Another week in partial lockdown, my last weeks post was going to be the last but Matti and Nath both reckon I should carry on, I will carry on for now by semi popular demand.
Fri 17th July - spent first part of the morning packing up the car with the masses of stuff that Anna made me take down to Owermoigne last week. Showed our housekeeper, Becki, where Anna had now stowed everything and then got out of her way while she carried on with the cleaning etc.
Following my being in trouble for not taking Anna out yesterday and going to the pub instead, I thought we would make a few detours on the way home. We went out toward Corfe Castle and Swanage. We had an ice cream in a parking lot which had a great viewpoint overlooking the whole of Poole Harbour, Brownsea Island, Studland and onto Bournemouth. We sat there in the car like a couple of old pensioners. Then we drove down to Swanage, Anna had packed a small picnic with bits of leftovers we had in the fridge so we found a 1 hour free parking slot right by the beach and took our blanket down for a beach picnic.
Returned back home somewhere around 4pm ready for a few Friday night Shed pints. Sat outside for a while, Nath and Matti turned up. Josh made some cracking lamb kebabs, we retired to the Shed when it started getting cooler and stayed in there all evening.
Sat 18th July - writing this day on Sunday night, nearly forgot what I did yesterday, which wasn't an awful lot. Usual afternoon of watching football and we had invited Dave and Steph round for pizza night. We had a pleasant evening of beer, pizza and more football on the TV. Arsenal caused the surprise by beating City in the semi final of the FA Cup.
Sun 19th July - sausage sandwich breakfast after a bit of a lie in. Saints were playing Bournemouth today, a lose for Bournemouth would more than likely see them go down. We watched the game which ended up 2-0 to Saints, in injury time Bournemouth had a goal ruled out by VAR for offside and then we scored a second through Che Adams’ second goal of the season. After that we had a ‘double header of watching Bath City lose in their play off game on the laptop whilst at the same time watching Spurs v Leicester on the TV. A quick break from football to collect dinner at the end from the kitchen before going back out to the Shed to eat and watch Chelsea beat Man Utd in the other cup semi final.
Mon 20th July - Raf rang Josh to ask if we would have Albie, Indy has come into season and obviously this is getting Albie into ‘hump’ mode. He dropped him off and when Alb decided to start whining I went out to cut the grass. I am looking to walk a minimum of five thousand steps per day or thirty five thousand over a week so having Alb will help reach this goal more easily. After cutting the grass I was already half way to my daily target and then we took him out for a walk over the fields at the back of Bowerhill and throughout Giles Wood by the canal. By the time we got back I was over my daily target by more than a thousand.
Tues 21st July - The Russian Report is supposed to be finally published today. It obviously won't make good reading for the Tories as otherwise they would gave released it far sooner, it should have been released prior to the last election!
Albie was a bit of a pain in the arse last night, he didn't sleep well and had to be let out a couple of times. This morning he is snuggled up fast asleep and is reluctant to move!
See that our Wonderful MP has yet again brown nosed to Boris and toed the party line by voting against clause 17 which effectively would have protected the NHS from any form of control from outside the UK. How can Tory MP’s clap and praise the NHS then vote to sell them down the river. A survey confirmed that 75% of British public did not support those voting against this and want to keep the NHS British, it also means that parliament has no say in any future trade deals giving Boris and his cronies carte blanche to agree whatever they wish to benefit themselves and their rich donors. This will give parliament less control over decisions over trade than they had with the EU. I have sent yet another email to her to explain her actions and also to remind her that I want a reply to my email of 10th July!
The Russian report effectively confirms that there was evidence of Russian interference in the Scottish referendum which the government were aware of but they ‘actively failed’ to investigate this further in respect of the Brexit referendum and subsequent elections. And we wonder why they didn't want to publish this before the last general election? To investigate Russian involvement would have required the direction of the Home Secretary, guess who that was at the time, yes Boris! Fraud is rife throughout the whole Tory party!
Albie had two good walks today, one through the woods at Giles Wood and later a pavement walk around the estate.
Beer order has gone in for this week, 10ltrs Covert and 10ltrs Locked In with Azacca hops.
Wed 22nd July - Michelle Donelan emailed me back about Dominic Cummings. I had asked for a breakdown in the numbers from the 1500 emails that she said she had from her constituents to confirm how many were in favour and how any against his actions. She did the usual politicians reply to a question by not directly answering it. She just said that she could not make personal views expressed by her constituents public but from the emails she received the 2 strongest were one for and one against. I will write back as I did not ask for personal views, I just asked for the numbers for and the numbers against from the 1500.
With regard the corrupt handing of contracts to contacts of Dominic Cummings and Michael Gove she just waffled on about Government transparency and how all contracts were made in the public domain. She says that Coronavirus related contracts which do not have to go to tender have been issued in full accordance with the law. If this is the case perhaps she can explain how a PPE contract worth £108m was awarded to a pest control company Pestfix, based in Sussex, with assets of £19,000 and a staff of 16. Also how another £108m PPE contract was handed to a wholesaler of sweets, Clandeboye Agencies Ltd, who had no previous experience of manufacturing PPE. She mentioned a contract issued to Randox Laboratories Ltd being in the public contracts register but my specific question to her was around the issue of contracts to associates of Gove and Cummings. I had not queried Randox Laboratories but as she brought it up i looked into it, it is obviously another case of ‘jobs for the boys’, it was a £133m contract issued to undertake testing, this is fine however they employ Owen Paterson, a former Tory cabinet minister as a consultant.
A contract of £840,000 was issued to a small policy and research company Public First whose owners have links to Cummings and Gove, the contract was issued without going out to tender under the guise of the Coronavirus need to be urgently commissioned. However they were first commissioned on 3rd March although no contract was put in place until 5th June! When the contract was finally issued it was backdated until 3rd March and £253,000 was paid out for Brexit related projects, absolutely nothing to do with COVID and not subject to the ‘emergency’ Covid contracts thus should have been put out to public tender!
I am asking her to justify this and also to supply me with the amount of PPE that has been produced by these 2 companies, that has been passed as suitable for use within the NHS.
On a lighter note I took Albie out for a walk to Giles Wood again, it was a very hot day and poor Alb was knackered for the rest of the afternoon.
Did a few jobs with Josh in the Shed, strengthened the bar top which was ‘sagging’ somewhat. Had a sort round of a few bits of wood in the garage and found where the mice had previously made a nest in the corner. I think they are long gone as I had a trap out for a few weeks without catching one, the nest is now swept up and in the bin.
Thurs 23rd July - not only do we have Albie today but Inca is also being dropped off as they are out all day getting Indy mated as she is now in season. Also it's my turn to go shopping today, although masks aren't compulsory until tomorrow I may give it a go with my mask today. Shopping at Lidl successfully done, about 70% of people today had masks on, including me, I have no real issue around wearing one but why now? Why wasn't this brought in as mandatory months ago?
Albie is being a real pain in the arse with Inca, he just will not leave her alone. We think it's that Inca has been with Indy, and with Indy being in season he probably smells her on Inca. There was no way I was taking them both out for a walk on my own today, so Anna came with me and we ended up with having both of them on leads as Albie could not behave himself!
I am more than a day over my minimum number of steps this week after 4 days, I deliberately set it low at 5000 per day, it makes you feel a lot better when you over achieve.
I had a bit of good news this afternoon, Josh and I had made an online purchase on Tuesday which was due to be delivered next Monday but I had a text from Parcelforce to say it is coming tomorrow. What is it you may ask? Well you will have to wait in anticipation until next week when I will reveal what it was and how effective it has been!
Sorry this week has been a bit more political again but there has been plenty for me to rant about whereby not much has been happening at home.
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