{"id":2380,"date":"2021-05-16T20:43:29","date_gmt":"2021-05-16T20:43:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/?p=2380"},"modified":"2021-05-16T21:04:01","modified_gmt":"2021-05-16T21:04:01","slug":"sunday-16th-may-2021-day-426","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/2021\/05\/16\/sunday-16th-may-2021-day-426\/","title":{"rendered":"Sunday, 16th May, 2021 [Day 426]"},"content":{"rendered":"

And so the weeks roll by and here we are at Sunday morning again. It seems almost unbelievable that at 12.00pm today (half way through the day) May wil<\/span>l be 15\u00bd days old – i.e. half way through the month of May. Meg was\u00a0feeling a little under the\u00a0weather\u00a0this morning so she stayed in bed whilst I walked down to collect the newspapers and then watched the Andrew Marr s<\/em>how at 9.0am Afterwards I wandered down\u00a0too\u00a0the park, again on my own, and\u00a0arrived at our normal bench, meeting our University friend within 20 seconds. We were soon joined by\u00a0another of the park regulars and we had the most entertaining\u00a0discussion\u00a0between the three of us. We were exploring how people navigated the educational\u00a0system and how examinations\u00a0were often a poor guide to the intelligence and potential of individuals. We all brought something to this discussion from our own biographies and so ‘a good discussion was had by all’. We negotiated (and discussed) one or two badly behaved dogs and our conversation also included the ways in which ‘man’s best friend’ had learnt to\u00a0live alongside us for so many\u00a0millennia. After this it was homeward bound and starting to\u00a0think about lunch.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Meg and I had intended to pay a visit up to Bolton, Lancs in about a week’s time but we had sent an email to the daughter of Meg’s cousin to help us all assess the gravity of the situation in Bolton. As it appears to be the\u00a0town worst affected by the Indian variant of the virus and it appears much more\u00a0transmissible than other variants, we have jointly decided to call off our trip for next Sunday.\u00a0Instead we have arranged a date in late June in about five week’s time and we suspect that by that time things might be very\u00a0<\/span>much better (or conceivably, worse) and we shall have to assess the\u00a0situation all over again. Tomorrow is the date\u00a0when we go inside and have a (seated) beer or meal in a pub, hug each other and a few of us meet in each other’s houses.\u00a0Personally, I would have liked this stage to\u00a0have been delayed by a fortnight (no time at all!) but I suppose that beer especially brought in for tomorrow would have to be poured down the drain again.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

After we had our lunch and a rest, I knew that I had to seize the\u00a0opportunity to\u00a0get the lawns cut as the sun was more-or-less shining and the lawns were\u00a0looking terrible. The dandelions and buttercups had gone mad in the last few\u00a0<\/span>days after the amount of rain that we had\u00a0is I needed to seize the opportunity. The communal green area in front of our houses takes some 40-45 minutes to cut (although I do cut it twice -once North-South and than a\u00a0transverse cut East-West) which although not strictly necessary does\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0make the whole look better. At least, with a mulching mower (which is the variant that I have) you do not have to stop to pick up grass cuttings every so\u00a0often. Then I have a quick 10 minute break and\u00a0straight on the with the back lawn, before my muscles get cold and this takes some 20-25 minutes. The rain intervened a little on the edge of some clouds as they passed over but it was\u00a0sufficiently light not to put a\u00a0damper on the\u00a0proceedings. I have to say that the front of the house looked a real treat once we had a burst of afternoon sunshine and the newly cut lawns were framed by the trees and\u00a0shrubs that are now in full bloom.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0According to Sky News, the highest concentrations of the Indian variant of the virus (specifically B.1.617.2) is\u00a0in Bolton, followed by Blackburn with Darwen, Leicester, Nottingham and Bedford. According to some experts, this situation is serious enough to\u00a0want\u00a0a delay to the ‘unlock down’ due to start tomorrow but, of course,\u00a0Boris Johnson is more concerned with the\u00a0politics rather than the science (despite\u00a0protestations to the contrary). It\u00a0looks as though the\u00a0government is engaged in a most horrendous gamble by hoping that the number of those vaccinated \u00a0will\u00a0manage to hold at bay the undoubted spread of the Indian variant. Of course, it might be that Boris Johnson is\u00a0extraordinarily\u00a0lucky and we get a semi-unlock down with no serious spread of the Indian variant – but it seems almost as likely that the\u00a0virus will ‘outrun’ the vaccine and we end up in quite a plight. I suppose the\u00a0fairly evident\u00a0thing to do is to impose an almost total lockdown on the\u00a0badly effected areas and to grit\u00a0one’s teeth to cope with the inevitable political\u00a0consequences. However, I feel it is almost certain by now that the total end to the\u00a0lockdown timetabled for 21st June, 2021 will\u00a0almost certainly not be met as things stand.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

And so the weeks roll by and here we are at Sunday morning again. It seems almost unbelievable that at 12.00pm today (half way through the day) May will be 15\u00bd days old – i.e. half way through the month of May. Meg was\u00a0feeling a little under the\u00a0weather\u00a0this morning so she stayed in bed whilst […]<\/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-2380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2380","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=2380"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2380\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2384,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2380\/revisions\/2384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}