As I drove home from the night shift the pundits on the radio were
spouting their rubbish as they do. I got rather angry (and rather jealous)
when I heard that the UK Covid-19 Inquiry started today. Ostensibly it
has been set up to “examine the UK’s response to and impact of the Covid-19
pandemic and learn lessons for the future”. It reality it is going to take
at least three years (three years!) to tell us what we already know.
To illustrate my cynicism let’s look at its “four key modules”:
Resilience and preparedness
(Module 1) – well, the nation wasn’t prepared, was it.
You can’t prepare for a once in a lifetime pandemic, and if you do you get
accused of wasting money on a very unlikely event.
Core UK decision-making and
political governance (Module 2) - Those in power took
the piss. This is quite well illustrated by the current situation in which that
idiot Boris Johnson now finds himself.
Impact of the Covid-19
pandemic on healthcare (Module 3) – The NHS (and the entire
care sector) did their best under less than ideal circumstances.
Vaccines and therapeutics (Module
4) – Is some political talk shop the best place to conduct scientific
research?
Hopefully the standing on doorsteps clapping like demented sealions
will be condemned as the insult it was seen to be, and hopefully vaccine
deniers will be punished for the harm that they did.
That’s three years effort saved… how do you get a job on this gravy
train?
I went to bed and slept as well as I could with the dogs using the
bed as a battleground, but after three hours I was awake. I made toast, had a
late brekkie and fought with a geo-puzzle which had been giving me grief
yesterday. The chap who’d set it had sent me one or two pointers… but I was
still struggling. After an hour I gave up, put on the “Filthy, Rich and
Catflap” DVD and set about the ironing.
Ironing took all afternoon.
“er indoors TM” eventually finished
work and we set off on a little mission. On Saturday we’d had a really good
time at the county geo-meet, but in all the excitement I’d left my bag there. So
we went to get it.
On the way we stopped off to pick up a geocache. The location of this
one was found by solving a particularly fiendish puzzle. I’d had an idea of
where the thing was for years (literally years) but bearing in mind we’d
be not a million miles from it today, yesterday I made a concerted attempt to
figure out where it was. I messaged the chap who’d hidden it; I’d got to within
forty metres under my own steam (which I think was rather good). The chap
who’d hidden it offered the final co-ordinates, but I thought I’d manage
without. That was silly of me…
We got to the final location, found it incredibly overgrown
so I sent a message asking for the actual location. I was glad I did. The cache
hadn’t been found for over a year and took some getting at.
From there we drove on to Staple and the pub where we’d had such a
good time on Saturday. I had a plan to have dinner there this evening in the
garden, but their kitchen was closed. Instead we had a drink in the garden, and
came home via the kebab shop.
I
took a few photos of our evening. I’m quite worn out now…
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