{"id":2864,"date":"2021-08-08T19:11:01","date_gmt":"2021-08-08T19:11:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/?p=2864"},"modified":"2021-08-08T21:52:18","modified_gmt":"2021-08-08T21:52:18","slug":"sunday-8th-august-2021-day-510","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/2021\/08\/08\/sunday-8th-august-2021-day-510\/","title":{"rendered":"Sunday, 8th August, 2021 [Day 510]"},"content":{"rendered":"

So it was my Sunday morning routine this morning where I go down early in the morning to collect my Sunday newspapers and I treated myself to a Mozart concert on my old iPhone en route<\/em>. On the way back, I had espied two\u00a0escaped plants that I thought I would ‘liberate’ and for\u00a0this purpose I took with me a gardener’s knife which is basically like a penknife but has an incredibly strong blade once it has been\u00a0successfully\u00a0locked into position. The first one of these was a piece of errant mint that had\u00a0escaped one of the gardens so I cut off a little section of root and put it into a plastic bag I\u00a0have brought with me. \u00a0I then progressed onto the second of my ventures. In a nearby garden, there is a very old and\u00a0mature sycamore tree (I think() which has\u00a0evidently cast its key-like seeds all over the\u00a0<\/span>place. A\u00a0cluster have evidently landed in the loose gravel of a neighbouring garden where the seedlings have taken root (simulating what happens when a gardener is trying to develop cuttings – the young seed\/plant\u00a0reaches through the gravel in search of water and nutriments and tends to develop good root systems. Anyway I liberated about three of these and into\u00a0another plastic bag they went, waiting to be popped into a spare bit of pot or earth as soon as I have the opportunity. \u00a0After breakfast, Meg and I walked down\u00a0to the park and we were delighted to see with our University of\u00a0Birmingham friend as we often do at the weekend as well as out 86 yr old avid walker who fits\u00a0in a circuit of at least 9km a day. Today was the last day of the Olympics and we watched a Welsh girl win a boxing gold, Jason Kenny win yet\u00a0another gold to add to\u00a0his\u00a0collection and Laura Kenny \u00a0endure a terrible crash in the ‘Omnium’ bike race. Several riders were involved in the crash which looked\u00a0horrendous : Laura Kenny herself had her bike fly in the air and then on top of her, two other riders ran over her (from what I could tell) and she slid down the\u00a0track until her (helmeted) head hit the side of the track. The amazing thing is that\u00a0after this she was expected to get on her bike and complete another series of races including a sprint which she may have won. Under the circumstances to come 7th was an absolute miracle – I think shortly afterwards as well she was expected to be the Team GB flag-bearer at the closing ceremony. And so we\u00a0bid a\u00a0restrained and dignified\u00a0farewell to Tokyo – I was rather expecting to see\u00a0hordes of young\u00a0athletes invading the arena to party but\u00a0I suppose the numbers (and\u00a0celebrations) had to be severely curtailed because ofCOVID. On to Paris in only three years time and\u00a0then the\u00a0Paralympics starts in a couple of weeks of time.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

This afternoon after lunch, I had just one little project to do which I thought would take 5 minutes but turned out to be a hard half hour. I have a spade\u00a0which I\u00a0keep outdoors for easy\u00a0accessibility \u00a0in Mogs Den. <\/em>This had got rusted so I\u00a0treated it first with raw vinegar and then a specialist rust remover which is really Phosphoric Acid (almost completely) Although the spade had been brushed with the\u00a0rust\u00a0remover several times I though the residues would be easy to move but this proved not to\u00a0be the case. I attacked it with a combination of wire brushes,\u00a0Brillo pads, C<\/span>hemico (which is just being re-manfactured again after being\u00a0common in the 1950’s) and half an hour’s elbow grease. It is still not absolutely right so I will give the stubborn patches\u00a0another ‘working over’ and that will be that – I will condition it with\u00a0oil and put it back where it\u00a0lives tomorrow.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Some\u00a0interesting COVI+D news has\u00a0emerged today. It seems that researchers have found a clear link between the Scottish\u00a0participation in the Euro finals and the rise (and fall) of COVID infections. The rate of infections dropped quite\u00a0dramatically once Scotland had failed to progress any further – it will be interesting to see if\u00a0there is \u00a0an ‘English’ effect once the data is analysed. \u00a0The overall rate of\u00a0infections seems to be fairly stable at the moment but the scientist have calculated that the ‘R’ rate may well have\u00a0topped\u00a0below 1.0 which if it sustained, means the\u00a0pandemic is somewhat on the retreat (for now!) The Health Secretary is concerned (like the rest of the us) at the huge\u00a0disparity in prices for a full PCR test (required if one is going abroad on\u00a0holiday) – another example of\u00a0the private sector ‘making hay whilst the sun shines’ whilst the\u00a0government’s showing no\u00a0interest at all in any\u00a0degree\u00a0harmonisation or regulation.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So it was my Sunday morning routine this morning where I go down early in the morning to collect my Sunday newspapers and I treated myself to a Mozart concert on my old iPhone en route. On the way back, I had espied two\u00a0escaped plants that I thought I would ‘liberate’ and for\u00a0this purpose I […]<\/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-2864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2864","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=2864"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2864\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2867,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2864\/revisions\/2867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}