M4

Today was nice so we went for a bike ride. After yesterday's walk our legs were a little sore - so it was good to move them in a different way. Unlike last weekend when it was really busy when we went for our ride, today was deserted, with not a soul about.

Today's stamp is from a series of named bridged printed in 1968, the other bridges in the series have actual names and look pretty, this is just described as a modern bridge on the then under construction M4, and I don't know where it is, or if it's even a real bridge!

For my sins, when I lived in Berkshire I used to work next to the M4, it was very noisy and not very nice. Thankfully, we couldn't hear it where we lived though. When we moved to Hampshire the M3 was the blight, and again I worked adjacent to it, and again our home was far enough away to not hear it.


We've been told that COVID vaccinations will become generally available in France now that the really vulnerable have all been vaccinated. At the moment 2.3% of the population is now fully vaccinated compared with 3.2% in Denmark and 1.2% in the UK. However only 4.4% of the population have had 1 vaccination (of which about half are in the fully vaccinated group) compared with 29.9% in the UK. While the half vaccination approach adopted by the UK is a gamble the initial data suggests it may be good enough as long as the P.1 variant doesn't break out as it doesn't seem to show the same kind of antigenic properties and the Brazilians found it happily reinfected people who'd already been infected...!