{"id":2665,"date":"2021-07-02T22:18:16","date_gmt":"2021-07-02T22:18:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/?p=2665"},"modified":"2021-07-05T20:15:34","modified_gmt":"2021-07-05T20:15:34","slug":"friday-2nd-july-2021-day-473","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/2021\/07\/02\/friday-2nd-july-2021-day-473\/","title":{"rendered":"Friday, 2nd July, 2021 [Day 473]"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today was one of those rather cloudy and humid days and we were a bit delayed making our usual venture down into town. We spent quite a lot of time chatting with our domestic help who comes round on Fridays. In particular, she was was eager to know how we had got on with our AirB&B in\u00a0<\/span>North Wales and her own view was that the catalogue of little things that were not quite right (no kettle in the room, parking at a distance, dodgy toilet) was such that she, too, would have found it unacceptable. Anyway, we are over that by now and have emerged home with one or two items of Meg’s clothing such as a gilet and a lightweight waterproof anorak (not to mention the kettle that we\u00a0eventually purchased) all of which will prove useful to us. To save a bit of time, we decided to go down by car to collect our newspapers and I treated Meg and myself to our usual fare in <\/span>Waitrose<\/em>. When we eventually got home, we neither of us felt particularly hungry so we indulged ourself in some fruit and\u00a0ice-cream which is all we fancied. In the afternoon, I had set myself the task of getting our communal lawns cut and this task generally takes about 40 minutes for the main grassed area, then a rest period, followed by another 20 minutes to do our back lawn. In the interval between the two cuts, <\/span>Miggles<\/em> the\u00a0local cat who had adopted us popped round to say hello (and to get a few cat treats,\u00a0courtesy of\u00a0<\/span>Waitrose<\/em>) Then quite unusually, <\/span>Miggles<\/em> decided to have a period on my lap which is quite unusual for him\/her – she tends to prefer the lap of my daughter-in-law whenever she gets the opportunity. Anyway, I just about got the lawns cut and everything put away before it was time for the Spain vs.Sweden European Cup quarter-final which Spain won eventually on penalties (although their record in winning matches by penalties is not at at\u00a0all inspiring) Later on, I watched the Italy vs. Belgium match which was pulsating, end-to-end stuff and incredibly exciting to watch. It was such a\u00a0contest in styles between the way in which the Spanish play (keep possession and have a long slow buildup) and the way in which the Italians play (go direct for goal with long ranging passes to assist) These two teams are to meet each other in the semi-finals so it is pretty\u00a0obvious who is\u00a0gong to win (I think)<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Before I started my mowing, I did a quick\u00a0<\/span>reconnoitre of the garden to see\u00a0if there any\u00a0hidden\u00a0shrubs (or even little trees) that I can relocate into <\/span>Mog’s Den.<\/em> I did discover one\u00a0healthy looking shrub that was being a bit crowded out and would not be missed from its present\u00a0location, so that is one candidate. It is a laurel I\u00a0believe and they are generally quite vigorous growers given enough light and space. Also, I think I have discovered a hazel lurking away in an obscure part of the front garden – it was probably self set but it, too, could do with a\u00a0bit more light and won’t be\u00a0missed from where\u00a0It is (as I hardly knew it was there in the first place) Some time ago, I bought a very\u00a0speciall kind of spade which has a very long thin blade. They go by a variety of names none of which are very descriptive – I think Spear and Jackson call their version a Tub Laying Shovel and as the blade is narrow but long, a lot more force is\u00a0<\/span>concentrated on the cutting edge (and therefore it slices\u00a0through roots more easily) It is\u00a0particularly useful, though, when transplanting trees as it helps to ensure that you get the entire length of the root (in which the tap root is much longer\u00a0than in a shrub)<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The extraordinary thing about today’s political news is that the Labour\u00a0Party did not lose a bye-election. This was Batley and\u00a0Spen and Labour won it by only <\/span>323 votes. The\u00a0noteworthy\u00a0thing about this seat is the seat held by the Labour MP (Jo Cox) who was murdered by a far right fanatic in 2016.\u00a0Campaigning for\u00a0the\u00a0referendum was in full spate – but the campaign was halted for a day or so an then carried on. The seat is now won by the sister of the murdered MP and the campaign, by all accounts, has attracted a lot of candidates and there were masses of dirty tricks. It was hoped that a negative result would help to unseat Keir Starmer and\u00a0the was the motivation for some of the shenanigans in the by-election. In the event, although the Tories hoped to take another seat off Labour, it was not to be and the seat was just kept within the Labour fold.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today was one of those rather cloudy and humid days and we were a bit delayed making our usual venture down into town. We spent quite a lot of time chatting with our domestic help who comes round on Fridays. In particular, she was was eager to know how we had got on with our […]<\/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-2665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2665","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=2665"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2665\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2684,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2665\/revisions\/2684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}