Chilly Times

26 November 2020) The weather gets chillier, the new tiers cause tears and I continue, slowly, to build up food stocks; mitigating the shortages we will experience in January.

The government have fudged Xmas so that they cannot be accused of abolishing it (leading to all the train companies stopping their cheap tickets for the period). They will then blame us for hugging and snogging when the virus surges in January (though we won’t worry as we will all be in long queues outside the food shops brightly mumbling that “At least we’ve taken back control”

On a positive note I have discovered that you can recycle properly the annoying plastic holders they put around 4 packs of canned beer (and presumably other drinks as well). There is this nice company who will send you a label; you fill an envelope with the items and hand it in to a UPS agent (my local newsagent is one). Simple, only expense, if reusing a large envelope, is a bit of sticky tape. It also is better than mixed recycling because a firm who have a quantity of identical material can do something with it. Here is a link.

UK Shipping Label | Ring Recycle Me

I see that Mr Trump is slowly realising that he has to go away-however I do fear that his constant denigration, of what appears to be a slightly strange democratic system anyway is seeding the ground for an authoritarian uprising/downtreading.

Fortunately, he has not bombed Iran. Yet.

Let’s not forget that in 830 AD the Persians had invented algebra and how to solve quadratic equations. We were in the Dark ages.

So when someone said “Ull you’re late” this was chastisement of a tardy peasant.

In Persia when this was requested  the recipient would utter a loud, usually protracted, high-pitched, rhythmical sound especially as an expression of sorrow, joy, celebration, or reverence.

Here is an example

And there is always hope (this is a rare picture capturing the secret sun)

Are there two suns?
The sun always rises

Msvcp140.dll (me neither) and more praise for Microsoft.

(13th November 2020). Somehow Mr Trump remains President of the USA. I do not understand their system. I imagine it also means he can still launch a nuclear war-on Friday 13th should I be worried?

At least Mr Biden seems an ordinary “proper” politician which is encouraging.

Today I, again, praise Microsoft. A week ago, an update caused all sorts of errors. I found much of my software was not working and was plagued with incomprehensible error messages. Then I discovered there is a nice option in settings “Reset this PC”. I set it off; it kept all my data and my bookmarks . I just had to spend a while reinstalling software, updating “drivers” (whatever they are) etc. But it worked; a handy tip (but backup all important documents just to be on the safe side).

So, thank you Microsoft. It is used by over 90% of all the computers in the world and only hated by a hard core of Apple users and the 5% of users who care about operating systems. The rest of us don’t, we just want to use our device.

Lockdown continues to imprison us; the government is trying to spin a way of not going down in history as the one that abolished Christmas and Brexit looms dangerously. Plus Cummings and goings in No 10. Though no expert I am not sure this is the way to govern a country.

I am steadily building up my stocks of non-perishable food for January’s Lockdown 3 along with a 90% decrease in imports.

A self portrait below.

On a rare sunny day I posed for the swans