Coronation day

Coronation day. Due to the forecast rain, the large television screen scheduled for the Castle Grounds was moved to the Centre 70 building, a much less salubrious setting. So we cancelled our picnic plans. I ended up watching the coronation at Bob and Angela's after helping Bob erect the marquee for the neighbourhood gathering scheduled for a 5PM start. 

The gathering was good. It drizzled on and off during the afternoon, but nothing too bad. Judy and I were talking to the northern Irish bloke who bought the house next door, where Australian friends used to live. He says he still loves it there, I stopped myself from reminding him that he had tried to sell it a few years ago, so I was glad things had improved since then. I asked him how things were going  since the UK/EU agreement on how to handle the Irish border. He was having none of Sunak's effusions that the deal gave Northern Ireland the best of both worlds, access to both the UK and the EU. He got excitable and said that he wanted the hard land border installed right away, He said that the DUP was on track to sweep back into power after the next elections -- not only are they supported unanimously by the protestant population, but also 20% of catholics support them too. It was strange -- I was the one asking the questions, but he addressed all of his answers mainly to Judy. 

I got chatting to some new arrivals to St John's Road, a couple who have just moved there after living 11 years in the south of France, in the Pyranees foothills. They moved here due to circumstance. The chap didn't look all that healthy and for some reason, maybe Brexit, they would get a better health service here. It turns out he was an old ex IT mainframer so we swapped tales of the old mainframe days, when large mainframes were the serious computing biggest game in town. He liked living in France and regrets having to relocate back to the UK. He said that there was a fairly large expat community in the area where he lived, but he tended to ignore them. They were too insular for him. He said a lot of them had moved either to Spain or back to the UK.