I slept like a log right up to when my phone beeped with a text message from work reminding me to take a COVID test. I sent the relevant department a rather pointed email saying that bearing that this is only my second complete weekend off work since July, is it too much to ask to not be woken far too early on a Sunday morning.
Finding myself awake I got up and did another (negative) COVID test, then made brekkie and had a look at the Internet.
There was more consternation about the Prime Minister’s announcement (yesterday) that in response to the new COVID variant, people coming in to the UK will be required to take a PCR test on the second day in the UK and then self-isolate and self-test until they get a negative result. Self isolate… having been squashed like sardines through a crowded airport and shuttle coach to their car or taxi? And masks are again compulsory in shops but not pubs or restaurants. I’m not belittling the crisis at all, but my concern with the mask-wearing is that it lulls people into a false sense of security. Find a vaping friend and have them take a suck on the vape, pull up a mask (correctly fitting from bridge of nose to under the chin) and then have them breath out normally. You will see clouds of vapour coming out in all directions. Admittedly a lot more vapour than in a normal breath, but this will visualise where the normal breath goes, and it is this which would be carrying virus. The mask contains coughs and sneezes, but I’d question how much reduction to viral spreading they do for people who are breathing normally.
I played “Cookie Jam” on Facebook games as “er indoors TM” got ready. We’d decided that today was going to be too cold, too windy and too muddy for a long walk so we settled the dogs and went to visit parents.
Getting out of Ashford took some doing. The road we would normally use to avoid the outlet centre was closed, and the traffic was queued up in all directions to get in to the place. Have you ever been to the MacArthur Glen outlet centre in Ashford? You can see the place from our attic window and I’ve not been there for two years. There is nothing that they sell that I can’t get from Amazon, but the public love it.
Pausing only briefly in Ham Street for geocachical reasons we were soon in Hastings. First of all we called in to see Dad who seemed well. He showed us his mouse traps – he caught a mouse in his kitchen on Thursday. Just the one, and since then there hasn’t been any tell-tale signs (mouse turds) but he’s got traps ready.
From there we went on to mother-in-law. She too seemed OK not having fallen off of any more ladders recently (!) Sister-in-law and nephews were also about, and “er indoors TM” chatted with them whilst I found myself engrossed in the snooker which was on the telly.
Once home we took the dogs round the block. As we’d sat with parents I’d been glancing out of the window at the bright day and wondering why we’d cancelled our planned walk. After thirty seconds of our dog walk my nose was running and I was shivering. Today was a bright day, but oh, it was cold!!
With walk walked we had a cuppa and a Belgian bun and with a near-Herculean effort I managed to organise a family pre-Christmas dinner. Finding a day that everyone could make took some doing.
“er indoors TM” boiled up a very good bit of dinner which we watched whilst watching tonight’s episode of “Doctor Who”. Unlike quite a lot of people we are still watching the show. Over the last few weeks I’ve been rather scathing about it, and I think I’ve worked out why. Leaving aside the fact that I can’t warm to any of the main characters, the writers are trying too hard. Back in the day Doctor Who specialised in the hero averting rather simple minor disasters. But since the re-boot every season tries to out-do the previous in scale of disaster to be averted and complexity of incomprehensible plot. And (apart from yet another end of the universe) does anyone know what was going on?
Having said that, there was a lot of nods to what had gone before in tonight’s show. I quite liked the reference to the War Machines which I suspect went over the heads of the vast majority of viewers. I suspect that the viewers of today’s show would laugh at the simplicity of the props used in the War Machines, but back then the writers knew the special effects weren’t up to much so they had a decent story instead.
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