Wednesday, 19th August, 2020 [Day 156]

Today it has rained and rained and rained all day long with hardly any respite – I suppose I should add it was drizzle rather than genuine rain but enough to make one uncomfortable. Nonetheless, we ventured out as per usual but enjoyed our elevenses whilst standing in the very middle of a completely open-sided bandstand (the only place where it was absolutely dry!) observing the only other hardy souls (one dog walker, one couple complete with children) all hundreds of yards away. Anyway, it was good to get back inside the house and enjoy a nice cup of tea! 

As it was such a wet day, I indulged myself by doing a little HTML to display some photos on the web. I did a very quick Google search and obtained some code which enabled me to show two columns of photos side by side – I am not absolutely sure I could have worked this out for myself but it came in useful. I then decided that I would like to try a version in which the photos were displayed side by side and row by row. I reckoned I could work this out for myself, as indeed I did. So now if I want to have a ‘quick and dirty’ method of getting some photos online, I can do it very quickly. I have a little bit of webspace which I rent from a Canadian company (incredibly cheaply) for these little bits of experimental and ‘playing about’ types of activities.

Our son and daughter-in-law are away having a few days break at the moment so Meg and I have the house to ourselves, which seems rather unusual after so many months ( well 156 days actually) when we are all been in the house together although working away in our respective rooms. Meg and I are starting to gradually think about our own little trip to Chester next week to which we are looking forward. When I updated the Waitrose order earlier on today, I ensured that I had plenty of anti-bacterial sprays and wipes for use whilst we are away. We have a plan to dump all of our suitcases in our allocated room and immediately give all of the immediate surfaces a quick wipedown before we go off to lunch in the country club down the road. Them we will do the same again when we get back from lunch and then we should be comparatively safe.

Well, we are wondering what tomorrow is going to bring with the publication of the GCSE results. So far, Gavin Williamson. the Education Secretary is both simultaneously claiming that he ‘spotted’ that the algorithm was going to produce bizarre results over last weekend – but at the same time, it is all the fault of the regulator OfQual who had assured him that the model was robust and would deliver the objectives he had set for it (no grade inflation) and they should, therefore, be blamed. Meanwhile. Boris Johnson on holiday in Scotland has proclaimed that he has ‘every confidence’ in both the head of Ofqual and also his Education Secretary. Without wishing to sound too naive, does anybody take ANY responsibility when things go so horribly wrong? One is reminded of Estelle Morris who resigned as education secretary because she felt that she was not doing a good enough job, Peter Carrington (the Foreign Secretary at the time of the Argentine invasion of the Falklands) who resigned for not having spotted that the invasion was imminent. Nowadays, nobody seems to resign even after committing the most horrendous dereliction of duty. The ultimate prize for any Tory has to go to Chris Grayling (who even follow Tories called ‘failing Grayling’ who wasted 2.7bn of taxpayer’s money on one mad scheme after another e.g. when transport secretary awarding a cross Channel ferry contract to a company that owned no ships!) He even failed to secure a job (leading the Parliamentary Intelligence and security committee) when he was the only ‘ official’ i.e. Prime Minister approved candidate!

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