{"id":2702,"date":"2021-07-09T18:54:57","date_gmt":"2021-07-09T18:54:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/?p=2702"},"modified":"2021-07-09T21:09:07","modified_gmt":"2021-07-09T21:09:07","slug":"friday-9th-july-2021-day-480","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/2021\/07\/09\/friday-9th-july-2021-day-480\/","title":{"rendered":"Friday, 9th July, 2021 [Day 480]"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today turned out to be quite a fine day, once we actually got onto our walk. We spent a certain amount of time chatting with our domestic help which is quite usual for a Friday. We had\u00a0got up a little bit earlier than normal because I had spent a certain amount of time sorting out some financial things during a sleepless period in the middle of the night. Specifically, one particular account had matured and then it got whizzed from account to another until I located where the money had eventually lodged itself. This is because I prefer to budget using lots of little\u00a0individualised accounts whereas my son prefers the\u00a0approach in which he uses one account but a\u00a0<\/span>spreadsheet to organise between one\u00a0heading and another. I can see the advantages and disadvantages of both ways of doing things but good and up-to-date record\u00a0keeping is always the recipe for an easy life. I had a routine health monitoring appointment this morning with one of the nurse practitioner team. This was not particularly stressful as certain\u00a0routine measures\u00a0were taken (blood pressure, blood samples for a variety of assays) but a more crunch\u00a0moment will come\u00a0in a couple of weeks when I have a telephone appointment to discuss some of the results that will have been returned by then. Passing past my local Asda<\/em>, I noticed that\u00a0<\/span>they had quite a range of hydrangea plants for sale for \u00a310. \u00a0I noticed when I was showing the practice nurse the laminated cards on which I keep the NHS numbers for both my wife and I that I tucked a spare \u00a310 note into one of my mobile\u00a0phone case slots so\u00a0I decided to treat myself to a plant to help to populate Mog’s Den<\/em>. I have a few more\u00a0cut-price plants arriving from a web source so hopefully if the weather holds out, I will manage to bring my plan to\u00a0fruition to install \u00a0several tubs of flowering and\/or colourful shrubs. One in particular I thought to be quite interesting as it was a buddleia<\/em> in which three different colours of flower are grafted\u00a0onto one root stock and the various colours are meant to\u00a0intertwine and to\u00a0complement each other. We shall have to wait and see if the\u00a0promise of the advertising actually gets\u00a0<\/span>fulfilled.\u00a0Having walked home from the medical\u00a0appointment, Meg and I\u00a0went down\u00a0into town by car but, once again, having picked up our newspapers we discovered that the\u00a0Waitrose<\/em> cafe was closed for a second day. \u00a0So we did what we did yesterday which was to buy an iced tea drink, couple it with a sandwich and make for a set in the park here e consumed\u00a0our snack in glorious sunshine. Then we made off for home, knowing that we had an afternoon appointment to see our friends at 3.00pm in the afternoon.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Our ex-Waitrose friends had\u00a0long since wanted us to view\u00a0their apartment and its surroundings and it was\u00a0truly impressive, once we had a little guided tour. The building itself had been built especially to provide good quality apartments for members of the\u00a0Bromsgrove business community. We had to acknowledge the fact that the quality of the internal layout and fixtures\u00a0<\/span>were superb –\u00a0also, the\u00a0accommodation had some well maintained gardens in which the residents could entertain visitors as well as some communal areas which of course were utilised to the full when\u00a0there not COVID regulations in\u00a0place. We spent a\u00a0very pleasant afternoon, drinking tea and eating some delicious cake,\u00a0especially prepared for yesterday’s ‘<\/span>Birthday Boy<\/em>‘ in the gardens overlooking a pond sporting a variety of vegetation and even wildlife (although we didn’t see any frogs today). When we got home, I carried out a little outside activity in which I am making a series of\u00a0drain holes in the planters I have recently purchased. This involves making a pilot hole and then\u00a0gradually enlarging it with a variety of implements until each hole is\u00a0about 1cm in diameter which I feel is just about right to make sure the whole planter does not get waterlogged.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

An estimated 400,000 tested positive for the virus last week which sounds scarily high to me. Although the link between\u00a0incidences\u00a0of the virus, hospitalisation and eventually deaths is now a lot more tenuous than it was, it is still there. Also, as the\u00a0numerate of\u00a0incidents continues to\u00a0<\/span>rise, so too does the possibility of new\u00a0variants which\u00a0might be immune to existing vaccines – then we would be in a mess. There are signs that the rate of increase is moderating a\u00a0little \u00a0but the R-rate is between 1.2-1.5. I do feel that the government is running the most dangerous game of ‘chicken’ at this point – and of course the huge crowds of football fans jumping up and down and exhaling vociferously is just what the virus\u00a0really likes.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today turned out to be quite a fine day, once we actually got onto our walk. We spent a certain amount of time chatting with our domestic help which is quite usual for a Friday. We had\u00a0got up a little bit earlier than normal because I had spent a certain amount of time sorting out […]<\/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-2702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2702","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=2702"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2702\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2707,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2702\/revisions\/2707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}