Balanced Opinion

We're now at 'lockdown +3' i.e. 3 weeks on lockdown and with Easter approaching (tomorrow), it will be tough for folk in towns trying to stay in.  For myself and my better half, we are pondering what to watch on the TV after exhausting those we said we would watch.  Last Tango in Halifax was especially watchable, and could do with a few more of those making, not that I'm expecting it.
Lighter nights mean we can get outside a bit more, but enthusiasm to do anything has waned a bit given the dire situation we are in.

I go for a run most mornings, and it sets me up (mentally and physically) for the day, and better half gets out on her bike now and again although I can tell she is not enamoured with the status we are in.
There's talk amongst the politicians of a lockdown review, (mainly being pressurised by the press) but there's no chance of that as we hit about 1000 death per day.  In theory, this should gradually reduce over the next week or so as the lockdown takes effect (a 14 day lag they say) so I would guess we are in for about another months before they consider any loosening of the rules.
We (the media) are watching other countries keenly as to what they are doing and seeing what works, what doesn't of course and ultimately have to make a judgement on what is best on balance.  That is really where the debates are - the 'balance' piece.  Total lockdown a la Wuhan in China would appear to be a good option, but at what cost to one's mental health? ..and will it just pop up again any time soon?  With a vaccine being some months away, there will have to be some careful consideration of what to do and when.  Balance is the big thing.

The Great Outdoors.

Pubs and restaurants closed down on Friday although takeaways remain open.  Unfortunately for some, Costa and McDonalds closed their takeaway service from today thereby reducing the options for a decent meal and quality coffee.
Interestingly, this weekend saw a huge number of people out and about at either supermarkets (panic buying) or tourists spots (panic visiting).  Snowdonia Park rangers say it has been their busiest day ever - which is either an exaggeration or people are behaving very, very strangely.

I've been working from home since Thursday, although I think this will be temporary as today our top HR man has decreed that we should go into work, mainly (I think) because we are 'key workers' i.e. in the food supply chain.

It's all a bit surreal at the moment, and it's very unlikely to improve for some months.

Four Horsemen.

Flood, Fire, Famine and Pestilence, or The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
They just seem to fit with what we have today.  Flooding started late last year, fire followed soon afterwards (in Australia), famine is what we are experiencing now with empty shelves in supermarkets along with the Covid-19 virus.  I might be exaggerating the famine bit, but you get the idea.
It's not nice having to stay at home as much as possible.  My better half is one of the 'at risk' groups with an autoimmune issue (lack of adrenal glands) so has to be doubly careful, which makes me very wary about going out, but better me than her.  I can see it being a major issue if I get it and have to isolate myself away from her.  We have plenty of spare rooms, but breathing the same air cannot be a good thing.  I really worry that she might catch it.
Meanwhile, the state crackdown is creeping in, probably brought in gradually to reduce the stress, but stressful nonetheless.  Last day for schools today, and along with everything else that has closed down it is difficult to see the end game even at my most optimistic.  Looks like we really are relying on science to pull us out the $hit on this one.

Have a nice day!

Wood You Believe It

Unseasoned (wet) wood for domestic stoves is being banned from 2012 and coal from 2023.  When I first read this, it seemed a bit harsh - OK, wet wood will not burn as efficiently, but surely its better than burning gas in a boiler.  However, there is a nasty pollutant in this type of fuel that deserves to be got rid of, so probably not as severe a ban as I first imagined.  Personally, my wood is dried out for at least 12 months, and probably a bit more.  I try and get my wood heap up to full capacity early Spring, then around half gets used the following Winter and I start the cycle again.
I don't think there's anything wet about my wood, but I've ordered a moisture meter just in case, which will allow me to bore the pants off everyone if they dare to mention wood burning stoves and prove to myself that drying works.

Dropped the car off at my local(ish) car garage in the next village and ran home via a little used footpath I last ventured down about 4 years ago.  Nearly lost my shoe a couple of times in a boggy bit of grass, but actually really enjoyed running over ground that I haven't been on for a while.  This has got me thinking about entering a race or 2 in the Spring and Summer but not sure what distance - half marathon as a minimum seems sensible, not worth travelling for less.  I wonder if sprinters think like that?  Must be tough - travel hundreds of miles, do a false start and get disqualified.

Don't Stop Me Now

Following my post of a couple of days ago (Blame Game), it looks like Kirsty Allsop despite her not being one of my favourite presenters has put similar thoughts forward in a piece in the Guardian.  She advocates that management should have a system in place to take over the social media stuff when
things get 'too much' (my words) and seems to make sense.

Anyway,  back to the running.  I've been out 3 early mornings in a row, this morning's being a 7.5 miler and felt reasonably good after it.  Not so good part way round, but that was probably because I needed a pit stop and there were no convenient gateways available.  When I found a suitable verge I felt much better thereafter.  Yesterday I had to stop for 3 pitstops, which given that the majority of my running is out in the countryside not as bad/risky as it sounds.  The biggest issue is filling up the shower plug hole with the odd blade of grass when showering.  Further details available on request.
If I tell anyone about these types of pitstops, they are often quite shocked, but to me they have become 'normal'.  By normal, I'm not saying it happens every time I go out, but it means that I don't stress about an early morning constitutional before I venture out.  Saves time y'know.

Skipping Along

I sometimes take my mini-ipod with me when I run - usually when it's dark and there's nothing to occupy my mind.  I have a selection of my favourite artists which at the moment are Pink Floyd, Fleetwood Mac and Ben Folds, not that the artists are an integral part of this story it's the listening that is different to most other times I listen to music.
The thing that interests me is that when I'm running I listen to all of the song.  No skipping to the next track if I'm not too familiar with it, and no skipping because I can't sing along to it.  There's no singing when you're running!
It reminds me of when records were pieces of vinyl placed on a turntable and the needle gingerly lowered down to begin the listening experience.  A few crackles and strange noises and the music kicked in.  I'm sure I did skip tracks very occasionally, but as a general rule I listened to the whole album cover to cover (although it was 1st to last track, not cover to cover).  I know all the words to most if not all of Pink Floyds albums which I purchased on vinyl, but not the ones I had as CDs or downloads.
So, note to self: don't skip tracks and your life will be enhanced by little heard tracks.

Blame Game

Caroline Flack, a TV celebrity presenter, sadly ended her life at the weekend, and this resulted in a great deal of angst about the role of the media and how they basically gave her a hard time along with social media trolls etc.  This has led to an immediate campaign for social media users to 'be kind', as if this hadn't occurred to anyone.  It seems a bit odd that we need to remind people to be kind to each other, but at least we have social media to tell people how to behave, then we can give them some grief if they don't.
I don't speak from experience, but it seems to be that celebrities must be torn between deleting themselves from social media to avoid the hassle, or embracing it as a marketing tool raising their profile, influence, income etc.  I guess it's quite a dilemma, and I would like to think that their management team (I guess all celebs have some sort of management team) should be able to help and advise.  Unfortunately, I would hazard a guess that the management team are paid a percentage of income, and that must surely skew their advice when it comes to any sort of decisions that would affect earnings.  I don't see any celeb managers getting the sort of media intrusion and social media grief that the celebs get.

Travellers Tale.

Driverless cars; a ban on diesel and petrol car sales by 2030; severe congestion.  All these things are making it difficult to predict what private transport will look like in 20 years.  I guess (readers can Google this) that the ability to hop in a car and go where you like when you like started in the mid 30s as the car became more affordable and popular, so it will have had it's 100 years of fame to be replaced by what?  I have always liked the idea of driverless cars - it combines the flexibility of the aforementioned with the luxury of being able to make use of the time spent travelling, the sort of thing currently only afforded to company execs with a chauffeured vehicle.
I can't see public transport ever replacing the private car except in large cities or along urban transport highways e.g. London-Birmingham despite the talk.  I can, however, foresee that low cost affordable electric vehicles such as e-bikes/scooters will gain in popularity when they become safer, practical and more prevalent (and thereby gain in popularity).  We probably need to re-boot the Sinclair C5.

Driving Changes

There's an interesting article today in The Guardian about congestion in London.  You can read it yourself of course, but the bottom line is that private cars make up a very small proportion of London's traffic, the rest being Ubers, Black Cabs, Buses and delivery vans.  I hadn't really thought about it before (being a rural yokel), but of course the Amazon Prime type of delivery - delivered a.s.a.p. without combining and optimising the deliveries are bound to create additional traffic.
How do we fix this?  Answers on a postcard (2nd class) to TfL.

Bridge That Gap

It must be an age thing, but I get much more concerned about bad weather than I used to.  We've just had a terribly windy Sunday with an awful lot of rain in a short time and I've been quite concerned about everyone else's as well as my own property.  How odd.

It transpires that the UK government are working on plans for a bridge between Scotland and Northern Ireland.  Early days yet, but that would be a rather expensive piece of infrastructure.

Racing Along.

The new Formula 1 season must be imminent, articles have started appearing about all sorts of racing rubbish.  What is apparent, is that the good ol' BBC, although supposedly unbiased news reporting seems to almost ignore sports it doesn't broadcast itself. For example, when it had the rights to F1 it was plastered with 'in depth' reports, speculation and other space filling articles, whilst now it limits itself to syndicated pieces.  Mind you, I don't think we're missing anything.
Talking of the BBC, there must be a good case for it to stop reporting/broadcasting on all sport entirely as a cost cutting exercise.  Surely there's enough independent sports channels around to fill the gap.

Remoan.

There are still many EU remainers that harbour thoughts about returning one fine day to the UE fold.  It would be interesting if we did, but I'm sure it will take as many years to get this uppermost in the politicians head as it did for the Brexit thought to get to the top of the list i.e. about 40.  It still amazes me that we ever got to vote on it in the first place, such is my confidence in politicians doing things for the majority of the electorate rather for their won narrow party views.  Brexit has never been a party v. party argument despite some wanting to turn it into one.  Luckily that failed to materialize.

I have had around 10 days off running whilst my hamstring knits itself back together, and unsure to wait a while longer of give it a go.  It's not sore, even to touch so I'm fairly optimistic it wasn't so bad and I can go for it.  I've been keeping the sweat flowing on my cycle turbo, but because I usually do it early morning, it's been rather cold (minus 1 today) and takes a while to feel warmed up, unlike running where I feel warm within a few minutes.  I always say that running is worth (in fitness terms) twice as much as cycling, and it seems to fit the warming up equation as well.

Should I stay? No I'll go.

So it's Brexit day at last.  I suppose it was inevitable, although the remain hungry MPs did their best to keep us waiting eventually succumbing to a risky election call by Boris Johnson and unwisely backed by the Liberals and labour.  At least we now have clarity and MPs that have got to respect the initial vote.

The coronavirus is now an official 'global health emergency'.  I guess it now qualifies for more attention.  We have the first 2 cases in the UK and I guess there will be plenty more.
I wonder if Chinese food sales will suffer?  My guess is that it will.  It has a healthy (!) share of the market, so even a small percentage change will impact overall figures.

Training Regime

I can't remember if I've ranted on about HS2 before or not, but it's such an eyewatering project (money-wise) that is deserve an airing.  The Tory government has commissioned a report as to it's viability - a type of business case review if you will.  The initial signs were that the chairman was not too impressed with it, then he was overruled (can't remember if he was pushed out or not) and replaced with a guy who is in bed in some kind of way with the contractors, so hardly independent.  Indications are that it will get the OK to proceed, but in my opinion is definitely not value for money.
I think the money would be better spent across the whole rail network, not just improving the 2 or 3 hour journey from London to Birmingham.
I think we should copy the Europeans who have double decker carriages, impossible with the bridge height in the UK, but why not start raising them?  Every time a new one is repaired/replaced then we move one stop nearer.  Could be some that are of historical importance, in which case we have to go round them or dig deeper.  This would increase capacity (possibly double it) and let the normal technology advances speed up the journey times.

Sounds easy.

A Bit Hamstrung.

I picked up a hamstring tweak last week, a result (I think) of an older injury from a couple of years back where I had to stop running for a few weeks.  That time, I went to a physio who took my money but essentially didn't do anything to speed up the repair except to advise it would take a few weeks to sort out.  This time, it doesn't feel quite as bad, so I went out early on Monday to test it, and ended up with it feeling as bad as last time, so that was a cock-up.  I'm now back to cycling only, but even that was a bit painful this morning.  I won't trouble the physio again though, he can advise those with a bit more money.

Money Talk

Gary Lineker thinks the BBC van be funded by voluntary subscriptions.  Therein speaks a man who has too much money.  I'm not sure that philosophy will reach many working class families.  Nice thought though, or perhaps he's going to pay for much of it himself?  He's taken a lot from it.

Don't know what happened there, I found myself reading the football transfer live update page.  Evidently there's a lot happening today, most of it involving rather large sums of money.  Not my cup of tea.

Wait, Just, One, Moment.

The latest 50p coin commemorating Brexit on 31st Jan has come in for some stick from linguists who object to a missing comma.  It looks Ok to me, and I like to think I know my commas.  Evidently they think there is a comma missing in a list, but before 'and', whereas I (and the coin's author obviously) think that it's not required.  I don't think we should lose too much sleep about it.

In other news, the coronavirus gathers more headlines as predicted.  Let's hope they sort it out sooner rather than later.

Coming to a Town Near You!

The coronavirus is suddenly big news.  It started in a sleepy Chinese city, and now occupies headlines in almost all newspapers.  If it gets worse i.e. spreads to other countries, we can expect much bigger headlines.
I'm not sure it really deserves that much attention, it seems to be a fairly isolated outbreak but I remember the sars virus started in much the same way so I guess we should be careful.
..and do those face masks really work?  They seem to be normal dress in Japanese cites, and are now widely seen in the press photographs of China, although they will make sure we see the most 'scary' ones.

Tree-mendous work.

The World Economic Forum is proposing that we plant 1 trillion trees by 2050 to replace those lost by logging and other means.  1 trillion sounds like a lot of trees, but I suppose that over 30 years and across the world it's not such a daunting job.
I did my bit for the environment at the weekend by planting about 30 saplings in an area of grass.  I did similar last year so I can sleep easily on the aeroplane.  I have a few more year old saplings coming on, so they will be going into the field in a couple of years.  The thing about trees is that the grower rarely sees the benefit, so unless big landowners are incentivised to plant them, it will rely on small scale planters like me plus the odd rich landowner who is a bit concerned about the planet.

However, I planted a row of lime trees down my drive about 25 years ago and they look great in spring and summer so you can get benefits in a lifetime (if you live long enough).

p.s. just did a quick calculation on the trillion trees - that's 63 per minute over 30 years.  I had better get digging.

Independence at a Price.

I can see there being some big discussions regarding the future of the BBC, specifically it's funding model.  The current 'everybody pays' method is looking more and more outdated as the monthly pay-as-you-go services increase in popularity.  I have no idea what it could be replaced with, I will leave it to the young creative types in a brain storming room, but it looks like our politicians want to make changes.
As long as they find a way to preserve the 'independence' of the BBC, that's ok with me, although I'm not too hopeful of that, and I can see it gradually becoming more and more commercial over a period of time.  It's my internet 'go to' news channel and I would miss that.

Words Don't Come Easy To me..

It is a fact that the English language has evolved over a long period of time and that words gradually become 'normal' when at first they seem very foreign.
In the internet age, it appears to have accelerated and there seems to be more and more new words being created (or at least I get to hear about them more) - maybe a result of social media and the ability to spread news/lies (delete as appropriate).   The internet itself has countless new words associated with it - I guess that 'internet' is reasonably new.
I am not too familiar with some definitions, having to guess if I see them written down - woke and meme spring to mind.
Another one is 'wellness', which is such a mess of a word I refuse to use it.  According to the aforementioned internet, this first appeared in the late 60s and has increased in use considerably since the mid 80s, which probably bears my 'internet age; theory out.  Amazingly enough when I use the same search facility I see that meme has been around since well before the 1800s!  I'm obviously a bit behind the times.
An advertised job needs a 'Head of Integrated Wellness'.  Nice title.

You Can Leave Now.

I never stop being surprised/annoyed/dismayed at the antics of our UK media when it comes to filling column inches with celebrity 'news'.  In the latest splurge of rubbish, it concerns the announcement of Prince Harry and Meghan stepping back from official royal duties and basically hiding away somewhere in Canada.  This has prompted huge amount of comment - most of which appears to be conjecture; from 'anonymous sources'; 'a friend of..'; as well as complete fabrication.
Whether this sells papers or brings extra viewers is surely unlikely, although the fact that I am moved to write about the writing means it stuck somewhere although I can assure you no money changed hands to arrive at my conclusions.
It has been headlines on the main TV channels for the last few days, and most newspapers have been leading with extravagant headlines regarding their relationship with other royals, their future plans and any other space filling information.
All in all, a load of tosh.

Just Imagine That!

Imagination -  Discuss.

It seems to me that some people have better imaginations than others.  But is this really the case?
By 'Imagination', I mean they can make things up, picture new things or 'the ability of the mind to be creative or resourceful' according to one online dictionary.
Are these imaginative people the 'arty' types that make good musicians, artists etc?
I have read that a good imagination needs certain areas of the brain to perform better than others, but I'm not sure that turning to science gives us the full picture.
Personally, I can safely say that I have little imagination, but without seeming to be too vain I am a good 'problem' which involves a lot of creative thinking to get the right outcome.  It's just that I'm not able to 'switch on' imagination without some sort of stimulus e.g. something needs sorting out.
Many musicians have written their best songs whilst under the influence of drink or drugs, so it could be that they too need some sort of stimulus to get something new out of their system.

Anyway, I imagine my lunchbreak is now over, and I haven't even had a drink.