{"id":1712,"date":"2021-02-03T20:02:47","date_gmt":"2021-02-03T20:02:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/?p=1712"},"modified":"2021-02-03T20:06:30","modified_gmt":"2021-02-03T20:06:30","slug":"wednesday-3rd-february-2021-day-324","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/2021\/02\/03\/wednesday-3rd-february-2021-day-324\/","title":{"rendered":"Wednesday, 3rd February, 2021 [Day 324]"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The\u00a0mild spell continues as we are getting a nice taste of quasi-Spring sunshine. However, I fear that this is the calm before the storm because the\u00a0weather forecasters are telling us that\u00a0another cold snap is on the way. Hopefully, we may just about evade the snow but \u2018wintry showers\u2019 are the order of the day. We were a little delayed this morning because it was the\u00a0appointed day for our house alarm system to be checked over, which we do once a year about\u00a0this time. The reason for doing it now is that it is the time of year when our house insurance has to be renewed and we always tick the box to say our alarm system has been checked \u2013 if we had not ticked the box or even worse had lied, then our house insurance might have been rendered null and avoid.\u00a0After three quarters of an hour with\u00a0the alarm\u00a0whooping at various intervals in order to test it, we were given the all-clear for another year so that is a\u00a0relief. We were also reminded how to press the \u2018panic mode\u2019 which is useful to know but not mentioned in the manuals, for some strange reason.\u00a0We then enjoyed a pleasant walk to collect our newspapers and on the way, we met with our Italian friend who had been\u00a0vaccinated on the same day as Meg and myself. We enquired whether she had endured any ill-effects (and she had not) so I said I was owed a ginger cake at least for taking her to the vaccination centre. From here, we made our way\u00a0to the park, where we met up with our Birmingham University\u00a0friend. We\u00a0were discussing matters of a\u00a0statistical nature \u2013 particularly the way in which statistics tend to get reported even by doctors. For example if a patient\u2019s risk factor is to be increased by 50%, this sounds dramatic. But if the risk had increased from 1 chance in a 1,000 to 1.5 chance in 1,000 then for all intents and purposes this can be ignored. Whilst we tend to have a chat every day, we are going to\u00a0try an experiment tomorrow and relocate ourselves to a\u00a0different set of\u00a0benches overlooking the park so that we can survey if anyone is going to approach us indicating we may be bending the rules. On our way home, we met with an old lady who we know well from our walks in the park \u2013 she was having a conversation with her son and grand-daughter and they were doing this whilst standing in a porch whilst the relatives were standing in the driveway. The things we have to do to comply with the spirit (and the letter) of the regulations. Finally, we met again with some of our old church friends and had another of our pleasant little chats before we\u00a0returned home in reasonable time.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

By this morning\u2019s post, we received a letter from Meg\u2019s cousin who is in the business of\u00a0relocating herself from Cheltenham in order to live much nearer to one of her daughters in a\u00a0small village just outside Derby. We had a wonderfully long and informative letter and Meg\u2019s cousin does seem to have a routine which is not very dissimilar to ours in that it involves a circular\u00a0walk, a chance to pick up a newspaper and one or two items of shopping. She also sent us some estate agent\u2019s \u2018blurb\u2019 detailing a bungalow that she intends to buy and it seems, to our eyes, to be superbly adapted for her needs. The blurb did actually use the words \u2018deceptively spacious\u201d (this phrase is now so hackneyed I wonder that it is still actually used). Basically, this is a two bedroomed bungalow but the whole of the loft space has been converted into a potential third\u00a0bedroom or even a work room which should our cousin\u2019s craft activities down to the ground. In the reply I am\u00a0going to draft tomorrow, I must work out what modes of\u00a0communication we can now deploy other than a letter \u2013 FaceTime<\/em> of course would be ideal if her\u00a0daughter has equipped her with an iPhone.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tonight, we were exhorted by Boris Johnson to \u2018clap for Captain Tom\u2019 which the members of the family duly did at 6.00pm. I\u00a0actually use a metal serving\u00a0spoon banged on the back of a large anodised cooking pot which makes a beautiful loud ringing noise\u00a0right across our little square. Having just seen a programme on the plague, I was\u00a0also tempted to cry out \u2018Bring out your Dead\u2019<\/em> which seemed funny at the time but was actually in the worst possible taste. Next time,\u00a0I think\u00a0I shall engage brain before mouth. I am slightly ambiguous about doing anything that Boris Johnson urges one to do but the\u00a0case is truly a worthy one and Captain Tom was a life well to be remembered. I wonder if a statue will be erected to him, which is one suggestion\u00a0doing the rounds this\u00a0evening.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The\u00a0mild spell continues as we are getting a nice taste of quasi-Spring sunshine. However, I fear that this is the calm before the storm because the\u00a0weather forecasters are telling us that\u00a0another cold snap is on the way. Hopefully, we may just about evade the snow but \u2018wintry showers\u2019 are the order of the day. We […]<\/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-1712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1712","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=1712"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1712\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1715,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1712\/revisions\/1715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}