{"id":1948,"date":"2021-03-12T21:16:21","date_gmt":"2021-03-12T21:16:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/?p=1948"},"modified":"2021-03-12T23:14:14","modified_gmt":"2021-03-12T23:14:14","slug":"friday-12th-march-2021-day-361","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/2021\/03\/12\/friday-12th-march-2021-day-361\/","title":{"rendered":"Friday, 12th March, 2021 [Day 361]"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today started off as a beautiful fine day – Meg and I enjoyed our walk down into town where we picked up our newspapers and one or two little items from <\/span>Waitrose<\/em> which is on our way back. We seemed to have been running a little bit earlier today and we made our way to our benches overlooking the park,\u00a0knowing that we would have some time to wait before any of our\u00a0acquaintances showed their faces. However, the weather started to worsen and some squally wintry showers swept along to\u00a0spoil our enjoyment and we even had a brief smattering of hail for good measure. Whilst we were waiting, we were passed by a young Irish mother we have chatted to before – we have some things in common because she attends the same church as do we but normally for the Sunday morning\u00a0rather than the\u00a0Saturday evening\u00a0services, so our paths have not crossed for quite some time. Then our Birmingham University friend hove into view and several other people we have come to know quite well. One is an elderly gentlemen of 87 years who is quite remarkable because he walks for at least 8 km per day (even more by the time he gets home) His\u00a0progress is checked on a ‘smart’ watch so he knows just how far he has walked and a GP daughter keeps track of him remotely. Our acquaintance had had a career in Export sales and in the course of his work had worked in both Kuwait and in\u00a0<\/span>Cairo. You never know what interesting lives people have led until you ask them of course, but I never fail to be surprised by the interesting\u00a0facts that emerge from our gentle\u00a0questioning. Later, we were joined by one of regulars (who happens to be a wheelchair user) so I was pleased that she stopped her chariot in time and did not run me over (which was quite a\u00a0possibility) Some others joined us so we finished up as a little gaggle of six but by now the weather was turning\u00a0against all of us so we decided universally that we had better strike for home.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

This afternoon was devoted to some routine domestic matters. One thing I do at this time of the month is getting my accounts in order (I record transactions in a large ‘day book’ and then\u00a0reconcile this with my online statements) This was a task quite soon accomplished so we returned to our newspapers to complete the afternoon.\u00a0Earlier this\u00a0<\/span>morning and still\u00a0preoccupied by ‘back up’\u00a0routines, I had a bit of a lateral thought and thought that I would use the memory card recently populated with my\u00a0backup data in a different way. On checking that I had plenty of space in the external drive attached to the portable that I have, I\u00a0thought I might as well as put a backup on there as well as on the hard-disk drive of the portable itself. So I now have my most recent backup on 2-3 different media in 2 different locations so were disaster to strike, I should be able to restore my files fairly easily.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

As \u00a0greater\u00a0proportion of the population get vaccinated nd the weeks\u00a0<\/span>roll by, so data is starting to\u00a0accumulate concerning the efficacy of the vaccines. The number of people vaccinated is now over 23 million in the UK. There have been a few reports of people suffering blood clots just after receiving the vaccine but the WHO and others hasten to reassure us that that there seems to be no causal link with the AstraZeneca vaccine. Whilst\u00a0cases in the UK are falling very rapidly, the rates in central and in Eastern\u00a0Europe seem to be rising quite rapidly. It could be, of course, that all countries are a slightly\u00a0different stage in the life cycle of the pandemic but it is surely\u00a0reassuring that the data is generally moving in the right direction in the UK.\u00a0Infections are up very slightly compared with a week ago but the number of fatalities is 61 less than a week ago when it was 236. I will personally feel a little\u00a0happier once we have Easter out of the way and hope that the ‘R’ rate has not been forced higher by the great influx of\u00a0schoolchildren going back to school this week. The Easter break may well give us all just a little bit more\u00a0breathing space.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

We have just spent a very pleasant hour chatting with one of my ex-Hampshire friends. As well as being a fund of good stories (and a\u00a0repository of a great deal of knowledge) he used to work for IBM which means that if I can struck on any little computing issues, my friend and\u00a0colleague can\u00a0generally supply me with the answers!<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today started off as a beautiful fine day – Meg and I enjoyed our walk down into town where we picked up our newspapers and one or two little items from Waitrose which is on our way back. We seemed to have been running a little bit earlier today and we made our way to […]<\/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-1948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1948","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=1948"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1948\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1956,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1948\/revisions\/1956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}