Pandemic concerns and hopes

The national news this morning showcased the start of the Oxford/AZ mass vaccination programme to reach 31 million people in total before Easter. Schools are about to start back in many parts of Britain, but mainly for an INSET day, Some schools remain closed for shortage of staff, sick or staying away. The government is under mounting pressure to keep all schools closed and revert to on-line learning for at least the rest of the month, but clarity is still lacking lobbying goes on behind the scenes and more criticism of government prevarication and mixed messages is drawing a lot of hostile criticism. So the shambles of feeble immature leadership continues.

I went to the Post Office to send a parcel mid-morning, and then to the phone shop on Severn Road to get the phone number Clare wanted to call and enquire about a case for her new phone. Mission accomplished. She rang up and then made an appointment to pop into the shop to get what she needed. She was shocked that nobody working in the store was masked. 

I thought I'd return to the park and search again in the small area where I must have dropped the lens cap I dropped yesterday evening. This time I was lucky and found the cap right in the middle of a flat sunken stone next to the 'no parking' double yellow lines. It didn't land where it could be obscured by vegetation, but in plain sight, black on a pennant grey sandstone kerb.

Coincidentally, the last photo I took with the Olympus last night was of a Redwing on the ground close to the double yellow line in question. It must have been at that point that I began to feel the cold and fished a pair of gloves from the pocket in which the lens cap had been buried, and out came the cap. I didn't piece together the memory fragments with the photo that would have narrowed the search locus. I'm glad I had the impulse to return and take another look!

After lunch I went out and walked again down to Blackweir. Although the temperature was five degrees, there was a strong easterly wind and the humidity made it bone chillingly cold. At one moment there was a small flurry of rain driven by the wind, so stingingly cold I thought it was hail. Despite impressions it's not yet cold enough to snow, and not yet cold enough to drive all the under fives from the playground whingeing with freezing cheeks and fingers. 

A quiet uneventful evening, whiled away idly watching ancient episodes of NCIS on the telly, and then the news of further lock-down measures in England and Scotland, and schools closed for the rest of this month officially, at last, though not everyone is happy about this. It's a measure of the seriousness of the escalating health crisis. Wales's tighter restrictions started straight after Christmas day with shops being shut down instead of open for the sales. I suspect there'll be more restrictions announced by First Minister Mark Drakeford very soon given the continuing rise in numbers of infected people.