The Today Programme on Radio 4 is usually enough âlive newsâ for me ... id rather read about stuff than watch it. I donât need those images in my head when I go to bed at night.Â
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
The only British papers available here are the Telegraph and the Mail which I find odd, given their views on Europe and general "creativity" with news.  When we first moved to Belgium we'd go out and buy the Sunday Times and Saturday Telegraph - good gardening and cookery and commentary - but then they started printing an EU version in Belgium without all the culture and lifestyle and much of the commentary and same price!! No interest for us.
We have had two short, sharp but very heavy showers today. The first was just after I'd finished watering all my treasures in pots to save them from the effects of increasingly gusty and drying warm winds.
The second was at the far end of my walkies circuit. Rasta has forgotten she's a Belgian doggy and used to coming home sopping wet and filthy and headed for home, keeping just far enough ahead of me to make sure I followed but couldn't make her go th elong way round.  Horrid dog!
@steveTu - the point of having 9 masks is to be able to change to a fresh one if out in a public space for more than an hour or two or all day, as I may be next weekend. The other point is that they are all made from offcuts of fabric I've used for making summer frocks so are either a perfect match or tone with all my other outfits. Â
We were amused this morning when a lady's dog lead got wrapped round the lamppost - on a steep bank and surrounded by stinging nettles. The dog had gone round one way and she another, we did stop and offer to help disentangle it but she was adamant she could manage on her own. We watched from a distance to make sure she didn't slip down the bank.
I'm still a bit lost as to how your 9 masks, how you use them and your sartorial elegance has any relevance to kids at school. Did you see the WHO advice (in graphic form) on how to use masks midway down the page? Basically every time you touch a mask - and before you touch a mask - sanitise your hands. So sanitise - put mask on; sanitise - take mask off and sanitise after removing the mask. I'm not sure a bunch of kids moving between lessons will sanitise their hands three times. It will be interesting to see what the secondary schools will be doing for sanitising stations and how the queues to use them between lessons will be managed.
Just watching BBC Breakfast and it showed Hancock going somewhere - and he gets a mask out, hands all over the mask area, and puts it on. If the ministerial role model that is Hancock can't get it right in front of a camera, what chance a random selection of kids?
I don't see the point of all your worries and pessimism.  Every report I've seen about how schools are preparing includes new washbasins, sanitisers in every room, movement controlled by bubbles, one-ways etc and they will no doubt include a lesson or 3 on mask use.   Transmission and infection rates in children are extremely low and most likely to come from parents anyway.
As for everyone else - it's going to be like learning how to cross the road safely. Ignore the rules about stopping, listening and looking for oncoming cars and you're far more likely to be run over. If you're a driver, you follow the highway code on which side of the road to drive, speed limits, behaviour at junctions, roundabouts etc and everyone can be safe.
I really don't much care about the politicians and whether they're doing their masks correctly.  Too easy to expect everyone else to get it right but not bother about one's own behaviour.
The best way to survive Covid and reduce its spread to to accept we all have a personal and civic responsibility to ourselves and each other - hygiene, distancing and masks when you can't. It is really very simple and since the consequences of not doing this can be fatal I just don't understand why you find it all so difficult.
I see what youâre saying @steveTu ... but sadly the thought of Matt Hancock or any other government minister nowadays as a role model is laughable ... itâs been do as I say not as I do since day one of this government.Â
Hopefully schools will provide children with clear instructions on how to use masks properly ... and children, with the aid of peer pressure and a few selfrighteous telltales (Miss! Miss! ... heâs touched his mask again!) will do their best to follow instructions. Â Thatâs all we can ask of anyone.Â
If children can learn in five minutes how to use an iPad and then roll their eyes when I do something wrong, they can learn how to use a mask.Â
Children are quite capable of behaving in a pretty self-disciplined way ... my generation did ... this generation will be no different ... it just has to be expected of them ... thatâs something adults havenât done for a while ... weâll have to stop treating them like babies.Â
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
I don't think I'm either worried or a pessimist - I really must give out the wrong impression. I just see masks for the general public largely as a sop - a 'keep the punter happy and feeling safe' . My curmudgeonly post was because I saw PPE in the early days as a good thing - the people who wore it were 'more' cautious - wore the kit and stayed away from others. Now that (from my limited experience) appears to have changed - now people who wear masks think they're safe and don't distance - they take more risks.
Hence all those comments, in the early days, by holidaymakers coming back from a 'spiking' country saying they felt safer there as everyone wore masks. Totally ignoring the 'fact' that if masks were that good a prevention and everyone was wearing them, then why a spike? Maybe because the wearers 'feel safe' and the become complacent about the other preventative rules?
But aren't you making my point for me anyway?
Kids tend to be asymptomatic (as far as is known so far I think) - no coughing and spluttering even with the virus. Presumably hence low transmission. A mask is to protect others, not the wearer. What point then a mask?
BUT - I assume that asymptomatic people still shed the virus by their breath and other excretions - it just doesn't get spread as far and as fast as with a coughing spluttering, person.. A mask will then become infected by the wearer, even an asymptomatic one - the more you then touch a mask, the more likely to transmit the virus by hand.
Which risk is then higher? Masks weren't even recommended here, even for adults, until quite recently. If the thought was that masks don't really matter that much (and spikes in countries where masks are and have been common place for weeks show transmission is still prevalent even with masks) in the grand scheme of preventions within an adult, potentially symptomatic group - then what point masks for an asymptomatic group?
The other oddity, is my understanding is that the kids won't wear masks in the classroom, where their breath will land on books and desktops, but will in corridors, where largely their breath will dissipate and hopefully end up on the floor (or other lesser touched areas) anyway.
Anyway, time will tell eh? We'll see as I say when the cameras are there on day 1 what the individual school's protocols are. When the cameras are rolling - just look at the kids trying to be on TV and spot those that touch their masks, or are (ab)using their usage.
Having just responded to a query about tomato blight ... is it very curmudgeonly of me to wonder why, if it affects the solanum family, it doesn't seem to affect the Nightshades etc ?
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Posts
And the Asian chap who's name isn't Murphy
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
We have had two short, sharp but very heavy showers today. The first was just after I'd finished watering all my treasures in pots to save them from the effects of increasingly gusty and drying warm winds.
The second was at the far end of my walkies circuit. Rasta has forgotten she's a Belgian doggy and used to coming home sopping wet and filthy and headed for home, keeping just far enough ahead of me to make sure I followed but couldn't make her go th elong way round.  Horrid dog!
@steveTu - the point of having 9 masks is to be able to change to a fresh one if out in a public space for more than an hour or two or all day, as I may be next weekend. The other point is that they are all made from offcuts of fabric I've used for making summer frocks so are either a perfect match or tone with all my other outfits. Â
As for everyone else - it's going to be like learning how to cross the road safely. Ignore the rules about stopping, listening and looking for oncoming cars and you're far more likely to be run over. If you're a driver, you follow the highway code on which side of the road to drive, speed limits, behaviour at junctions, roundabouts etc and everyone can be safe.
I really don't much care about the politicians and whether they're doing their masks correctly.  Too easy to expect everyone else to get it right but not bother about one's own behaviour.
The best way to survive Covid and reduce its spread to to accept we all have a personal and civic responsibility to ourselves and each other - hygiene, distancing and masks when you can't. It is really very simple and since the consequences of not doing this can be fatal I just don't understand why you find it all so difficult.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Jeez! If you go
No problem Songbird-1. If I get banned I'll come back with another ID and get ya.