Following Thought for the Day I uploaded day two's Morning Prayer video with a little more confidence than yesterday. Then I walked into town again after breakfast by way of the Madhav Indian grocery shop on Lower Cathedral Road, as we needed to top up on several spices. The store sells packets at half the cost and twice with weight of the ones sold in little glass bottles from supermarkets. Just right if you use spices liberally, as we do. It caters mainly for Asian, African and Caribbean customers, not only with spices and condiments but also select vegetables from far off places. Next to the shop is a small simple restaurant area where cooked vegetarian Indian foods can be bought to take home or eat in. I always enjoy going in there, as its proprietor is friendly. One of these lunchtimes I'll try the eaterie.
Under the Wood Street river bridge, I noticed a strange object sticking out of the water. Closer inspection revealed that its was a large stuffed toy Snoopy tied to a branch broken off a try. Strange, I can't imagine how it got there, but it made a good Instagram picture. I popped into John Lewis' to see if there were any tech' bargains, but nothing obvious remained on Black Friday deals. Not that I have anything particular in mind that I need to buy at the moment. My tech needs are very limited these days. Thankfully I don't have to edit videos that often, as I make very few, so I couldn't justify buying a more powerful computer just do do that - unless it was heavily discounted, of course!
On leaving the city centre I took more photos of building construction progress. The Edwardian Crown Post Office building on Westgate Street is being converted into a hotel, and a huge steel skeleton has sprung up at the rear of the building, for additional suites of rooms, I imagine. The grand main hall with counters will I suspect be renovated and adapted for the hotel reception area in due time. It'll uplift the environment at the lower end of the street, which has looked sad and neglected for the past quarter of a century if not longer.
I stopped at Tesco's to get some wine and a bunch of flowers, and had to queue longer than expected at the checkout, as the store was quite busy. I got home just as Clare was putting lunch on the table and wondering where I was. Although I didn't feel physically tired, I slept for an hour and a half after lunch. I seem to need a regular eight hours sleep time a day. I usually wake just after seven whatever time I got to bed, and lately it's been well after midnight, so an afternoon siesta plugs the gap. I wonder if this amount of rest is as necessary for the mind as for the body, and maybe more so as we get older. I went out for another walk later to complete my full two hours of fresh air and exercise. Along with excellent food this seems vital to sustain the steady improvement of the wound condition. It's also an antidote to dark evening hours inert in front of the telly. That's something that's been easier to do of late as I can now sit for longer without pain and discomfort. It's truly incredible, having been for so long unable to do so.
Over the weekend UK health regulators have been fast-tracking approval of the Pfizer/BioNtech covid-19 vaccine for use and distribution in Britain, so that roll-out can begin some time next week. Four hundred thousand double doses for essential health workers to start with. This is a colossal achievement for the global scientific community, to get this far in ten months from decoding the virus genome, unprecedented in the history of science. And on the same day a Chinese robotic space craft lands on the moon to collect and return kilos of moon rock samples to earth!
Only yesterday Google's Deep Mind artificial intelligence research programme announced a breakthrough in predicting the shape of different kinds of proteins, long chain amino acid molecules which, depending on composition and size fold up into different shapes that determine their behavioural properties and functions inside cells. Determining shape by any other means is extremely difficult, and the question of how to do this on a basis of what the molecule is made up of, has been around unanswered for the past fifty years. This new tool has amazing potential in analysing and synthesising proteins, and in developing new medicines.
At a time when the pandemic has put normal life on hold, paradigm shifting scientific breakthrough has taken place that will make a profound difference to the future and challenge temptation to despair. The Creator Spirit works among us while we're busy worrying.
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