Tag Archives: lockdown

The Story So Far

We went out this morning around 9.00 and found that the roads we more crowded than we would have expected. I dropped Julia off at the gardens and then went to the shop. I must admit I would rather have been working with her clearing the pond rather than sitting indoors. Fresh air seems a much better option.

We will be reopening next week with a skeleton service for eBay orders. There will only be one of us in at a time and no customers.

We will reopen to the public on 15th June but will only see people by appointment. I’m not sure I see that working as people will just turn up and expect to be let in anyway. Monday always has been a day where we supposedly had an appointment system, but people always used to drift in anyway.

Crow drinking from water butt at Wilford

We had to fill the water butts and bird baths by hose on Wednesday as it had been rather dry. Once we had topped this one up the crow came to drink, showing that water is as important as food to birds. We are close to the river but there is nowhere for most birds to drink.

Let’s face it, we used to get customers coming in before we were open and as we were walking to the door at the end of the day. Some people don’t read notices on doors, and a surprising number cannot work out that if the lights aren’t on the shop isn’t open.

It is likely we will be locking the door to control access, but I expect that will be relaxed as soon as the weather gets too hot and we need the door open. I always think the shop is cooler with the door closed, but I’m usually outvoted on this.

The shop is now redesigned so that we can only have two customers in at a time and are able to keep six feet away from them.

The back room has also been redesigned, as it’s difficult to isolate when you can’t sit six feet away from a coworker. My workstation is now in the front of the shop, in a different room from all the stock and packaging materials. There is even less room to work and I will be within a few feet of all my coworkers as they walk through the doorway between rooms.

I’m not really bothered about the lack of distance, because I’m taking a relaxed attitude to these things. I am, however, a bit annoyed about the lack of efficiency which is going to be the result of the reorganisation. Once we get back to full strength it will be tricky to keep our distance and whilst finding stationery and stock to parcel up.

Yellow flowers in need of identification

Blue skies over Mencap Gardens

Bee on Chives – Wilford

Then we did a quiz which we happened to have hanging around and I went to pick Julia up from the gardens. There are several sets of roadworks on the way (including gas mains and the Clifton Bridge works). By this time there was quite a lot of traffic on the road with queues at the roadworks. It wasn’t much different to the traffic before the lockdown.

I hope that the growing relaxation of the restrictions isn’t going to bring a second outbreak of the virus.

As we returned home, having gone by a different route to introduce some variety into our lives, we saw a life-size cut-out of Dominic Cummings tied to roadside railings. It was holding a notice that said “You are expendable, I am essential.”

It looks like this is not going away despite the Prime Minister’s attempts to ignore it.

Figs at Wilford Mencap Garden

The fig tree in the picture was given to us as part of a bundle of cuttings from a neighbour. We planted them, nurtured them and, eventually, saw them chopped off short by an idiot with a strimmer. That was what life on the farm was like. The three survivors are doing well, and this looks like it may even produce fruit this year.

Caesar’s Wife and the Special Advisor

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Sorry, I’m being political and I’m writing about Dominic Cummings today. He is a special advisor to the Prime Minister and was recently accused of breaking the lockdown guidance. People have resigned, or been forced to resign, over this several times and in several countries. Some useful scientists have been discarded as a result, at a time when we need scientists. Now Dominic Cummings has been accused of breaking the rules. He is not a scientist and, to my mind, is not useful. Political advisors fill the same niche in politics as catfish do in the world’s rivers – they lurk in murky places and feed from the bottom.

If he was sacked tomorrow I really don’t think the world would notice.

However, Boris Johnson won’t sack him. He has, according to Boris, ‘acted responsibly, legally and with integrity’.

First, may I say that Boris, with his expensive classical education, should be the first to know that Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion. It is not good enough for someone in that position to be squeaky clean: they must give absolutely no room for suspicion.

And when they are tackled by the press they should remember, that, as the Bible tells us, A soft answer turneth away wrath: but grievous words stir up anger. A soft answer does not seem to be the favoured response of either Mr Cummings or the Tory Party. Their responses to the press are verging on arrogant.

As for ‘responsibly, legally and with integrity’, I don’t know the exact definition of what was legal. Discussing things like this is what keeps the legal profession in wigs and holiday homes. The ex-Chief Constable of Durham seems to believe there was a crime.(that is the same link as the previous one).

Responsible? I’m not sure that travelling the length of the country with a child and an infected person in the car to stay with family is responsible.

Integrity? I’ll let you make your own mind up.

All over the country people are making sacrifices. Even some politicians are making sacrifices. Sadly, it seems that some of them aren’t.

I photographed the crow in the picture 18 times before I got that shot, which makes the title of that shot corvid19.

I’ve been waiting to use that joke for months…

A Fine Day Loafing

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It’s early afternoon, we’ve just had lunch (Lincolnshire sausages in warm baguettes), and Father Brown is on TV. It could be a touch warmer, but apart from that life is good.

A delivery driver has just turned up with a box containing three meals (my birthday present from Number One Son) – unfortunately I’ve forgotten what they are, though it will be a nice surprise. One is chickpea and peanut butter curry and another is pork steaks with garlic greens but that’s as much as I can remember. I’m feeling a bit guilty because I gave them some harsh feedback when it was requested, much of it on the grounds that they failed to solve a problem which they created needlessly. I just found their answers – they had sent them but I’d overlooked them. I’d better write and apologise.

While I was writing last night’s post I had followed several interesting links and gave myself an idea for another Medal News article. This is good, as all my other ideas have run into problems and I’m not feeling industrious at the moment. I will regret that when we go back to work and I find I have no time (my perennial excuse).

My original plan was to spend my time writing three articles for three different magazines, but one has turned out to be difficult to write, one needs a table (which I don’t feel like compiling ) and the other is turning out to be harder to research than I thought. They will all end up being written but not just now. According to an article on motivation, which I read last night, I have just increased my chances of completing them by telling people I am doing them.

We have just had a visit from a neighbour. Julia dropped her a card and present off this morning as it is her birthday. She came to give us a plate of cake. Unfortunately we weren’t able to invite her in as we don’t want to be delinquent. This morning the internet carried the news that house sales have started again and people can view houses. So, you can’t invite a neighbour or family member in but you can have an estate agent and a stranger looking at your home. Life is very strange.

Photos are, again, from the free picture library.

Photo by Min An on Pexels.com

Blood Test

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I went for a blood test this morning, amalgamating two visits (one for methotrexate and one for warfarin) into one, and donating a total of three tubes.

My original plan was to rise at 6.30 and get down to City Hospital for just after 7.00. That was replaced by a second plan, rising at 7.30 and getting down to the Queen’s Medical Centre (QMC)for 8.30.

Like my last trip, there was plenty of parking and no queue.

Instead of tickets from the machine they are using laminated tickets you pick up from reception. Last time I mentioned that I wondered if they cleaned the tickets between uses. I noted this time, that they do. To be honest, today’s tester seemed much more on the ball than the last one.

They couldn’t get anything from the insides of my elbows, so they used something with a needle and flexible tube. This went into my forearm and the tube was screwed onto the end. It’s difficult to describe, but is probably a cannula. I always think of them as having massive, painful needles, but I have checked up and some of them look like the equipment from this morning.I feel quite faint after looking at that. It wasn’t so bad this morning but I’ve had some really bad experiences with cannulas (or cannulae, if you want to be true to the original Latin).

After that I risked my life by shopping for bread and various other bits. It wasn’t essential, but it eases the pressure on the ingredients cupboard.

Then I went home.

After a late breakfast and a cup of tea I checked to see that I was still waterproof and started to consider my activities for the rest of the day.

This was, as you have probably guessed, fatal.

I had a phone call from the surgery. They had, in turn, had a phone call from the anti-coagulant service to tell them to tell me that my sample had not been acceptable. This usually means that the tube wasn’t full enough, though the filling should be automatic with modern equipment.

They printed me up a new request form, which I had to collect, and I then nipped into the nearby City Hospital for the test. There was no parking. I could have parked further away, but I’m lazy, so, after staring at the new testing facilities. I drove back to QMC.

It all went smoothly, we had a laugh about my second visit of the day and I got stabbed in the arm again.

If I was Richard Curtis this would be the inciting incident for a prize-winning romcom – Four Blood Tests and a Cannula or Blood Actually. These are just working titles, they still need some work.

I was so glad to get out that I can’t even rise to being irritated by the duplication of tests, or the demise of my cunning isolation plan.

I was slightly irritated by the presence of a Staff Testing facility at City Hospital. There were tents, signs, barriers and a Security Guard. There were no cars, no staff and no evidence that anything was happening. The testing regime will, I’m sure, come under scrutiny in the months to come.

As a final note – I saw a dead badger on the Ring Road – the first in over 30 years. You see dead foxes, because they live in town but the badger must have sneaked in as part of the wildlife resurgence. Unlike my projected romcom this is a story that doesn’t end well.

Photo by Karolina Grabowska on Pexels.com

Burbling Boris the Blonde Buffoon

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I was thinking of other alliterative terms too, but good taste prevents me from using them.

The long-awaited speech from the Prime Minister on TV tonight turned out, after two days of leaked snippets, to be pretty much useless. It wasn’t so much a speech as a succession of vague mumblings, and very short on detail. It did verge on the Shakespearean in being told by an idiot and signifying nothing, but there was a sad lack of sound and fury.

Shakespeare – British Library

As a result, I am none the wiser about the way forward, but I do have a feeling of deep gloom. I didn’t have much confidence in the Government before lockdown, and I have less now. The only time I’ve been reasonably happy with the conduct of the Government coincided with the period the Prime Minister spent in hospital.

We don’t have a plan, it seems, just ‘the shape of a plan’.

It reminds me of Churchill – ‘ this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end.
But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.’

It is not a plan. It is not even the beginning of a plan. It is the shape of a plan.

Sadly, Boris Johnson, in addition to being no Shakespeare, is no Churchill.

Churchill

Forgive my underwhelming response, but I now have to plan for going back to work.

This starts tomorrow, or Wednesday, or the first week in June. It’s even more non-specific if you work in a pub or restaurant.

They would like me to walk, cycle or use my car because public transport is going to be limited due to the need for social distancing. That should quickly undo all the gains we made by staying at home for six weeks.

And there was no mention of masks.

Although we are allowed to do a bit more mixing they are going to beef up the police powers by doubling the fines for breaches of the regulations. If severe punishments worked I’m sure we’d still be hanging people for stealing handkerchiefs, but try telling a politician that.

That never looks correct in writing, but I checked it up and dictionaries seem happy with either handkerchiefs or handkerchieves. The spellchecker isn’t, but that’s life. The strange thing is that I pronounce it handkerchieves, but spell it handkerchiefs.

I’m just watching a programme about Ladybird books, which is why I’ve missed my deadline. It seems that a child only needs a vocabulary of 12 words to start reading. One of them appears to be ‘dog’ but ‘cat’, it seems, is not necessary. Adults, they claim, have a vocabulary of 20,000 words. I am dubious about that. I honestly doubt that I use 1,000, but I really can’t be bothered to count them. I do know it’s possible to get by with eight words on my drive to work. These eight don’t feature either ‘cat’ or ‘dog’.

I just went looking for a vocabulary test to see how large my vocabulary is. Instead, I started to do a quiz about how long I’m going to live. Based on diet, lifestyle and various other quasi-scientific mumbo-jumbo I have 6 years 293 days and 32 minutes. That’s a bit less than I calculated in a previous post. (2,483 compared to the previous calculation of 2,920). That’s a nuisance as I was planning on using those 500 days to write my memoirs.

A Man with No Plan

A Confusion of Scientists

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From what I’ve seen today the Government doesn’t need to ease the lockdown restrictions because people have already decided to cut themselves some slack. This is annoying after we’ve made major efforts to isolate ourselves.

I’ve been reading about the voluntary lockdown in Sweden, which everyone says has worked well. I’m not sure it would work too well in the UK, from what I’ve seen today. On top of that, Swedish Government scientists have even said that our lockdown is futile.

However, after some of the things they have done I’m not sure how far I’d trust Swedish scientists. Not that they were the only ones who thought eugenics were a Good Thing.

You would expect that their death rate would be very low in that case, wouldn’t you? It isn’t. It’s lower than hours, to be sure. But it’s higher than Ireland, where the low rate of death has been attributed to Ireland adopting a lockdown policy.

So, with a lower death rate being linked to (a) strict lockdown policies and (b) relaxed lockdown policies you have to wonder who is right.

Or if anyone is right…

That’s it for now. I’ve failed to hit my self-appointed 250 words, but I’m having trouble concentrating. Lockdown has finally softened my brain, and I’m devoting too much of my brain to thoughts of the gooseberry crumble one of the neighbours gave us.

The picture is from the free picture library – sorry about that but I’m nor getting out much. That should be about the right number of words.

Substitution

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I had a food delivery from ASDA today. It was a lot better than the last internet order from ASDA, and the driver was a source of much information. He told us, for instance, that during the height of the panic-buying people were buying so much food that on one delivery run he was only able to fit three deliveries on the van. No wonder they ran out of both food and capacity.

For a while I started to feel sympathy for ASDA. Then I began to unpack the order and look at the substitutions.

I had ordered two packs of bake at home baguettes. I did this because I want to finish off the baking at home and be able to have fresh bread in a week’s time. It’s nine days until the next delivery.

I didn’t get that. They substituted ready-cut white bread rolls, the sort we call burger buns in the UK. They are never good quality bread. And, being cut, they are already well on the way to being stale by the time you get them. Poor quality, stale, soft, cotton wool and unappetising. We have limited freezer space and though we have frozen one pack we will have to eat the other as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, eating them will delay the eating of the sliced loaf we also ordered, and that will start to go stale, or even mouldy, before we finish it.

There is nothing like a nice, crusty, warm baguette. And, as we say in the UK, the substitute buns are nothing like a nice, crusty, warm baguette.

Who thinks a pack of burger buns are an acceptable substitute for a nice crusty baguette?

If they were out of vinegar would they send me battery acid as a substitute. They are, after all, both acids, but they have very different effects when sprinkled on chips.

I also ordered a couple of Sicilian Lemon tarts as a treat for dessert one night. They sent profiteroles. I like profiteroles, and if I wanted them I’m quite capable of ordering them. But I wanted the sharpness of Sicilian Lemon tarts, even though I doubt that the lemons have ever seen Sicily. We had the profiteroles tonight – they were short of chocolate and cream. I don’t know about you, but I don’t buy them because of the choux pastry, I want chocolate and cream. Or, to be accurate, I want Sicilian Lemon Tart.

Better than the bread substitution but not ideal.

Then there was the coriander. I wanted fresh coriander leaves for some recipes I’m going to try. So I ordered fresh coriander leaves with soil so that they would sit in a pot and last a week or two. I thought I was getting a pot too, but they have stopped doing that so they save plastic.

What did they send?

Did they send cut coriander, which would give you the flavour without the longevity? No.

Did they send Ground Coriander or Coriander seeds from the spice section? No.

They sent me flat leaf parsley. As I had already ordered some, I now have two lots of flat leaf parsley.

So, no coriander, and a double helping of parsley. If I’d wanted two, I would have ordered two.

I really should stop believing them when they say they have things in stock, and I should start saying that I don’t want substitutions. Then, of course, I would end up with no bread and no pudding.

To be fair, I should say that they did substitute a couple of things which were more expensive than the items I’d ordered, and didn’t charge me extra. But I’m not feeling very fair after the bread substitution, or last week.

The Bear Pictures, and Some Diversions

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A Bear in a Tree

Julia’s Knitted Teddy Bear – a lockdown special

I can’t post a bear picture as a header because I’m incompetent. Julia sent me these two pictures but I can’t get them to load into the media file so I just dropped them into the text. It’s a fascinating study in how a bit of knitting, a few stitches and a bit of imagination ends up as a teddy bear with a distinct personality of its own.

She has posted these pictures on the Mencap Facebook page, so there’s a chance we might be seeing a few more of them about as lockdown progresses.

Sooty is one of the best known bears, and he has been helping charliecountryboy retain his sanity during the lockdown. I use the term ‘sanity’ in a fairly loose sense, as you will have realised if you’ve read his blog before.

One of my favourites is Pooh, the bear of very little brain, and an unfortunate name. We have a copy of The Pooh Cook Book upstairs. Julia bought it. I’ve never actually read it, as I suspect it isn’t really a cookery book, just going through the motions.

I’m fairly sure that the humour I see in the title was unintentional, unlike the next book, which has a confusingly similar title.

It is, however, quite different, being a book of Thai cooking compiled by a woman nick-named Poo. It apparently means ‘crab’ in Thai. She’s really called Saiyuud Diwong, but that wouldn’t sell as many books. Let’s face it, Cooking with Saiyud Diwong wouldn’t actually rate a mention here.

“For I am a bear of very little brain, and long words bother me.” A. A. Milne

Bear in a tree – again!

ASDA Disaster!

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As I said yesterday, I spent a lot of time amending my ASDA Click & Collect order. I added my payment details and ensured I had the conformation email. Everything was, as the Americans say, copacetic. Actually, from what I see on WordPress, they don’t say it. But they could do. It’s one word I wouldn’t mind them importing into English.

Things took a distinct turn for the worst when we arrived. At ASDA you park up then use their app to tell them you have arrived. A what? I don’t do apps. I did it the old-fashioned way, catching the eye of a staff member and asking for help.

As they brought the shopping across I felt a deep depression settle on me.

My order was for over £60, including things for the stock cupboard and a few bits for neighbours. What was coming to us across the car park was a small box with just over a dozen items, including some that I’d cancelled the night before.

They had clearly not processed the new order. They had sent me an email to tell me that the order had been amended and I had, foolishly, not checked the rest of the email, which detailed the order. When I returned home and checked, the “amended order” was not, in fact, amended. It was just the old order repeated.

I won’t bore you with too much detail.

The man on the helpline (after I had spoken to three other people, including an idiot) told me it was obviously a “technical matter”, that there was no way for him to provide me with the food I had ordered and that “there’s nothing I can do,”

I will remember this in future.

In fact I will remember it in two weeks. I have another Click and Collect order with ASDA in two weeks, but I’ve also managed to get a TESCO delivery slot two days after that. It’s very tempting to cancel the ASDA order. I don’t like doing it, as I am a man of my word. On the other hand they let me down badly today and refused to make things right.

Fortunately I’ve managed to arrange things over the last month so that we have enough food to last us until the next delivery. It means we are out of mustard, short on marmalade, and low on cheese, but have plenty of toilet roll, pasta and longlife milk.

However, I’ve just been watching the news from Brazil. Their President makes Boris Johnson look like a statesman, and President Trump is an intellectual giant in comparison. In terms of counting our blessings, let’s just reflect that it could be a lot worse.

It was an an unpleasant, cold, grey day today, though it’s supposed to improve tomorrow.

And that concludes the miserable, moaning diary entry for today. I thought I’d use some rainbow photos as they are a symbol of the lockdown.

abstract abstract expressionism abstract painting acrylic paint

Photo by Steve Johnson on Pexels.com

Soup!

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I have 28 minutes to post, and am going to give it my best shot. Please excuse the haste and the worse than normal editing.

Today’s main event, apart from a hospital phone call (which was a duplicate of the one I got yesterday) was the soup. We had half a dozen manky carrots, a medium sized parsnip and a swede (rutabaga) which was beginning to look a bit grey round the cut end. My solution – root veg soup.

This is a lockdown recipe, because with only shopping every week or ten days I’m not quite getting the supplies right and we needed to get through a few more roots.

I also had the green end of a leek, so I softened that and roasted the roots whilst cooking the tea last night. I then boiled it with stock and spices (2 tsp cumin, 1 tsp ground coriander, half a tsp of lazy chilli from a jar) and left it covered overnight. No need for a fridge, we are having a cold spell here at the moment. We always do once we start putting plants outside.

Today I added some lazy garlic from a jar, a touch more chilli and reduced it to a smooth consistency with a stick blender. I tried to leave afew flecks of red, but they didn’t stand uput in the finished soup. Sometimes I use finely chopped red chillis – they stand out better.

The result was a nice beige soup with an interesting flavour and a touch of mild heat. I’m not sure that it needed the ground coriander, as I can never really taste it when I use stronger tasting spices.

Finally I added a spoonful of turmeric to brighten it up a bit. I’m not sure if the photos show it, but you get a slightly brighter orange/yellow soup when you do that.

Things I didn’t add – mushrooms and kale (despite kale being virtually compulsory in recipes these days. I thought mushrooms would be confusing, though they do need using soon, and I couldn’t be bothered to take the kale off the stalks (I didn’t want to spoil the consistency by putting stalks in. I was going to put kale in at the end rather than boil it with the rest of the veg.)

It made far more than we needed and we will be having it tomorrow too. And Friday. However, it’s good and cheap and you can have sandwiches with it so it helps dodge the salads.

Carrot, Parsnip and Swede Soup

Carrot, Parsnip and Swede Soup with Turmeric

The one on the left has no added colour, the one on the right has the turmeric added. The one in the header picture was taken with flash, which made it look a richer colour and wasn’t a fair comparison to the original beige.

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Life after the Care Farm