Just another Saturday

Freezing drizzle, freezing rain, ice pellets, rain, wet snow forecast. Temperature -3º. Chris went to the Flying Club in any case, as usual on a Saturday, and took to the virtual air with Kathy in the Redbird flight trainer. I stayed at home to catch up with some housework, putting a few things aside that will be of use to a young woman from Afghanistan who's spending a while in Ottawa studying here before she goes home to her husband in Kabul. She has two little sons; I found some toys for them to play with. Ann came to collect the things, and then I answered a Skype call from Emma, Peter and our grandson Thomas (same age as the Afghan children) in London.

Just as I was setting off into town Chris returned from the Club, so he came with me. We both wanted to take part in the demonstration against Bill C-51 that started at midday, leaving us little time for lunch, so I'd packed a peeled boiled egg and some other edibles in my handbag. We called in at the Boulangerie Française for a croissant on the way. I'm describing the demo in a separate blogpost.

We left before the end, stopping at Planet Coffee for the sake of Chris' freezing feet during the walk home, because we had promised to be back at the Flying Club by 2pm to meet my Czech friend Vladka with her husband and children. When they turned up, he hopped back into the Redbird with them, letting them all have a go at the controls, even the six year old (tightly supervised), simulating take-offs, tours and landings in a twin-prop 'plane. That took an hour or so, after which Chris allowed them to sit in a real plane too––PTN looking very tiny to them, although Vladka's husband was a glider pilot once. No take-off in PTN today, because of the weather.

Home via Nature's Buzz to buy some groceries where we had news of Miranda who used to work there and had since moved to Nicaragua. Her baby was doing well, it seems. We drove home with the shopping and spoke my mum "on the iPad" as she calls it: another Skype call. She'd been watching the Wales v. Ireland rugby game. Yet another Skype call after that, this one from George and Eddie at the start of their day in Australia. When we'd had some supper we sang / played Schubert and Beethoven Lieder again and a duet written in 1704 by John Eccles, a composer who was appointed Master of the King's Musick by no fewer than four British monarchs.