{"id":2433,"date":"2021-05-25T20:25:31","date_gmt":"2021-05-25T20:25:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/?p=2433"},"modified":"2021-05-25T20:25:31","modified_gmt":"2021-05-25T20:25:31","slug":"tuesday-25th-may-2021-day-435","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/2021\/05\/25\/tuesday-25th-may-2021-day-435\/","title":{"rendered":"Tuesday, 25th May, 2021 [Day 435]"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today was one of those days when you seem constantly be running to catch up with one’s self – as they\u00a0used to say ‘Like a dog chasing its own tail<\/em>‘ \u00a0We knew that we would have keep a careful watch upon our timings because of a couple of\u00a0appointments in the middle of the day. Nonetheless, I dropped Meg on her normal park bench\u00a0where she met with our University of Birmingham friend \u00a0who is busy teaching himself some Spanish. Naturally, Meg and I were happy to\u00a0step in with our little bits and it is always interesting to\u00a0note that the books tend to teach you one thing whereas ‘colloquial\u00a0Spanish’ (what you hear\u00a0people speak on the street) is quite another. We were taught an important lesson when our son spent a year in Mexico and had to teach himself Spanish in as short a time as possible. \u00a0His tip was a good one – never bother to learn the future tense of a verb in Spanish (although it is useful to know of it when you are reading a more\u00a0<\/span>formal report in a newspaper, for example) So instead of\u00a0saying (in Spanish) ‘I will catch a train’ we can use the much more colloquial (and sloppier way of saying\u00a0something) such as ‘I’m going to catch a train’ where all you have to remember is the ‘<\/span>I ‘m going’<\/em> to bit and then the infinitive of the verb ‘to catch’ and hence ‘<\/span>Voy a coger un tren<\/em>‘ rather than ‘<\/span>Coger\u00e9 un tren<\/em>‘ which is more formally correct (but perhaps harder to remember). Anyway, I left Meg and my friend exchanging little bits of colloquial Spanish which our friend assiduously\u00a0wrote down in his little notebook whilst I went to\u00a0collect the newspapers. Then we had to race home and I had to quickly fill in an on-line COVID assessment form before I raced down to the\u00a0physiotherapy clinic to have my knackered shoulder looked at (in the same\u00a0building where my Pilates class was die to start 35 minutes\u00a0<\/span><\/span>later). I was 2 minutes late for this appointment but then we ran over a bit and I was five minutes late for my Pilates class – but it was that kind of day. At the very end of the class, one of my Pilates classmates of several year’s standing let\u00a0something slip about a widow’s pension. It was\u00a0only then that I was told that her\u00a0husband had died last November of a massive heart attack. With the COVID-19\u00a0restrictions in place, their daughter could not come back from Australia to attend the funeral and the funeral itself was the by now all too\u00a0familiar Covid-19\u00a0restricted affair. I felt\u00a0particularly sad on their behalf\u00a0because I do not know how much of a happy retirement they had managed to spend together.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

By the time we had a delayed lunch (typical on Pilates days) I carried on with some newspaper tidying before we suddenly realised it was time for our weekly chat with our ex-Waitrose friends which we generally do using <\/span>FaceTime<\/em>. With the lockdown gradually easing, our friends had managed to make more sustained contact with members of their family which was a great source of pleasure to them. It looks as though the weather will change for the better in the next day or so and then we might have a series of fine days – if so, we might be able to go to <\/span>Webbs<\/em> (the nearby large garden centre) where we may be able to share a socially distanced coffee and cake in the next few days ahead. \u00a0We are particularly pleased about the weather because our immediate neighbours are planning an outdoors 70th birthday party on Sunday next – although contingency plans are no doubt in place, it will be so much easier to mingle and chat if the\u00a0weather is fine.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The government is evidently in a dilemma and in some disarray this evening. It is evident that the Indian variant of the virus is taking quite a hold in various areas of the country (all starting with a ‘B” – Bolton, Blackburn, Bedford,Burnley) as well as Kirklees, Leicester, Hounslow and North Tyneside. In order to counteract this, the Government quietly introduced a policy of ‘de facto<\/em>‘ lockdown in which travel into and out of the area was to be\u00a0severely discouraged (to put it\u00a0<\/span>mildly) The trouble is that nobody bothered to tell the relevant local authorities what was meant to be happening in their own areas. After the most tremendous row (behind the scenes) between local and central government, the advice on the Government website was withdrawn – sorry, ‘updated’ in government speak. This little episode can be interpreted in one of two ways. Either one can argue that central government have an autocratic\u00a0disregard for the wishes of the local populace and did not see fit to inform them.Or else, it was a\u00a0massive communications ‘cockup’ which only displays the government’s lack of grip on the levers of government.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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Today was one of those days when you seem constantly be running to catch up with one’s self – as they\u00a0used to say ‘Like a dog chasing its own tail‘ \u00a0We knew that we would have keep a careful watch upon our timings because of a couple of\u00a0appointments in the middle of the day. Nonetheless, […]<\/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-2433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2433","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=2433"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2433\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2436,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2433\/revisions\/2436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}