Today started off in an ‘interesting’ way, computing wise. As part of the WordPress suite that I use for writing this bog there is an ‘plug-in’ called Jetpack. Apart from collecting statistics about your website and much more besides, this plug-in monitors whether your site is ‘live’ and sends you an email if anything is amiss. I received an email from the Jetpack system telling me that this site was ‘down’ which, indeed it was. After about an hour, I sent off an email pleading for help to my webspace provider – as it happened Jetpack informed me, again by email, that the site had been restored to working order after a downtime of some two hours. What had gone wrong, I really do not know but it is rather nice when ‘errors’ correct themselves. Of course, it could have been a fault at the server end and ‘nothing to do with me’ but that is one problem less to worry about.

Today is the official Census day and later on today, we are going to complete it ‘en famille‘.  Census Day is always interesting for Meg and myself because we were recruited as census numerators in 1971 (50 years ago!) What we had to do was to go round the houses on our patch – about 200 houses I think, and distribute the census forms to each household. We then had to call back one week later to pick up the census form and, as far as I remember, we had to do some basic checking on the doorstep to make sure there were no gross errors. When we got the census forms home, we had to do a more detailed checking and then had to transfer some basic information onto special sheets which we had to mark with an HB pencil. These were to be read by OCR (Optical Character Recognition) and it enables the census authorities to get some basic information (numbers, age, sex of individuals and where they lived) very quickly – we are talking about a week or so. Meg and I were probably recruited as we were social science students and had been taught about the census and how it operated in our course. We had a course in statistics which had two components, the first being conventional statistical theory and operations and the second was called ‘Social Statistics’ and it was a fascinating course. We had a certain amount of demography in the course and learnt how government statistics were collected and used – it really was an incredibly useful course (and I don’t even think it was examined either) As part of our census enumerator role, we had a brief training course in which it was stressed that we should leave no building unvisited and indeed, I did pass a ‘deserted’ Anglican Church only to discover it had been converted into a mosque and hence was eventually caught up in the census exercise. If we encountered a ‘difficult’ situation on our patch, we were encouraged to use what persuasive skills we had to extract whatever (basic) information we could, rather than submit a nil return. On my patch, I did encounter a hippy commune who railed against the authority notions they discerned in the census questions such ‘Head of Household‘ and ‘Relationship to head of household‘ After a period of negotiation, I was very pleased with myself that I got the whole commune enumerated with each describing themselves as the ‘co-spouse’ of the other – the members of the commune were delighted to describe themselves this and I was delighted to get the data.

And so we come to today’s on-line form. It took about 10 minutes or so for each of the four of us to complete and I thought that technologically it had been made as fool-proof as possible. I am sure that the amount of information collected has been scaled back somewhat compared with other censuses that I remember – but I suppose the government already holds an extraordinary amount of information on each one of us anyway. After submission, I got an email acknowledgement so I know the form is truly lodged. We were also asked to comment upon any particular features of the form so I did add one comment, at the suggestion of my daughter-in-law. The question on religion assumed that you had ‘some’ religious affiliation or ‘none’ and there was no way in which a humanist could identify themselves as such on the form. In fact, I suspect that they have had this battle with the census authorities for some time.  We were speculating what the role of ‘non-completion’ might be and I an wondering whether it will be quite high on this occasion. Ten years ago, the non completion rate was about 6% (higher amongst some of the BAME community) and I would venture to speculate that despite the threat of large fines and the legal compulsion to fill in a census form, the non-completion might be 10% or more on this occasion

Today was full of little hints of the spring about to come. We are noticing that flowering cherries and flowering hawthorns are starting to bloom nicely and in a few days these flowering trees might be at their best. Similarly, the forsythia in several people’s gardens is similarly in full bloom so I am inclined to have my camera at the ready so that I can capture these flowering images at their best. Today is also the date of the Spring equinox and I have discovered why it is not always on March 21st. The explanation is that each year is 365¼ days (hence we need leap years every four years) and the spring equinox occurs 6 hours later than the previous year. A consequence of all of this is that the equinox can occur on either 20th or 21st or 22nd of March in any particular year. But after a pleasant walk into town, we collected our newspapers and then on into the town where we met, as usual, with a couple of park friends. Then we made for home, knowing that the afternoon was going to be dominated by rugby.

This afternoon was ‘Super Saturday‘ in which there are going to be three 6-Nations rugby matches to round off the season (almost) The first game was Italy v. Scotland which was a bit of a non-match as Italy haven’t won a game since goodness knows when. The second match was England vs. Ireland in which the English seemed to be at the wrong end of every refereeing decision but in the end the Irish won very convincingly. But the match which was a cracker was the Wales v. France which both needed to win in order to win the whole championship. Wales seemed to have it won as they were 10 points ahead 10 minutes before the end. But the French displayed supreme pressure and the pressure on both teams was so intense that the game ended with the French one player down (red-carded) and the Wales team two players down (yellow carded) In the event, French won the game with a try in the third minute after the clock had ‘gone red’ which must make it one of the tightest finishes of all time.

Tonight was the night in which church services were resuming. We had to book our places with Eventbrite,  much as if we are booking a tour in a National Trust property or similar. In theory, there could have been up to about 45 places in the church but tonight there were about 33 – the places for tomorrow are, we understand, fully booked. Of most interest to the congregation, though, was the fact that we have a new priest allocated to the parish. How long the new priest will remain with us is a bit hard to say because it seemed as though he was ‘on loan’ from another English discuss altogether. Meg and I were very interested in the character of the new priest and were impressed – he seemed to have the right combination of a common-sense approach to liturgical matters whilst also exhibiting a dry sense of humour whilst he was introducing himself. Although we haven’t had the opportunity to speak with him yet (or nor will we, until lockdown conditions are released) but to ease his entry and show him some goodwill on taking over our parish, I left him a bottle of our own Damson Gin (which we hope does not get mixed up with communion wine, not that that is very likely)

As we suspected, today was the day when, as a nation, we crept over the 50% milestone of proportion of the adult population vaccinated. However good the news is from the UK, the news from continental Europe where the virus seems to be entering a third wave is a source of great concern. Many scientists are worried that the European infection rates will thwart our simmer holidays. In particular, exponential growth in cases in countries like Germany puts in doubt roadmap proposals to restart international travel by 21 June. It has been a record day for the UK as 711,156 vaccinations have been given and more than 26.8 million first and 2.1 million second doses have now been given in the UK since December.

On Friday afternoon, we had a Zoom call with one of our closest friends in Oxfordshire – in normal times, we often meet half way in Bicester for a ‘get together’ meal. We are looking forward to the magic date of Monday March 29th (a week on Monday) because, in theory, that is the date when according to the roadmap up to six people can legally meet in a garden or similar open space to have a meal or a social get together. So as soon as the weather gets nothing like reasonable, we will see if we can meet up in a garden to see each other face-to-face rather than relying upon technology the whole time.

Today was a bit gloomy but not excessively cold and we collected our newspapers and got to the park in plenty of time.  There we met with our University of Birmingham friend who I was especially pleased to see as I had managed to locate a couple of papers I had written that examined the relationship between GEC O-levels and A-levels and the final degree results. The analysis used a statistical technique called ANOVA (Analysis of Variance) and it is excellent at solving the problems where you lots of categories of input (e.g. score from a number of GCE’s put into bands) and corresponding output (class of degree) and you trying to establish the statistical relationship  between them.The papers were not written with a view to publication and hence had no references, literature reviews and the like – they were just straight analysis of the records of our students that were susceptible to a statistical treatment but they both came as very useful documents in policy terms when we were resubmitting our degree courses or attempting to prove that we were ‘adding value’.  Anyway, my friend is going to cast his statistical eye over them nd it will be interesting to see what he makes of them both.

Today is rather a strange anniversary for me as it is 48 years according to the date when I was run over by a Hillman Imp (whose driver claims to have fainted at the wheel) when I had just finished a lecture at Leicester Polytechnic and was on my way to another class. I will spare you all of the gory details except I was hit first and thrown out of the way, both legs being smashed up in the process. My two students were carried on the body of the Hillman Imp through some iron railings outside a residential home. My legs were put into a temporary plaster but the tendons to all of the muscles were severed – but it was the middle of an ancillaries dispute so there was no bed for me in the hospital either that day or the following day (I was told to take aspirins for the pain) The third day afterwards they did take me into hospital and when I came round from the operation I remember peering timorously underneath the sheet to see how many legs I had left. As it was, the answer was two but as they had told me that they had no idea what they were going to do until they got me onto the operating table and so there was a possibility I would end up legless. Enough of all of this – but 19th March as well as being the feast of St. Joseph is a date which I find it hard to forget.

Tonight was also the night when we decided to have a celebratory meal for the birthday of our daughter-in-law (last Sunday) and our son (next Thursday) so tonight’s meal was an occasion approximately in the middle. As we are still in lockdown and cannot go out for a collective meal, we treated ourselves to a fish-and-chip supper delivered to the house and we had quite a jolly occasion of it all, considering the circumstances.

We have now vaccinated  some 26.2 million of the population and record number in one day of 660,000 (nearly two thirds of a million in one day) Also, the record tonight seems to indicate that we have vaccinated some 49.9% of the population – and I wonder off the government will ‘explode’ with the good news once we actually hit the 50% proportion. At the same time, the situation in Germany seems to be going from bad to worse and is definitely at the start of a third wave of the pandemic. The Germans freely admit that they do not have enough vaccine to give more of their own population the vaccine that they need so the ‘politics of vaccination’ may start to rear its ugly head. The situation in Europe is  now sufficiently serious for experts here in the UK to wonder whether despite the success of our vaccination programme, a third wave in the rest of Europe might seep into the UK in the summer/utumn and we are certainly not out of the woods just yet.

There is quite some concern in official circles that the virus seems to ‘target’ the UK’s poorest and most deprived communities, and once entrenched the virus seems difficult to shift. Rotherham is one of those towns that has struggled to get infection rates down. Even when they do fall, they do so slowly, and cases remain stubbornly over 100 cases per 100,000 people – while the average area in England has 45. So it is become more and more evident that COVID-19 is almost ‘seeking out’ and then intensifying existing social and economic inequalities. The problem for these communities is that poverty strikes at the economic base, the educational system, the local health resources and these inequalities only seem to reinforce each other. The policy implications are clear (but unpalatable for a Conservative government)

Today was quite a mild, cloudy day but no rain was forecast. We are a little delayed as we often are on a Thursday morning as the Waitrose order had been delivered and we needed to put all of the provisions away before we set out on our walk. Having collected our newspapers, I could not resist telling our newsagent a joke that had been running through my head for the last day or so i.e. ‘ How does an agnostic, dyslexic, insomniac spend their time?‘ to which the answer is ‘They lay awake all night, wondering whether or not there is a dog‘ I know it’s a crap joke but it is a little quirky.  After we had picked our newspapers, we needed to go into the town to send off a condolence card following the death of one our oldest academic mentors and friends in Spain. – so we needed to go to the Post Office (now housed in W H Smiths) to get this posted. On our way, we passed a little ‘ecological’ shop that sells all kinds of sustainable products and we purchased a little bar of soap, complete in its tin. Actually, if the truth be known, I only actually wanted the tin because I had spotted it some time beforehand and I thought that it might make a suitable heatsink to help to keep an external disk drive cool. This is because according to my researches, disk drives might only have a life of about 5 years (although I have several considerably older than this) and excess heat is one factor that could well shorten their life. Having completed our little foray into the High Street, we made our way into the park and coincided as we almost always do these days with our University of Birmingham friend. We had two very long and interesting but not-connected conversations. The first of these was a discussion of a video that Meg and I had stumbled upon by the classicist Mary Beard on the subject of ‘whiteness’ (with reference to skin colour) in Roman society.  I said that I would hunt out the video link as we had only watched it recently which I did later on in the afternoon and then sent it on. Then we got onto the topic of the statistical connection between ‘O’-levels and ‘A’-levels  and academic progress in degree courses. I had researched and then written up a couple of papers, one dating to my time in the (then) Leicester Polytechnic and the second written when I was at King Alfred’s College in Winchester. We were so delayed by our extended conversations that it was terriblly late when we got home for lunch being practically 2.00pm in the afternoon so we had to raid our store cupboard for a tin of quality stewing steak which we employ when we need to get an instant meal in about two minutes. After lunch, I thought I would see if I could hunt out the couple of papers I had written and by some kind of miracle, I managed to locate them after about one minute of looking for them (one paper was 30 years old and the other was 20 years old so I impressed myself with my own efficiency – or good luck!) Anyway, I will pass these on to my friend to read to see if the findings from the students that I taught all of those years ago had the same degree of applicability to our friend’s students.

After lunch, I needed to make a lightning visit into town to return a defective disk drive back to Amazon (it worked for about a week and then refuse to format) I had got a QR code on my phone and so, in theory, I could go into one of the shops that are an agency which will scan my phone, print off the label and then return the item to Amazon. The first shop to which I went and which I had used before shut its doors about 10 seconds before I got there. So then I went off to a newsagents that I know had a system of Amazon lockers but they didn’t have the label printing facility. So I went off to a third shop but they were only agents for Hermes carriers and not UPS so my QR code was not recognised. They recommended me to another shop at which I also drew a blank. Frustrated I came home for a consoling cup of tea and consulted the web as to which shop in the area I could use for an Amazon return. I found an off-license that accepted my parcel back (and gave me a receipt) and the ironic thing is that this shop was the next door neighbour but one to the first shop I had tried. All I have to do now is hope that the refund systems within Amazon work the way they should (they have aways worked superbly well in the past, I must say)

It seems strange to start off this blog with ‘Day 366’ but I thought I would stick with the absolute number of days since we started this blog rather than using any other numbering system. Today is always a delayed start for us as we have to complete our shopping order ready for delivery from Waitrose tomorrow morning but we got going at last. At last, though, we got under way and caught up with some of our church friends after our way back from collecting the newspapers. They informed us (but I think I already had a note of it) that bookings for our church services was going to start tonight, organised by Eventbrite, so that is something I must get organised later on tonight. Having seen one set of friends we cut across the road into the park and saw our University of Birmingham friend who was wondering where we were, as were a little late this morning.  We chatted about this and that, thinking about how we were going to get our social lives organised in a week or so. For a start, our friend will be resuming a lot of his tennis activities as soon as these reopen on March 29th for outdoor sports but I suspect that my Pilates classes, being indoor, will have to wait a little longer. Last time we were ‘in between’ lockdowns we had a Pilates class with only four in it (one in each corner of the room) whilst our instructor occupied some open space near the door so we may go onto a similar regime this time around. Another friend who is a wheelchair-user hove into view and, as promised, I just happened to have another bottle of damson gin in my rucksack ready for her to enjoy.

We knew that this afternoon, we were going to have a ‘Zoom’ session with some of Meg’s cousins. So after lunch, a snooze and a paper read we were ready for the Zoom session which involved Meg’s cousin, her daughter and son-in-law in one house in Derby whilst another daughter and son-in-law were at their house in Cheltenham. We had a rather jolly time with quite a lot of discussion about how the nature of work would evolve in a post-pandemic world. We all agreed that the nature of work would alter radically and it may well be (I conjecture) that a pattern will evolve of 1-2 days in the office (around the water cooler!) to maintain social contacts and those things best handled face-to-face and with a corresponding 3-4 days working from home (if you have the space) I suspect that those who can, released from travelling time to/from work. may well decide to work 10 hour days and then see if it is possible to have a four day ‘working’ week and a three day ‘week-end’ or leisure time at least. The ultimate irony in all of this is that for the foreseeable future, one’s leisure time is likely to have a large internet component to it.

Tonight, when our  ‘Zoom’ session had finished, I decided to consult our church’s website to see what arrangements there would be for services this weekend. To my delight, there as a clickable link to the Eventbrite booking system which worked like clockwork and I managed to get two places booked for myself and Meg at the Saturday evening service without any difficulty. I presume that we have to show the QR codes that have been sent over the email to secure our admission into church on Saturday and I wonder if we will be scanned in – much like the coffee ships before lockdown. We have a new parish priest ready to take over the parish so we are all rather curious – I thought I might take along some damson gin for him to enjoy but I suppose it can always double for communion wine if pressed into service.

There is a massive row going on in Europe at the moment with vaccines at their core – it really does look as the supply of vaccines is being ‘weaponised’ and is to be used in the developing contretemps between the UK and its EU neighbours. It looks as though supplies of the AstraZeneca vaccine are going to be severely limited throughout the whole of April – so the long-term hope that we may start to think about vaccinating those under 50 seems to have evaporated. As always the argument is a complex one and hinges upon who promised what supplies of vaccine to whom and when and a lot of this is subject to legal agreements as well. But it appears that the government target of vaccinating all of the 50+ section of the population is still a government objective. Meanwhile, more than 25 million of the UK population has now been vaccinated and the point must be approaching (quite soon? within a day or so?) when we hit the milestone of 50% of the adult population having received at least one dose of the vaccine.

For the various numerologists who read this blog, you will notice that a particular type of milestone is recorded today. It is blog no. 365 which means that this blogging exercise has continued for exactly one year. As it happens, a lot of the media are talking about the first anniversary of the ‘lockdown’ (No. 1 that is) and it is rather a strange anniversary to celebrate as so many at the time thought that it would be for a month or so of some privations and certainly not a year. It is interesting that according to the ‘official’ account, the lockdown began on 16 March 2020, when Matt Hancock told the House of Commons that all unnecessary social contact should cease. Mr Hancock did say this, but it was not until 23 March 2020 that Boris Johnson told the country that people ‘must’ stay at home and certain businesses must close. Government ministers have previously described this second date as the start of lockdown. There is no official government definition of ‘lockdown’. So there is a certain degree of confusion, even now, when the lockdown is supposed to have started but today is 16th March and therefore the anniversary of the Matt Hancock (if not the Boris Johnson) announcement.

Today was a little on the dull side but at least the weather app on our phone indicted that the sun might make an appearance a little later in the day. We collected our newspapers, picked up some milk from Waitrose and then wondered who we might meet in the park. Eventually, we ran into a little gaggle of four of the regulars and we exchanged some details about what the various members of our families were up to, particularly as there is now the possibility that we might make some arrangements to see some of the more distant members in only  month or so now. When we have lived throughout twelve months of the pandemic, then another month seems quite a trifling amount of time. We all chat happily away until the standing around makes us realise we are feeling a little cold and want to be on our way as it nearly always approaching lunchtime.

This afternoon, we knew we were going to have a good time with video calls to friends and ex-colleagues. The first of these was a call to one of our Hampshire (ex University of Winchester friends) and we exchanged reminiscences about some of the earliest computers and software with which we cut our computing teeth (when we were younger, in the late 1970’s and then the 1980’s) We were recalling a particular type of computer (the Amstrad) which became massively popular as a fairly cheap consumer product. In fact the name ‘Amstrad‘ was brought to the market by Alan Sugar (of ‘The Apprentice’ fame) as the name ‘Amstrad‘ is derived from Alan Michael Sugar (Ams) and then ‘trad’ from trading. We were thinking about some of our earliest computing experiences and both of us expressed the desire to see the Museum of Computing which actually lives next door in Bletchley Park to the wartime code-breaking project to which Alan Turing contributed so much. We have made a tentative commitment to meet each other at the Museum of Computing when travel conditions allow- it should be approximately the same distance of travel for both of us and will certainly be a good day out. We then discussed strategies of decluttering our respective houses, in which our Hampshire friends seem to have made a considerable degree of progress whereas we in Bromsgrove have scarcely started. After this lengthy but really entertaining chat, we FaceTimed some of our ex-Waitrose friends here in Bromsgrove as the time is rapidly approaching (after March 29th) when we can make some tentative plans to meet with each other in some open space somewhere (our garden, their garden, or even the park) Next week, we might be able to see our way ahead to make some more firm arrangements.

The COVID news still proves of interest to us all. Although the infection rates and death rates are dropping dramatically in the UK (and vaccination rate seems to be holding up), the situation in Europe is still grim.  In about three quarters of European societies, the COVID rate is increasing although concentrated in Central and Eastern Europe. But Italy is feeling the need to go into a full national lockdown again, as from today, so that if is persists our little vacation scheduled for Rome late September might be put at jeopardy. Tomorrow might prove to be quite an interesting day as well for we are to be in touch (via Zoom) with Meg’s cousins in Derby and the time is fast approaching when it might be possible to arrange a visit (if only in a garden). If and when we meet, this might be quite interesting because Meg’s cousin is actually buying a house in Derbyshire near to her daughter and we might be at a stage when we can view it (if only from the outside)

Well, here we are at the start of another week and we wonder what this week will bring for us. It was a bit of an indeterminate day today with a fair bit of cloud but with a mild temperature and only the modicum of wind. As we walked down to collect our newspapers, we bumped into the friend of a friend outside the park and then, once inside the park,  a little gaggle of 5-6 of us (including ourselves) met and  exchanged pleasantries and then, as the weather turned cooler, we all made for home. We generally turn on the rolling news programmes on the TV when we return home and as anticipated, the airways were full of the reaction to the way in which the Metropolitan police handled (mishandled!) the vigil held by women on Clapham Common. One particular image has gone around the world i.e. a slight 5′ 2″ physics student pinned to the ground and restrained by several burley police officers. All of this, of course, in a vigil which was designed to honour the memory of a woman who had been killed by a serving police officer as well. There are more idiosyncrasies attached to this event as well. There just happens to be a huge bill being presented to Parliament today (the rather ungainly entitled ‘Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill‘) which is a portmanteau type of provision designed to gave the state and the police many more powers than they already have. Before Saturday’s vigil. the bill seemed to aimed at Extinction Rebellion type protests as well as the current concerns about what to do with the statues all over the country erected to ex-slaver traders and which many now wish to see removed. It has been pointed out in Parliament that there are several references to offences against property in the new bill but nothing which would address the concerns of the omen who feel unsafe on the streets of our cities and towns. A senior minister has defended plans to increase sentences for violence against statues, amid rising fury at the government’s failure to tackle violence against women – the Tory Police Bill, to be debated in the Commons today, will allow judges to hand down sentences of up to 10 years for damaging statues based on their ’emotional, symbolic value’. There are some who argue that in the UK legal system offences against property tend to attract high penalties than offences against the person but I haven’t managed to track down any evidence for this oft-quoted remark.

As it was a beautiful afternoon I decided to give the car a wash as it hasn’t had a wash for a couple of weeks. When we bought it new, we did have a special treatment to help protect paintwork against things like bird droppings (which can be a particular nuisance if you happen to park the car in the wrong place) Anyway, I was particularly pleased that the car seemed to get itself cleaned particularly easily today – I suspect the trick is not to let it get too dirty in the first place. I have had the same large container of car shampoo for several years now but it seems to do its job OK- one particular car washing aid I have which is particularly useful is a smaller size watering can with a very long spout (designed, I imagine, to water handing baskets and the like). This I use to deliver a small but constant steam of water to wet the car before I get going with a soft brush (and then a multi-fibre mitten).

Tonight, many European countries (Germany at first, followed by France, Italy and Spain) are pausing their use of the AstraZeneca vaccine over fears that it might be implicated in a number of incidents of blood clots after people have received the vaccine. This is probably excessively cautious as there will always be a certain (low) proportion of blood-clotting in the population as a whole, vaccine or no and so the epidemiologists have to ascertain whether there is (a) an excess of blood clotting and (b) whether there is a causal relationship with the vaccine in any case.

Tomorrow afternoon will be quite full of video calls. First we are going to have a natter with one of my Hampshire friends/colleagues. It transpired that we inhabited the same haunts of Manchester but separated by a few years so we never actually met whilst we were both working there. Then we will FaceTime some of our oldest ex-Waitrose friends as we do every Tuesday afternoon. They, like us, are making some plans as to what they might do in a few weeks time when the lockdown starts to ease. But the news from Europe is now grim. Italy, France, Germany nd Poland are now all in the grip of a third wave of the pandemic and their failure to vaccinate enough of their population in time means that the third wave is proceeding apace. Can we be isolated from this, I ask myself?

Today is a day when two events are taking place on the same day – the first of these is Mother’s Day (or more accurately ‘Mothering Sunday’) and the second is my daughter-in-law’s birthday. So we have masses of cards, presents and calls coming into the house associated with either one celebration or the other. I was a little puzzled why ‘Mother’s Day‘ appeared so early this year – I tend to think of it as a Sunday near to March 25th (the ‘Feast of the Annunciation’) but I find after a little more investigation that the date (in the UK) is the fourth Sunday of Lent. Therefore, if Easter is early, then Mothering Sunday will also be early so that is one little mystery solved. Today being a Sunday, we engaged in our normal Sunday morning routine. I get up an hour earlier and then stroll down to collect our Sunday morning newspapers, getting back in time for the Andrew Marr Show which I am hoping might be particularly illuminating this morning in view of the fuss that is taking place over the Metropolitan Police’s catastrophic handling of the vigil taking place last on Clapham Common to commemorate the murder of the girl by a serving police officer.  As I was making my way home complete with newspapers, I tend to take a banana with me to sustain me until I get breakfast. When I came to disposing of the banana skin I remembered an old ‘tip’ and decided to use the banana skin to give my walking boots a quick wipe. Although this sound odd, it is quite well documented that the large amount of potassium in banana skins is the beneficial agent when it comes to shine up leather. Incidentally, the same trick works with rubber car mats (not the cheaper plastic variety) – it appears that the natural oils found in banana skins are very similar to this occurring naturally in rubber products which may be drying out. This is all strange yet true – fortunately, at that hour in the morning, there was none around apart from the occasional jogger to see me cleaning my boots with a banana skin. On my journey down into town, I treated myself to a little concert on my trusty old iPhone – this time, I was playing J.S. Bach’s B Minor Mass and parts from the Matthew Passion. So all in all, I quite enjoy my little trips on a Sunday with a ‘free’ concert thrown in. We walked down to the park and there we met with some of our usual ‘park’ friends – as we all know what parts of the park we inhabit and congregate in, we tend to coincide more often than not. Needless to say, yesterday’s Rugby match (between England and France) was a great talking point. After a while, Meg and I struck for home and we bumped into one of our church friends who told us that we now had a priest to take services when we next go in a couple of week’s time. Nobody seems to know anything about him (not that that should matter at all) but it looks as though he has been installed in the presbytery already. Of course social contact with him and with fellow parishioners is bound to be limited until we are in further stage of lockdown.

This afternoon, as you might expect, was devoted to watching a 6-Nations rugby match – this time between Ireland and Scotland. It was a hard fought match and only decided in the last five minutes when the Irish clawed themselves ahead – it never ceases to amaze me how many rugby matches are decided in the last fine minutes or so of a game.

In the late afternoon, Meg and I decided to see if we could see anything that Mary Beard might have produced on the subject of ‘race’ in Roman society. We did find a well-illustrated lecture by Mary Beard which was fascinating and answered some of our questions indirectly. Whereas the far right in both Britain and America tend to look to antiquity for the ‘roots’ of white western civilisation, Mary Beard manage to dispose of the most facile of their arguments. She showed that how many statues although often displayed in museums as white marble, at least initially many of them would be coloured (garishly according to present day sensibilities) in which we can infer the skin tints and tones of ‘typical’ roman citizens. In short, there is quite a lot of indirect evidence that Roman society was relatively open and cosmopolitan and also with a degree of social mobility for some. For example, one gravestone found near South Shields shows that the person who had their monument erected for him had married one of his slaves who therefore became his wife (almost impossible to think of similar events happening in past centuries in the UK when slavery was still legal)

Today turned out to be a fairly typical Saturday. The big storm which had swept across the UK from the Atlantic had done its worst but there were still the remnants of some following winds and rather lowered temperatures. We picked up our complement of Saturday newspapers, replete with supplements ready for a good read later on today. And so we made our way to the park which seemed a bit more empty of children on bikes and dogs which is normally the case for a Saturday morning. There we met with our normal crowd of park habitués – we tend to sit on the same benches every day and as people pass us by, they stop for a little chat. In this colder weather, the older amongst us have realised that it is not a good idea to stand for too long nattering  as our knees get set and our bodies get cooler so most of the passers-by just stop for a few minutes to exchange gossip of the day. Nearly all of us have been jabbed by now and some of us are awaiting our second dose of the vaccine in about 3-4 weeks time. We are all making tentative plans for the things that we intend to do during the summer when the lockdown has been alleviated. However, many of us of us are working out the people (generally relatives) that we would like to meet up with again as soon as we can and the crucial date is March 29th which is two weeks on Monday. On that date, up to six people drawn from two households will be allowed to meet in an open space such as a garden, so I imagine that many people will take that opportunity.

Quite a lot of COVID-19 news has surfaced today. For a start the number of (first) vaccinations has now reached 23.6 million which by my calculations is over 50% of the adult population. One would have thought that there would been much celebration at passing the 50% milestone but. if this has occurred, I have missed it. The number of new infections is down to about 6,000 a day which is approximately one tenth of the daily rate announced at the height of this phase of the pandemic (last January). In the last two weeks of March, however, is looks as though the UK is due to receive some extra batches of vaccine and therefore the rates of vaccination might increase dramatically. Various vaccination centres have been put on maximum alert to greatly accelerate the rate of vaccination and asked to ready their staff in preparation for this. There is a target to get all adults inoculated by the end of July but it is quite possible that with an acceleration of the rate, all UK adults may be vaccinated by early June. In today’s ‘The Times‘ an analysis has been reported that the cost of the lockdown is some £18 billion per month in GDP. So every month earlier that the vaccination target is brought forward should more than pay for the costs of the vaccines themselves. Of course, there is ‘many a slip t’wist cup and lip‘ as they say but we do, as a country, seem to be a long way ahead of any of our fellow European countries. The last set of comparable figures that I have seen published put the UK at 34% but the average for Spain, Italy, France and Germany is about one fifth of this (at 7%) Of course, there is always the possibility that new variants may arise (against which our existing vaccine will not be very efficacious until they have had the chance to be reformulated)

This afternoon proved to host one of the most exciting rugby matches in years – in this case between England and France. Had the French won, they would have been on-course for the ‘Grand Slam’ i.e one team beats all of the others in the competition. The French certainly had the better of the first half and actually scored their first try after about 80 seconds of the match in a piece of brilliant French flair and opportunism. The French led at half-time but the English gradually overhauled the French in the second half. However, they were still behind three minutes before the end when Maro Itoje (who had a terrible game against Wales conceding a clutch of penalties) squeezed over the line and was adjudged by the TV official to have just about grounded the ball, thus earning the try which secured victory.

Tonight there have been disturbances in South London as several women’s groups were planning a vigil in honour of Sarah Everard (murdered by a serving police officer). The vigil was not allowed by the police despite promises by the organisers to social distance – but a lot of women turned up to the vigil in any case only to run into clashes with the police. Under the circumstances, the police probably ‘called this one wrong’ even though mass gatherings are against the law under current COVID regulations.

Today started off as a beautiful fine day – Meg and I enjoyed our walk down into town where we picked up our newspapers and one or two little items from Waitrose which is on our way back. We seemed to have been running a little bit earlier today and we made our way to our benches overlooking the park, knowing that we would have some time to wait before any of our acquaintances showed their faces. However, the weather started to worsen and some squally wintry showers swept along to spoil our enjoyment and we even had a brief smattering of hail for good measure. Whilst we were waiting, we were passed by a young Irish mother we have chatted to before – we have some things in common because she attends the same church as do we but normally for the Sunday morning rather than the Saturday evening services, so our paths have not crossed for quite some time. Then our Birmingham University friend hove into view and several other people we have come to know quite well. One is an elderly gentlemen of 87 years who is quite remarkable because he walks for at least 8 km per day (even more by the time he gets home) His progress is checked on a ‘smart’ watch so he knows just how far he has walked and a GP daughter keeps track of him remotely. Our acquaintance had had a career in Export sales and in the course of his work had worked in both Kuwait and in Cairo. You never know what interesting lives people have led until you ask them of course, but I never fail to be surprised by the interesting facts that emerge from our gentle questioning. Later, we were joined by one of regulars (who happens to be a wheelchair user) so I was pleased that she stopped her chariot in time and did not run me over (which was quite a possibility) Some others joined us so we finished up as a little gaggle of six but by now the weather was turning against all of us so we decided universally that we had better strike for home.

This afternoon was devoted to some routine domestic matters. One thing I do at this time of the month is getting my accounts in order (I record transactions in a large ‘day book’ and then reconcile this with my online statements) This was a task quite soon accomplished so we returned to our newspapers to complete the afternoon. Earlier this morning and still preoccupied by ‘back up’ routines, I had a bit of a lateral thought and thought that I would use the memory card recently populated with my backup data in a different way. On checking that I had plenty of space in the external drive attached to the portable that I have, I thought I might as well as put a backup on there as well as on the hard-disk drive of the portable itself. So I now have my most recent backup on 2-3 different media in 2 different locations so were disaster to strike, I should be able to restore my files fairly easily.

As  greater proportion of the population get vaccinated nd the weeks roll by, so data is starting to accumulate concerning the efficacy of the vaccines. The number of people vaccinated is now over 23 million in the UK. There have been a few reports of people suffering blood clots just after receiving the vaccine but the WHO and others hasten to reassure us that that there seems to be no causal link with the AstraZeneca vaccine. Whilst cases in the UK are falling very rapidly, the rates in central and in Eastern Europe seem to be rising quite rapidly. It could be, of course, that all countries are a slightly different stage in the life cycle of the pandemic but it is surely reassuring that the data is generally moving in the right direction in the UK. Infections are up very slightly compared with a week ago but the number of fatalities is 61 less than a week ago when it was 236. I will personally feel a little happier once we have Easter out of the way and hope that the ‘R’ rate has not been forced higher by the great influx of schoolchildren going back to school this week. The Easter break may well give us all just a little bit more breathing space.

We have just spent a very pleasant hour chatting with one of my ex-Hampshire friends. As well as being a fund of good stories (and a repository of a great deal of knowledge) he used to work for IBM which means that if I can struck on any little computing issues, my friend and colleague can generally supply me with the answers!