City Breaks

In the absence of real city breaks, I've done a couple of jigsaw city breaks in Paris and Rome, finishing the Paris jigsaw this morning. I bought a couple of peg boards online for the garage and got an extra one for the inside of a kitchen cupboard, which I fitted this morning. A bit of gardening this afternoon, taking out three tiny old shrubs and digging around them (and yes, removing some more fist sized stones). I've been looking online at plants for the pond and around it - gosh it's complicated, particularly as the pond is quite small! Looking back on blip, lockdown 1 started easing after 50 days and I was able to go to the beach, we're at 56 days for lockdown 3 and still 27 days at least until the stay at home order is removed, so 64% longer! 

Day 351 / Day 56 of Lockdown 3 (for my record only)
UK deaths up 343 to 123,296 (revised basis), with 6,291 new cases, 12,748 patients in hospital, 1.806 on ventilation and 1,110 new admissions. c20.5m have now received their first dose of the vaccine. UK deaths per 100k of popn are the 4th highest in the World (behind Belgium, Slovenia & the Czech Republic). The search for the unknown person who tested positive for the P1 variant has been narrowed to 379 households issued with home testing kits in SE Eng, all are being contacted. The variant is 1.4 to 2.2 x more transmissible than previous versions in Manaus. Researchers say it may evade between 25% and 61% of protective immunity from previous infection (not peer reviewed), as borne out by a surge of reinfections early this year despite 70% of the popn having the virus last Spring. As at 11/2 1 in 4 people in Eng are estimated to have coronavirus antibodies, highest levels are in the over 80s. France has now also approved the AZ vaccine for 65-74 year olds with existing health problems. In an item on R4 there were reports of some people with long Covid reporting improvements after having the jab. On GMB this morning a professor said there is no doubt there is a danger from joggers passing and that they should wear a mask when passing groups of people - at last someone saying what most of us think is obvious!