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Thursday, August 13, 2020
Coronavirus Death RateI breakfasted at Cafe Rouge this week. It was half price, thanks to the Eat Out to Help Out scheme. I like Cafe Rouge, particularly our local one. It went into administration during the lockdown, but it has been rescued. I’m...

Coronavirus Death Rate

I breakfasted at Cafe Rouge this week. It was half price, thanks to the Eat Out to Help Out scheme. I like Cafe Rouge, particularly our local one. It went into administration during the lockdown, but it has been rescued. I’m glad. There are very few French restaurants about. And they do a fabulous Full English. 

One of the burning questions of the last six months has been; what is the death rate from the coronavirus? Dividing the global deaths by recorded cases provides a figure of 3.58%. But this isn’t going to be accurate, for numerous reasons. Best guesses have been anything between 0.5% and 1.5%. What we need is a country that has counted fatalities with a reasonable degree of accuracy to then also provide a reasonably accurate estimate of the true number of infections.

We may now have that data. Imperial College London have estimated that approximately 3,400,000 people in the U.K. have been infected with the novel coronavirus. That would mean that the death rate is somewhere between 1.22% and 1.76%, depending upon whether you choose to use the official tally of fatalities or the number of excess mortalities. Perhaps you’ll hedge your bets and pick a number somewhere between the two. Say 1.5%.

Of course, this isn’t a definitive figure. The virus was ‘allowed’ to sweep through care homes in the U.K., which will likely have inflated the number of fatalities compared to a country which saw the virus spread more evenly across age groups.

Still, we have a ball park figure with decent data behind it. There’ll be more data, and the figure will move. But if it wasn’t clear before, and it really should have been, then hopefully it is a little clearer now. It’s not flu.

Getting OldOur walk along the beach in the morning helps blow away a few cobwebs. There might be mist out at sea, but the cool ocean breeze helps see off any lingering fog between the ears. It’s a nice time of day to take a walk, although it’s not...

Getting Old

Our walk along the beach in the morning helps blow away a few cobwebs. There might be mist out at sea, but the cool ocean breeze helps see off any lingering fog between the ears. It’s a nice time of day to take a walk, although it’s not something we ever did, pre-pandemic. We were too busy chasing after buses to get to the office. We used to do this walk in the afternoon, not the morning.

There’s a whole bunch of solid signs of ageing that I’ve noticed. It started a decade ago, when I realised that I considered brown to be a fashionable colour. There’s that uncomfortable moment when you realise that the hot girl in the office, the one that turns every male head as she walks past, is young enough to be your daughter.

A few days ago I thought of another one. I walk a full thirty metres everyday to a gate, rather than hop over the 30″ wall. As an act of defiance, I gingerly stepped over it, just this once. However, there’s no dodging the most recent sign of ageing. It is a bit of a psychological one. I’ve got to the point where a spot of illness prompts the assumption, ‘We’ll, I guess this is it, then”. Followed by an online search for how to write a will.

Yes, I’m almost certainly being a bit melodramatic. But then the doctor doesn’t help things. Not at all. In my youth, the quack would give me some pills, tell me I’ll soon be right as rain and that I should quite frankly man up a bit. Nowadays there are uncomfortable silences. Furious typing noises in the background. Some worried ooohs. And ahhhs. And I should pop in to give a sample.

Of course, no sooner do I do so, than I start feeling much better. That’s how these things work, right? But these are the days of the plague. One can take no chances. But I’m pretty confident I’ll still be about tomorrow for another walk along the beach.

Tuesday, August 11, 2020
Big Red Box of DoomVisiting the doctor is so last year. These days it’s all zoom meetings. Or online consultations. I’m not much of a fan of telephone calls. My hearing isn’t the best, but my typing skills are reasonable, so I will always opt for an...

Big Red Box of Doom

Visiting the doctor is so last year. These days it’s all zoom meetings. Or online consultations. I’m not much of a fan of telephone calls. My hearing isn’t the best, but my typing skills are reasonable, so I will always opt for an online consultation. My doctors surgery has a pretty good system. You write down a basic summary of the problem then go through a list of symptoms, choosing ‘yes’ or ‘no’.

At the end, you’ll receive a cheery goodbye and you must await a response from the GP telling you what to do. Or you’ll get a big red box of doom, to inform you that the end is nigh and there is no time to be lost in waiting for emails. I got the big red box of doom. Oh my. 

What do I have? Well if I knew that, I’d not have needed an online consultation. My answers to the symptom queries were mostly ‘no’. But clearly I triggered the system somewhere. Bloody snowflake computer.

To be continued? We all hope not, don’t we…

Bournemouth at Night

Is there a Sherlock Holmes amongst you? If so, you will have deduced that I am not a night owl. So many photographs of Bournemouth’s pier and beaches, but never after dark. So I thought I’d treat myself to a late night walk. Admittedly, these photos were taken only just after sunset, at about nine. We also walked along the pier. I recently purchased a season pass for the pier. It cost the princely sum of £2.60 for the pair of us. Come September, it will once again be open to all and sundry, free of charge.

The beach was still busy, considering the time. Mostly young folk, enjoying themselves. Plenty were smoking weed. I rather like the smell of it. Mrs P does not. There’s a lot of tents on the beach, with people camping out rather than spending on hotels. Technically, it’s illegal. But the police do not have the manpower to deal with things that are, essentially, causing little or no harm. Instead, the matter is pointlessly addressed by outraged locals in the comments section of the local newspaper.

Monday, August 10, 2020
Question TimeOh what wouldn’t one do to be able to go back about nine months in time and have a good long chat with the people of Wuhan about the perils of a roasted Pangolin sandwich invest every last penny in companies produces perplex screens,...

Question Time

Oh what wouldn’t one do to be able to go back about nine months in time and have a good long chat with the people of Wuhan about the perils of a roasted Pangolin sandwich invest every last penny in companies produces perplex screens, black and yellow plastic tape and customised floor vinyls. The one in my photo is a rather spiffy vinyl found in Bournemouth town centre, featuring a rather ironic plane on account of Bournemouth’s annual air show. The 2020 edition of which was, of course, cancelled months ago. Still, it is a rather nice looking vinyl. Dare I say it looks rather collectible? I’m almost tempted to peel it off and take home. Then sell it on eBay in ten years for a small fortune. 

A friend shared an interesting article from the Economist on Facebook today. There are indeed many hard questions to be asked. There are few concrete answers though. Which will no doubt come as a something of a shock to the legions of Facebook and other online armchair experts who have provided viral forecasts for the coming year with surprisingly high levels of confidence. Predictions invariably follow a set pattern according to their political views and choice of media. Which is to say that predictions either involve hiding in a bunker for the next decade, or carrying on as if there were no virus at all.

It’s tiresome. There are many possible directions that the pandemic could go, and it can make for interesting debate - exploring those options, the likelihood of each possibility and what evidence exists to support them. But I have largely tuned out the proffered wisdoms of anyone who either insists that the Swedes ‘got it right’ or that schools mustn’t be opened under any circumstances. The one thing that I’m certain of is that there’s a 99% chance that someone insisting upon one of those probably doesn’t really know what they’re talking about.

I’ll offer a talking point though, just because. It seemed plausible when I read it. How possible it is, is anyone’s guess. The premise was simply that we’ve gotten away lightly in the northern temperate zone. So far. The virus bloomed just as the temperature increased and the population headed outside. Come autumn, the virus will return, with a higher degree of transmission and greater viral loads. And it’ll hit in a killer pincer attack with the flu. We’re all doomed.

Maybe. But I’m trying to be cautiously optimistic. I try to tread the path that lies somewhere between the extremes. We do need to approach life a little more cautiously than we once did. We also need to take some risks to make sure our economies and societies don’t self implode. I’m doing my bit. I’m up for the Eat Out To Help Out deal. Mrs P and I will travel to foreign destinations* in September and October, rules permitting. And I do hope that someone pressed the U.K. government as to why they’ve frittered the last five months away without developing a really effective test and trace programme. The US government, of course, simply needs removing.

But we are where we are. I can’t go back in time. I can’t intervene in Wuhans worst ever picnic. Nor can I throw my life’s savings into shares of plastics companies. I simply have to cross my fingers and hope that the shares I do own stage some sort of recovery within the next couple of years…

The Art of the VultureWe all like a bargain, don’t we? I do. Mrs P too. And when it comes to the weekly shop, we know where and when to find them. There’s an art to getting the best bargains. There’s two stores in particular that discount hard, as...

The Art of the Vulture

We all like a bargain, don’t we? I do. Mrs P too. And when it comes to the weekly shop, we know where and when to find them. There’s an art to getting the best bargains. There’s two stores in particular that discount hard, as products reach their Sell By date. A Waitrose and a Marks & Spencer, both a short drive from home. Not all branches of these supermarkets are so drastic with their discounting. Just these two stores in particular.

There’s a real art to getting the best deal. We’re never alone. We see the other bargain hunters there, circling the employee and his/her food trolley like vultures. We’re all trying to be discreet. But we’re ready. When the goods hit the shelf, it’s every man and woman for him or herself. Mrs P and I operate as a slick, well oiled machine. She blocks off competitors with the trolley while I put my long arms and clutching fingers to good use.

Grab what you can. You can always put it back if you don’t want it. Sometimes you’ll end up buying some weird new product that you’d never have otherwise tried. Other times you get lucky and find a much loved treat. Yesterday we did good. The basket tells the story. Tonight we dine on the Indian Meal for Two box, which isn’t priced in the photo. We got it for half price.

In some ways, this is a tricky story to tell whilst retaining a sense of dignity and self respect.  Mrs P and I are not a step away from having to rely on food banks. Yes, we love a bargain. But we’re largely in it for the game. It’s like a safari hunt, but with a trolley instead of a gun. We do laugh and mock ourselves as we prepare to swoop. Sometimes I will wave my arms in vulturish fashion and screech as we approach the corner of the aisle, moving in for to feast on the carrion.

Last Christmas I got the M&S hunt version of the Big Five in one swoop. Ten packs of their best fresh Scottish smoked salmon, reduced from £15 each to £1.50 each. We still have one last pack in the freezer. Sometimes when we return we realize that we need just one more thing. A bigger freezer. Perhaps we should invest. A freezer full of frozen bargains might come in handy when the famine arrives.

August is going to be a great month for bargain hunters like us, without having to do so much work. The government have launched an Eat Out to Help Out campaign, whereby they pay for half the cost of a meal in most restaurants on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays for the whole month. And Amex have launched a Shop Small campaign, whereby I will receive £5 back for every £10 spent in small qualifying shops, up to ten purchases in total. I’ll make the most of it…