08:00 It's a big day for me today, because it's my annual review at the doctor's surgery. Lois has strained her back, so it's for me to get up and get out of bed to make the tea. But we manage to both get ready to go out in time for my appointment.
I feel incredibly nervous, but then not only is it an "annual review", scary enough in itself, but it's also only about the 3rd time we've gone out and interacted with strangers in all of the past 6 months, so we've each become something of a social recluse, to put it mildly. All our food and other purchases are delivered to the house, so we don't need to go out except for a bit of exercise.
typical social anxiety sufferers
10:45 We drive over to our doctor's surgery. Luckily there's a vacant place in the practice's tiny car-park. Because of the pandemic you have to "sign in" at the receptionist's window just outside the front door, tell them what car you're in, and then go back and sit in your car until the nurse comes for you.
our doctor's surgery and its ridiculously tiny car-park - what madness !!!!
The nurse takes my blood pressure (it's too high, but she says she'll take it again in a few minutes - this happens every time I come here: damn!!! Then she does a blood test in my right arm, and takes my blood pressure again: this time it's acceptable: what a nuisance my blood pressure is! I also tell her what readings I've taken at home over the last 10 days and she seems satisfied. That damn "white coat syndrome" strikes again!
a typical case of "white coat syndrome" haha (copyright Curb Your Enthusiasm)
Now it just remains for me to sweat it out for a week, in a bit of a state until they phone me next week with the results of the blood test. Will they tell me that 4 months of taking statins have eaten away all my insides, for example? Hopefully not haha!!!
11:30 We drive home, and have a cup of coffee and a biscuit on the sofa. Then we go out for a walk on the local football field. Not many people about - it's getting towards lunchtime for most people, so we have no trouble avoiding the few stragglers among the area's competing field-users haha! [Look you just watch it. That's more than enough hahas for one morning: this is your final warning! - Ed]
we take a walk on the local football field, easily avoiding
the few competing field-users - hurrah for us !!!!
13:00 Lunch and then to bed for a nap. A cup of tea and a "left-over Christmas mince pie" at 4 pm on the sofa.
16:30 I look at my smartphone. I see that every week 7,000 vaccinations are taking place at one of the county's fire stations: Cheltenham East.
Lois and I have many happy memories of this fire-station, where we got our first dose of astrazeneca vaccine at the end of last month.
one of the county's fire-stations (Cheltenham East) where Lois and I
had our first dose of astrazeneca vaccine on January 30th
Our vaccination was 2 and a half weeks ago now, so hopefully we've already got some degree of immunity. But it's difficult to be certain and we're not going to relax our guard, that's for sure! This morning it was once again with face-mask and disposable plastic gloves fully donned, that I braved our doctor's surgery. Lois stayed outside - they don't want any "minders" in, thank you very much! She passed the time by going for a little walk in the area.
Of course old people have been targeted especially for the jabs, but Lois says there was a strange case on the radio this tea-time: a very fit young man - rugby player type - was invited to come for a vaccination and he didn't know why.
He contacted his doctor's surgery and they said it was because he was very obese. He admitted that he weighed 13 stone (182 lbs or 83 kg). He protested, however, that he was just well-built and certainly wasn't obese. He was 6' 2" tall (1.88m).
The surgery checked their data on him and discovered that although he was 6' 2", the surgery staff had entered this in their records as 6.2 cm, which is only about 2-3 inches: surprisingly no alarm bells rang over this statistic.
That's the trouble you get if people only do a half-hearted conversion to metric! What a crazy country we live in !!!!
the sign welcoming visitors from the Irish Republic
20:00 Lois has decided to skip her sect's weekly Bible Class on zoom tonight because she has pains in her side still, which would be aggravated by sitting in front of the laptop for 60-90 minutes, that's for sure.
We settle down on the couch and watch a bit of TV, an interesting documentary about sexual harassment in the music business.
An interesting programme, although, predictably, Lois and I haven't heard of any of the artists or DJ's mentioned - but no surprise there.
Lois says it's surprising that the music industry has, at least until recently, been a safe haven for sexual predators, considering the advances in the film industry, where there now is always someone on hand, during sex scenes for examples, to make sure that female actors in particular are okay with what they are being asked to do.
I speculate that the music industry's problems in this area could be exacerbated by the large number of very small record companies, some of them made up of only 2 or 3 all-powerful executives, who feel they can act any way they want without fear of legal action. But I'm not sure about that - the jury's still out on that one.
To some extent the pendulum has started to slip the other way, with the onset of so-called "cancel culture": small record companies or artists/DJs that have been put out of business after a single unsubstantiated allegation on social media, for example.
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzzzzz!!!!!!!
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