{"id":2006,"date":"2021-03-20T22:34:22","date_gmt":"2021-03-20T22:34:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/?p=2006"},"modified":"2021-03-20T23:13:32","modified_gmt":"2021-03-20T23:13:32","slug":"saturday-20th-march-2021-day-369","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/2021\/03\/20\/saturday-20th-march-2021-day-369\/","title":{"rendered":"Saturday, 20th March, 2021 [Day 369]"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today was full of little hints of the spring about to come. We are\u00a0noticing that flowering cherries and flowering hawthorns are starting to bloom nicely and in a few days these\u00a0flowering trees might be at their best. Similarly, the forsythia in several people’s gardens is similarly in full bloom so I am\u00a0inclined to have my\u00a0camera at the ready so that I can capture these flowering images at\u00a0their best. Today is also the date of the Spring\u00a0equinox and I have\u00a0discovered why it is not always on March 21st. The explanation is that each year is 365\u00bc days (hence we need leap years every four years) and the spring\u00a0<\/span>equinox occurs 6\u00a0hours later than the previous year. A consequence of all of this is that the\u00a0equinox can occur on either 20th or 21st or 22nd of March in any particular year. But after a pleasant walk into town, we collected our newspapers and then on into the\u00a0town where we met, as usual, with a couple of park friends. Then we made for home, knowing that the afternoon was going to be dominated by rugby.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

This afternoon was ‘Super\u00a0Saturday<\/em>‘ in which there are going to be three 6-Nations rugby\u00a0matches to round off the season (almost) The first game was Italy v. Scotland which was a bit of a\u00a0<\/span>non-match as Italy\u00a0haven’t won a\u00a0game since goodness knows when.\u00a0The second match was England vs. Ireland in which the English seemed to be at the\u00a0wrong end of every refereeing decision but in the end the Irish won very\u00a0convincingly. But the match which was a cracker was the Wales v. France which both needed to win in order to win the whole\u00a0championship. Wales seemed to have it won as they\u00a0were 10 points ahead 10 minutes before\u00a0the end. But the French displayed supreme pressure and the pressure on both teams was so intense that the game ended with the French one player down (red-carded) and the Wales\u00a0team two players down (yellow carded) In the event,\u00a0French won the game with a\u00a0try in the third minute after the clock had ‘gone red’ which must make it one of the tightest finishes of all time.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Tonight was the night in which church services were resuming. We had to book our places with Eventbrite<\/em>, \u00a0much as if we are booking a tour in a National Trust property or similar. In theory, there could have been up to about 45 places in the church but tonight there were about 33 – the places for tomorrow are, we understand, fully booked. Of most interest to the congregation, though, was the fact that we have a new priest allocated to the parish. How long the new priest will remain with us is a bit hard to say because it seemed as though he was ‘on loan’ from another English\u00a0discuss altogether. Meg and I were very interested in the character of the new priest and were\u00a0impressed – he seemed to have the right combination of a common-sense approach to liturgical matters whilst also exhibiting a dry sense of humour whilst he was introducing himself.\u00a0Although we haven’t had the opportunity to speak with him yet (or nor will we, until lockdown conditions are released) but to ease his entry and show him some goodwill on taking over our parish, I left him a bottle of our own Damson Gin (which we\u00a0hope does not get mixed up with communion wine, not that that is very likely)<\/span><\/p>\n

As we suspected, today was the day when, as a nation, we crept over the 50% milestone of proportion of the adult population vaccinated. However good the news is from the UK, the news from continental Europe where the virus seems to be entering a third wave is a source of great concern. Many scientists are worried that the European\u00a0infection rates will thwart our simmer holidays. In particular, exponential growth in cases in countries like Germany puts in doubt roadmap proposals to restart international travel by 21 June. It has\u00a0been a record day for the UK as 711,156 vaccinations have been given and m<\/span>ore than 26.8 million first and 2.1 million second doses have now been given in the UK since December.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

On Friday afternoon, we had a Zoom call with one of our closest friends in Oxfordshire – in normal times, we\u00a0often\u00a0meet half way in Bicester for a ‘get together’ meal. We are looking\u00a0forward to the magic date of Monday March 29th (a week on Monday)\u00a0because, in theory, that is the date when according to the roadmap up to six people can legally\u00a0meet in a garden or similar open space to have a meal or a social get\u00a0<\/span>together. So as soon as the weather gets\u00a0nothing like reasonable, we will see if we can meet up in a garden to see each other face-to-face rather than relying upon technology the whole time.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Today was full of little hints of the spring about to come. We are\u00a0noticing that flowering cherries and flowering hawthorns are starting to bloom nicely and in a few days these\u00a0flowering trees might be at their best. Similarly, the forsythia in several people’s gardens is similarly in full bloom so I am\u00a0inclined to have my\u00a0camera […]<\/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-2006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2006","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=2006"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2006\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2013,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2006\/revisions\/2013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}