Holiday planning

The day started cold and cloudy, then the rain came mid-morning and persisted until early evening, making it was cold as February again. Meanwhile, overnight, French beans which Clare planted in a seed tray on her work station have completely emerged in just fifteen hours. Four out of the six seeds are now poking their heads out of the compost. I'm amazed at their rate of growth, and for amusement am taking photos of these first stages.

There were nine of us at St Catherine's for the midweek Eucharist. Mother Emma has agreed to collect me from Llandough after the operation, if Clare is no longer allowed to drive, after her field of vision test this morning. On return from church there was a voicemail from the other Emma, Euro-diocese locum coordinator, in response to my email about the aborted safeguarding seminar. She's in the throes of moving house at the moment, so we will talk again next week when she's back at her desk.

In the news today, a report about follow up research on recipients of the Oxford AZ vaccine. As well as offering a high level of protection from serious illness, it seems that about half the people who get re-infected don't pass the virus on to others. In other words, virus contagion is significantly reduced by the very fact of getting vaccinated. This is certainly good news in terms of curbing the pandemic. It's good to see that India is now getting international support with medical equipment, oxygen and vaccine supplies. 

It's ironic that India's vaccine production industry is one of the largest in the world, no doubt a good income generator, but currently it's short of vaccines for domestic use, having seriously underestimated the scale of the problem it is now facing, not least because covid deaths have been widely under-reported, and the full scale of the Indian epidemic my never be known. This is really bad news, as inaccurate data make it so much harder to monitor the situation and plan an effective response.

Clare has been spending a lot of spare time this past few days researching holiday cottages, so that we can take a week off in July after the operation. There are a lot of places to choose from at off-peak times, and it's hard to decide what will best suit our needs, except it should be near the sea. 

Talking of expenditure, I renewed the car insurance with Aviva this morning, eleven pounds more than last year, but I expect to pay a bit more, being the age I am, regardless of an accident free record over the past twenty five years or so. Aviva's website is a model of clarity, and the payment process was simple. Would that all web commerce had such high standards.

I walked in the rain to Beanfreaks after lunch to collect our special weekly grocery order, and later went out again for a walk in the park, this time wearing rain trousers. The rain slowed to a drizzle and stopped in the hour I was out, but it was still very chilly. I felt very resentful. It should be much milder so near the end of April.

After supper, I watched telly for a couple of hours. There was a documentary about police corruption in London in the 1970s and 80s. Apart from film footage of some of the now elderly police officers who were aware of what went on and tried to speak out, most of its was selected from newsreel footage of the era, an interesting reminder of how London has changed, but also a reminder of how accustomed we have become to high quality digital movie footage in the new millennium. Video newsreel footage of the era isn't sharp, it's even fuzzy almost out of focus sometimes, and the colours are over-saturated. You notice the difference between this and digitized black and white newsreel footage, much sharper unless its from a super eight home movie camera.