{"id":1548,"date":"2021-01-04T20:59:31","date_gmt":"2021-01-04T20:59:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/?p=1548"},"modified":"2021-01-04T20:59:31","modified_gmt":"2021-01-04T20:59:31","slug":"monday-4th-january-2021-day-294","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/2021\/01\/04\/monday-4th-january-2021-day-294\/","title":{"rendered":"Monday, 4th January, 2021 [Day 294]"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today was somewhat overcast and chilly but no snow was immediately in prospect. The cold spell is going to last a few more days yet but we are relieved not to wake up to a\u00a0further\u00a0dump of snow. \u00a0So we conducted our normal\u00a0walk, picking up our newspapers and making our way to the park which was not particularly busy. We had our\u00a0elevenses and walked home without bumping into anyone although I am carrying a spare bottle of damson gin plus a jar of comp\u00f4te in case we happened to meet with anyone who might be the recipients of further gifts. After lunch, we read\u00a0our newspapers and listened to some of the rolling news programmes – the Scots are going for\u00a0something approaching a full lockdown to cope with the COVID-19 crisis so it is a matter of speculation how far behind we will happen to be.<\/span><\/p>\n

Earlier in the day we had a message from some of our near neighbours in Hampshire when all of the family were going to be at home and therefore accessible to a FaceTime<\/em> webinar. We arranged \u00a0a time in the late afternoon when we could all coincide – and we are looking forward to that as we have not seen the younger members of the family for about ten years now and with the\u00a0passage of time they have got their GCSE’s and ‘A’-levels and graduated from their\u00a0respective\u00a0universities. But before then, we Skyped<\/em> some of our Oxfordshire friends and had a good chat about events that had happened to us both over the Christmas period (which we were both glad to have behind us) as well as matters much more philosophical. We parted saying that we should Skype<\/em> again in a fortnight or so, which we certainly shall. No\u00a0sooner had this call ended before we repaired to our iPad which is a better technology for us to make and receive FaceTime<\/em> calls. It was wonderful to chat whilst we were brought up-to-date on what each individual members of the family was\u00a0doing – principally, their work life after graduation. The son of the family was shortly to leave to go and work in London – the last time we saw him he was actually the first questioner in an edition of Question Time<\/em> which happened to come from\u00a0Cardiff University. The daughter of the family was living locally but under a bubble arrangement could come home to work remotely (as though going to the office!). The family had lost their family dog over the years but acquired another, bear-like looking dog which, if my\u00a0memory serves me\u00a0correctly was a cockapoodle (or a mixture of a cocker spaniel and a poodle) or a similar mixture.There are not many occasions in which all of the family would be together ‘en\u00a0famille<\/em>‘ so we were pleased to seize the\u00a0opportunity for a FaceTime<\/em> chat whilst we could.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tonight there is going to be a broadcast from Bosis Johnson to the nation so it is fairly evident that something approaching a new lockdown is imminent. The important question about which there is speculation before the broadcast is whether schools are to be involved in the lockdown (like last spring) or not. I am continuing\u00a0the blog \u00a0few minutes after the\u00a0broadcast so now some of the details have been filled in. It now seems that the lockdown will be total i.e. like last spring, but essential and key workers will still travel to work and continue to work,\u00a0Really significant change, for all of us, is that the lockdown will stay in place until mid-February at the very earliest. The political commentators are suggesting that Boris Johnson did not sound at all confident that even some of the most stringent\u00a0measures could be lifted after\u00a0mid-February. In other words, the lockdown will last at six weeks and probably for a fair amount of time after that. The provisions will come into effect from midnight tonight but will become law on Wednesday (presumably\u00a0after Parliament has approved the\u00a0emergence legislation).\u00a0People will be allowed to leave the house for essential shopping and exercise (once per day) but\u00a0all social contact has to be minimised. In the case of the schools, children in\u00a0general will be asked not to attend school but to engage in distant leaning whilst they can. But, as we have discovered this evening, the list of ‘essential’ and ‘key’ workers is long and complex and schools are meant to operationalise this sounds like a logistical nightmare. For example, is a parent living on a one room flat turns up with a child and\u00a0claim a ‘carer’ status, what element of\u00a0proof will have to be supplied to the school to work out whether a child is\u00a0eligible to\u00a0return to school or not? As I write, the\u00a0senior staff in schools are frantically trying to work out how all of this going to work but it sounds as\u00a0though the next few\u00a0days are going to be\u00a0particularly fraught at the school gates (or when the\u00a0school is\u00a0telephoned, if\u00a0nobody can get through, of course, on over-whelmed phone lines)<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today was somewhat overcast and chilly but no snow was immediately in prospect. The cold spell is going to last a few more days yet but we are relieved not to wake up to a\u00a0further\u00a0dump of snow. \u00a0So we conducted our normal\u00a0walk, picking up our newspapers and making our way to the park which 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-1548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1548","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=1548"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1548\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1551,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1548\/revisions\/1551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}