It was quite a dull day today but the weather was quite mild so Meg and I walked down to collect our newspapers as usual. There I discussed with our newsagent the fact that we both owned Apple Macs and he told me that he had, at one stage, owned one of the very earliest MACs which he had actually given away. If you look on the web, you can see that vintage MACs are now a collector’s item and can be worth up to $1,000 each – or perhaps even more for a really early, vintage model. My newsagent told me that he thought that the MAC he had given away might now be worth thousands of dollars.

Having picked up our newspapers, we made our way to the park and there we coincided with our Birmingham University friend. We had a chuckle about colleagues that we had both experienced in the past who had proved to be irksome to us. I recalled one particular colleague who upon my return from the Complutense University in Madrid teaching Information Technology (in Spanish) to public administration students, informed me that he was ‘proud’ he could only speak English and no other language. Although we were a friendly and non-argumentative department, I did rather ‘express my displeasure at his attitude’ (and this is putting it mildly). But to put things into context, I only had one or two matters of really serious dispute in the whole of a teaching career and, in general, worked with a very amiable and professional set of colleagues in the two universities in which I worked.

Out of an idle curiosity, I thought I would look at the comparative merits and prices of hard disk drives (HDDs), solid state devices (SSDs) and memory cards in variety. Whilst I browsed for various items on Amazon and noted some prices, navigated away and then navigated back again, I noticed that one items I had been looking at had jumped from £80 to £100 in the space of a few seconds. I think this is an Amazon ‘ploy’ ultimately to extract a degree of profit as they might work on the principle that if you want something urgently you may be willing to pay a premium price for it. Anyway, I have come to no firm conclusions on this subject except that in my researches to examine which medium has the best storage properties, baked clay tablets that have lasted for thousands of years may have something to be said for them. But given the speed at which technology is advancing, can one be sure that the media one is using today will still be readable by a future generation in, say, 10-15 year’s time? The solution, I have discovered, is to think about a backup strategy rather than storage devices. A good backup strategy is to think of the 3-2-1 rule i.e.  ‘The 3-2-1 backup rule is an easy-to-remember acronym for a common approach to keeping your data safe in almost any failure scenario. The rule is: keep at least three (3) copies of your data, and store two (2) backup copies on different storage media, with one (1) of them located offsite.’ So I will continue to have thoughts and ruminations about all of this.

In the late afternoon, I caught up with my emails only to discover that a Hampshire friend was suggesting we Skype in 20 minutes time. Then I discovered there was an ominous ‘question mark’ over the Skype desktop icon which suggests that the newly updated operating system could not use the out-of-date application in my computer. So I quickly deleted it and then managed to reinstall a more up-to-date version which fortunately worked like a dream. So I Skyped my friend and we had an entertaining few minutes before we FaceTimed some of our other Bromsgrove friends as we have a regular arrangement each Tuesday afternoon. So all in all, about an hour and a half of non-stop ‘chatting’ via video technology.

There is an interesting political ‘brew’ developing this evening. The Tory party has firmly set its face against anything that sounds like a ‘vaccine passport’ which may well be demanded by airlines, other holiday destinations and so on.  But civil liberties organisations are alarmed about the project. “Vaccine passports would create the backbone of an oppressive digital ID system and could easily lead to a health apartheid that’s incompatible with a free and democratic country,” says Silkie Carlo, director of Big Brother Watch. “Digital IDs would lead to sensitive records spanning medical, work, travel, and biometric data about each and every one of us being held at the fingertips of authorities and state bureaucrats.”  Nonetheless, the idea is gaining a degree of traction and the government may well be approaching a volte-face on this issue. Already some of the technological and ethical issues are being explored within government and something akin to the old yellow card, more formally known as the International Certificate of Vaccination may well emerge. I can firmly predict, however, that the government will call it anything but ensure that the old ‘passport’ is never actually used!

After a somewhat delayed start, we decided that it was not going to rain today so Meg and I walked down to collect our newspapers and journey into the park as part of our normal routine. We found the park reasonably quiet after the weekend which is obviously always a busy time. We did appreciate the little bit of peace but found that every park bench was muddy as children had evidently clambered all over them in their muddy shoes. Fortunately, we came prepared for all contingencies and have an old tea towel which served both to wipe the mud off the seats and to dry them at the same time. Apart from a wave from a car, we did not bump into any of our sets of friends today, of the park genre or otherwise, so I read yesterday’s blog to Meg which I can access via my mobile phone.

This afternoon, I decided to tackle a pile of old files which required some rationalisation – and I hope to reduce the clutter a smidgeon by seeing how much of the contents I could dispense with. As is the way with things, quite a lot of things that seemed important at the time could now get junked so I helped to fill our outside paper-waste bin to overflowing before it gets emptied on Thursday morning. One of the tasks that I quite enjoy is to recycle some of the old files which I do by carefully peeling off the old labels – I noticed that on one, which had a label ‘stuck over’ a label, the original referred to the applications my son was making when he went to university which makes it about 34 years old! I also discovered a photo of myself with my ‘Spanish’ baby  – well, not mine exactly, but the baby belonging to a professor from Barcelona who was a fellow examiner of a PhD in La Coruña, Northern Spain, about 6-7 years ago now. 

As part of my clearing up activities I came across an old ‘pocket’ hard disk drive that I must have bought years before – when I looked on it, it did not have a great deal of data but it did have some oldish photos that I had forgotten about. So I copied these across to a legacy folder on my principal computer and then reformatted the newly discovered disk (it was FAT32 and I wanted to make sure it was NTFS compatible with the MAC) and then copied the files back over on it. As I was congratulating myself on a new discovered extra source of computer storage, I thought it might be a good idea to try to discover how old the disk drive actually was. By putting the serial number into a Seagate database, I discovered that it was about 9 years old. A bit of research on the internet indicates that most portable hard disk drives are only anticipated to have a life of about 5-6 years so I already appear to be living on borrowed time. So do I need to buy a new disk drive as a backup when the newly discovered one seems absolutely fine? I need to have a think about this one.

This afternoon’s political news has been dominated by the much-trailed ‘roadmap’ for the way in which the lockdown is be gradually released. Whilst I am not a fan of this particular government, I do feel that they have got the roadmap about right. They are suggesting a series of four gradual  easing of restrictions and always subject to four criteria which are that vaccination rates continue, death rates are still reducing, infection rates are not surging and finally new variants of the virus do not threaten us. The innovative part of the proposal is that there should be a gap of five weeks before one stage and the next – this is to allow for an examination of the data to show that adverse consequence are not flowing before the next wave of the ‘un-lockdown’ continues. This all sounds incredibly sensible but as predicted the the right wing of the Conservative party (all ex-Brexiteers by the way) are still calling for restrictions to be eased at the earliest possible moment i.e. in time for Easter. The reaction of the popular press and any opinion polls gathered in the next few days will prove to be extremely interesting reading.

One treat I am saving for later on this evening is to view that new footage released by NASA of the ending of ‘Perseverance‘ onto the surface of Mars. This is said to be ‘stunning’ but I think it relates principally to the way in the craft was landed without damage, on the surface of Mars via a type of ‘sky crane’ from which the craft was lowered on a series of tethers. Whether is actually is stunning or just ‘hype’ I will be able to tell later on the evening.

Today was the type of day in which the poetic would say that the clouds were ‘scudding’ across the sky – in fact, I don’t know if we use that verb for any other object or activity except clouds. Anyway, I got up fairly early-ish and then walked down to the newsagent for our normal Sunday supplies, all done at this hour in the morning in order to get back in time for the Andrew Marr show (which, I am ashamed to say, I largely slept through). Then we made our way down to the park, being met on the way by some of our church friends. We continued our discussions as to what has (not) been going at our local church and the news to date does seem very encouraging for us.  In the park we met with our Birmingham University friend and another park regular who occasionally seeks out our company and has a lot to say for himself. Enough said for the moment.  We met some more of our church friends who told us that the police had been called out about 6.00 am to a large disturbance in the vicinity of the park involving several young males so I wonder whether some kind of illegal drinks party had been organised.

After lunch, and a brief rest, I thought I would busy myself with the tidy-up of the study. I had ordered several things from Amazon and I hoped that would package them in a fairly large box- which fortunately, they did. I could then use this box to store some competing ‘hardware’ which was adding to the clutter but now they are safely boxed up, labelled and put on a bookcase top where I cannot forget about them but quickly access them when needed.

There is still quite a debate going on as to whether the schools should be ‘open’  on 8th March (not that they ever closed as they catered for the children of key workers as as well as disadvantaged children) The government argue that they will be driven by ‘the data’ but all will be revealed tomorrow afternoon (to Parliament) and then other address to the nation by Boris Johnson at 7.00pm.  What is interesting is that Meg and I watched the replay of Thursday night’s Question Time which is broadcast on the Parliament channel between 6.00 and 7.00 on a Sunday. The consensus view (even agreed to by the Tory MP who was part of the panel) was that any lockdown should be gradual in the extreme and there should be a pause after each step to ensure that the R factor does not increase. 

The BBC seems to be taking its role as a public educator in these troubled times. I notice that on their website tonight, there is a contribution entitled ‘Lockdown review: What are the risks of schools, pubs and shops reopening?‘  The article appears interesting and informative and was written by a member of the BBC Reality Check unit. There seemed to be plenty of graphs and reference to the latest research evidence so this is probably worth a good read once I have the time.

This morning, acting on a whim, I turned to a section of Google called Google Scholar which will detail for any researcher who has published a series of papers how many citations have been received. In this context, a citation is a  reference by another author to one’s own published work. In this way, it is possible to measure if only in a simplistic way whether one’s paper had any points within it that another academic wished to reference. I was surprised to find that the most popular paper (twice as many citations as the next highest) was a paper written on the subject of plagiarism.(By the way, my son commented ‘Who did you copy it from?‘) I think that myself and my co-author had just hit the rising tide of concern at just about the right time and also had it published in an electronic journal (which would it easier to find in a wide-ranging Google search, I imagine). The ‘citation indices’ are heavily used in the academic community to help to assess the quality of published work in what was called the Research Assessment Exercise, to which all universities had to subject themselves at regular intervals (every four years as I remember).

The latest data seems to indicate that some 17.5 million of the population (about a third of the adult population) have now been vaccinated. There is also a suggestion this evening that jabs may reduce the amount of transmission by about two-thirds. But we have a difficult job statistically to work out how much of the reduction in transmission is due to vaccine and how much is due to the generalised effects of the lockdown – perhaps this type of analysis might be forthcoming in time, but it is evidently far too early to come to firm conclusions at this stage in the proceedings.

As today was one of those ‘raining all morning’ days, we decided to pop down and collect our newspapers in the car and then make our way to the park. Once there, we made for the bandstand as it was too wet to take a seat – but then we were joined unexpectedly by our Birmingham University friends.  We spent about twenty minutes chewing the fat until we all decided we had got a little cold and decided to call it a day. Fortunately as we were in the car we got home without getting wet and immediately started cooking our mid-day meal. Then we had a lazy afternoon, reading the Saturday newspapers until I decided it was time to complete the tidy up of the study. On top of my book cases in the study, I tend to store the empty boxes of any hardware that we have bought in the past (in case anything needed to go back within the guarantee period) I located a little stool that I had underneath a desk and ‘liberated’ it so that I could make some space on the bookcase tops for things that I needed to store but keep accessible like our Photo Frame (which we may need to drag out once we make contact with members of the family). One thing that I re-discover was a type of hard-drive which we used to use with an Apple Mac – this particular model, whilst expensive, is the kind that film producers and professionals of a similar ilk use to make sure that their work does not get lost. To cut a long story short, it was already formatted for a MAC so I tried it out as an alternative backup mechanism and was delighted to find out it saved 16 Gbytes of data in about 8 minutes, which is a good reason for doing it regularly from now on.

It will be interesting to read the Sunday newspapers tomorrow morning to see how the world at large is responding to the imminent ending of the lockdown. The most immediate point of contention is whether schools should all be re-opened in almost the form of a ‘Big Bang’ on March 8th. Were this to happen against the advice of teachers and many in the scientific community (including the Government’s Chief medical officer, Chris Whitty. There is a strong feeling that whilst the right wing of the Conservative party are baying for schools to re-open, it may prove to be an incredibly risky procedure. I had not realised that children whilst not suffering much from the virus itself can certainly pass it on adults with whom they come into contact. Most of the scientific community are of the view that the current R rate of between 0.6 and 0.9 will rise to 1.0 and over if the schools get reopened in a ‘Big Bang’ sort of way. The Scots and the Welsh seem to be heading for a much more measured and phased return of children to school which is surely the way to go – but of course political considerations come dramatically to the fore. Whilst there is a consensus that this has to be the ‘last’ of the lockdowns, it it is far from clear how carefully we need to tread, as a society, to make sure we do not throw away the efforts we have made during the last 10-11 months. For example, most of the population are of the view that pubs should not reopen until about May at the earliest.

On the more positive side, it does appear that there will some liberalisation of the contacts between members of a family and their aged relatives in residential homes. What is being suggested is a very limited form of contact where holding hands will be allowed but no hugging or kissing – and members of the family must wear full PPE. Meg and I are anxious to try and see Meg’s cousin in Lancashire who is in sheltered accommodation. We will have to see what the actual norms are but I will wait until about Tuesday (the final versions of the regulations may well be published late on Monday afternoon). We hope that it may be possible to make a visit at least in a garden if we were to wait until mid-April and the regulations permit members of facilities to meet in the outdoors. Anyway, we shall to wait and see. I see that BBC are running an article in their website called ‘Coronavirus: What Europeans have learned from a year of pandemic’ and at first glance, it appears to be interesting to see how other societies have coped with the common threat. I think that we in the UK are particularly bad at learning from other societies – always assuming that we know and do things better than anywhere else on earth. But if do imitate other societies, it always seems to the worst of practices in the USA rather than our European neighbours. 

Today was one of those kinds of days in which there was a degree of low-hanging cloud and showers always threatening but not quite materialising. We collected our newspapers and were in two minds whether or not to seek the shelter of the bandstand in the park – in the event, we decided to try our luck on one of the local benches and it although it was blustery and lots of water in the air, we were not being actually rained upon so we judged it better to try our luck on the bench. The poor weather kept some of the mothers with young children away whilst the ardent dog walkers were there in force as always. Talking about mothers and  young children, I saw a young mother made up to the eyeballs who was dragging a two and a three year old through the mud. They were both howling and covered in mud but their mother dragged them along anyway, no doubt encouraging them to stand ‘on their own two feet’ which they didn’t. Just a little scene from park life. We didn’t meet with Birmingham University friend today as he had other things to do but we will probably meet on Sunday, all being well.

Today, I thought I would try something different for lunch. We had ordered some coley from Waitrose which actually came cut in the form of blocks of fish (but not reconstituted) I made a background mix of onions, peppers, tomatoes and mushrooms and then added the fish. Under the instruction of our domestic help, I made a type of roux which went over the fish and then slopped half a jar of onion and garlic ‘goo’ onto it before the whole was baked in the oven. It did actually turned out OK and I am sure I have tasted something similar in a Spanish restaurant but I couldn’t recall what they actually called it.

This afternoon after a slight snooze and a read, I decide to carry on cleaning up the study because having cleared some much ‘clutter’ off the desk, I did need to do something with it. One of these items was  what I think is called a Digital Picture Frame and I had purchased one about four years ago, principally with our (then forthcoming) 50th wedding anniversary in mind. During my cleanup, I had an extraordinary stroke of luck because I discovered an unlabelled pen drive near to the picture frame but I had no idea what was on it. Inserting into the computer, I found that it actually contained the ordinal wedding photos (from 1967) which I had digitised and soundtracks of the music that had been played. This afternoon, I took the picture frame, inserted the pen drive into the slot provided, turned on the ‘On’ button and wondered what would happen. What we actually got was a rolling display of the digitised wedding photographs from 1967, all of the photos of the guests that we had taken at the celebration we held in a hotel near Kidderminster in 2017 (some three and a half years ago) complete with all of the tracks of music (internet derived copies of the original playlist that approximated very closely to the originals). I felt that all of this was an absolute bonus so now that I know what a fantastic record that we have of the memories of both the original service and our celebration some fifty years later. I must box it up carefully and as soon as the lockdown ends, we can bore some of our friends rigid with it all when we next manage to socialise in each others houses. (I suppose I could take a big video of all of this on my iPhone but the resultant file might be multiple megabytes in length so perhaps not. )

More interesting vaccine news is forthcoming tonight. A study in The Lancet (weekly medical periodical) has shown that the efficiency off the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine is raised from 76% to 81% if a gap of about three months is left between the initial and the second dose. The report also said that a single standard dose of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine is 76% effective from day 22 to day 90 after the jab – meaning protection was not reduced in the three months between the first and second dose. The infection rate in London is also reducing very rapidly. What would be very interesting to know is how much of the reduction in the infection rate is due to the lockdown, how much to the vaccinations provided and how what is the ratio of one to the other. Perhaps in the fullness of time, we will tell. To round off the week, I FaceTimed one of my Hampshire friends who seems incredibly busy organising various Zoom events and we had a good old catch up on the last week’s news. 

As I reported last night, I was very pleased to get my computer system up and running again and all seemed to be well. I did, though, wondered whether or not I could use a client other than FileZilla which is a very reliable FTP program. I did have an app installed called Forklift which had good reviews when I installed it and automatically remembered your login credentials when in use. However, I updated my FTP password because the new operating system indicated to me that my previous one had been found in a data breach and so there was a theoretical possibility that my security could be breached. So I updated the password and used it once or twice but then my problems started (possibly my new password conflicted with a legacy password on the FTP server) Anyway, I got myself locked out of my own system and couldn’t access any of my website (or this WordPress installation) whatsoever. In desperation, I wrote to my extremely friendly Canadian web host provider – we have known each for at least 15 years and she often gets me out of scrapes. It transpired that I had made several unsuccessful log-in attempts after which the server automatically logged me out – and hence the system was completely inaccessible. I was in quite a deep cloud all day worrying about all of this but eventually Karina came to me rescue, unlocked my account and here we are. I think as a lesson learnt, I am going to uninstall the slightly dodgy software that got me into this mess in the first place.

Meg and I were a little late going for our walk this morning. In the first place Meg had a scheduled webinar that went on for an hour. I was unpacking the Waitrose shopping when it arrived and set to in my major task for the day. I am ashamed to say that after about fourteen years in this house, my principal computer desk had acquired all kinds of clutter so I took the ‘bold’ decision to clear absolutely everything off the desk and put everything on the study floor in a collection of plastic bowls which I keep in the garage for clearing up jobs of this type. Generally one bowl was filled with pens and stationary and the other with masses of bits of paper e.g. letter headings from when people had written to me in the past. So I did a massive, massive clearing out job which involved a ruthless weeding out of anything that was not strictly useful. I did make a little bundle though of ‘business card’ sized cards (colleagues, useful contacts, restaurants) and then another mini file, inside a notelet card of those letters and addresses that I particularly did not want to throw away. And so I now completed my comprehensive reordering so I now have besides the Apple Mac a scanner (behind the monitor) my two pocket drives for operating the backup systems, a plastic envelope complete with old pen drives, my correspondence cards and stationary now neatly filed, Tippex, staplers, sellotape dispenser and finally some desk tidies populated with important bits of paper to be actioned in a day or do. So as you can see, not much there then! At least I have some clear work space on which I can write and perform my other ‘office like duties’ I know this is a long way from a clear, empty ‘hot desk’ solution that many prefer but at least it looks very neat and tidy and I intend top keep it that way. This tidying up job took all of the afternoon by he way and I only finished it at 6.30 in the evening.

Three important bits of news are merging this evening. The first is that the new infection rate seems to be falling rapidly and this has to be good news, unless we all lose our heads and end our lockdown far too soon. Another piece of breaking news is the results of an investigation that reveals that those who die of COVID-10 lose on average 16 years of their lives, which seems dramatic considering that most of the deaths occur in the elderly anyway. But the third breaking bit of news is that the Australian government is trying to extract more money from FaceTime for its news content. FaceTime has responded by ‘unfriending’ practically the whole of Australia locking almost the entire population out of their FaceTime accounts. This conflict between media giant and democratically elected government had to come at some point of time, I surmise, and how this plays out with have implications for the rest of us. Needless to say, most of Australia is incandescent with indignation and although Google has backed down in a similar situation, FaceTime has not so we will have to see who blinks first in the situation.

Last night, we had quite an interesting experience on our TV set. I had done a search on YouTube for Amadeus (the film of the life of Mozart) and saw an entry for ‘Amadeus – the Director’s Cut’. Excitedly, we started to watch it only to discover that was an advert for a particular version of Amadeus. Disappointed, we trawled the rest of YouTube but did find a full version of the film but with the dialogue dubbed into Spanish. As it happened, we did not mind this too much and could follow most of the dialogue but in any case we enjoyed the music and the way the plot unfolded. After a little lie-in this morning, we were again delayed whilst I updated my Waitrose order for delivery tomorrow – this, by now, is part of our regular Wednesday morning routine. As the weather was so mild, the park was absolutely teeming with both children and dogs so we won’t be sorry when it quietens down for a little. On the way down we met with some of our church friends who who were a little distressed that nothing at all is happening in our own parish church whereas other parishes are taking a much more pro-active stance by keeping church services running whilst radically restricting the numbers. We seem to have been caught in a vicious spiral of the lockdown, our parish priest who has somewhat mysteriously retired from public view and one of the other major organisers of the parish is in infirm health. What is distressing is that other churches are making the best of a bad job and it appears that many members of our church community are deserting it in favour of services in other towns and it is problematic whether or not they will return.

After lunch, my son and I got the rest of my computer system sorted out. This involved making sure my backup system was working correctly – we formatted one of my pocket drives and then got Time Machine to make a backup.  This is one of the best possible utilities on a MAC – the first time it runs, evidently it makes a full backup but thereafter it performs hourly backups for the past 24 hours, daily backups for the past month and weekly backups for all previous months. The backups are incremental i.e. it only backs up what has actually been changed in the last hour, day or whatever and works well in the background. Perhaps PC’s have a similar facility these days but it means that you always have a ‘roll back’ in case anything has gone dramatically wrong whilst you are working.

Whilst we had the computer more-or-less decluttered and the backup systems working as I wanted, then I turned my attention to the desk itself. I cleared everything off it and onto some large trays on the floor. Now I can go about carefully putting back only what I need and discarding an awful lot of junk along the way. I did discover two things that I knew were at the bottom of the pile – the button from a submarine captain’s jacket which I discovered whilst digging in the garden and also a roman coin which I shall have to clean up a bit to discover its actual denomination. Whilst on the subject of working with a tidy desk, I know that in these days of ‘hot desking’ that one has one’s laptop and absolutely nothing else – I have coasters for coffee, notebooks, pens, stationery items and I dare not mention what else besides. But as I often say to members of my family ‘I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety-nine just persons, which need no repentance’ – however, they are not convinced by this I am told that I need to keep on repenting (i.e. keep things tidy) I will admit to one foible, though that I think is widely shared. If I leave out a letter, a document or whatever, then I know that some action needs to be taken on it but once it gets (neatly) filed away then the pressure to do something about it diminishes.

Tonight, by prior arrangement we Zoomed Meg’s cousins over in Derby. We had a wonderful hour together and are going to repeat the experience at regular intervals, perhaps once a fortnight, and are looking forward to the days perhaps in late April/May when we go and have a little ‘get-together’ even if is only own a socially-distanced way in a garden. Meanwhile, I read that in Germany the (British) Oxford/AstraZeneca virus is not being well received and there are reports of many fevers and headaches following the vaccination. However, there are no similar complaints about the Modena or the Pfizer vaccine which is preferred. Strange that, isn’t it?

Every so often, computer manufacturers release new copies of their operating systems and it is generally beneficial to upgrade whilst one can. The major upgrades used to be once every two years but Apple now releases a major upgrade every single year. As the new releases come on stream, so support for older MAC models tends to drop away i.e. you cannot upgrade and the more cynical will say that this is Apple’s way of making you change your hardware every five years or so whether you want to or not. As it happens, the new operating system will install on the desktop MAC I have in my study and the portable I have in the lounge (on which I am typing this blog) and as they both date from 2015 that makes them both about 5-6 years old and therefore ‘just’ upgradeable. So when I had the chance to update my main system in the study, I did so – and that’s when the problem started.  Every major release of operating system means that some programs which are well-loved and useful but ‘aged’ are no longer supported and therefore one had to learn to do without them. In my case, the update seemed to take most of the night and then the whole computer failed to start. I was in complete despair and thinking that I would probably have to buy a whole new system. What I did not know, but fortunately my son did, was that there is a special ‘Recovery mode’ for a dead MAC which enables a user with an apparently dead machine to reboot it with a special keyboard combination of keys  and this forces a reboot using an internet connection. Anyway, this worked and I eventually got the new operating system installed. But then my son and I spent about four hours getting the system cleaned up of redundant and dead programs, ‘clutter’ and other things that might potentially cause problems. we still have a little tidying up to do but I was mighty relieved to get my system up and running and in a ‘cleaner’ state than it was in before the upgrade (If you install or re-install new programs, all computers accumulate clutter so this is well known to most of us) So all is  well that ends well.

After a night of precious little sleep and a lot of concentration in the morning, I should have felt terrible but in practice felt quite OK – I suppose it was a sort of delayed exhilaration in getting a system working again. We were were delayed in getting into town but passed by two of our sets of friends en route as well as coinciding with our Birmingham University friend who we had not expected to see this morning. After an extended chat about our various academic experiences of how we award classified degrees to our students, we returned home to a very, very late lunch but managed to rustle together a meal which was actually ready in about 20 minutes, which was just as well. Then I spent some time playing? learning? some of the new features of the newly installed operating system with which I need to familiarise myself.In the late afternoon, we FaceTimed  some of our ex-Waitrose friends that we communicate with every week on a Tuesday at about the sam time. It was good to catch up on current news (although neither of us had that much new) but I did manage to tell our friends about my success in getting my EHIC cards upgraded to the new GHIC cards which will be current for five years.

Tomorrow night, we will Zoom some of our cousins in Derby and fortunately, the entire system has been set up for us so with a bit of luck, all I need to do is to click a link and enter the appropriate password (sent to me in an email). Also on Wednesday evenings, there is an excellent series exploring the legacy of Donald Trump particularly from the perspective of other world leaders and this has been a fascinating watch for us. Tomorrow morning, in the wee small hours of the morning, I need to update my Waitrose shopping list for two weeks time – once in the groove, it is quite easy to get the slot you need with a bit of forward planning.

Yet another variant of the virus has been identified which may have the ability to bypass the vaccines so far developed. Although this sounds frightening, it is the fact that UK medical science leads the world in virus genome sequencing which means that we identify new mutations far more rapidly than other countries. There is some evidence that these newly occurring mutations are both deadly and can evade current vaccines which sounds bad. But on the other hand, as the rate of infection drops overall, it is easier for us to ‘jump’ on new mutations that do occur and hopefully try to prevent a rapid and harmful transmission process.

Today started off ominously with a brown envelope from the NHS but on opening it, my forebodings turned to delight. The origin of all this train of events lies in the Brexit negotiations at the end of last year. Everything got done in a tremendous rush towards the end of the year and it was touch-and-go whether or not we conclude a deal by 1st January. I had read in the press that one of the casualties of Brexit was the EHIC card (European Health Insurance Card) which allowed all members of the EC to enjoy treatment in other’s hospitals. What was agreed in the case of the EHIC was that any time existing on the issue of the card would be honoured but not thereafter. On reading this, I went to check the EHIC cards for Meg and myself only to find that they had both expired (not having been on holiday, evidently I didn’t bother to check them) I decided to quickly make a reapplication for two new EHIC cards, hoping that as as I was making application whilst we were technically still members of the EC, then it might be possible to be issued with two new ones. When I opened the iron envelope this morning, some seven weeks after making application for replacements at the end of December, I found to my delight that Meg and I had been issued with Global Health Insurance Cards (The word ‘European’ has been replaced with ‘Global’ as there MAY be some non-EU countries with reciprocal healthcare arrangements with the UK) Moreover, these are valid for the next five years i.e. until December, 2025 so we can make use of them in a few months time. (It is interesting, by the way, that the word ‘European’ seems to be banished from any situations in which it may encourage citizens of the UK to think well of the EU. For example, the EU has promised to fund 50% of all of the foodbanks in the UK but as this was a requirement for a notice to be displayed that ‘this project was part funded by the EU‘ then the government refused to accept any help from the EU as it probably felt that many of the population would say a heartfelt ‘thank you’ for being fed by the EU – and that would never do, would it?)

The day today was almost balmy as the temperatures of about -3° had given way to a temperature of about 5-6°, which is certainly a welcome change. We met our Italian friend on the way down into town as well as the cycling partner of one of our Church friends who was taking advantage of some non-icy conditions for a bike ride. We collected our newspapers and caught up with our Birmingham University friend but we had to keep a careful eye out for the COVID wardens who were doing their rounds at quite a leisurely pace. We timed our chats so that having them in our field of vision, we could ‘separate’ before they got at all close to us. Having said that, the day being the first day of half-term, there seemed to be kids and dogs absolutely all over the place, but that was to be expected.

This afternoon, I emailed the daughter of one of Meg’s cousins because we are hoping to set up a Zoom call on Wednesday so that about five of us can participate in a chat. I am not very sure of my ground when it comes to Zoom but our cousin’s daughter seems to have it well sorted it out so I have asked her for last minute instructions so that we can conjoin without a hitch. Incidentally, I felt a little sorry for the young adolescent couple who lived in separate towns in the West Midlands but had arranged to meet in a carpark for a kiss and a cuddle – whereupon, they were set upon by the local police and no doubt fined (would they each be fined, I ask myself)? All of this, the day after Valentine’s day as well.

There is a bit of an interesting twist to the success story of the vaccinations so far. That is Britain’s BAME community seem far more reluctant to be vaccinated than the rest of the UK population.  According to SAGE, nearly 72% of black or black British groups say they are unlikely or very unlikely to be vaccinated. This may be a dramatic mis-statement of the true position but the latest data does seem to reveal that adults in minority ethnic groups were less likely to receive the vaccine than those in white groups, by between 10-20%. Misinformation spread within ethnic minority communities often plays on religious concerns — that the vaccine might contain gelatine, or other animal products and is not halal, or that it can result in modification of DNA. In the face of this rather disturbing information, there has been a bit of a fight back as community and religious leaders have been enrolled to spread much more positive measures. Locating a vaccination point actually within a mosque seems to work well as well (after all, we used cathedrals in the early stages of the mass vaccination campaign)

Hopefully, today will be the last of our current cold ‘snap’ as a front of warm air is moving across Britain from the West, bringing with it a lot of rain and higher temperatures. I got up at 6.0am this morning and after a St. Valentine’s cup of tea (ever the romantic!) I got myself muffled up and stole off through the cold for our Sunday newspapers. After that I watched/dozed through most of the Andrew Marr Show, then Meg set off for our visit to the park where we met with our Birmingham University friend. We exchanged little bits of news and gossip, mainly talking about the rugby that we had so enjoyed on Saturday afternoon. But as it was still bitterly cold, we did not linger for long but had our coffee and comestibles and headed for home. The park, as you might expect, was well populated with dogs and their owners and although it just an impression, I am convinced that the number of dogs has increased since the lockdown last March. At least on the way home. the wind is behind us rather than in our faces and this makes the journey home seem a little less severe.

This afternoon was another Six Nations rugby match, this time between Ireland and France, played in Dublin (without any teams of supporters in the stadium) Wales was a little weakened owing to injury and a suspension and had a clutch of injured players in the course of the game. In the event, the French proved to be the superior team but only just and it was a hard-fought match with only a couple of points separating the two teams at the finish. 

Today, as we suspected, the vaccination total surpassed the 15 million that the government had promised before mid-February and the total is now standing at 15,062,000. This means that all the 70 years and older should have been vaccinated (or at least been offered) vaccination and now the target moves onto the 60+ band of the population. Some research has just been released by a leading epidemiologist who has analysed data from 50,000 users who have been vaccinated with either the Pfizer or the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine. The very interesting results show that irrespective of which vaccine was used, then one dose gave 46% protection after two weeks but this rises to 67%  after three to six weeks. This result had been anticipated from the initial trials of the vaccine but this data is collected from the first cohorts to be vaccinated from about a month ago and is especially interesting. As it happens, it will be three weeks tomorrow since Meg and I received our initial dose of the vaccine and we already have the second ‘booked’ in the system for 12 April with is about eight weeks away.

As we have to expect, ex-President Donald Trump was not convicted in the US Senate yesterday. A vote for conviction would have required a two-thirds majority which, given that the Senate is divided absolutely equally between Republicans and Democrats, would have meant the 17 of the Republican senators would have to have voted for Trump’s conviction. In the event, only 7 of the 50 for a conviction, thus leaving 43 out of 50 Republican senators who were unmoved by the mob ransacking the Capitol building and then seeking out the Speaker (Nancy Pelosi) and the Republican Vice President (Mike pence) presumably to try to execute them. If you do not convict for that, then what behaviour is liable to conviction? Our very own Boris Johnson has issued a statement to say that US democracy remains ‘strong’, despite the ‘kerfuffle’ over former President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial. If the result of the Senate failure to convict is regarded as a sign of the strength of American democracy then words fail one – it shows rather than approx 80% of American voters and Senators are not unhappy about mobs rampaging throughout the Capitol building so long as they, presumably are ‘on our side’ American society must now be so polarised that one wonders of any centre-ground still exists in the gulf between the two parties.

This week is going to be another ‘bottling’ week. After waiting to get a supply of miniature (200 cl) wine bottles, I am now faced with the task of removing all of the labels (some of which is easy, some of which requires a variety of implements and techniques) so that I can to bottle some more of the 16 litres of damson gin with which I started. Any tradesperson who comes to the house (e.g. service of the central heating boiler) gets a bottle of damson gin to help to keep them onside. All in all, I hope to bottle another 15 litres or so this week which is about twenty bottles or so and then they just have to be carefully labelled and they are ready to be dispensed again.