Day 47 of self isolation/lockdown and one day is beginning to look like another at home. Baking, cleaning, gardening , walking and watching tv. We’ve now seen almost all of the 90 odd episodes of Spooks with about a dozen to go. I hadn’t realised that so many MI5 “spies” were killed off during the series. There are rumours that a new series is coming. But there is nobody left. I seem to remember that in the last episode  “Sir Harry” is  killed off.  Maybe he hadn’t really died?

Boris is now taking the press briefings and if you listen carefully, he actually tells us very little. I think the reason is that in reality, they have made a bit of a mess of things in the early stages. At least he doesn’t recommend injecting bleach or disinfectant directly into our bloodstream. However, if one looks back he and his advisors did not take advice from those whose job it is to deal with these things. He has always advocated following the science. Well, he hasn’t but at least it has given him someone to blame. Germany seem to have done better than us by going hard at the basics of the infection control…testing, tracing….social isolation and lockdown. They were also lucky in that their early outbreak was due in no small part to younger, fitter citizens returning from skiing holidays and were much more likely to be super spreaders rather than die. Testing and isolating early brought them more benefits healthwise as opposed to the UK’s wishy washy approach. Because we were not testing enough people, especially those in care homes were dying and not being linked to Corona deaths. So not all is as as it seems. Spain, one of the worst infected, were slow off the mark too. Mainly because they identified about 8000 early deaths as normal seasonal flu. Effectively, no country has been perfect, except North Korea where the pandemic decided to miss them out, although there are now rumours that Kim Jon Un is dead and his sister is about to take over.

Good news. Ernie (Premium Bonds) gave us some winning numbers today resulting in £125 going to our bank. Moved to our holiday account. We will get the big one someday.

We made a list yesterday of everything in our freezers and tidied them up a bit. Apart from things like eggs and milk, we could live out of the freezers for at least a month.

Took delivery of two Amazon items today. The paper shredder which was just “plug and play” works brilliantly. It is time to shred nearly all the paperwork we brought back from Spain and a load of UK bank statements dating back 10 years. I am now tackling a self assembly shoe cupboard with three compartments. I have done one before and learned that it pays to read the instructions, check there are enough screws and the electric screwdriver is fully charged.

Better news on the satistics in that daily deaths have been reduced again. Hopefully it is a trend. We still need to self isolate and keep our from people we meet. The reinfection (R) number is still below 1 at 0.6 oto 0.9. We need to keep the lockdown going. We are definitely doing our bit.

UK deaths Thursday 30th April        674  (Incudes ALL deaths)

UK deaths Friday 1st May                 739  (Includes ALL deaths)

UK deaths Saturday 2nd May           621  (Includes ALL deaths).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

UK deaths Saturday 2nd May            (Includes