Send in the Troops

 

There are still quite a few households without electricity following Storm Arwen, over a week later. Soldiers were deployed to check on remote properties - maybe they supplied hot food and blankets. At least we had the wood burner and a camp stove when we were without power - many homes are fully electric and have no alternative means for cooking or heating. 

I went for my Covid / Flu booster this week and felt that I could have been in a Dystopian TV Drama. The Aberdeen vaccination centre is now in the ex John Lewis department store. There was a queueing system like at an airport followed by field-hospital booths in what had been the Menswear and Haberdashery departments, where my jabs were administered by a British Army medic. 

I was bemused and impressed when a 4x4 pickup truck with blazing arc lights parked outside and a guy in full hi-vis waterproofs knocked on the door to check up on Nella. He had been deployed by someone at the Council to see if a vulnerable person living at our address was OK. 

Up-river from me somebody has lost a few logs! They had washed up onto the bank and I managed to pull a few out of the water and load them into my festival trolley. 

After the hiatus of the long power cut I did not get much quilting done and I was keen for some quilts to be collected - since ordering several rolls of wadding and big cones of thread my bank balance was shockingly low at £5.10…

Quilt-Con 2022 rejected “Rainbow Warriors” from its juried show. I was quite disappointed but recognised that many other amazing quilts had not made the cut either. To be honest, when I visited Quilt-con in Savannah, I thought that many of the entries were very similar to each other and it was not a huge show with many diverse entries, unlike Houston which is also juried. What really hacks me off is that I have to subscribe to become a member of the Modern Quilt Guild in the USA before I can even enter so it is an expensive process. It makes me appreciate that FOQ encourages everyone and simply offers a discounted entry fee to existing Guild members. I will enter “Rainbow Warliors into the World Quilt Show if the UK is entering and see what happens, otherwise it will join all of the other vanity projects on one of my workshop shelves!

At the end of a wintry week, it was decided that we would cheer the house up by putting up the Christmas tree. Nella missed all of that last year as she was in hospital. Although she is not exactly thriving, it was a significant reminder that she is always better off on the road to recovery.