{"id":1563,"date":"2021-01-08T21:56:46","date_gmt":"2021-01-08T21:56:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/?p=1563"},"modified":"2021-01-08T21:56:46","modified_gmt":"2021-01-08T21:56:46","slug":"friday-8th-january-2021-day-298","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/2021\/01\/08\/friday-8th-january-2021-day-298\/","title":{"rendered":"Friday, 8th January, 2021 [Day 298]"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today was one of those ‘nothing much happened all day’ type of days. There had been a light scattering of snow overnight but nothing to trouble us on the pavements. Having collected our newspapers and trudging towards the park, though, it started snowing (fairly lightly) so we did not tarry excessively but drank our coffee and headed homewards. Today was the day that our domestic help comes to help so it was great to see her again after the excitement of\u00a0Christmas and New Year – we chatted away excitedly about the kind of Christmas we had both had but, of course, we have to be\u00a0particularly\u00a0careful to keep a fair distance between all of us. We worked out little culinary treats that we are going to do for each other – whenever, I have some curry left over (which is nearly always) a save a bit extra for her and similarly she was to cook for us one of her specialist lasagne which, no doubt, will be streets ahead of anything you can buy or eat in a restaurant.<\/span><\/p>\n

We had a fish dinner today (some pieces of cod which I found in an obscure part of the freezer that I had forgotten all about). We tart it up a bit by making a specialised little piece of hot sauce (equal elements of Thousand Island<\/em> dressing, mayonnaise and tomato sauce heated up for a\u00a0minute in the microwave) and it works a treat. We\u00a0try the same dressing, incidentally, to make the fishcakes we tend to have once a week slightly more interesting.<\/span><\/p>\n

Watching the rolling news programmes, it was amazing to see Donald Trump in something like a contrite mood and formally conceding the election as well as promising an orderly transfer of power. It is fairly evident to us what is\u00a0going on. There is now a real\u00a0possibility of being drummed out of office either via the 25th Amendment procedure or via another impeachment. It looks as though Trump is now seriously fighting for his political life and hence the strange spectacle of him reading out a statement condemning the rioters (that he had previously egged on) and indicating that the offenders would be prosecuted (but is anyone going to ‘shop’ them to the FBI?) It appears that some 4-5\u00a0people have\u00a0actually lost their lives during this storming of the Capitol building. My son showed me something he had seen on social media that I had not been able to verify concerning how one of the rioters had lost their lives. After\u00a0being\u00a0photographed brandishing a couple of\u00a0rifles in the air, he attempted to steal a picture from one of the walls. In the course of wrenching it off, he had\u00a0discharged a\u00a0taser which he was carrying into his own scrotum – in the subsequent distress he had inflicted upon\u00a0himself, he had suffered a heart attack from\u00a0which he died. \u00a0I do not know if\u00a0this story is correct but, if it is, it gives an extra twist to the meaning of the\u00a0German word ‘schadenfreude’ which means malicious delight in another person’s misfortune.<\/span><\/p>\n

The COVID-19 news tonight is truly frightful. In the last 24 hours, there have been 1325 deaths recorded and 68,000 new infections. Of these statistics, the ‘new infection’ rate is always going to be the most important because a proportion of these are destined to become\u00a0hospital in-patients – if there is any room left in the\u00a0hospitals. The hospitals in London are at breaking point and the London Mayor has\u00a0declared that the state of the London\u00a0hospitals is now a ‘major incident’. As so many commentators are now saying, it really is a race between trying to get as many of the elderly and vulnerable\u00a0vaccinated\u00a0before the middle of February and the fact that the hospitals, already at breaking point, are going to have to cope somehow with an intake that seems to be increasing more than their discharge date day by day. Once the wards are full, the A&E corridor space is full with trollies and the ambulances outside are full, then what is to be done? The government is so worried about the next few weeks that they are going to\u00a0start a major\u00a0advertising campaign that members of the population should act as they are already infected by the virus and should keep to social distancing religiously – something that even a casual observation in the streets shows is not happening. Another source of worry is that a recent survey has shown that many people think they once they have been\u00a0vaccinated, then many restrictions may be eased. It could be that ‘easing of restrictions prematurely’ will exceed the benefits to be derived from the\u00a0vaccination itself which\u00a0willingly\u00a0prolong the misery for all of us.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Today was one of those ‘nothing much happened all day’ type of days. There had been a light scattering of snow overnight but nothing to trouble us on the pavements. Having collected our newspapers and trudging towards the park, though, it started snowing (fairly lightly) so we did not tarry excessively but drank our coffee […]<\/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-1563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1563","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=1563"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1563\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1567,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1563\/revisions\/1567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}