{"id":2168,"date":"2021-04-13T20:38:01","date_gmt":"2021-04-13T20:38:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/?p=2168"},"modified":"2021-04-13T22:07:42","modified_gmt":"2021-04-13T22:07:42","slug":"tuesday-13th-april-2021-day-393","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/2021\/04\/13\/tuesday-13th-april-2021-day-393\/","title":{"rendered":"Tuesday, 13th April, 2021 [Day 393]"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, this is the day after our second jab so the interesting question is whether we will get any side-effects after the second jab or not. Last night, I just had the hint of a temperature rise but this\u00a0could have been imagination. Similarly, this morning, I felt that I had the slightest bit of tenderness around my jab site but this, too, could have imagination. There is rather an odd feeling about the state of the anti-lockdown this\u00a0evening. Boris Johnson is saying that people must just understand that ‘we will have increased\u00a0infections and increased deaths’\u00a0<\/em>as we un-lockdown. He also gave us the news, if it is\u00a0news , that all of the benefits we have seen is largely the result of the lockdown and not the effects of a mass\u00a0vaccination campaign – I wonder what the science is behind all of this? The sight on the TV bulletins of lots of\u00a0youngg people going out to drink and celebrate and not observe any\u00a0social distancing\u00a0does not exactly fill me full of joy. It seems to be an odd\u00a0paradox that those who have\u00a0vaccinated and even double\u00a0vaccinated (like Meg and myself) are\u00a0staying at home in the evening whereas the streets are generally filled with the younger\u00a0elements of the population who have not been vaccinated. I know that some in the epidemiological community are watching current\u00a0developments with a degree of apprehension. After all, what we are doing is really a massive social\u00a0experiment which could go horribly, horribly\u00a0wrong but is now a certainty that Boris Johnson is following ‘the dates, not the data<\/em>‘ The fact that as a democratic society, we are going to have national elections shortly is probably not in our long term interests as\u00a0politicians choose policies that they imagine will bty some them some short-lived popularity and votes.<\/span><\/p>\n

Today, though, was. a beautiful day for us to walk down into town. We picked up our\u00a0newspapers and then headed off to the park, noting that there were a lot of cars parked in the vicinity of the park which is\u00a0usually an indication that the park’s car\u00a0parks are\u00a0full and people are parking in the streets nearby. But as we got into the\u00a0<\/span>park, it seemed not\u00a0particularly busy and we were soon involved in lots of conversations with a\u00a0variety of\u00a0our park\u00a0friends and park\u00a0acquaintances. This even extended as far as the two COVID wardens who\u00a0patrolling order to give ‘advice’ to members of the population who may be\u00a0transgressing the rules. Some friends who live\u00a0any the bottom of Kidderminster Road told us of a\u00a0terrible car \u00a0crash that had happened quite near to their house. At least one car was\u00a0severely damaged, several young men\u00a0tumbled out of the car and the police\u00a0almost had to close the road until the accident debris was cleared up. One can only speculate but I did wonder of some younger people had consumed too much alcohol and\u00a0pushed their car\u00a0beyond sensible limits (the accident\u00a0occurring on a corner)<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

In the meanwhile, we have yet more horrifying stories from Mineapolis where another young black man was shot dead by the police. The\u00a0young black person was pulled over by the police for a minor offence and when he struggled to get into a (police) car he was shot by the policewoman – who thought she was firing her\u00a0taser and got ‘mixed up’ between that and her regular firearm. The police officer, herself experienced, has resigned as has the chief of police whilst the black population of Mineapolis is literally up in arms (being met with shows of force and arrested by members\u00a0of a\u00a0white police force) One has to wonder\u00a0whether the deep racism in American\u00a0<\/span>society together with a rampant gun culture makes the\u00a0whole society a\u00a0deeply unattractive\u00a0one. It is also interesting to speculate what influence this is going to have on the minds of\u00a0the jury in the George Floyd case (black man whose neck was knelt on by a white\u00a0police officer and who\u00a0subsequently died) This case is being heard\u00a0in a court house a few miles away\u00a0from the\u00a0present shooting and the defence are starting their case shortly.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Tonight, I finally got to work bottling a lot of the remainder of my damson gin. This is not a difficult process but is a little fiddly. First, my little wine bottles have to be sterilised and I do this with a Milton solution (or the Boots\u00a0<\/span>equivalent). Now the tricky part – kilner jars full of damson gin (and damsons) has to be\u00a0emptied into\/filtered into a jug. I generally use an old man’s vest (the type with little ‘vertex’ type holes in it) with a thickness in which the vest\u00a0material is at least doubled, it not\u00a0quadrupled. The to the top of\u00a0each jar, I add literally 1-2 drops of concentrated almond essence which gives the final product a little extra kick of flavour. Then I will label up my 27 extra bottles of gin before they get distributed again to friends and neighbours.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, this is the day after our second jab so the interesting question is whether we will get any side-effects after the second jab or not. Last night, I just had the hint of a temperature rise but this\u00a0could have been imagination. Similarly, this morning, I felt that I had the slightest bit of tenderness […]<\/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-2168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2168","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=2168"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2168\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2174,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2168\/revisions\/2174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}