Rain.

I'm glad I worked hard in the garden yesterday because today it has rained heavily all day long. We have spent a lazy day watching tv and mooching about. If it wasn't for my various joint problems making both lying and sitting in bed uncomfortable, I might have spent the day in our superking bed with its memory foam mattress. Apart from a little housework all I have done was to cover my next year's academic diary with a photo from our holiday on St Mary's. I still like to personalise things especially when we are all issued with the same diary. That's a recipe for me to lose mine so I always cover mine with distinctive paper or a blown up photo. I did think about wrapping up and going for a short walk in the rain but conditions got worse and now the trees are lashing about in the wind. This was all just as Peter set off to go rowing. He's going to come home like a drowned rat.
We had originally planned to go to the village picnic/party to celebrate the jubilee but changed our minds when we saw the weather forecast. We did watch Jubilee river pageant on TV for a while and it was interesting to see the different rowing boats. One of the ships in the pageant was The Matthew, a full scale replica of the caravel in which John Cabot sailed to America in 1497. We first saw The Matthew sailing down the Cornish coast as we sailed from Penzance to the Scillies. It stayed the whole week in the Scillies while we were there. I was just a little disappointed that it used an engine rather than sails. As to the rest of the pomp of this weekend I don't see why we should look up to people who are in a position of power and wealth due to a chance of birth but if it makes other people happy to have a celebration that's fine by me. There was just the passing thought of how much this all cost when vulnerable people at the lower end of the social scale are being told they have to have reduced services and funding because of the recession.