Birthday boy

...well, not quite. Gavin's birthday is tomorrow but he will be leaving for work at 6.20am as usual and by the time he gets home I will be in my camera club meeting, so we decided to celebrate today. Luke is away this weekend in Sunderland with Meriel to meet her new baby nephew, Adam is frantically busy in the lab today, so we waited for Tommy to get home and then opened his presents. We will celebrate his birthday as a family next weekend.

Tommy has been away with Inca in Cornwall for two weeks before she goes back to uni today, it will be a very busy for her being her 5th year of veterinary medicine. Tommy will also be very busy over the next few weeks formulating his PhD proposals, contacting various PI's at labs about them, and then applying to the universities.

My sister in South Africa told me that there is no water in the Durban area due to sabotage of their water infrastructure, and now all supermarkets have even sold out of bottled water. Technical investigation found that an air valve in a water pipeline was tampered with and another valve was vandalised, the result being there is no water and even reservoirs are now empty or critically low. It is criminal how the ANC have destroyed that country. For anyone interested (probably not many but it makes interesting reading) read this frightening article. Nelson Mandela did not leave a legacy to be proud of, he would be ashamed at what is happening there now and angry with his criminal successors.

I also read an article about Covid, although the infection numbers have increased there won't be another Covid vaccine for normal healthy under 65's, there is no value in investing time and effort immunising them when the health services would rather spend resources on other things. The reality is that immunity will be boosted for this group of people by catching Covid, as one does with colds and flu. I had already decided not to get another Covid vaccine if it was offered, I think the risks of the unknown side effects of the vaccine outweigh the benefits for healthy younger people at this stage after having had the required three (or was it four?) vaccines - it is quite scary how the Astra Zeneca vaccine has been pulled from the market, not even Africa wanted it - and the side effects of that vaccine have not been fully realised yet. (I had two of those, but at the time it was the better choice than to have nothing). So now we just live with the expectation that we will get it again at some point. 

On that note our camera club meeting tomorrow night has been changed to a zoom meeting as the person running the meeting has Covid, again, so will run the meeting via zoom instead.