...I'm going back to the 80's Lyn, when I was a young man... I just recall driving down the main road into lifton (coming in from the east - and way before you went up the hill to the post office and the A Arms on the right) and had to turn up on the right hand side, and my sis's place was out in the wilds some distance down that road (heading towards Holsworthy or some such - would that be right?). One of those old places with walls thick enough to withstand a nuclear blast - I'm certain she said it had been an old cider house at some stage. Her husband's family owned it initially and used it as a holiday home. Then my sister married into the family and her and her husband bought it off the group and moved down there permanently - well, for a fair few years. I think they moved back to Brighton by the early 90's - I would have thought 91 or 92 when her daughter was about 7'ish.
Just looking on Google (other search engines are available), the road may have been Old Tinhay - then I hooked a right at the top of that and then maybe the first left?)..bloody hell brigs back the memory of driving down from Eastbourne in a clapped out Mini in the pouring rain and the windscreen wipers packing up... And I borrowed a Luton type van from a friend who owned a kitchen manufacturing business to help them move back up to Brighton. Never driven anything that size before in my life before then, and coming back had to fill up so pulled into a garage, and it had low slung plastic covers over the overhead lights - and yep, the van was toooooo high to clear them... Memories..make you smile. Good job my friend liked me. He was a good old stick - like a second father to me - and surreally after my wife was diagnosed with cancer - he called me to tell me he had been as well. He died 4 days before my wife. How strange eh?
Now why did I say that - what has that to do with the price of fish?
Edited: The witches museum...when we went there was all but nothing there! But that was the charm of it all. I loved the stuff. And out on Bodmin Moor - Jamaica Inn, the Minions..Cheeserin, down to Fohey and Charlestown.., so many good times with some absolutely lovely people.
My daughter lost her sense of smell for a few days. First thing she smelt was Vick. She swears by it now. Then toast. Then a candle. She's going around sniffing everything. I'm sure she'll never take her sense of smell for granted ever again.
I don't think they is a biscuit I don't like I'll eat mine and yours including the pink wafers , I call them pink panther wafers . And I'll dunk any biscuit in tea including jaffa cakes
Good story Steve, strange how things work out, sounds about right with the roads. one of my favourite walks is up to the Cheese-rings, lovely views from there. I read a series of books set around there many years ago, so I can relate to it through that. (Ben Retallick series) The old engine house had been done up and turned into a museum with lots of local history. My daughter lives very near to Charlestown, they often take a walk down there at night. Her husband was born and grew up there, his great great grandad was a captain on one of the sailing ships out of the port. (May have been an extra great in there😀). Back in the Poldark days though.
All of Charlestown is now owned by the man who owns the Eden Project.
Gardening on the wild, windy west side of Dartmoor.
My Mum (87),son and myself ventured forth this evening to our first Pub Quiz since Feb 2020! We are all double jabbed. We were not sure what to expect as those nights are usually heaving with people. Instead of the normal 20+ teams there were only 8 and not that many other patrons so it seems people are still being pretty cautious. The staff did not wear masks and we chose to have our order taken at our table rather than go to the bar. At no time did we feel unsafe and it was just nice to do something social with other human beings! Our team came last but we did win the raffle!
“Every day is ordinary, until it isn't.” - Bernard Cornwell-Death of Kings
Two married friends of my husband, mid -fifties, both fully jabbed, are just getting over the Delta variant now. It felt “like they had been hit by a train” and took a couple of weeks to be properly on their feet again.
Carmarthenshire (mild, wet, windy). Loam over shale, very slightly sloping, so free draining. Mildly acidic or neutral.
I took my then to be wife down to meet my sis back in the 80's and I took her on a tour around all the places I knew. After she died, there were a few things I wanted to 're-live', and going down to Bodmin was one of them. Anyway, one of my son's mates got married in Auz and he couldn't take time off to go over - but the friend came back and had a do at his wife's parent's place in a lovely little place called Uley in Gloucestershire (you have to say that in an American accent) . He was going down with his other friends (who drove - my son doesn't) but one by one they pulled out until it was just him going. He was looking at getting down there by train...'No problem' says I (without looking at a map of even having a clue about the distances), '..I'll drop you down there. Then I'll continue onto Bodmin, see the places I went to with your mum, and pick you up on the way back..'. Yeah, right. Turns out that Uley is roughly mid way in a 330 mile one way trip - circa 500-600 miles round trip. Brilliant ride down - dropped him off at the parent's house and I went to the local pub and sat there drinking orange juice and lemonades for what seemed like hours (we'd left it that he'd text me when he was ready to leave) before realising there wasn't a signal on my phone. So I nipped back and joined them and we left about 7pm to head the 160+ miles to Bodmin - my dear dafter was tasked with finding us a hotel - which she somehow did (given it was July - a major feat) get a room in a hotel actually in Bodmin itself - and we got there about 11pm. A quick night's sleep, a good breakfast - and we headed off to find the minions, hurlers (?) cheesering, wheel house and to visit Jamaica Inn on the way back. Grand time just being with the kid and just such a shame me dear dafter (who was engaged by then) wasn't with us. But we had good music, loads of boiled sweets and good company (well, for me it was. Not sure hoiw my son saw it!). A bit Thelma and Louise'ish. I had hoped we'd also do a bit of a detour and see my sis's place and the Fox and Grapes - but all that area was bypasses, so hard to work out where the original roads were. I think we got back late evening - an amazing time.
...I like the pull-me, push-you, black and white cow. Obviously a Cornwallean (?) thing!
Sorry about dominating again. But I'm not sure where to post this - it's Covid, but I'm quite pee'd 'orf - so maybe should have posted it on curmudgeons.
I think most people here know I don't go out much anyway - so I'm not a gad-about - and I also mentioned that my son had been told by a work colleague at a local pub that her husband and subsequently herself, had both been tested positive for covid.
I also mentioned about the tree and my neighbour - who I did pop round and chat to (although the neighbour - an elderly'ish woman in her sixties) - as far as I know didn't have her mobile phone (if she owned one) on her outdoors anyway - as she went back indoors to give me her EMail address). I probably spent no more than 10-15 minutes with her walking around part of her garden discussing the issue. So the timeline:
> Thurs 15th July - son works in pub
> Fri 16th July - I go to Sainsbury's as normal
> Sat 17th July - colleague informs my son she's positive. My son has not been pinged though.
> Sat 17th July - we decide to do the 'right thing' and isolate anyway until the incubation period - and then get a PCR test each.
> Tue 20th - See neighbour. I have my mobile on me, the neighbour doesn't appear to.
> Wed 21st ...
....we wended our way to the local 'walk in testing centre' in Eastbourne. Frustratingly, the address the gov's web site gives is the wrong address anyway, as the testing centre was moved from Devonshire park because of the tennis tournament held there to a place further away from the town centre. Minor in the grand scheme of things, but a bloody irritant and symptomatic of how this is being managed at detail level. Anyway, we found the place, parked (about 9:44), paid for an hours parking and registered at the reception cabin to get a pair of walk in PCR tests. All good so far. The queue was outdoors and we were probably 10 people or so from the front. The queue was spaced (roughly) and was in an 'S' type shape to optimise the number of people in the queue, given the space - I would guess though that the people in the queue were between 1.5 to 2 metres apart most of the time. We had the tests in an NHS portacabin - fine. That was by then a bit before 11am Wednesday 21st. Grand. Results came through on time, and by the time I woke up the next morning (Thurs 22nd) at 6am, the negative result was in. Both me and my son were negative. Even grander. Then.... that afternoon (yesterday Thurs 22nd) I received a ping from the NHS app...I have allegedly been in close proximity with someone who has tested positive - my son has not been pinged (as yet)! Do you see the irony in all this? We didn't have to test anyway, but trying to do 'the right thing' , we both got tested based on my son's possible contact with an infected person - and I'd guess that the NHS app picked up someone in the queue at the walk in test centre who subsequently tested positive - who had been closer to me than my son over the 50 minutes or so we were queueing . Laugh? I nearly wet myself... OK, I could have been in contact with someone at the supermarket on the previous Friday (but how do you get 15 mins of close contact in a supermarket without stalking someone?) and there had been a lag in the notification, or my neighbour could possibly be the culprit (But I puposely stayed away from her and I don't think she had her phone on her anyway - and we walked around - so even if the bluetooth went through a wall to her phone, we weren't static and within 'distance' any one wall for any period) , but it looks odds on that the source was the NHS testing centre itself doesn't it?
Could the walk in testing centres be vectors for the ping pandemic?
What is even more frustrating is that when the app first came out I contacted the provider (there was a contact point for technical issues) and asked if the app could be expanded to give more info. The app appeared to work on 3 x 5 minute segments - points then awarded for each 5 minute segment/period in close proximity of someone who had tested positive. If you then accumulated 'x' points over 15 minutes, you were then pinged. I asked the tech contact if, whether pinged or not, the app could provide a daily summary of close contacts - ie where you had been, how many points had been accrued over how long type thing. But that was ignored - and now I have absolutely no idea as to why I was pinged - no clue as to the location or duration of the contact.
Grump, grump and more grump. 15+ months of staying safe and avoiding the virus like the plague, only to get pinged by potentially picking up the virus queuing to check if I had the virus - that I didn't 'have' to do anyway.
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one of my favourite walks is up to the Cheese-rings, lovely views from there.
I read a series of books set around there many years ago, so I can relate to it through that. (Ben Retallick series) The old engine house had been done up and turned into a museum with lots of local history.
My daughter lives very near to Charlestown, they often take a walk down there at night. Her husband was born and grew up there, his great great grandad was a captain on one of the sailing ships out of the port. (May have been an extra great in there😀). Back in the Poldark days though.
All of Charlestown is now owned by the man who owns the Eden Project.
We were not sure what to expect as those nights are usually heaving with people.
Instead of the normal 20+ teams there were only 8 and not that many other patrons so it seems people are still being pretty cautious.
The staff did not wear masks and we chose to have our order taken at our table rather than go to the bar.
At no time did we feel unsafe and it was just nice to do something social with other human beings!
Our team came last but we did win the raffle!
So the timeline:
The queue was outdoors and we were probably 10 people or so from the front. The queue was spaced (roughly) and was in an 'S' type shape to optimise the number of people in the queue, given the space - I would guess though that the people in the queue were between 1.5 to 2 metres apart most of the time. We had the tests in an NHS portacabin - fine. That was by then a bit before 11am Wednesday 21st. Grand. Results came through on time, and by the time I woke up the next morning (Thurs 22nd) at 6am, the negative result was in. Both me and my son were negative. Even grander. Then.... that afternoon (yesterday Thurs 22nd) I received a ping from the NHS app...I have allegedly been in close proximity with someone who has tested positive - my son has not been pinged (as yet)! Do you see the irony in all this? We didn't have to test anyway, but trying to do 'the right thing' , we both got tested based on my son's possible contact with an infected person - and I'd guess that the NHS app picked up someone in the queue at the walk in test centre who subsequently tested positive - who had been closer to me than my son over the 50 minutes or so we were queueing . Laugh? I nearly wet myself... OK, I could have been in contact with someone at the supermarket on the previous Friday (but how do you get 15 mins of close contact in a supermarket without stalking someone?) and there had been a lag in the notification, or my neighbour could possibly be the culprit (But I puposely stayed away from her and I don't think she had her phone on her anyway - and we walked around - so even if the bluetooth went through a wall to her phone, we weren't static and within 'distance' any one wall for any period) , but it looks odds on that the source was the NHS testing centre itself doesn't it?