Tag Archives: Covid outbreak at TESCO

A Slow Start and Two Interesting Links

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I just woke up in front of the computer screen. It’s 11.27 and if I can’t stay awake while I’m writing a blog it suggests that the post isn’t worth finishing.

My alarm was set for 6.30 this morning as I had a blood test. Naturally I woke at 6.12. That is a bad time – too soon to get up and too late to have a nice warm snooze. A bit of lateral thinking and I went back to sleep with the clock now set for 6.45. Good plan, but poor execution as I then slept until nearly 7.00.

Next bit of bad planning – the car has been parked up for five days. It started, but with an outside temperature of -4°C and a five day coating of ice and frozen snow, it took a bit longer to de-ice than I had planned.

The Road through Clumber park

Non of this actually mattered because when I got down to Phlebotomy, there were two phlebotomists looking very lonely. The one by the door actually told me not to sit in the waiting area a they were ready for me. It took two attempts, the car parking is still free and, unlike the last few weeks, it was actually light. There are no actual flowers out now, but the snowdrops are on the verge of opening. It was not a bad blood test, all things considered.

The trip into work was uneventful, though there did seem to, be more traffic than you would expect from a lockdown. This agrees with the figures about the number of people in work, compared to the first lockdown. I didn’t find any figures when I looked for them but I did find a story about the problems of hippos in Columbia. They  are taking over the waterways after being introduced, via the private zoo of Pablo Escobar.

In the Mencap Garden

Currently, after waking up, I am trying to concentrate as workmen build a drum in next door’s drive. It was meant to be a wooden garage, but the noise indicates it is a drum. A big one.

I’d better get some work done as this could be my last day in lockdown.  Tomorrow I’m going to the shop to work on my own – I offered to do it because everyone else is working and it seems a bit unfair not to do it. I will wipe everything down before leaving.

Then next week it looks like I will be back in work. By Monday I will be at the end of the self-imposed 14 day quarantine. I still don’t see why we are going back to work, but the owner has paid us full wages through three lockdowns and I suppose he’s getting fed up with it. This is known as Pandemic Fatigue, and is not to be confused with the fatigue that lingers after Covid. That is Post-Viral fatigue.

Off the Coast at Southend on Sea.

The photographs are some I have dredged up from old memory cards – some really good memories. They are random, and nothing to do with the content of the post, but I hope you like them.

 

Running on the Spot

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I had an email from TESCO this morning.

Dear Mr Wilson
We are extremely sorry to let you know that due to store issues, we have unfortunately had to cancel your order that’s due today. You have not been charged for your order.

Kind Regards

Your Grocery Home Shopping Team

The mildest word that escaped my lips is “unacceptable”. Fortunately, I have plenty of food in, and with a little thought can last until next week. We’ve done that before when things have gone wrong. However, this time it’s the casual way they tell you that your social distancing  efforts are all in vain and that your menu planning has been a waste.

I have just rung the company to check that it isn’t some form of clever scam email, but it is true. They have an in-store Covid outbreak. Now, if they’d told me that, I would have sympathised. But just telling mw that they had cancelled the order and are offering no alternative is asking for a negative reaction.

We will have to buy bread, milk, cheese and eggs but probably have enough of everything else. We would normally have plenty of cheese and eggs but I have been cutting back to prevent waste.

Before that, I had my repeat blood test after failing last week’s test. In contrast to last week the phlebotomist was eager to start and I didn’t even have time to sit down in the waiting area before he called me through. Good news is that I bled profusely, so no clotting problems there. Of course, that might mean I have gone too far the other way.

I have also just rung the pharmacy and my methotrexate is in. It’s taken 23 days to work its way through the system and I’ve had to request it twice. This is, of course, from the people who brought us The Great Track & Trace Debacle and Lockdown III – This Time It’s Serious.

The pharmacy, to be fair, has been very efficient – its the on-line ordering that has gone haywire. In the old days you got a piece of paper in your hand. These days you wait for a text, and when it doesn’t come you realise you have no pills and it will be another week, if you are lucky. There’s a lot to be said for simple paper-based systems.

So far it’s been a day of chasing my own tale – lots of jobs done, including getting Julia to work, and writing this post is the only thing I’ve wanted to do. And even this i just a list non-vents in the life of a boring man.

I’ve also had a phone call from someone who claims to be validating Life Insurance Policies, but it felt more like a sales call so I made my excuses and left.

The surgery just rang – I failed my blood test again.  Altered dosage and another test next week again.

And now I’ve had one of those calls pretending to be from Amazon.

There is so much rubbish to deal with before you can actually do anything useful.