{"id":2297,"date":"2021-05-03T20:12:21","date_gmt":"2021-05-03T20:12:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/?p=2297"},"modified":"2021-05-03T22:06:11","modified_gmt":"2021-05-03T22:06:11","slug":"monday-3rd-may-20121-day-2021","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/2021\/05\/03\/monday-3rd-may-20121-day-2021\/","title":{"rendered":"Monday, 3rd May 2021 [Day 413]"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today, you might say, was a typical Bank Holiday Monday i.e. it was wet , cold, windy and\u00a0<\/span>blustery. To be\u00a0fair, it seemed to be like this all over the country so we did not feel relatively deprived – but it is amazing how many times Bank Holidays in the UK just happen to coincide with a spell of really\u00a0awful\u00a0weather. When Meg and I were wondering whether or not to walk into town, we decided to brave it as the sky was only spluttering a little and we thought the walk would do us good.\u00a0Eventually, though, we made our way to the park where we were about the only people to be seen –\u00a0apart from one lonely dog walker in\u00a0a hi-viz vest about 300 yards away. So we consoled ourselves by having our snack absolutely alone and feeling a little wet and\u00a0miserable – I kept remembering the line written in a Blackpool theatrical digs \u00a0establishment in which a rather disgruntled thespian had written in the guest book ‘We\u00a0were cold and\u00a0hungry – and you took us in’\u00a0<\/em>As we were leaving we glanced towards the\u00a0duck pond\/boating lake only to discover that six little\u00a0ducklings had made their presence known. They have a rather precarious existence having to contend with ‘Henry’ the (resident) heron on the one hand and some rats who we know inhabit the island in the\u00a0middle of the\u00a0lake. Last year, I remember seeing the mother duck paddling cross the pond with all of her\u00a0ducklings spread out behind her in an orderly line. This made me\u00a0remember\u00a0something we once saw in Coru\u00f1a in\u00a0Northern Spain. A group of\u00a0Japanese\u00a0kindergarten children who must have been aged about 4-6 were being taken out by their teacher. The\u00a0children held onto a\u00a0long length of blue rope and\u00a0they were placed alternatively and were similarly equally spaced on each side of the rope – they had evidently been told ‘Whatever you do – keep hold of the rope’<\/em>\u00a0 and all the teacher had to do in order to get them across the road was to wait for a gap in the traffic and then hang onto one end of the rope and then lead them across. A\u00a0simple solution to a\u00a0problem, really.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

This afternoon although it was still\u00a0very blustery, I decided to make a special expedition to our local Asda<\/em> in order to buy a few particular things that I know cannot be bought anywhere else – for example, we quite like \u00a0tins of rhubarb that we have with a hot bowl of custard but only Asda<\/em> seem to stock it. Anyway, I had about eight little items on my list and, fortunately, I managed to buy each one of them. The fact it was a Bank Holiday and so wet and windy made the store practically empty which sorted my purposes down to the ground. In particular, now that I am ‘in the know’, I bought a couple of what I now know to be called ‘Power Banks’ i.e. little stores of energy a bit like a battery but where you can top up your mobile phone if\u00a0you out on the road and find your battery has run out completely. In my case, I am using these power banks to\u00a0<\/span>power the speakers on my resurrected ThinkPad<\/em> which means that a\u00a0precious USB port is not taken out of commission. Incidentally, I managed to find other reviews\u00a0that contrasted with the\u00a0rather scabby\u00a0review that I read about the Logitech\u00a0speakers I have brought into use recently.\u00a0These other reviews were YouTube<\/em>\u00a0reviews and the presenters were very\u00a0enthusiastic about the quality and functionality of these speakers (as\u00a0indeed I am). \u00a0I gave them a good test by playing\u00a0the whole of Mozart’s\u00a0Piano Concerto No. 23 whilst replying to my emails this morning and I personally found the quality and the tone to be excellent. When you think of the number of variables (the quality of the\u00a0actual sound card, the drivers, the speakers themselves and the inevitably subjective impressions of the hearer) perhaps it is not a surprise that one can get such a variety of opinions concerning the sound quality that the user is experiencing.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Today Boris Johnson has been declaiming that the end of the lockdown may well be in sight and that we can start to look forward to both the end of social distancing and also\u00a0also the prospect of overseas holidays. It looks as France, Spain and\u00a0Italy may well end up not in the ‘green zone’ but in the ‘amber zone’\u00a0which means that\u00a0visitors to\u00a0the countries will have self\u00a0quarantine for a number of days upon their return. Quite frankly, I think it is a little too soon to be holding out such promises because there is plenty of time for new variants to arise and for all kinds of\u00a0problems to manifest themselves. For example, some experts are\u00a0explaining that when travelling through an airport terminal those from ‘red’ ‘amber’\u00a0and \u00a0‘green’ zones will all be mixing and\u00a0queuing up together which exposes everyone to all kinds of cross-infection. The fact that an election is due in three days time is probably explanation enough for the fact that a proper degree of caution is now being\u00a0<\/span>abandoned – and we may all suffer in the long run.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today, you might say, was a typical Bank Holiday Monday i.e. it was wet , cold, windy and\u00a0blustery. To be\u00a0fair, it seemed to be like this all over the country so we did not feel relatively deprived – but it is amazing how many times Bank Holidays in the UK just happen to coincide with […]<\/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-2297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2297","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=2297"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2297\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2303,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2297\/revisions\/2303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}