{"id":2598,"date":"2021-06-19T22:23:22","date_gmt":"2021-06-19T22:23:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/?p=2598"},"modified":"2021-06-19T22:23:22","modified_gmt":"2021-06-19T22:23:22","slug":"saturday-19th-june-2021-day-460","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/2021\/06\/19\/saturday-19th-june-2021-day-460\/","title":{"rendered":"Saturday, 19th June, 2021 [Day 460]"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today was another\u00a0overcast day and we assumed that we would not\u00a0rained upon but\u00a0<\/span>nonetheless we had to endure one of those rather ‘glowering’ kinds of days. Meg and I did a tour of the park to see if we could make contact with any of our normal park\u00a0acquaintances but it was not to be.\u00a0Having\u00a0done\u00a0a tour of the park we went to pick up our\u00a0newspapers and then made sure that we frequented the local Waitrose<\/em> cafe that we wanted to see if we could keep in business – as attendance seems to be right down at the moment. Waitrose<\/em> used to sell a range of cups so that people could avail themselves of the ‘free’ coffee when this was offered. They offered rather a super collapsible cup (a\u00a0brand called ‘<\/span>Stojo<\/em>‘) which comes complete with lid.These used to retail at \u00a312.00 each and perhaps it is not\u00a0surprising that hardly any were sold at this price. But then Waitrose have reduced them to \u00a31.19 and at that price,\u00a0they are an\u00a0absolute bargain. We bought a couple for ourselves and they will be very welcome when\/if we resume coffee drinking in the park. I asked our domestic help if she would\u00a0like any at that price and this morning we bought \u00a0couple for her as\u00a0<\/span>well. I have taken to having a soup at Waitrose<\/em>\u00a0rather than relying upon a\u00a0cappuccino and some excess carbohydrate – so far the two soups on offer have been so incredibly spicy that I\u00a0ended to request a glass of cold water to make sure the soup could be ingested OK. Then it was home and a fairly quick lunch so that we could settle down to the football.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I am not an excessive football fan but the European championships have a certain fascination at this stage because in in the\u00a0initial phases you get well-fancied teams together with teams who are delighted to have\u00a0qualified and, you\u00a0might say, are in different league to some of the major footballing nations (<\/span>Germany, Italy, France, Spain). What happens in the pool stages is that you occasionally get a match where you assume it is\u00a0going to be a ‘walkover’ for one team but it doesn’t work out that way. For example, in the last few days we have England versus Scotland, Framce versus Hungary, Spain versus\u00a0Poland and the assumptions before\u00a0the match is that the ‘first’ team in the matches just announced are by far the\u00a0stronger\u00a0term and the result seems to be a foregone conclusion. However, they all seem to have played out to a different script but one with a pattern in it. the ‘stronger’ team is all over the ‘weaker’ team\u00a0for a portion of the match and may even\u00a0score a goal. Then there is a\u00a0quick\u00a0breakaway and the opposing team scores an equaliser – and then hangs on for dear life so as to secure a draw. The ‘stronger’\u00a0team is disappointed to only have a draw (although they score one point with it) and the ‘weaker’ team are absolutely delighted to have\u00a0held\u00a0their ‘stronger’ opponents to a draw, and of course. they too have scored a pint – sometimes for the first time ever in the\u00a0history of that country’s European cup runs where they have struggled to qualify and\u00a0expect to be soundly beaten in the pool stages. What I am\u00a0saying is that we have a series of “David’ and ‘Goliath’ contests which have a certain fascination – and the delight of the ‘weaker’ team is always a joy to behold when the referees’s final whistle is blown. and just to reinforce the point, plucky little Wales is scheduled to play\u00a0torment\u00a0favourites (and do far, very impressive) Italy to morrow evening.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The CID pandemic is still making an impact on our travel and vacation pans. The good news is that Meg phone up her\u00a0uncle in North Wales who will be delighted to see us (<\/span>particularly as he is\u00a0his mid-90’s and is now confined to the house). We are travelling up to\u00a0North Wales to lodge in an AirBnB for the first time\u00a0next Wednesday and will pay a visit to Meg’s uncle the following day. We have already got booked into one of our favourite\u00a0restaurants on the day that we travel so we will not be hunting around\u00a0for\u00a0somewhere to eat. We will have\u00a0two clear days on Thursday and Friday before we return home next\u00a0Saturday. We did have plans, though, to visit a\u00a0cousin on the other side of Meg’s family in the neat future but Bolton in Greater Manchester is the last place to\u00a0visit at the moment. Meg’s\u00a0cousin’s\u00a0daughter is in contact and they are having some domestic\u00a0upheavals so we have pencilled in a date for about two months time and hope\u00a0the things might be clarified by\u00a0then. We know this is affecting lots of people – one of our friendly staff in Waitrose<\/em> is South\u00a0African and he has to re-arrange and cancel 3-4 trips already. Many of us are now writing off all our international travel and trips\u00a0until next\u00a0Spring of 2022 in any case.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Today was another\u00a0overcast day and we assumed that we would not\u00a0rained upon but\u00a0nonetheless we had to endure one of those rather ‘glowering’ kinds of days. Meg and I did a tour of the park to see if we could make contact with any of our normal park\u00a0acquaintances but it was not to be.\u00a0Having\u00a0done\u00a0a tour of […]<\/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-2598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2598","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=2598"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2598\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2603,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2598\/revisions\/2603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}