{"id":1194,"date":"2020-10-17T20:28:39","date_gmt":"2020-10-17T20:28:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/?p=1194"},"modified":"2020-10-17T20:28:39","modified_gmt":"2020-10-17T20:28:39","slug":"saturday-17th-october-2020-day-215","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/2020\/10\/17\/saturday-17th-october-2020-day-215\/","title":{"rendered":"Saturday, 17th October, 2020 [Day 215]"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u00a0always\u00a0knew that today was going to be a bit busier than a normal Saturday and so it proved. Meg and I were a little late \u00a0but then we bumped into two of our friends that we had not seen for a few days followed shortly by another so soon we were five (No. 6 was busy weeding so he had already had his share of attention) Of course, we are all trying to make the best of things before some kind of new lock-down emerges as we will probably move from Tier 1\u00a0to Tier 2 within a few days. Eventually we made it to\u00a0our newspaper shop and thence to our normal park bench where we had a snatched coffee. We knew that we did not a massive amount of time so had to cut short yet another couple of conversations in order to get home by 1.00pm. As it happened, we\u00a0just had time to throw some\u00a0sausages into the oven and then\u00a0settled down in our study to enter a Zoom<\/em> session with our two of our friends and ex-colleagues from our De Montfort University days (although we have met for\u00a0meals at approximately yearly intervals since then) It was really good to chat with our friends again but the technology (‘Zoom<\/em>‘) rather let us down because the\u00a0quality of the video was pretty poor – we\u00a0looked as though talking to each from under the sea, \u00a0and the audio seemed to come and go. Nonetheless, we \u00a0exchanged what stories and\u00a0reminiscences we could for over three quarters of an hour but resolved to try another technology (‘Skype’?) in two weeks time.<\/span><\/p>\n

I knew that after lunch I had to make my way to a nearby hospital to have a (routine) CT scan, ordered months ago by my cancer surgeon after an episode some two years ago. I treated myself to a brand-new face mask as I was going to visit a hospital and, fortunately, the car parking charges were suspended as well. I won’t bore you with details of the procedure except to note\u00a0that the first attempt to insert a cannula into my left arm failed so I had to have it\u00a0inserted\u00a0into the other arm (this was to allow for the injection of the radio-opaque agent which has the strange effect – upon everybody – of making the bottom of your abdomen feel all warm) Removing the cannula seemed to result in the spillage of a certain\u00a0quantity of\u00a0blood so I was relieved to get home and have a nice cup of tea! (The procedure itself was relatively quick and trouble-free). Then we had to prepare\u00a0ourselves for going to our church service from 6.00-7.00. In theory, we should have telephoned to reserve a place amongst the congregation to be one of the 36 allowed maximum. So we got there 20 minutes early and pleaded\u00a0the we were ‘lost sheep returning to the fold<\/em>‘ and, fortunately, there was space so we were not turned away. The service seemed a little more\u00a0intimate tonight for reasons I cannot exactly put my finger on. Anyway, at an appropriate point in the service, a beautiful rendition was made of John\u00a0<\/span>Henry Newman’s poem\/hymn ‘Lead, Kindly Light – amongst the encircling gloom; Lead thou me on<\/em>‘ The story behind the penning of these lines is quite interesting. Apparently, it was composed in the middle of a tempestuous storm\u00a0where all the fellow\u00a0passengers were being sea-sick and all feared for their lives – Newman just got on and\u00a0composed the\u00a0poem \u00a0(I sent a recording of this to a friend of mine who was living out her last days in a\u00a0hospice,\u00a0hoping that it might bring a little bit of comfort to her. Whether it did or not, I do not know)<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

In the US, Donald Trump and Joe Biden did not debate with each other but each had what the\u00a0Americans call a ‘town hall meeting’ with the two broadcasts transmitted at the same time. This format is favoured by Joe Biden and he appears to have performed well with a reasonable yet\u00a0avuncular tone. Donald Trump did not fare so well, however,\u00a0coming off second best to a\u00a0feisty female interviewer and not helping to capture any of the middle\u00a0groups by refusing, yet again, to condemn any of the white supremacist groups who are supporting him. In the\u00a0meantime, the British political scene seems to be just as\u00a0cantankerous but I am looking\u00a0forward to tomorrow’s newspapers that often contain some interest insights\/bits of gossip that do not get repeated much in the Main Street Media. It looks as though Boris is cooking up a miniature ‘circuit breaker’ of\u00a0his own – it could be that something is devised which avoids the use of the term ‘lock-down’ or even ‘circuit breaker’ itself, whilst essentially being the same thing.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u00a0always\u00a0knew that today was going to be a bit busier than a normal Saturday and so it proved. Meg and I were a little late \u00a0but then we bumped into two of our friends that we had not seen for a few days followed shortly by another so soon we were five (No. 6 was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1194"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1194\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1197,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1194\/revisions\/1197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}