{"id":1404,"date":"2020-12-06T20:50:47","date_gmt":"2020-12-06T20:50:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/?p=1404"},"modified":"2020-12-06T20:50:47","modified_gmt":"2020-12-06T20:50:47","slug":"sunday-6th-december-2020-day-265","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/2020\/12\/06\/sunday-6th-december-2020-day-265\/","title":{"rendered":"Sunday, 6th December, 2020 [Day 265]"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today we entered into our normal Sunday morning routine which involves running down to the newsagents in the car to pick\u00a0pop the Sunday\u00a0newspapers in order to get\u00a0back for the Andrew Marr<\/em> show (which never quite manages to fulfil its promises these days). Our\u00a0sit-down in the park was a little on the cold side but not really\u00a0unpleasant. Whilst sitting on the park bench we were visited by a friendly dog (this is not at all\u00a0unusual as their magnificent olfactory organs can sense the presence of food from a long way away and hence we are the target of their attentions). Once we got into conversation with the\u00a0dog’s owners, we ascertained that it had been a rescue dog from the RSPCA.\u00a0I opined to the owner that you were never quite sure what you were going to get if you acquired a rescue dog but we were informed that before a dog\u00a0was\u00a0entrusted to a new owner, it had a ‘behavioural analysis’ done on it. I suppose with a knowledge of the breed and some acute observation, the\u00a0veterinary personnel who perform the\u00a0behavioural analysis can have a fair idea whether the dog is going to be OK with children, other animals, not to mention human kind (all of this I didn’t know) On the way home, \u00a0I got a telephone call from one of our friends whose wife was busy preparing the Christmas wreaths that we had\u00a0already pre-ordered. As it happened, we\u00a0were only two minutes away from their house so we called in had our choice of wreaths. Tomorrow we will pass by and pick them up and then when we get them home we will have to decide how and where we are going to hang them. As it happens,I have reel of fishing line wire which is\u00a0very fine but has a 50lb breaking strength so no doubt I can utilise this when I choose a display point for the wreaths. Our friends also\u00a0informed us,\u00a0much to our\u00a0delight, that they were going to make application to go on the pilgrimage to Rome next September. All of this means that there\u00a0will be a group of some 7-8 of us who all know each other and it may well be that we can hire a minibus to take us all down to Bristol\u00a0airport which seems to be our best accessible airport if we wish to avoid Heathrow.<\/span><\/p>\n

The afternoon was dominated by our watching the England-France rugby final which turned out to have a pulsating finish. Two minutes before the end,\u00a0England after concerted pressure all during the\u00a0second half of the match eventually scored a try (and converted it) which managed to make the scores level. From then on, it was extra time and a ‘sudden death’ finish i.e. whoever scored would win the game. England appeared to have won the match only for a penalty kick to hit the upright post, traverse the goal and then not, in the event, \u00a0go in. So with hearts in mouths, we watched England eventually get a penalty from which they won the match but it certainly, in the words of the Duke of Wellington, ‘a damned near-run thing<\/em>‘ (said of the battle of Waterloo)\u00a0Without it sounding too fanciful, I\u00a0wondered idly if this result would have a\u00a0deleterious effect upon the current\u00a0increasingly tense EC-UK trade negotiations in which the French are said to be maintaining a very hard line. I was wondering whether the French might be stiffened in their\u00a0resolve NOT to\u00a0yield to the UK having just had\u00a0victory just\u00a0snatched from their grasp in the dying seconds of the match this afternoon.<\/span><\/p>\n

There is no news yet of a COVID-19 negotiation outcome, as yet, as the negotiators have resumed their negotiations for ‘one\u00a0last throw of the dice.<\/em>‘ It looks as though day, or even some time tomorrow, might be the critical end-point for the negotiations. If and when the UK reinstate the\u00a0clauses from the legislation governing the operation of the internal market (removed by the House of Lords) then the EU\u00a0will probably walk away from the negotiations indicating\u00a0there is no point in trying to reach and agreement if the UK government intends that it intends to break past agreements (the ‘Withdrawal Agreement’) which has the force of international law.<\/span><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, there is quite a lot of excitement in the press over the imminent\u00a0arrival of the recently\u00a0developed vaccine. This looks as though it is going to be delivered to various\u00a0hospitals and distribution points over the weekend with final preparations on Monday next and possible start of the injection\u00a0programme on Tuesday. Various political leaders have indicated they are quite prepared to\u00a0publicly\u00a0receive their doses of the vaccine so as to increase\u00a0acceptance of the virus in the wider community. Even the Queen has indicated she is willing to receive the vaccine (although not in public) and\u00a0apparently there is a\u00a0precedent for this in the\u00a0early 1950’s when the\u00a0monarch ‘did her bit’ for the acceptance of the\u00a0polio vaccine.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today we entered into our normal Sunday morning routine which involves running down to the newsagents in the car to pick\u00a0pop the Sunday\u00a0newspapers in order to get\u00a0back for the Andrew Marr show (which never quite manages to fulfil its promises these days). Our\u00a0sit-down in the park was a little on the cold side but not […]<\/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-1404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1404","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=1404"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1404\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1406,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1404\/revisions\/1406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}