The New Way of Life
My bike is back and raring to go and try out it’s serviced gears and brakes, and new peddles! So, I took it out for a spin at lunch-time with M.
It’s a dull day but not cold or wet, so perfect for cycling.
Got on with organising our family quiz. 19 people taking part with one son and his partner joining us from Sweden and eldest granddaughter dialing in from Greece.
Cracking on nicely with editing Chapter 5 of Wait for Me. Should finish it tomorrow.
A grocery delivery arrived this morning and I put it all away. I’m not being quite as obsessive about sanitising it all now. Still careful, but it’s not such a major operation. I’m getting into a good routine now to avoid having such long gaps in between deliveries. I’m pretty much getting them weekly now. I always have 3 delivery slots booked and when one shop arrives I book the next one. That means the orders are smaller and easier to deal with and we don’t run out of so much stuff, necessitating trips to our local Tesco, where social distancing standards are slipping a little.
I made a batch of Carluccio’s Bolognese sauce in the afternoon. It’s a simple recipe but a long cooking time so I always make double and freeze half. It’s just onions, minced beef and pork fried in butter and olive oil them simmered for 3 hours with passata, tomato puree and white wine. Simple but the long slow simmer makes it really tasty.
Before dinner I had a long bath and read my book in there for a while. Lovely. In my PJ’s by 6pm!
The News
Zoos, Safari Parks and outdoor attractions can open from Monday. At first I thought – so what? But then I learned that animals were going to be put down because businesses were failing and I did a double take. I’m not the world’s biggest animal lover, (I always say I’ll start worrying about animals when all the people in the world are safe and fed) but I’d never want the poor creatures to be killed.
Surprise, surprise the UK economy has been hit the worst out of all of the worlds leading economies. It’s an interesting one. We have been devastated by the virus but many people believe that if the government had locked down just a week or two before they did, it wouldn’t have been so bad.
It also seems that countries who care more about their people than their economies and locked down early, like New Zealand have fared better than those that locked down late. New Zealand have declared themselves virus-free over the past couple of days, and are really getting back to normal.
Even, rugby is re-starting in New Zealand. No sign of that happening here any time soon. We’re thinking of finding someone we know to sell our tickets and flights for the European Rugby Union Finals in Marseille. We’re not going to be going now. If we can get out of the country we’ll be heading straight for Barbados.
The NHS is struggling to get back to normal. Waiting are really long. Estimates suggest that 10 million people are waiting for treatment. My gallstones appointment that was in March, and then pushed back to June by me, has been pushed back again to late July.
In the daily briefing, led by Boris today, they announced that single people (including single parents and their children) can join another household and stay over if they want to. Not really sure what this means in practice. They are a calling it a support bubble.
The Numbers
245 new deaths.
Total “official” deaths 41,128.
New cases 1,419. This is going up again.
jswritingservices.com 