{"id":2859,"date":"2021-08-07T20:27:54","date_gmt":"2021-08-07T20:27:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/?p=2859"},"modified":"2021-08-07T22:13:56","modified_gmt":"2021-08-07T22:13:56","slug":"saturday-7th-august-2021-day-509","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/2021\/08\/07\/saturday-7th-august-2021-day-509\/","title":{"rendered":"Saturday, 7th August, 2021 [Day 509]"},"content":{"rendered":"

We suspected that it would be fine this morning and might rain a little later in the day and so it turned out. On our way to collect the newspapers, we ran into our University of Birmingham friend whom we have not seen for\u00a0almost a week (as most days of the week he is off playing tennis) Meg was feeling a little tired so I handed Meg\u00a0her to our friend to accompany her to the park whilst I went to collect the newspapers. In the park, we met up with one of our park regulars \u00a0and carried on\u00a0conversations regarding the Olympics. One\u00a0thing I have noticed, which has received a little but not an enormous amount of\u00a0<\/span>publicity, is the impact of technology on both running shoes and the track itself. The\u00a0modern running shoes are incorporating some carbon fibre and the effect of this is to add a little bit of ‘spring’ to the athlete as well\u00a0as lowering impact resistance. Various kinds of technological improvements have also been built into the track. Immediately ‘below the surface’ is a type of honeycomb or lattice arrangement (filled with what?) which has the effect of making the track\u00a0operate like a series of miniaturised trampolines. The effect of these two technological improvements (running\u00a0shoes, track) is that world records are being broken quite\u00a0<\/span>regularly. In one of the men’s races over hurdles ( I cannot remember which) then the world record was broken in the heats and again in the\u00a0final. The person who came in second (i.e. silver) would have broken the previous world record whilst not winning the race. Whilst not arguing against\u00a0the march of\u00a0technological advance, \u00a0I am left with a slight feeling of unease that world records are being broken with the aid of thee technological\u00a0advances as well as the individual efforts of the athletes themselves.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

As we made it home for lunch, a little earlier than usual, the smattering rain looked as though it was going to\u00a0intensify during the\u00a0afternoon so I made sure that I applied one of my ‘rust-removal’ routines to a spade\u00a0which\u00a0I store in Mog’s Den<\/em>. This is basically a wire\u00a0brush, followed by a\u00a0brillo pad treatment and then a sponge off and clean and dry with kitchen paper.When all of this settled down, I will give it (and my\u00a0other gardening tools) a good spray with WD-40 (or a near equivalent) which helps to\u00a0build up a degree of rust protection if I apply every time the tools get used and ‘put to bed’. Halfway through the afternoon, an order arrived from Amazon which was a complete collection of \u00a0hand tools for \u00a317.00 \u00a0Evidently, at\u00a0this price it is Chinese made but you get about three<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0different kinds of hand rakes, five different trowels in a variety of shapes and sizes,\u00a0some\u00a0secateurs, a miniature garden\u00a0spray, some gloves, a series of coloured\u00a0labels, some wire twists complete\u00a0with cutter and finally. a fabric gardening basket to hold all the tools. All of\u00a0this lot is destined for the toolbox in Mog’s Den<\/em> so now there is no excuse for not keeping everything well trimmed and cultivated.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

This afternoon, we were generally watching the culmination of the Olympic Games. Team GB seem to be\u00a0winning medals until the end with a boxing gold for a\u00a0local Birmingham lad and a gold in the modern pentathlon.\u00a0<\/span>This was invented by Pierre de Coubertin (father of the Modern Olympics) and was a variation on the military aspect of the Ancient pentathlon. It focused on the skills required by a late-19th-century soldier, with competitions in shooting, swimming, fencing, equestrianism, and cross country running. I also watched some of the obscure events such as\u00a0artistic swimming and\u00a0artistic gymnastics and have to say I was incredibly impressed by the\u00a0athleticism and gymnastic skills displayed. In the late afternoon, we\u00a0went to church as we always do early in the evening on Saturday. There we made contact again with a lively Liverpudlian lady who can talk for England but also, at a fairly advanced age makes regular round trips in her car\u00a0visiting members of her family in\u00a0Sheffield and Liverpool. We had not seen her for the best part of a year (although she says she has seen us\u00a0whilst we are walking up and down the road towards the park each day). \u00a0I promised her a bottle of our damson gin to which, I gather, she might be somewhat partial. Tomorrow evening will no doubt be closing ceremony of the Olympics and I may well watch this as I am sure that the Japanese will stage it particularly well. In addition, I do like to see the faces of the genuinely happy athletes as the pressures of\u00a0competition are\u00a0behind them and they can party for the first time in years. I wonder how many cross-cultural\u00a0liaisons are made during events like these?<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We suspected that it would be fine this morning and might rain a little later in the day and so it turned out. On our way to collect the newspapers, we ran into our University of Birmingham friend whom we have not seen for\u00a0almost a week (as most days of the week he is off […]<\/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-2859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2859","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=2859"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2859\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2863,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2859\/revisions\/2863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}