An A to Z Coronavirus observational guide. . . S

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Symptoms and stuff . . .

Yes indeed what are the symptoms of Covid-19. There is much talk of it and how many have died or the numbers known to have had it but you don’t hear a huge amount now about exactly what the symptoms are. So this is a little reminder

It generally takes about five days to start showing the symptoms, but some people will get them much later. The World Health Organization (WHO) says the incubation period can last up to 14 days and it is possible to pass on the virus before you are aware you have it

Coronavirus fundamentally infects the lungs. And the two main symptoms are a fever or a dry cough; this in turn could lead to breathing problems.

 Coughs

Now the cough you need to keep an eye out for is a new, continuous cough. This means coughing a lot, probably for more than an hour; or having three or more coughing episodes in 24 hours. Which is quite a lot of coughing and if you usually have a cough (some folk do, like smokers), then it may be worse than usual. And it can be quite bad and sore.

Fever

You have a fever if your temperature is above 37.8C. This can make you feel warm, cold or shivery.

Other stuff

You may also have a sore throat, headache and diarrhoea and the loss of smell and taste seems to be a common symptom.

The thing is with some folk the symptoms can be very mild and then with others they can be extremely bad leading to a life and death struggle in a hospital. But do remember most people recover because I’m sure it must be a bit spooky to realise you may be showing symptoms of Covid-19 regardless of whether you are considered vulnerable or not even if the symptoms are mild.

One step closer to being a Cat

Well a couple of days ago I happen to say that something very important was going to happen. And as it happens it has now happened. Now when I say important it is important for me but in reality except for my own family it is of no importance to anyone else and even my own family might be inclined to say it is not important, but it is important. You see I am no longer an official IT expert, in fact some would say I am an not an expert in anything of any form what so ever. And the reason is that I resigned this month from my rather part time job and therefore now do nothing, well not nothing I do move about eat food write things on my blog including rather odd poetry, but I do nothing that actually generates income. Which means I actually have an annual income of nothing, which does seem a little extreme but it is better that it might sound at first glance. You see almost my entire working life I have never spent money I don’t have, I have never borrowed money with the one exception of a mortgage for our house. Which due to a very unfortunate incident in 1985 meant I was able to pay in full a long time ago. A classic example of the old saying . . . . Something of a double edged sword . . .   

So for the next two and a half years I now have to survive on an income of nothing and a bit of savings and writing very bad poetry which I will recite outside shops until they pay me to go away. If this fails I do have the back up plan of eating the cats, but I can’t see that keeping me going for more that a week or two at best. It is a bit of a gamble having no income because the world, and in particular western society is very much based on the premise that we all go out working everyday so that we can earn money to live in a home that we don’t live in because we are all out earning money to pay for the home we live in. But I have made my decision and I have leapt out of the rat race and into the fire. Or at least sitting beside the fire keeping my toes warm.

In two and a half years I will actually receive a pension from the state which is not huge, but my out goings are minimal and if all stays as predicted then I can chill and spend the rest of my days annoying folk with slightly odd poetry and pointing at seagulls.  I have always felt society in the west is all a bit wrong as most folk are forced to chase a reasonable income in order to remain fit and healthy in order to work. Cats do not have this problem, a well fed middle class fat cat is to all intense and purposes a lazy fat critter who likes dinner on demand and a warm bed and does very little to justify his over indulgent lazy lifestyle. I am now one of those cats although I am not fat and would like to think I have worked away as best I can to get to this point.      

Another Ordinary Day in the Life of an Old and Grumpy Bad Poet

I have started to de-clutter the room I keep all the clutter in. It has been useful clutter, but time is catching up on my clutter and most of it is now obsolete clutter that is of no use to man or machine. But some of it might just be useful clutter that I should hang onto for a bit longer, until it too becomes obsolete clutter and can be thrown away. This makes de-cluttering the clutter much harder as I need to check what is what and then think . . . OOoooooo is this useful, or is it clutter, before being ruthless and putting in the possible clutter pile.

As it happens there is a lot of stuff that really is clutter so I have several bags of things to go, and as an added bonus I found a small bag of money. Now don’t get all excited it was not a lot of money but it was just over £10.00 in small change and that will buy me a bag of chips tomorrow when I am out in the predicted rain and wind doing my good deed. I am getting good at doing this good deed thing.  It would be good to think the concept catches on and before you know it we are all out there doing stuff to help others and the like.  Sadly the world does not always work like that, I suspect one of the reasons is that folk have rooms full of unwanted clutter that they are finding it difficult to get rid of, and they are angry and frustrated that a sizeable percentage of their home is redundant and full of stuff they don’t need.

OK I’m off to watch a bit of TV now but I will be back.

I’m back, you see that took no time. Right I am off to bed in a bit so this in one of the less exciting diary entries of recent times involving no poetry or even anything remotely exciting in any way. This is fairly normal for almost everyone, even that Neil Armstrong did not do exciting stuff every day sometimes he would get up have breakfast read a bit chill in the sun all day and then nod in a knowing way at the moon before going back to bed in the evening to sleep. That is the sort of day I have had although I did go to the local market this morning where I saw a badgers skull, but I did not see the moon.  

The Curse of Cars

Yes its a Man and a Fish and has no link whatsoever to the words 

but they do this in ads on the television all the time so it must be OK.

Yesterday was the longest day as in loads of sunlight and it was still hot, it was also a long day indeed as we went out in the evening to have a curry with our good friends Mr Charlie and Miss Jane.  This was grand and I even had something new after a very long time of having the same curry. As always we were the last to leave, we are always the last to leave, even when we all turned up earlier than normal to avoid being the last to leave.

We waved Mr Charlie and Jane farewell and set off into the sunset (night) in our trusty Fiat. However about halfway home one of the front tyres sort of gave up and fell apart, Not sure why but one minute we are driving along all chilled and the next the car is rattling along like it has a square wheel.  But its OK we can fit the spare or phone the nice man at the RAC if all else fails, only it turns out the spare wheel release mechanism is dead, we have since found out this is common on this car and folk are advised to keep the spare in the back.. . . . O DEAR . . .  OK then phone the nice RAC man only it appears the mobile phone battery it too low to make a phone call and it is now 11.00pm on a dark road with no one about.

So we decide to limp along the road for a bit, luckily we had a lead to charge the phone so after a bit we were able to phone the nice RAC man who did have to drive for almost an hour to get to us . . . . The joy of life in the country.

Anyway we arrived back home just after midnight on the back of a large tow truck, so it did turn into a very long day indeed.

So we now have a three legged car and we (not the car) will be heading off tomorrow to attempt to fix our beast as it appears to have a few problems and is bleeping at us.  It is not quite the old faithful machine it used to be in the old days.   

R is for Rut

I have been busy today making a rut. . . . . Yes a rut, not a hut. And there are good reasons for this that I’m sure folk will agree with. You see us human beings are creatures of habit. Folk may say they are not and they like to be spontaneous and non conformist, but there is much myth in this, and like all creatures that like to live in large colonies, some of which bear (or bare) a striking resemblance to a termite mound, we are rather predictable. Some folk may find this depressing, but it is biologically built into our DNA because if we all went off doing spontaneous stuff all the time the world would fall into anarchy and chaos. Much like a termite hill would if all the worker termites decided to take up water polo or making models of Elvis. 

However there is one thing I am always told that should not befall us, and that is to get into a rut, this is a sort of valley which means it is difficult to get out of like a model scalextric racing car on its track. Which would imply that once you are travelling very fast you will suddenly fly off and hit the bookcase? I have a feeling this may have happened to me once, but I was unaware of the reason at the time.

But in a moment of genius today where I remembered that Baldrick in the last of the Black Adder series set in WW1 decided that if he was to scratch his name on a bullet and hang on to it he would know where the bullet with his name on was and so would be safe.  So today I thought to avoid the risk of getting in a rut I would make the rut where I could plainly see it and avoid falling into it. I also thought some sharp bends would held just in case so if I do fall in I can run at speed and fly out of the rut in the sharp corner and hit the bookcase again.  I built the rut on the front lawn which is (was) nice and flat where I can easily see it to avoid falling in. It has obviously impressed the entire family who when they saw my efforts left them totally speechless, muttering stuff about IDIOTS and spades. I have explained it needs more work and a man with a mini-digger to really turn it into something really memorable a sort of Grand Canyon of Ruts. It is clear they totally agree as they sort of nodded and pointed at it a lot.

Weather Machines and Alien Jelly Creatures

Have I mentioned that dad started work on a new weather machine, I don’t think I have? It had its first trial run today or at least part of it did. He says he is fed up with the weather and if we must have rotten weather then he wants to be the one to create it. That is quite understandable really, we all like to be in control of our own destiny if we can and so the more we can control ourselves the better.  Although in the case of weather machines I think history leads us to conclude that we may be in control of the weather machine, but the controls are slightly faulty. Thus what we expect and what we get do not always tally, such as today when it was raining one minute and sunny the next followed by rain and sun.

So yet again we have a small insight into the great workings of the universe, we make our plans we carry them out and something entirely different happens and before you know it you are not a brain surgeon in the great Metropolis but a hairdresser in Luton or a roller-skate salesman in Edinburgh.  This is what happens to everyone and deep down in our inner soul is a small voice telling us that everyone (ok most folks) are doing stuff we would do better and why cant we have what they have.  This is what happened with TV, for years folk would watch all these so called celebrities and think well they are rubbish I could do that; and so was born the TV talent show closely followed by the celebrity talent show as celebrities became paranoid that folk were doing stuff they could do.

I was rather distracted there as I was planning to say that Mrs E and Mr S came to see us and delivered a lentil dhal and a Pheasant curry for our tea  . . . . . . WELL COOL (OK nice and spicy) although you will be pleased to learn the pheasant in the curry was not Gandhi or tame pheasant, it would be rather non politically correct to eat Gandhi or our tame pheasant.

Ooooooooo yes I have added a photo to my diary tonight of something seriously weird that has appeared to have oozed out from the patio, it appeared to be a clear jelly like substance with some sort of life in the middle?  . . . . . . . . . Do we finally have proof of alien life; it has been there a couple of days now and is showing no sign of vanishing off back to its home planet . . . . . . . Very odd.

Ooooooo yes again, it was Mr Charlie’s Birthday as well . . . . . .

Life, the Universe and Harry Potter

Today as we all know is the start of a fresh year or the day after yesterday, and depending on how you view these events makes one look rather grander than the other. It has also been a rather wet and grey day with wild winds blowing turning it into a horrible day, so I have done a tiny bit of DIY, I say tiny because even inside it can be difficult to get all fired up and keen when it is wet, windy, cold and grey outside. I even did something really really terrible this afternoon I watched the first Harry Potter film again, you know back in the day when young Harry was a likeable young wizard with his innocent startled rabbit face, eyes blinking into the great abyss of the future and it made me realise that Harry Potter (we have never seen eye to eye by the way) and what happened to him is a classic reflection on life the universe and everything.

You see there he was young likeable chirpy and sort of happy go lucky-ish at first, but as he grows up so he appears to have the world and its problems burdening him down and he starts to lose his chirpy quirky ways and turns dead grumpy, life gets darker and darker and those funny little bits of magic lose there humorous sparkle. Then as the years go on he sneaks an extra film in to make a bit more money with his part one and part two merchandising scam.  Then vanishes off into the distance and obscurity to do whatever Harry is doing . . . . . . Well . . . I can tell you right now we will have none of that with me; I remain chirpy  . . . . OK grumpy-ish and have no plans to sneak in extra films just for the hell of it. And I can assure everyone that I will always be an innocent (OK not rabbit looking) startled faced chap with eyes blinking into the great abyss of the future even when I am old and grumpy like the Ghost Writer . . . . And there will always be a place in my diary for a goat to be catapulted into the out of town supermarket or a Zombie or two to tap dance on the piano at Uncle Fred’s Funeral, or Mr Jones to chase the ice cream van up the high street naked because it is playing the theme song to Close Encounters of the Third Kind. . . . You will never see Harry Potter doing stuff like that  . . . . O NO and he dos not have a Steam Powered Duck or a Pointy Stick.

the Random Apple Tower experiment, the Universe and no Hamsters

As you all know I am a part-time student teacher and one of my specialist subjects is OIT Obscure Irrational Theories mainly the big ones relating to the universe, not small ones devoted to why hamsters run in small wheels. . . . . . AH as it happens that is one of the big ones but not today’s story, although the more science minded of you will see the link straight away.

Anyway today’s lesson was my first practical on OIT and I was trying to explain why galaxies spiral, much like water spirals down the plug hole. You see a spinning galaxy is in fact a huge gyroscope, and like a gyroscope, if you put it on top of a pointy stick at right angles rather than fall off the pointy stick the gravitational forces are moved to the pivot point and the gyroscope will start to rotate round the pivot. (OK I know some of you are saying WHAT?)  As you may guess some of my students got a bit confused, so I used the Random Apple Tower experiment to show them what was happening.  OK yes I know some of you have never done the Random Apple Tower Experiment (The RAT Experiment) have you (education these days it’s terrible… Hang on I’m a student teacher)

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Anyway what you need is a selection of random apples from an apple tree; say anything from ten to about fifty and you have to make a tower. It is a well known fact that after a maximum of five apples the tower will fall over, the interesting point is no matter which apples or which combination you choose the tower will never get higher than five apples. Well if you cheat by using super glue or small skewers or use modern GM apples then it will but in nature the universe is the universe and cheating is not an option.  After many hours the class tried and failed to improve on a tower of five apples until Esmeralda got bored and turned the whole lot into toffee apples and the class ate the universe.

However it proved the point I needed to make about why galaxies spiral although I must admit some of the class still looked a little perplexed, so I told them to try the experiment at home and get their parents to explain it.   

The Art of Sarcasm, Loosing Ones Mojo . . . . . And Wasps

As I said yesterday I have lost my wit and humour, folk have tried to reassure me that I am still witty and write in a way that only I can write (well me and the Ghost Writer) due to a unique skill in being able to string total rubbish together in such a way that as a whole it is total rubbish (the whole greater that the parts so to speak). I know that’s true,, that very nice Steven Spielberg has told me many times that he finds it hard to believe anyone could write such total rubbish. It is words like that that make me realize I am indeed unique and thanks to such encouragement I will persevere with my tale (not tail as I don’t have one of those).

It was a strange morning because I woke up to grey skies and the wind blowing all the blossom off the tree in the front garden, that and the as yet still small young leaves on the trees made it look and feel just like autumn. I told everyone in school it was autumn and that summer is now over, and one or two folk thought this was slightly amusing, this I put down to the possible sarcasm of the remark, so I pursued  this idea further as a way of recovering my mojo (wit). So I explained that summer really was over (enforcing the sarcasm) and that their lives were entirely futile and that in the great scheme of things they are meanly ants, small insignificant ants. I appeared to get a bit of nervous laughter from one or two pupils so thought I would push the point a bit further, so having told most of the girls they were merely girls destined for a life of drudgery, babies and fighting in the aisles of the supermarket, while there partners get drunk in the pub and fight and get locked in a cell for the evening. I thought I would go for the jugular and told the headmaster he was rubbish and that his sense of dress was worse that that of a Japanese Elvis impersonator wearing a giraffe outfit and a straw hat.

It appears sarcasm is trickier that I thought as I spent much of the day tied to a tree covered in honey below a wasps nest with a tub of itching power poured on my head. It is a difficult decision between staying perfectly still and not being stung or having a good scratch and getting attacked by wasps. I don’t think telling the wasps they were rubbish and had a pathetic buzz that was not worthy of grannies door bell with flat batteries fitted helped much,  apparently wasps don’t do sarcasm and have no sense of humour what so ever.

I noticed that on my return home Sooty the Cat was practising sarcasm by lying perfectly still on the bed and not being stung by wasps.

Mum said I am an IDIOT, but agreed about the headmasters dress sense.

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Long Lost Relatives and Helicopters

Earlier today My long lost relative Miss Anne and her husband Mr Chris came to visit us and we all ate food and chatted about things like life the universe and cats and dogs and how to escape from a helicopter. It might sound odd to some that we discussed escaping from a helicopter but on a show of hands it was revealed that 75% of those present knew how to do this; well they knew how to do this as long as the helicopter landed in the sea. Although Miss Anne said that she might need the assistance of a diver with some decent underwater cutting equipment and we did all agree that this would certainly make the whole process considerably easier. Ooooo yes and all agreed that the helicopter had to be a Sikorsky 61 because everyone knew where the windows and doors are on one of those when it is upside-down.

Miss Anne and Mr Chris also left their dog at home because it likes cats, sorry I mean it likes to eat cats, it has something to do with the breed of dog it is a sort of husky type dog and out in the wilds where the snow can be deep and drift there is little food except the occasional passing cat and arctic explorer with a huge mechanical JCB thing.

 Miss Anne and Mr Chris then had to get back home to make sure the dog was happy and had not eaten all the neighbourhood cats, they have not lived in their present home long enough to be forgiven by the village for the loss of all the local cats. But in their haste to escape from my diary it appears that Mr Chris left his Porsche behind, I know not easily done but its true, dad has offered to drive it back to him very very fast it he needs it. But apparently Mr Chris has a spare one at home so PHEW that’s lucky. . . .           

Oooo must go and eat again I will return……

Ooooooooo (again) its ages later now, it just goes to show that if you stop and sit down it is very hard to get up again and do stuff and it is therefore best to do the stuff before you sit down. And I have also forgotten exactly what I was planning to write at the time, although when I say plan I don’t mean plan because I tend just to wave my hands in the general direction of the keyboard and hope for the best. I have it on good authority that all the best writers wear a blindfold and woolly gloves when they type and so I type like I have a blindfold and woolly gloves on.  

AH I think that’s it.

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Funerals, cats and flying kites

Today has been a funny old day as we had to go to a funeral this morning of a family friend, funerals are not nice things really, but strangely you often get to meet people you have not met for ages, which happened today. It was in Montgomery church which is a really nice church even though I am not a churchy person, but it has some nice carvings and fancy bits in it that many small town churches do not have but then a very very long time ago Monty church was more important than it is now, as Montgomery was the County town until the railway, roads, cattle markets, shops and everything else sort of bypassed it completely and even the county does not exist any longer. I think this maybe be to do with yesterdays discussion of networks, you see Montgomery is physically just sort of in the wrong place to be a good network hub and even Montgomeryshire was regarded as surplus to the administrate requirements of modern life.

We will be going to another Funeral tomorrow in the Chapel in Montgomery so that will be a strange too, It has been an odd week really because I know of two other people known to members of the family who have died in the last week. But it is easy to forget that in the context of time as in all of time, all of us are but the blink of an eye lid so I am trying to find out whose eyelid it is and plan to prop their eyes open with match sticks.  The only real redeeming feature of this is that all those world leaders, power mad corporate capitalists and the like are no more that a blink of an eyelid along with the rest of us, we are all the same in the end.

In other news the weather has been terrible here today, I mean really terrible, we have had very high winds and the car was bounced about as we headed home after the funeral. Then once at home the winds got even worse and the roof was creaking and groaning and the rain got even heavier and it was dark by about 3pm luckily the roof did stay on the house and all is well as the worst has now passed.  

The dog tells me it was probably one of the windiest days we have had in the last year we have lived here, and that even a small stunt kite (stunt kitty AHAHAHH HAH ahaha hahahhah haha hah) easily lifted two overweight cats several hundred metres into the air with no effort at all. That may explain why the cats are rather wet and refuse to go outside now, and have attacked several thin bamboo canes, a table cloth and a fishing line which dad had put by to make an Armadillo lamp shade as a surprise present for someone. . . . . Luckily not me PHEW.   

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I think Mr H's link from his comment is also just the thing to show us all our place in the great big world

LIFE THE UNIVERSE AND EVERYTHING

Many thanks Mr H