New Year’s Eve???

Another weirdly warm temperature with a max per my weather station of 14.6C, no wonder the ice cream shop decided to open in Sheringham and had several takers. There was heavy rain again this morning, making 2.74 inches of rain for Dec - that might not be a lot for most areas, but it’s 50% higher than our Dec average and with only 2 sunny days. 

Spent most of the day trying to sort a delivery problem with Currys /DPD. I had an email this morning that my order (a 2 part bundle) was available to collect from the post office at Sheringham. Then DPD delivered a John Lewis parcel and another one which turned out to be 1 part of the bundle. So I went to Sheringham for the other part and was told the parcel had been taken back by DPD as there was a problem with it. Using the tracking info when I got home, it was showing as available for collection at Sheringham still and I couldn’t find a phone no. to ring DPD. So I rang Currys and the trail of ‘press’ options led me to a message saying to track on the DPD website. So I pressed the option for faulty goods and finally got to speak to someone (in India?). She gave me a phone no for DPD but also spoke to them and the item was being returned to Currys. I could have a refund and go purchase it in store (a 2 hour round trip) and she’d have to arrange for collection of the piece delivered. I rang DPD and they said they only ever had 1 parcel. I rang Currys again who said the other part wasn’t in stock and would be delivered when it was. When I queried this she couldn’t tell me if it had been sent and not delivered or not yet sent. I eventually got her to raise a non delivery enquiry. You couldn’t design it this badly if you tried - I’ll never shop at Currys again. 

Day 655 / Day 22 of Plan B (for my record only)
189,846 new cases reported today, another new record. The ONS weekly infection survey of private households to 23rd Dec shows an estimated 2.3m had Covid in the UK (highest recorded); with 1 in 25 with the virus in England (up - with 1 in 15 in London); 1 in 40 in Scotland (up); 1 in 40 in Wales (up); and 1 in 40 in NI (unchanged). Nearly another 1,000 people are in hospital in England in the last 24 hours. The UKHSA has said that two doses of AZ have no effect against Omicron infection after 20 weeks (still has some protection against hospitalisation). They also said that two weeks after a booster, protection increases to 88% against Omicron and that there were ‘encouraging signs’ that the risk of hospitalisation from Omicron was about one-third of that of Delta. The UK’s medicines regulator has approved Pfizer’s pill for Covid treatment for people over 18. A Professor on Nervtag has said ‘(omicron) has ended up being so infectious that it almost needs just a whiff of infected breath and you could get infected.’ 24,632 staff at NHS hospital trusts were off with Covid or self-isolating on Boxing Day.