{"id":1211,"date":"2020-10-21T21:09:05","date_gmt":"2020-10-21T21:09:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/?p=1211"},"modified":"2020-10-21T21:09:05","modified_gmt":"2020-10-21T21:09:05","slug":"wednesday-21st-october-2020-day-219","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/2020\/10\/21\/wednesday-21st-october-2020-day-219\/","title":{"rendered":"Wednesday, 21st October, 2020 [Day 219]"},"content":{"rendered":"

We know that the weather might be quite fine\u00a0tomorrow but it certainly was not today as the morning\u00a0seemed dominated by windy and squally showers. However, the wind was not particularly cold so our normal walk was not unpleasant but I still had to engage in the daily ritual of wiping the park bench dry –\u00a0<\/span>fortunately, we always pack a spare tea towel in our rucksack so we are well used to making the place\u00a0habitable. From a distance, we spotted one or two of our normal ‘park’ or ‘ex-Waitrose<\/em>‘ friends but I suspect that none of us wanted to linger for too long in case we got rained upon even more. Meg and I had a hairdressing\u00a0appointment in the middle of the day (our hairdresser comes to the house\u00a0accoutred with visors and gloves) and was on time, so Meg and I had\u00a0had to\u00a0schedule our lunch so we had got it all over (if not\u00a0washed up) before she arrived. We now tend to pay people who provide us with services by electronic payments which saves scrabbling around for the odd \u00a35 note (which incidentally seem to be rare as hen’s teeth these days)<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

As my mobile phone contract had run its three years and expired a few days ago, I thought I would go down into town and work out what my options might be. So I ensured that my existing phone was backed up and 100% charged before\u00a0I set forth in the late afternoon. Although my contract was with EE<\/em>, I was\u00a0pretty sure that there was a CarPhone Warehouse<\/em> on the High Street and so my game plan was to visit CarPhone Warehouse<\/em>, see what deals I could be offered and then use this to trade a better deal with EE. But as I have not visited the High Street for some time, then\u00a0Carphone Warehouse<\/em> seems to have\u00a0<\/span>disappeared (I looked on the web and discovered just now that they have closed 531 standalone stores and made 2,000 staff redundant on 3rd April.) As our attention was elsewhere because of the virus, I didn’t know or even notice the demise of CarPhone Warehouse<\/em>. Undeterred, I went into my (deserted) EE store, told them I was at end of my contract and wondered what my options were – I\u00a0vaguely had in mind that I wanted to trade up to a slightly smaller and more convenient model than my current iPhone and had read some\u00a0reviews of the SE model. Basically, Apple have done a most un-Apple like thing and combined some old technology (screen size, footprint) with some advances in chip design and performance \u00a0to produce a phone with 90% of the performance of the bigger beasts in the Apple stable for about 50% of the price. I was\u00a0pleasantly surprised to be told I could have a brand new\u00a0phone at a price cut of 40% of the\u00a0contract price I had been paying and they could transfer all of my old phone data over and have it\u00a0installed on the new one within the hour. This was a pleasant surprise, and not what I was expecting The EE assistant pointed me in the direction of a cheaper shop that here I purchased a screen protector and a new case at a 20%\u00a0discount and for about \u00a320.00. So made my way home, amazed that everything had been so trouble free (as yet) as well as so much cheaper.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, back into the real world! the COVID-19 cases totalled 26,700 in a single day\u00a0which is a frightening figure ( you have to work\u00a0out how many become seriously ill, then have\u00a0to be hospitalised, them progress into a Critical\u00a0Care unit and then, for some,\u00a0die of the virus). South Yorkshire have joined Manchester into being promoted to ‘Tier 3’ which basically\u00a0outlaws any indoor or outdoor meetings, pubs can\u00a0only stay\u00a0open if they a<\/span>re serving a ‘substantial meal’ How many business in the hospitality sector can survive. However, having said that, there is certainly the growth of what one can term ‘the night-time economy’ There are 650 licensed premises (principally pubs) in Manchester\u00a0City centre\u00a0alone. How many nightclubs there are is anybody’s guess and I have not been able to even make a\u00a0guesstimate but I would I\u00a0suspect that it is in the range of 50-100. When I was a student in Manchester in the mid 1960s there were..2! One has to ask the question – how many pubs\/nightclubs does a city like\u00a0Manchester need? (I realise this is a\u00a0somewhat\u00a0heretical question to ask but I ask it anyway)<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We know that the weather might be quite fine\u00a0tomorrow but it certainly was not today as the morning\u00a0seemed dominated by windy and squally showers. However, the wind was not particularly cold so our normal walk was not unpleasant but I still had to engage in the daily ritual of wiping the park bench dry –\u00a0fortunately, […]<\/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-1211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1211","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=1211"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1211\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1213,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1211\/revisions\/1213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}