{"id":2781,"date":"2021-07-24T20:51:45","date_gmt":"2021-07-24T20:51:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/?p=2781"},"modified":"2021-07-24T23:23:20","modified_gmt":"2021-07-24T23:23:20","slug":"saturday-24th-july-2021-day-495","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/2021\/07\/24\/saturday-24th-july-2021-day-495\/","title":{"rendered":"Saturday, 24th July, 2021 [Day 495]"},"content":{"rendered":"

The weather is evidently on the turn and when we woke up this morning, there was quite a\u00a0breath of fresh air when we popped our noses out of the\u00a0back door. There were occasional\u00a0smatterings of rain throughout the early morning\u00a0but not the prolonged and sustained downpour for which we had all been hoping. So\u00a0we decided to make our journey down into town by car just in case the\u00a0heavens opened – but as it happened, they did not. Having collected our newspapers, we then bumped into our University of Birmingham friend so we all dived into Waitrose<\/em> to have our mid-morning coffee. As it happened, we had quite a lot to catch up on with various happenings throughout the week so we spent quite some time explaining the various things we have been up to in the last week. We explained that next week is going to be a little fraught for us because I have to Worcester for a COVID-19 test, then three days of isolation before I have some investigations performed on me next Friday. So I think the week ahead may be a little ‘chewy’ bit just has to be managed one day at a time.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the afternoon, I spent a\u00a0certain amount of time spreadsheeting some of our finances so that we could make some plans for the post COVID era. It looks as though our planned trip to Rome in late September is now looking more ‘on’ than ‘off’ and we have also an offer\u00a0<\/span>from the tour organiser to forgo one day’s vacation but to fly from Birmingham rather than Bristol. We will have to see, of course,\u00a0whether Italy is still enforcing five days of\u00a0quarantine to travellers from Britain but there is about seven weeks to go before the flight is\u00a0scheduled to depart.\u00a0The skies were\u00a0still\u00a0threatening a\u00a0little this afternoon but I was determined to try to get the lawns cut\u00a0before we left for church at 5.30\u00a0this\u00a0afternoon. I was fortunate\u00a0because although time was tight, I still managed to them cut in time. Then it was\u00a0our customary attendance at church on a\u00a0Saturday evening, Up \u00a0until now, we have been\u00a0having to book in\u00a0for the service every week but now we have booked in the ‘last’ time as all of the data for this week \u00a0will form the template for the weeks to come so the attendance record will ‘roll on’ week by week. Outside church, we managed to have a brief chat about the week ahead and they were not to be surprised if they didn’t see us as we have to self-isolate from Tuesday to\u00a0Thursday.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

It is being reported tonight that UK airports have been the busiest they have been since the start of the pandemic but the system of COVID-19 testing ( or showing that you have been tested) is taking a wait of at least two hours. What is not clear is whether people are actually missing their flights because of these\u00a0enforced delays or whether the\u00a0airlines\u00a0themselves are having to\u00a0reschedule their flights. I suppose that it was fairly\u00a0predictable that having been subject to pandemic restrictions for the best part of 500 days, people are\u00a0desperate to get away\u00a0particularly as the schools have just broken up. \u00a0From the brief\u00a0snatches of videotape I have seen, it looks as though\u00a0airports might\u00a0become a magnificent venue\u00a0for the\u00a0<\/span>spread of the virus. Some members of the SAGE\u00a0committee are showing\u00a0their exasperation\u00a0with the present government strategy. One of them\u00a0broke ranks\u00a0yesterday and argued\u00a0strongly that the\u00a0<\/span>government attempting to generate herd immunity by letting the virus rip through\u00a0younger\u00a0sections of the population (20-29 year olds) by giving free\u00a0reign to the nighttime\u00a0economy of pubs and nightclubs was immoral. On the other hand, there is a glimmer of hope that the infection rate may\u00a0have peaked and may just about be starting to fall consistently. The\u00a0amazing thing is that the government is starting to lose its popularity but still seems to be ahead of the Labour party in the opinion polls.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Tomorrow should be an\u00a0interesting day for us as we are meeting some old friends for a\u00a0lunch date in Oxford (we will ‘sat-nav’ the restaurant to find it OK) I only hope that there are not\u00a0devastating storms and floods because Hampshire, where we used to live, seems to have received a real battering since the hot weather\u00a0broke down and the almost inevitable flooding now occurs. I must say the I am really looking forward\u00a0to a period of prolonged rainfall – but I say this from the rather smug position of having all of my lawns cut, all my plants planted and the garden in generally good order and receptive to\u00a0being trained upon!\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The weather is evidently on the turn and when we woke up this morning, there was quite a\u00a0breath of fresh air when we popped our noses out of the\u00a0back door. There were occasional\u00a0smatterings of rain throughout the early morning\u00a0but not the prolonged and sustained downpour for which we had all been hoping. So\u00a0we decided to […]<\/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-2781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2781","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=2781"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2781\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2785,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2781\/revisions\/2785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}