Stay at home to stay active

We have a lovely fishpond in our garden. I can speak fondly of it for I dug it out myself many years ago, when I was young and healthy and capable of solid labour. The pump and filter were powered by a cable underground to a switch in the house, but a couple of years ago it stopped working and each time we switched it on it blew a fuse in the fuse box. The cable itself was old: it had been installed before we moved in to feed a light in the garden. Beside being buried, it now lies under the patio and somehow comes up inside the wall to the light switch, so it cannot be simply replaced.

Since the pump stopped, the pond has become green and overgrown, though the fish still seem to survive and breed. We've had it cleaned a couple of times, but now I have time off I decided to lay in a new wire, so spent the morning drilling through the garage wall and connecting a new cable to the garage supply, which is easier than trying to go back to the house. Unfortunately, the old pump has now seized up, but our son-in-law had a spare one, larger and better than my original, which he's brought round for us. As the pump wire is also buried until it emerges at the pond, I have had to send for an underwater connector. Next job will be to connect them up.

We had another family quiz night last night, run by Andy. It was much harder this week, but next week Edwin and Andre will run it, so it might be even worse! I will plead for a few easy questions. However, an article in today's paper suggests that social isolation is even worse for our health than smoking, so I'm grateful for all contact to keep us in touch with each other, even difficult quizzes. Also, a lovely snippet in The Irish Times: "For God's sake reopen the pubs soon, before we all become alcoholics!" A nice thought, but what with that and with isolation being as bad as smoking, I think they are killing us all off without any need for a doomsday virus.