Electronic Hound and VE day
I have bought a Tile for Theo. It's a Bluetooth device that hangs from his collar and allows me to use an app to track him by showing him on a map. In theory, it's also supposed to send me an alert if he goes too far from the phone, but so far the only time this has happened has been the time I went out in the car without him. It seems that the range of the alerts is several miles, which is annoying, because it clearly shows on the phone when he's out of Bluetooth connection range. But you have to be looking at it to see that.
Still, it has allowed me to keep an eye on him in the garden while not standing right over him, and I think my ability to suddenly pop out and call him back just as he was making the decision to leave is having some impact.
VE day yesterday, and coincidentally, also my mother's birthday. I popped over for the first time in almost 2 months to take a card & present (at a suitable distance). As an official Old Person Of The Village, she had been given a VE day cupcake, a drawing of a rainbow to show in her window, and a VE day button. This seemed to amuse her.
In our village, I don't think we had cupcakes for the elderly, but we did have a scarecrow competition. This was slightly eyebrow-raising, since it was impromptu, and everyone had to use stuff already in their house. Several people chose to make soldiers, but since they had no uniform, the effect was often somewhat... terroristic. But other people did more peaceful scarecrows, like the one of a woman welcoming her lover home, and the pub (closed, of course), which rather mysteriously decided to put up an effigy of the landlord celebrating VE day, which of course he was not.
We wandered up to have a look at the efforts late in the evening, and while we were doing that, someone let off what was apparently a genuine WWII air raid siren. It made a very strange and eery sound echoing up the river valley, with almost no other sound to be heard and the scent of blossom on the air, and almost no moving people, but still scarecrows all around. Then, even more surreal, it segued into the oddly-familiar crackly sound of Vera Lynn singing 'We'll meet again'. What a strange time this is.
Still, it has allowed me to keep an eye on him in the garden while not standing right over him, and I think my ability to suddenly pop out and call him back just as he was making the decision to leave is having some impact.
VE day yesterday, and coincidentally, also my mother's birthday. I popped over for the first time in almost 2 months to take a card & present (at a suitable distance). As an official Old Person Of The Village, she had been given a VE day cupcake, a drawing of a rainbow to show in her window, and a VE day button. This seemed to amuse her.
In our village, I don't think we had cupcakes for the elderly, but we did have a scarecrow competition. This was slightly eyebrow-raising, since it was impromptu, and everyone had to use stuff already in their house. Several people chose to make soldiers, but since they had no uniform, the effect was often somewhat... terroristic. But other people did more peaceful scarecrows, like the one of a woman welcoming her lover home, and the pub (closed, of course), which rather mysteriously decided to put up an effigy of the landlord celebrating VE day, which of course he was not.
We wandered up to have a look at the efforts late in the evening, and while we were doing that, someone let off what was apparently a genuine WWII air raid siren. It made a very strange and eery sound echoing up the river valley, with almost no other sound to be heard and the scent of blossom on the air, and almost no moving people, but still scarecrows all around. Then, even more surreal, it segued into the oddly-familiar crackly sound of Vera Lynn singing 'We'll meet again'. What a strange time this is.