LIFE IN THE TIME OF CORONAVIRUS PART ELEVEN
SUNDAY 24 MAY 2020 0900HRS BST

Completely putting aside the virus, the Chinese attempt to end Hong Kong autonomy, and the growing furore over Dominic Cummings' supposed repeated 'breaking the lockdown rules he helped write' (should be so simple to prove-disprove if the man drove his family 250+miles to sightsee bluebells in the wood by checking the traffic cams, d'uh!). I need a break from it all. I've checked the dailies and am now going to waffle on about something 'closer to home' - reorganising my kitchen (again).

I've been searching the Internet for ideas - what a laugh when the best home reno sites promise to help the reader/viewer make a 'compact/tiny/small' kitchen work better and then the page opens to show a 15x20sq-ft kitchen claiming it as a tiny space in desperate need of extension rather than simple 'keep the footprint and make it work'. £50K later the homeowner has a bigger kitchen fit for 'entertaining the neighbourhood'. meh

My kitchen is 8x8. Feet, not square feet. Barring a lottery win (which one must play to have a chance at winning), there will be no extension (no-where to extend to, actually) and there will be no renovation (but a girl can dream - starting with moving the clothes washer to the bathroom and oh dear, I'd really need a big lottery win as that would mean re-wiring not only the kitchen but the bathroom and would also mean going from a bathroom to a shower room...).

After 18 months of living with the existing kitchen I know two things (after the realisation a real renovation is of course waaaaaaaaaaay out of my budget). One - my kitchen doesn't work the way it is. Two, getting it to work is going to take a whole lot of elbow grease (see below re painting).

I have no room in the kitchen for tools and equipment AND actual food. Problem solved - I bought a reasonably priced pine bookcase (tall) and re-jigged the living room furniture to permit placement of said bookcase just the other side of the kitchen wall (for easier access). Into that bookcase went the food. A door will eventually follow - perhaps. The now I have a tension rod and fabric curtain panel hiding the food from casual view. It looks quite 'Scottish Farmhouse' and I have enough fabric left to make new living room curtains and recover the ottoman.

And the kitchen tools and equipment are now happily in the cupboards, easy(ish) to get to without having to move this to get to that. Worktop now uncluttered (good thing as there isn't much worktop to clutter in the first place).

I want to replace the 1950s style fluorescent tube light fixture with flexible track lighting. Paul isn't keen. I don't care. Luckily it's a job I can do myself - if Paul doesn't decide an electrician must be called in and that's too expensive so replacing that horrible light fixture is out of the question. heh 

But more importantly, DAMN I loathe the cupboard doors! Ugly doesn't begin to describe the horror. They weren't cheap to fit - nothing cheap lasts 30 years and those have. But oh wow are they ugly and completely the wrong colouring to match that kitchen - faint brown veining on beige plus a cheap looking faux wood 'trim' at the top of each door and drawer front - ICK! Worse, the doors are melamine on press-wood so there's no painting them successfully to ensure 'easy clean-up'. dammit. Off I went to the 'Net and sadly quickly discovered replacing those doors with something I could paint (and then clean) was far-far-far over the budget. It might be less expensive to completely replace the cupboards altogether, that's how expensive replacement doors would have been.

So now I'm scouring the Internet for reasonably priced self-adhesive vinyl wrap to cover the horror and make that kitchen look more pulled together. Paul is sceptical - he understands wallpaper and self-adhesive surface cover and he knows that is going to be a nightmare job getting the wrap done right. heh. I'm way ahead of him - I'm looking at something with faint but distinct grey lines (bonus - matches the floor and worktop) so piecing in would be slightly easier and hide most 'mistakes'.

And new handles. OH MY WORD those are bloody expensive! So much so I'm considering trying one long copper pipe cut into handles, capped (so the cut ends don't shred hands) and an extension soldered on to make screwing the hand-crafted handles to the doors. We'll see. I envisioned lovely old fashioned cup handles, not copper (that will have to be coated or polished, eew, more work!) hand-crafted handles that will protrude a wee bit enough to catch clothing.

Paint. I have a gallon of primrose that will be going on what little visible wall there is in there. Right now it's a goldish beigey cream coffee-cup motif cushion vinyl wallpaper - an attempt to match up with the horrid cupboards? Who cares, I don't like it and want it gone. That's going to be an interesting job, getting 30 year old wallpaper off the wall, 'mudding'/plastering to make a smooth painting surface - but I relish the work I'm good at. Once it's done, even with the 'legacy tiles' (legacy meaning it's what was here when we bought the house), once the paint is done, that kitchen will be MINE.  

The 'legacy tiles' on the splashback. I actually quite like them and am trying to incorporate the beige-blue-poppy red colouring into the kitchen design (hahahahaha - my worktop is faux black and gold-flecked granite, my floor is faux ceramic black-grey veined vinyl). But if I can't work out a way to keep those tiles, I've discovered a work-around - peel and stick vinyl 'tiles' that cover the original tiles but not the grout. There are some really nice designs that would completely (once the cupboard doors are dealt with) change the look and feel in there. Would the 'fix' be scrubbable - dunno and am still trying to find reviews that tell me yes/no.

The truth is I'm not keen on tile - one of my Saturday morning chores as a teen was cleaning the grout on the kitchen walls and worktop and trust me, cleaning 50 year old grout is not fun or easy. I think it safe to say I hate tile. My preference is painted walls (and silicone seal at the base to keep splashes out of the wall) covered by a clean piece of glass. Don't laugh and don't roll your eyes in disdain - if you can afford to re-tile and if you have the energy and ability to contort yourself into back-wrenching positions to clean the tiles, good on yer. I can't afford to re-tile every five-ten years and I am in my mid-60s, I don't bend well any longer! One day, hopefully sooner rather than too much later, those tiles are coming down and paint+glass going up.

Sad to say this is not my dream kitchen even if I manage to work-around those tiles and get my cupboard doors re-covered. It's not the size, it's the way the appliances currently fit in there (and where). And it's the cupboards that should go to the ceiling but don't, leaving a a completely useless ten inch gap at the top.

If I played the lottery and won, I'd have to first have the kitchen and bathroom re-wired to accommodate the appliance reshuffle (including an industrial strength exhaust fan in the bathroom and fitting a tumble dryer over the washer).

In the kitchen, I'd leave the plumbing footprint. I'd move the clothes washer into the bathroom (which would become a shower room to make room for the washer and make getting a shower safer as well - oh my goodness why on earth are British bathtubs so bloody high-sided?!) and put a dishwasher in where the clothes washer is now. I'd put a single wall oven above the dishwasher. Directly across from those appliances, I'd fit an industrial strength exhaust fan through the wall, fit a ceramic hob cook-top with pots-pans storage below. Between those two walls I'd pull the current window and replace it with a 'greenhouse' window - not a deep one but a mere 12 inches would be enough to really make that kitchen feel bigger.

I'd replace all the cupboards with ones that usefully go to the ceiling leaving room where the current hob and oven are now for a frost-free American style side-by-side fridge-freezer. The lower cupboards would all be pull-out and the upper would be pull-down - I'm too old to be climbing on a step-ladder and bending into a bottom cupboard. And I'd replace the worktops with faux butcher block. I'd have a double bowl sink with a pull-out sprayer-tap.

Bathroom? Out-out-out with that 1960s bathtub with sides so high it's a struggle to climb in to get a shower! Compact water-saving toilet, compact hand-wash basin and vanity OR a pedestal one with a full-sized basin - the only things I keep in the vanity cupboard now are cleaning supplies and those could go in the household supply cupboard to be hand carried into the shower room. (I keep shampoo, towels, etc, in a linen cupboard outside the bathroom) Stacking clothes washer and tumble dryer vented to the outside. Efficient. functional. Brilliant.

But. But I'd keep the legacy tiling in there despite my not being keen on tile. It's pink-light grey and kitsch and I love it. I want to paint the un-tiled walls a very light grey to pick up the light grey in the tiling. I have reproduction vintage rosebud on cream curtains (over slat blinds - I'm not stupid, lol, and that window is to the front of the house), a mauve bath mat, and use mauve, purple, pink, and green (solids) towels. Aside from the weird painted over cushion vinyl wallpaper (creamy beige, really? In a pink bathroom, really?!) and miserably high tub, the bathroom is rather nice. Luckily Paul doesn't care what colour scheme is in there as long as the toilet flushes and the taps work reliably.

Sunday dreaming - Life in the Time of Coronavirus.

LIFE IN THE TIME OF CORONAVIRUS PART TEN (I think. I've lost count. What day is it?)

Yesterday at her daily televised one-upmanship display, our First Minister Nicola Sturgeon cheerfully informed the Scottish people (and the rest of the UK watching live SkyNews) she was thinking we might possibly - if we all behave ourselves and practice strict social distancing - and the 'R' factor (number of contagious to number of people the contagious can infect) stays at its current level of 00.07 to 1, and IF (big if, we are talking Nicola Sturgeon here) she thinks it safe, Thursday 28 May 2020 we will be able to 'drive to visit parents in the garden', have neighbours into the garden for a BBQ, and drive a reasonable distance to sit in the sun or take exercise in a 'beauty spot'. She stressed we must exercise good judgement if we want more relaxation of the restrictions.

Oh, and garden centres can reopen. But hairdressers cannot. It looks like another five months for that happy day.

Which means it will be safe for Paul and I to take a drive to the seaside or to the supermarket six miles south to collect our 'Click and Collect' shop. I'm thrilled.(please note I did not use an exclamation point to express real joy - one, I'll believe it when/if I see it, and two, I'm sick and tired of that dozy mare wretched little cow telling me and the rest of Scotland she's having an adult conversation with us whilst ensuring we all understand we're too stupid to know what's best for us so she has to take all the decisions to keep us safe).

It's a Bank Holiday Weekend. Naturally we will not have the restrictions relaxed for it. But I'm not sure it matters this Bank Holiday - yesterday afternoon the winds picked up to gale force speeds and haven't abated yet. The weather forecast for today is dismal although Sunday is forecast to be improving and Monday (the actual Bank Holiday) is forecast (of course) to be a glorious 68F and sunny. Considering our average daily temperature in NE Scotland this time of year is in the high 50sF, 68F is a blinkin' heat wave. Those of us lucky enough to have a garden will be able to 'enjoy' it as long as we don't have anyone from outside our household to share it with. We do have a garden and we're planning some tree pruning for the day.

Meanwhile - and this is the real reason I'm updating the blog today - China has several million citizens locked down again owing to the resurgeance of the virus. Worse, the virus has mutated again. It's done so at least 50 documented times and every time it does it mutates to a worse combination of symptoms and complications.

Here in the UK the growing scandal of the shocking and seemingly deliberate attempt to cull the elderly by forcing state-funded care homes to accept admissions of virus infected (and thus contagious) elderly patients being discharged from hospital has been overtaken by the growing scandal of critical care patients with 'Kawasaki-like' symptoms not even being tested for the virus. The admissions were/are children - but now are increasingly older teens and young 20somethings. Healthy youngsters. Who are now dying - but not in large enough numbers yet to cause genuine alarm and countless news reports.

Last night a friend living Down South (in England) telephoned to see how we're doing. His wife is on the 'high-risk' list. In all honesty we've been afraid to telephone them to see how they're doing as we were worried we'd find she was in hospital. She is a lovely tiny wee thing, her lungs are terribly compromised and things are at a point we didn't want to hear she has contracted the virus.

Any road, when this thing first started he was sceptical of it all. Now he's not. Before I handed the phone over to Paul, we talked about the 'broken glass' lung complication. We also talked about how his feisty wee wife is being far less feisty and much more cautious (thank-God). He mentioned she had to go for a scan and they had to sit in their car to be called into the hospital lab for the scan - and he couldn't go in with her when the fully PPE suited staffer beckoned her into the hospital for the scan.

Paul is worried about mandatory vaccinations once they find a vaccine against this thing. I keep trying to remind him 'they' can't even find a treatment for this thing owing to the many mutations, and 'they' can't even find a vaccine against the common cold (a coronavirus, let's not forget) so the chance of 'them' coming up with an effective vaccine for SARS-CoV-2 is so slim as to be none. There will be no vaccine for this thing, and it's going to go on to globally kill far more than the hundreds of thousands it already has.

The best we can do, any of us, is make sure our loose ends are tidied up - wills are up-to-date, our homes cleaned up so our loved ones (or whomever is stuck with the clear-out should we die without loved ones) don't have to work extra hard clearing out our homes. It would help if the skips (landfills/local dumps, for the American readers) were open! Supposedly that MAY happen around the first of June. We'll see. I suspect the queues to get into the skips once reopened will tailback for miles at the first few weeks.

Finally, again about China - apparently they believe we in the West are all so busy with the virus we'll take a pass on protesting the gross abuse of the treaty and are forcing a law on Hong Kong that effectively ends what democratic freedom the HK'ers have enjoyed since the handover back in the summer of 1997.

 

LIFE IN THE TIME OF CORONAVIRUS PART NINE

20 May 2020 0848hrs BST

 

Seriously??!!

Some ‘leading scientist’ (oh alright, I know who they are but I don’t feel like naming and shaming) are pushing a ‘rollover’ schedule of 50 on (meaning life as we used to know it) and 30 days in lockdown. Cambridge brainiacs are pushing an 80 on – 80 off schedule.

Because, you know, money really does grow on trees. 

Meanwhile up here in Scotland where lockdown hasn’t been eased one bit while Nicola Sturgeon ekes out every last second of her control-freak power trip, even the most law-abiding is sneaking out at night (I hear them from my porch late at night), they’re so fed up with this bloody damn useless ‘lockdown’. 

Every Thursday night we come out of our homes and clap (and bang wooden spoons on pots) to show our appreciation for essential workers. The Thursday night clap started as a way of saying thank-you to the NHS and has grown to include coppers, paramedics, binmen, couriers and posties (the real heroes of the lockdown if you ask me). And every Thursday night those residents lucky enough to live in neighbourhoods with a secluded aspect and more tolerant curtain twitchers, are gathering in slightly increasing numbers to clap – and then BBQ or share a doorstep picnic. 

More on Nicola Sturgeon – OH EFFing LORD this bitch has GOT TO GO! She refuses to let us get back to normal, and in her mind why should she when she knows the English taxpayers will have to foot the bill for her continuing this nightmare of ‘Police Scotland will enforce these rules’ she’s subjecting us to. 

Because, you know, we’re all effing ejits too stupid to come in out of the rain so she has to make sure we’re protected from ourselves…but every day flights into the three international airports here in Scotland continue with no quarantine or even the slightest restrictions on incomers. 

Same in the other three nations making up the UK, btw – every time someone sensible says ‘FFS, force quarantine on incomers or close the bloody entry ports!’ the muslins moan it’s muslinophobia, the airline companies scream they’re already in serious financial trouble (and definitely have their hands out hoping for Government handouts), the NHS swears they can’t do without their foreign ‘trained’ staffers, and the farmers who are making it nearly impossible for Britons to help bring in the harvests whinge they need the Bulgarians and Romanians to pick the harvests.

  

And yesterday – much, much closer to home, Paul nipped down the shop for BBQ sauce and found a masked middle-aged Chinese couple wandering around town taking in the sights. Clearly tourists, not residents – what the hell??!! I can’t go to the seaside to sit socially distanced in the car and watch the sea through the windscreen but Chinese (CHINESE, FFS!) tourists can come marvel at the sights of our wee town (without giving too much away, we live in a town famous for a certain author with several themed ‘attractions’ to honour the man and lure in tourists). 

And every effing day that ghastly Nicola Sturgeon gets on the telly trying to one-up the PM and what she’s taken to calling ‘the English Government’ by reminding us she’s the law in Scotland and we’d bloody well better remember that.

Meanwhile the lockdown is definitely wearing on Paul and me. We’re hermits at the best of times but being forced by threat of gaol and fines to be forbidden to take a drive, forbidden to meet with friends and neighbours, forbidden…AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH is taking its toll on us. We’re irritable with each other and the cat, we’re both spending far too much time on the Internet looking at cat videos, and I honestly cannot remember the last time I dressed in real clothes – I’m no longer browsing street clothes online, I’m looking at ‘loungewear’ (aka pajamas).

It’s insanity and now some ‘expert’ wants to tell the Government we should be on some sort of rolling schedule?

FO!

LIFE IN THE TIME OF CORONAVIRUS PART EIGHT

SATURDAY 2 MAY 2020 0700BST

I’ve succumbed. Yesterday I could stand my hair no longer and I gave myself a CoronaCut. I have two things to say on that. One, I actually didn’t do all that bad a job of it. Two, the hair salons and barbers are going to make a bloody fortune fixing all our CoronaCuts when this is all over.  

Meanwhile. Boris is back but not quite fully recovered. His breathing is still a little rough and there are whispers his lungs are compromised. Quite possibly. Big Woo. Aside from fervently wishing him well, let’s please to recall Churchill brought us through six horrific years of war with compromised lungs. And he lived to be 91 years old. May Boris enjoy so long a life.

Speaking of Boris Johnson, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, he and Carrie Symonds (his live-in fiancé) welcomed a son Wednesday 29^th April 2020 in the wee hours. No further info as to actual time, weight, and name. No photos either. When Boris wants to be private, he does private rather well.

Speaking of Boris Johnson and Winston Churchill, I’ve just bought a used 1^st edition copy of Johnson’s biography of Sir Winston.

In the USA, according to news reports and what Fox tells me he’s seeing ‘on the ground’, agitation to lift the mass ‘stay at home’ orders has risen to an alarming level – last week protesters swarmed into Michigan State House during session. No shots were fired but the legislators were so frightened by the protesters they voted down the Governor’s bill to continue the Public Health Order keeping everyone on a stay-at-home restriction.

Here in the UK we are still on ‘lockdown’. Supposedly the restrictions are to be reviewed and an announcement made on the 7^th of May (a Thursday) regarding any changes.There have been ‘interesting rumours’ floated through-out this nightmare. One being ‘basic income’ (with all our pensions and savings confiscated to be used towards giving everyone a ‘basic income’) – that one appears to have gone away as ‘not gonna happen’.

Another 'interesting rumour', this one currently making the rounds, has gained a bit of tractions. University Warwick put out a study the past few days saying the over-50yo lot should be on lockdown for the next year but younger people should be permitted to go as they please.

Naturally, this is not popular with the over-50s lot. It certainly has created a lot of popular press buzz but so far the Government isn’t talking.

Meanwhile, we now have a rather shocking death toll going on here in Britain and NI. Not the full story of just how many have died (and the accompanying stats regarding age, underlying conditions, ethnicity, etc. Apparently discussing those stats is considered racist as it shows when ‘ethnic minorities’ contract the virus and become seriously unwell with it, they tend to die (meaning they suffer horribly and then die either in hospital or ‘in the community’). Mustn’t have that uncomfortable conversation. The usual suspects (the professional victims) in the BAME ‘community’ agitated for a few days to make it sound as though the deaths in ‘their community’ were somehow a racist plot by whites to kill off the BAME population. Until it was revealed the ‘death toll’ is 57+% white. Then they stfu.

The death toll. Ah, yes, the death toll. By my calculations, the toll is 30,310. By the Government calculations, it’s ‘only’ 27K, owing to creative accounting – the other three nations in the UK apparently don’t ‘count’ when the English Department of Health release the daily ‘UK total’ – it is obvious they are not adding in the numbers from the other three (Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales).

Worse, NI, Scotland and Wales are not releasing a daily total that includes the horrific number (rising and not ‘peak’ yet) of deaths in care and nursing homes and ‘the community’. England now finally is adding those numbers into the daily total. Once a week Nicola Sturgeon (the First Minister of Scotland – and don’t you bloody forget her title when referring to her!) drops an astonishingly high number of recorded deaths that include the words ‘confirmed or suspected Coronavirus’ on the death certificate. But that number is never used again, the daily totals announced from Scotland revert to hospital only deaths. God only knows what numbers include in the daily NI announcement. As for Wales, sometimes the so-called UK totals include Wales, sometimes those totals do not. Yet the daily total is solemnly announced every afternoon by ‘the UK Government’ as the ‘UK Total’.

As such, I recognise my calculations are not perfect but at least mine include what numbers the other three nations release daily. It’s the best I can do in these utterly bizarre times we are living through.Like the Spanish Influenza Pandemic of 1918-1920, I don't think we'll know the full story, ever. After that one was over and the tally was attempted to be made, records keeping (and records skewing, let's be honest here) meant we'll never really know if the 'wildest toll number' of 'over 50 million globally' is accurate.