Tag: lockdown

It caught my eye this week… 1

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COVID – That the ‘Vaccine Wars‘ seems so embarrassing to all concerned. Whilst it is important that everyone gets vaccinated to overcome the Covid Pandemic, spare a thought for Third-World Countries and their lack of facilities, even before the crisis started. – Only 25 doses!!!!

Best Efforts – Having been involved in a number of legal contracts for Computer Projects over the years it was interesting to see the term ‘Best Efforts’ being discussed with regards to Vaccine delivery this week.

It was always an interesting discussion with contract lawyers as to the difference between ‘Best Efforts’ & ‘Reasonable Efforts‘ and which offered the greatest safeguard to both parties from the point of ‘delivery.

Novichok Poisoning Inquest – Finally; some movement on the inquest into the Salisbury Novichok poisonings of 2018 – yes that was nearly four years ago and the inquest into Dawn Sturgess’s death is still unfinished. What is it that the UK.Gov does not want to come out?
Seems that it is being dragged for some reason, I wonder what? Well at least we will get an official inquest, unlike what happened to Alexei Navalny.

Breaking the boredom of Lockdown – Quite a lot written about this subject over the last months, how have you kept your sanity? Here are just of the suggestions I have found online…

I continue to be busy building my new shed for the second allotment I took over last year and trying to get my cycling going; though I’ve not done a lot since the start of the year due to the weather (never thought I would say that!). We’re also back to helping with ‘home-schooling’ and managing to get back on my Yamaha Keyboard at long last. Boredom; no way!

Did I blink!!

MikeLeave a comment

What happened to 2020? Did I blink or did time speed up? I think it is true that time seems to speed up as you get older, but how come I have not posted since February last year!! That’s nearly twelve months ago, what have I done since then?

Clearly a lot has happened and I suppose the biggest event was and still is the COVID Pandemic, I just heard the news today that we have now passed the 80,000 COVID deaths total! The ‘confirmed’ cases now stand at over three million, just three weeks after they passed the two million mark! Clearly people are not paying attention to keeping themselves isolated!

Here’s an article from the Guardian with more details, it’s such a tragic situation that appears only to be getting worse. A distant light on the horizon must be the vaccines, let’s hope that they will end this, but I fear it will be a long time before it does.

So what did I do with the last eleven months? I suppose the three main things would have been… intermittently looking after the two grandchildren during 2020 whenever the pandemic measures allowed, though sadly we have now not seen them in person since our brief get together for the 2020 October Half-Term week at a great getaway in Dorset. We decided (although the changes with the Pandemic really decided for us), that after that break we should keep more isolated, though the online get togethers are good, they don’t replace actual physical being together. The other two main things were cycling and the Garden/Allotment.

Cycling – Despite the various pandemic related changes over the period, I have managed to keep cycling, the cycling club I belong to suspended group rides during the first lockdown and since then I’ve done all of my riding in 2020 by myself. I’ve still managed to cover a reasonable distance for the year, sadly though not as much as the previous year.

Allotment – I took on another plot in late 2019 and managed to get a good set of crops out of the front section of it during the 2020 growing season. However, the back section was really in a mess and the latter part of the 2020 was taken up with reorganising that area. Slow progress, but getting there and a good job to finish during early 2021.

Other things that kept me busy were…

  • Helping ‘remotely’ with peoples computers, now so much more important for staying in contact with their contacts via Zoom, Facetime, Google Meet and many other apps I’ve lost track of, also carried out a number of updates to Windows 10 remotely; very interesting!!
  • Keeping my daily newsletters up to date as much as possible
  • Working on the various Allotment committee items
    • Monthly Newsletters and Special Bulletins
    • Designing and launching a new Website, though I would not call myself a web designer!
  • Decorating during lockdown
  • Shopping for our family and a couple of neighbours.
  • Working through some excellent free online courses from FutureLearn
  • Sorting out my images and delving deeper into Lightroom and Photoshop
  • Buying and learning about the Raspberry Pi (via FutureLearn) and thinking back to the original BBC Micro – how technology has changed!
  • Binge watching various series, Star Trek: Picard, Treadstone, Mr Robot – Season 4, The Main in the High Castle – Season 4, Jack Ryan – Season 1, Bosch, from Season 1, NCIS, Season 14, WW II in Colour, Star Trek: Discovery, Season 3 and quite a few others.
  • Local Walking

So I do seem to have been busy, but 2020 still seems to have flown by and I still seem to have lots to do, scanning of old photos, Family Tree updates, printing out some of my images on a brand new A3 Printer, plus I hope putting more post into this space.