I felt quite sorry for her because she seemed to enjoy the work and the meeting people. However, the cotton bud down the throat and up the nose still had to be done today and the questions had to be answered and logged for one last time. I think we’ll keep it on for a while anyway, if just for the free test.

Scamp went off after that to get some essentials from Tesco and I started working out how I’m going to get tomorrow’s picture for Flickr Friday. The topic is ‘Kiss’. My plan involves two ‘Troopies’, male and female kissing. Not as easy as you might think. While I was working on it I got a text from DPD to say that the lens would be delivered between 7.09 and 8.09pm tonight. I had hoped it would be here earlier, but it was not to be.

When she returned, Scamp had bought bread and some bananas. That was lunch sorted for both of us. After lunch, Scamp wanted to cut the front grass because it was a lovely warm day and there’s just the chance t might rain tomorrow and you can’t cut wet grass. While she was doing that, I thought I’d better be gainfully employed, and used the new radiator brush to clean out the inside of the back radiator. It’s amazing how much gunge gets stuck in the vanes of those heaters.

With that done, I offered to cut the remaining grass. I hadn’t realised how technical, cutting a couple of square metres of grass is, but with plenty of instruction from Scamp I got it finished. Or almost finished because she was pointing to a bit I’d missed. Then I was unloading the clippings the wrong way too. I gave up and went for a walk in St Mo’s.

I didn’t get much today, because there wasn’t a lot of insect life about. A couple of Ringlet butterflies was all I found. I was just heading for home when I got a message from Scamp asking me to get a lettuce from the shops. I phoned her to say I’d no money, but if she wanted I’d meet her and we could walk to the shops together. On the way to meet her I found today’s PoD. It’s the seed heads of a Sweet Cicely plant. I’ve photographed them before, but didn’t know their name. Mr Google did. When we got back there was just enough time for a relaxing G ’n’ T in the garden.

Dinner was a salad with lettuce, potato salad (last of our ‘earlys’) beetroot and prawns for me. I’m not really keen on big prawns served cold. I’d wished we’d got some small fresh prawns at the shops. Never mind, it was food. Plus there was strawberry jelly and ice cream for dessert.

Just after 7.30pm the driver delivered the box from MPB. Inside was a red box. This is important. It appears that there is a group on YouTube who have proved that lenses that come in red/orange boxes are better than those that come in white boxes. It’s probably utter tosh, but this was a red box, so I knew we were good!

It’s a neat little lens. Solid feeling and it does indeed produce a distorted wide angle view. Unfortunately it was starting to get dark before I could get any decent images, so tomorrow is testing day.

Tomorrow we have no plans. I thought we were going to a tea dance, but Scamp decided to err on the side of safety. Probably quite right.