God I think this guy's great!

It's like a bloody roller-coaster here at the moment, but not for the reason you might think. Jordan and Jen phoned last night and Jen mentioned that Jordan had been off work for three days with dizziness and vomiting and that she was "glad she'd got her ob/gynae appointment tomorrow" because she was again having contractions! She's not a panicker by any stretch of the imagination (and thankfully neither am I) but I was moithered last night I reckon because she's only 18 weeks pregnant! Bloody hell! Anyway, the good news is that Lily's covid test came back negative, Jen's midwife wasn't worried about her or the baby and the work's doctor saw Jordan and confirmed it wasn't covid either, but did not make a diagnosis. By Thursday he was better and back at work but - and I'm not sure if this makes sense since I'm not a medical person - but his symptoms sounded to me like some of those that can be associated with problems of the inner ear. So then I got to thinking about the (frankly god-awful) music they play in their band at heaven only knows how many decibels and even though they all wear ear plugs I was wondering if that could have similar effects at some point. My ex would be in the living room playing music with his headphones on, I would be in bed with ear plugs in and I could still hear it and he is most certainly pretty deaf, although of course he denies it. Thankfully that is no longer my problem. His gf can enjoy the delights of constantly having to repeat herself and listening to the TV at full blast. Anyway, all that to say, at least we had somewhat "calming" news today chez moi!

Since the weather was glorious I decided to take Monsieur Macron up on his kind offer of a one hour walk. I walked along the railway line down towards the church, but very conscious of making sure I didn't go over my one-hour limit or further than 1km away from home as the crow flies, (but since I'm not a crow I can't be sure I totally conformed there)! As I was walking I noticed a man a little further down on the other side of the tracks walking his dog about 10 metres one way, turning round and walking back 10 metres and so on, so I reckoned this business about "not being more than 1km from home" was definitely getting to him. Ha, when I got up closer I saw that he was mowing a strip of grass running along the side of the railway line! Methinks I might be overdue a new pair of glasses! When I was about 50 metres from home I bumped into the neighbour whose garden backs onto mine. Well, basically most of the field you can see in my header picture belongs to her. So she asked me in for a coffee. When I explained to her that Monsieur Macron said I only had another 10 minutes of exercise time left she just laughed and said "have you seen the size of my garden, we can keep a distance of about a km between us and then you can skip through the hedge back home". So I stayed and had a coffee with her and guess what, I didn't get caught! Talk about living dangerously - a bit like the Englishman who eats his After Eights at 7.30! Since I don't have French TV she was telling me that there was a more than likely possibility that the French would extend the state of emergency until mid-February! I was horrified but then as my son explained to me, it simply means that the possibility of maintaining or imposing covid-related restrictions remains within their remit, not that they would necessarily be doing so! Still, at least when Macron spoke to the nation he reiterated that it was his decision and j'en accepte pleinement la responsabilité! Now this is pretty difficult to translate into English because you hear it so rarely, but basically it means "it's my decision and I take full responsibility"! See what I mean about it being "difficult to translate"!

André is getting excited about the possibility of getting his own place and has another meeting at the bank next week. So tonight he's been rattling on about furnishings and decorations and I convinced him to start looking at various stores online to get an idea about what he might need and how much it would cost. Of course what he might like and what he eventually gets will be two different things but it's good to see him so happy. He's been bobbing up and downstairs getting himself a beer, then another one, and then ..... so last time he passed me I told him I'd had a lightbulb "time and efficiency" idea and suggested that if he just took the bottle of beer and poured it directly down the toilet it would cut out using him as the middle man. It doesn't look like he was too impressed though!

And finally, because I couldn't sleep again last night (bloody elections - like everyone else I wish they were over), I got to listen to Trump's verbal diarrhoea at the press conference. I hadn't realized that all but two networks actually cut away from him after about 20 seconds, but I heard the whole 17 (I think) minutes and lord was it terrible. It was also very noticeable that he referred to Joe Biden as "Mr. Biden" and "Joe" - I wonder whatever happened to "sleepy Joe"! He then stormed out like the coward that he is and I think it was Jim Acosta that shouted after him "are you such a sore loser"? After that Donny Jr tweeted something about "daddy it's time to declare war" (not sure if that tweet is still up) and then I heard about Bannon "musing" about the possibility of beheading Dr. Fauci!!!!!!! Don't those tweets constitute incitement to violence? Dear god, what is this election coming to! Buuuuut shortly after that I saw Anderson Cooper describe Trump as "an obese turtle on his back flailing in the hot sun realizing his time is over" and my anger at what I'd just heard just went up in a puff of Anderson smoke. I've always liked him anyway, but now? God I think he's great!

Anderson Cooper!