Plus ca change

Another couple of weeks pass by - 8 months now since we made a dash home from Australia. Realistic prospects now of vaccinations on the horizon but the practicalities and the logistics of the rollout to the population at large mean it's likely to be some time yet until we're out of this mess. Meanwhile, our routine life goes on. It's not really too bad for us - we're comfortable and careful here. The main thing we're missing out on is travel, of course. Who knows when we'll be able to go and see Kelly and Lucy again - we don't even see Gary and Ross very much, although we did travel through to Inverurie on Tuesday and had an Indian meal with Gary, Carole and Luca:

We're planning to do the same with Ross this week - and it looks like he will be coming back to Banchory soon, given the dire current employment prospects. Zoom/Facetime/Messenger video calls occupy a good bit of our days. Between me and Jo, a typical week will have 10-11 calls, including the odd remote wine or beer tasting, the latest of which was on Friday night - the Family Brewers of Britain. Very educational and entertaining, with 3 experts and another 45 ordinary CAMRA members from all over the UK joining in. This coming Saturday, I have arranged a smaller one with Burnside Brewery (Laurencekirk) for our local branch members. I'm also experimenting with a new technology in home brewing - the Pinter (https://thegreatergood.co.uk/). It's been brewing for the last 5 days and yesterday I removed the bottom part of the vessel containing the yeast, turned the remainder of the unit horizontal and put it in to the fridge for a few days' conditioning:

As a complete aside, the small tree/bush that stood in our rockery at the front of the house was cut back by Jo earlier this year. I had thought she intended to do a bit of judicious pruning on it, but Jo suprised me by how severe she was, leaving just this:

Do you think this is Jo's message to the world? Passing strangers must wonder. Not much else to say just now. Keep safe.