18 April 2020 (Saturday) - Anoter Locked-Down Saturday



I woke shivering at half past six; an alliance of "er indoors TM" and the dogs had again seized mush of the duvet. I managed to wrestle some back and got another hour or so shut-eye.

Over brekkie I had a look at Facebook to see what I’d missed.
There was a lot of talk about Captain Tom Moore; a ninety-nine-year-old war veteran who has raised twenty million pounds to help the NHS. Everyone was saying what a wonderful fellow he is. I don’t doubt that he is, but is this sort of fundraising ultimately benefitting the NHS? Bear in mind the UK government voted against a pay rise for nurses in 2017, and also bear in mind that many of the nations’ specialist cancer care nurses aren’t funded via the NHS but are dependent on charity for their wages
It really boils my piss that most people don’t realise this. No government of any political party is going to fund anything that people are already paying for. When the fruits of my loin were at school we were invited to take part in fundraising events to buy their text books…
I’ve heard it said that “charity is the failure of government”… an interesting point of view.
My cousin had raised a rather interesting point… what *does* happen when coronageddon drags on? If no vaccine is forthcoming, do we carry on socially distancing and working for home for years? Given that there’s no vaccine immediately available, it’s not entirely impossible that those who are susceptible to the disease will die whilst those who aren’t will survive… this sort of thing has been happening for millions of years – “natural selection”.
We’ve rather got used to the (wrong) idea that humanity has beaten the concept of infectious disease.

There were some fun memes and fun games circulating, which was just as well. It lightened a rather depressing and negative toast and coffee. And I was rather pleased to see that a new Munzee had appeared just down the road – called “For Fudge”.

It was raining this morning; "er indoors TM" tuned in to a podcast from the League of Candlemongers whilst I played Lego. Last week’s carousel didn’t quite go to plan, so this morning I built a Ferris wheel. It was more of an experiment than a “proper” build, but I was quite pleased with how it turned out.

The rain had stopped by mid-day so we took the dogs round the park for a walk. We met some other dogs and we had no fights whatsoever. Mind you Fudge wasn’t overly pleased at being humped by some other dog; maybe he will now stop doing it to others? Somehow I doubt it. We had a good walk; only marred by Treacle’s paddling in the stagnant mire and eating poo.

It wasn’t sunny, but it was warm enough to sit in the garden. I downed a couple of bottles of ale and read more Alexei Sayle on the kindle. As we sat so quite the conversation was taking place on Facebook and via instant messages. A lot of people were discovering (and re-discovering) Munzee. After all (as I described it), it’s a bit like caching but with bar codes. There's a lot more virtuals, a lot more structured game play and FAR less squabbling.

Eventually the sun went in, and so did we. I spent a little while ironing shirts whilst watching episodes of “Bottom”, then over a very good bit of dinner we watched another episode of “The Heist”. Admittedly it is a TV show, but bearing in mind that if you can evade detection you stand to win a hundred thousand pounds I for one would lay a lot lower than some of the contestants would seem to be doing.

With nothing else to do we logged in to the League of Candlemongers’s lock-down quiz. I got twenty six points out of a possible forty.
I might organise another quiz next weekend…

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