55 days in isolation/lockdown. Despite all UK deaths reducing significantly, we are still in crisis and we all hoped the Prime Ministers statement would clarify matters. The picture is confusing especially as Germany who have eased their social distancing rules, have seen their R number creep to 1.1. This is bad news. The government have now announced 14 days quarantine for people flying in to the UK. How will that work for cousin Petra, and Manfred who have booked a 7 day return flight in August. Boris duly came on tv and spoke for over 10 minutes and said nothing of any value. He said it well though.

We had VE day on Friday and many streets made a good attempt at instilling a party mood. Our street had a bit of bunting but that was it. We watched loads of tv where they had unearthed hours of colour film showing how the country celebrated the end of the war in Europe. What a pity that having achieved a fairly joined up Europe wth the EU/EEC, we decided to throw it all away and once again stand alone.  Now, them and us, will go our own ways and try to resolve the Pandemic in isolation. Not a good sign.

We have now finished the Spooks tv series. Definately ended in a way that leaves the door open for another series. I hope so.

We’ve had a couple of great ZOOM/WhatsApp calls from Sally and Jim in Romania. They are doing well and are fully occupied with teaching from home, which is going vey well, and nurturing their two kittens. They don’t have names yet but the vet now thinks they are both males and doing very well. They are now more like toddlers and are playing with each other.

Jenny has been baking again. This time coconut slices. Yum. Tomorrow we should receive the baking powder we have ordered on line so I will be baking scones again.

David’s kids have got him to do some dancing on their TikTok App. Not a pretty sight.

The weather has been superb in the last few days although it is colder today and will be so for the next few days. Not alot of rain is forecast so watering plants has become part of my daily routine. All the plants are doing well despite the very poor soil/clay in our back garden. There has been a spate of thefts of hanging baskets in Cottingham so we have secured ours as best we can with plastic ties. Not ideal but better than nothing.

We continue to keep in touch with all our friends by phone and Email. In these peculiar days, it is very important as that sort of thing that you would otherwise take for granted. David, Bill and Andy and others, keep us amused with funny videos etc that they find on the internet.

 

UK deaths Friday 8th May        626

UK deaths Saturday 9th May   346

UK deaths Sunday 10th May    269

52 days in isolation/lockdown. We are both still well with no symptoms. The weather is great so we are doing alot of walking. Maintaining social distancing of course. Lots of people sat in their gardens enjoying the sunshine. Sadly nobody was selling icecreams.

Relaxation of the rules are promised soon but I cannot see it’s value while we still top the “European deaths list”. Not a statistic to be proud of despite the governments mantra that they did “everything right at the right time”. No they did not! Many things were correctly done but could have been done earlier. Lockdown and testing for example. I await Boris’s proposals with some trepidation. I lost count of the number of times Dominic Raab said “we will make all the right decisions at the right time, as we have done so far” or words to that effect. Saying something often enough, will not magically make it true.

Now we find out that the 400,000 scrubs and masks flown in from Turkey were sub standard and therefore unusable. A great example of “right decision at the right time” Dominic? So I assume the whole lot will be returned for a refund? (There is a pig flying past my window).

I was reminded on my walk today, to take my prescription in, that not all sick people are connected with the virus. I was chatting to a chap who suffered from “prostrate” and his appointments were delayed. There must be thousands like him and maybe Boris will address that. Maybe more corona cases could be dealt with in the Nightingale facilities. freeing up consultants to deal with other conditions, heart, cancers and transplants etc. in relatively safe hospitals. Those of us awaiting referals for minor stuff like my knee replacement problem etc would surely be happy to wait.

UK deaths Thursday 7th May   539 (In hospitals 383)

 

 

 

 

Football. How are we managing without it? Very well thank you. Of course I miss it a bit. Watching my granddson play on a Sunday morning for example but being alive is more important and I get angry at all the news media spending so much time and column inches on the plight of football clubs and their nutty supporters. There are hundreds of thousands of dead people to whom this is an irrelevance. In the grand scheme of things, who cares if Anytown United get relegated or not. People are dying but the Prima Donnas of the pemiership are still getting their tens of thousands of pounds, PER WEEK, even after some have donated 20% of their wages to charity. Give me strength!

There seems to be some light at the end of the tunnel regarding the progress of Covid 19 and some loosening of the lockdown are being considered. I will not be happy being in throngs of people until the virus has gone completely and/or there is a vaccine. My wife and I are in our 70s and we manage ok so why cannot eveyone else?

We’ve done more baking. I am having 100% success with my scones.There is a new word doing the rounds. Doughverkill. Definition…doing too much baking. That’s me folks.

Called to deliver a birthday card to my cousin Pamela who was going to a funeral in the afternoon. Her Uncle had died of Corona virus although he had “underlying medical problems”. Funerals are a strange affair at the moment. Only 10 mourners allowed in the Crematorium’s chapel. They had to stay in their cars until the coffin was taken in. Then the mourners had to, obviously, observe social distancing so no hugs. The service lasted 10 minutes only and still observing social distancing they had to go straight to their cars and then home. Obviously no wake was held. All very strange and upsetting.

We called at Mum’s yesterday to take some washing back. She is really doing well and is fully aware of what is going on. We took a couple of my own scones for the carer to prepare her for lunch instead of a trifle. We hope it is allowed. We had just left when one of her carers, an young angel called Jenna, was cycling to Mum’s house. We were sorry to miss her. She really cares for mum.

The total deaths in the UK has now exceeded 30,000 which puts us into top spot in Europe ahead of Italy and Spain and France are not far behind. In 5th place with only just over 7000 deaths, is Germany. That is about 80/90 per million of population whereas the UK figure is over 400 deaths per million. Germany’s population is 16 million more than ours. Doesn’t it make you feel proud. So, those nice graphs on the daily briefing are probably meaningless in terms of how well our polititians have handled the whole situation.

ALL UK Deaths Sunday 3rd May           315

ALL UK Deaths Monday 4th May          288

ALL UK Deaths Tuesday 5th May          693

ALL UK Deaths Wednesday 6th May    649   (hospitals 331)

 

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