The New Way of Life
Another busy day! Worked on my biography project for most of the day. Really making good progress now with the first draft. I think I only have a handful of chapters left to write.
I stopped for lunch and a break about 2.30 pm and then went out for my bike ride. It’s a humid day, overcast but warm.
M seems to be relaxing a bit! There is a fresh fish van that visits the village every Tuesday. Every Tuesday, without fail, we pass it on our bike ride and promise ourselves that we’ll remember to get some fish the following week. Today, it was there on our way home, but I needed to have shower before I could go out, so he went instead! On the way back he went into the chemist to pick up his prescription. Well! He must be feeling that things are getting safer out there. It’s the first time he’s gone into anywhere at all since the 15th of March!
He has also made an appointment in Birmingham city centre for us to take his Apple watch in to be repaired next week! Our local Apple shop was fully booked for months and he’s desperate to get it fixed so that he can monitor how his athletic prowess is coming along. So we’ll be driving into the city and going to the Apple shop in the centre of town! Wow! What an adventure!
Talking of adventures, Europe opened its borders today and our friends, whose daughter and granddaughter lives there, went to visit them on the Eurostar! They took the train to London, then the Eurostar to Brussels, where their son-in-law picked them up. They are staying in a hotel and just messaged us to say that, after a lovely day with their family, they are sitting on the hotel terrace enjoying a bottle of wine. I can’t imagine what it must feel like. They must feel as though they are in a dream.
The News
As said, Europe has opened its borders today but, apart from Belgium, most countries are excluding people from the UK, citing our poor control of the virus.
In New Zealand, only a few days after they declared themselves Covid free, two British women have introduced the virus into the country again. They travelled on a flight via Doha and Brisbane and were half way a two week quarantine, when they were allowed to leave early to visit a dying relative. They drove 400 miles across New Zealand in a car with another family member before testing positive. Now everyone they came into contact with on their journey will have to be contacted and asked, along with anyone they have been in contact with, to self-isolate for 14 days.
I do hope that this does not force other countries (yes, I do mean Barbados!) to restrict visitors from the UK!
The government has done another U-turn on providing child meal vouchers for families in need through the school holidays, after an appeal by Marcus Rashford, a young England footballer who experienced poverty and hardship as a child. Many families are in terrible financial difficulties at the moment. Many children who normally get free school meals and have been attending school through lockdown as “vulnerable” children, were going to miss out on this during the school holidays and the government, until today, were refusing to introduce the scheme over the summer.
This is a situation that is only going to get worse. We haven’t seen the half of it yet! It is estimated that 600,000 people have lost their jobs as a result of the pandemic, and that by the summer 3 million will be unemployed.
An old medicine, Dexamethazone, has been shown to be effective in reducing mortality from Covid-19. It is widely available as a generic across the world and is cheap to manufacture. It could be a significant development!
Indian hospitals are currently being overwhelmed by people with the virus
The Numbers
233 new deaths taking the total to 41,969.
1279 new cases.
It’s a very slow process.
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