Larry’s Diary Week Fifty Five

Monday

What’s going on, yet another hot day. I woke up in the middle of the night really hot and in need of a drink and some rotter hadn’t refilled my water bowl. I was that desperate I tried the Mutt’s bowl, but that was empty too. You just can’t get the staff. I slipped out of the cat flap and found some relief from the birdbath. It was much cooler in the garden, there was even a pleasant breeze. I thought a quick patrol in the cool was in order so I gave the estate a once over. I think I disturbed a mouse in No 10 but it disappeared very quickly. Anyway, I decided to sleep out under the stars for once and was awoken by the Little Otter calling me for breakfast.

I forgot to mention last week that Saturday was International Cats Days. I had a very pleasant day, I had a snooze on my favourite windowsill next to No.10’s front door. When I jumped down the photographers on the other side of the road called me. I thought I would pose for them as it was a special day, so I squeezed through the bars and went over. They took loads of pictures and then gave me a stroke. Even a passing policeman, with a machine gun, rubbed my neck!

I just love this story of the black Labour MP who is complaining about being stopped when out “driving” with her “black” friend. Only from the edited video she posted online, she wasn’t driving and her friend looked a very pale shade of black. What’s with switching the video around so that it appeared she was sat on the right when she was in the front passenger seat. You can tell by the parting in her hair. She then went into a full-on rant about the police targeting black people, even trying the “Don’t you know I’m an MP” line. All she did was prove her stupidity.

More trouble for Labour today. It was rumoured some time ago that the company in America that they used for their servers and data storage had been hacked. Well, Labour has just e-mailed all it’s party members telling them that they have been subjected to a ransomware attack. They say they have paid off the scammers and been assured that the data will not be used. Believe that and you’ll believe anything.

It seems that a new drug for Alzheimer’s disease is looking very promising. The drug, called Aducanumab, is going to be fast-tracked after it has been found to be the first drug to actually improve the memory of sufferers. Current treatments at best slow the development of Alzheimer’s. The new drug works by untangling the plaque that typically builds up in suffers brains. A decision on the drug’s safety is expected in six months.

I hear that Bozzie is going to split his time between No 10 and Chequers this week. I don’t really care just as long as someone is designated to feed me and fill up the water bowl. Then he is going to take a week off and go to Scottishland with the Little Otter, Wilf and the Mutt. Someone said they might be camping. I guess he can’t get into a hotel as they are all full of illegal immigrants.

A nice little story is emerging from a police disciplinary hearing in South Wales. A policewoman is accused of performing oral sex on Sergeant on various occasions in the police station. The sergeant, who has since retired, says it was only once. She is also accused of having sex with a PCSO and allowing her phone to be used by someone else to secretly take a photo of another woman officers feet for someone with a foot fetish. The best bit is that she is called PC Dicks.

Tuesday

I was a bit artful last night, I waited until the human servants had gone to bed than crept out into the garden to sleep where it’s a bit cooler. They like me in at night “because of foxes” but I know damn well there isn’t one around here, I would smell it. In any case, it would trigger the intruder alarms in the garden, I know just where they are and avoid them they make such a racket. Also, foxes are stupid, like dogs, and have never learnt to climb trees. I slept well, woke early and was back in my basket when Bozzie appeared on Wilf’s bottle duty.

Lots of fuss about all these illegal immigrants coming over the channel in inflatables. I just don’t know why we don’t do what the Aussies do, put them all on a remote island in barrack blocks, with just enough food to live. Tell them they will never be granted access to the UK but we will fly them home if they don’t want to stay on the island. It works well for the Aussies.

A quick story I heard this morning is that for a month or two single Marathon bars are going to return to the UK market. Mars renamed Marathon bars in the UK Snickers many years ago to give it the same name internationally. But the British people love nostalgia and Mars are to revive the brand for a limited period, they will be available in Morrisons and McCoys.

I also read an article about chocolate bars that people would like back. I know of some of them but not all. Dream, Marble, Mars Delight, Spira, Fuse, Mingles, Wonka Bars, Mint Whisper and Time Out. I bet you can all name favourite that has disappeared.

Wee Krankie and her Education Secretary John Swinney have done a major U-turn on the Scottishland Highers exam results. Nearly 125,000 students who had their results downgraded by an algorithm are to have them put back to the original recommendations of the teachers and lecturers. The results for the A levels in England, Wales and Northern Ireland are due on Thursday and are supposed to be being compiled in a similar way to the Scottishland ones. I wonder if a quick rethink is taking place or will they stick with what looks like a flawed system.

Vladimir Putrid has announced that Russia has approved a coronavirus vaccine that they are starting to use, making it the first one available. The only problem is that it has not gone through phase 3 testing which normally means several thousand people have test shots of the vaccine. Without the phase 3 tests it’s very doubtful whether any other country will approve the vaccine. Putrid says his daughter has had the vaccine. That reminds me of John Gummer feeding his daughter a beef burger when mad cow disease was about.

I hear that dogs can’t understand what people say to them, their brains are so undeveloped that they can only guess from the tone of voice like when someone says “good dog”. Of course, cats are much brighter than dogs and know exactly what humans are saying but often choose to ignore them. In fact, I even know of a cat, called Winslow, who plays the piano to tell his humans when to feed him.

Final story for tonight, I bet you are delighted to know that it’s National Allotment Week. I reckon that Steptoe is happy, has he been on the TV yet, I suspect he will be, even if it just the local news.

I think I may well be sleeping out again tonight.

Wednesday

Another warm night, sleeping out and creeping back in before Bozzie was up. Wilf is getting a bit vocal when it’s time for food and I am happy to say he seems to like me more than the Mutt. Perhaps it’s because I don’t rust found madly, I am gentle and slow around him.

The rest of the UK has had second thoughts on exam results. They are to let students choose whether to use the edited predicted results from the exam boards or the results they got in their mocks. It will be interesting to see how that works when the announcements are made early Thursday morning.

The GDP figures were out this morning and were not very good. The negative figures in the first two quarters of the year put the country into recession. But this wasn’t unexpected as the figures had all been previously published for the individual months. However, July’s figures have already been published and they have shown a sharp uptick so the recession is hardly likely to last long.

The train accident in Scottishland this morning sounds nasty. The train from Aberdeen to Glasgow had a drive car at either end and 4 carriages between them. I understand that it came across a landslide and was given permission to return to the last station when it drove into a new landslip and was derailed and a drive car and several carriages slid down an embankment. Early reports said the driver and two passengers have been killed and six have been helicoptered to hospital. It seems there had been lots of rain in the area overnight.

I’m sure I have mentioned before that England is out of step with the rest of the UK in the way that it counts COVID-19 deaths. England counts anyone who has ever tested positive as a COVID death, whenever they were tested and however they died. So if someone died in a plane crash having tested positive six months before they would have been counted. However, in Scottishland, Wales, and Northern Ireland they only count if they tested positive in the last 28 days. As of tomorrow England is going to change to the same method as the others so don’t be surprised to see the total number of deaths come down tomorrow.

Someone one the Isle of Wight was waited for their daughter to finish her dance lesson and went for a walk on the beach. While doing so they kicked what they thought was an odd-shaped stone which the picked up and took home. Over the following weekend they thought it could be a vertebra from a dinosaur so they took it to a museum. It was found to be from a new species, a smaller relative of T. rex. I hear that someone else has contacted the museum today who picked up another vertebra in the same place.

I understand that a number of the Facebook pages belonging to Extinction Rebellion have been “unpublished” and they are not very happy. Southampton XR complained and Facebook have reinstated their page, saying that they were removed by accident when a whole load had committed offences against Facebook regulations. XR say it’s not fair shutting them down, but I didn’t hear them complain when “right-wingers” like NHRN have had the same treatment.

There was a bit of fun in the Scottishland Parliament today. As the new leader of the Scottishland Conservatives, Hugh Ross, is a Westminster MP he can’t take part in First Ministers Questions. Instead, Ruth Davidson asked the questions for the Opposition and by all accounts it was a glorious comeback, firstly putting Wee Krankie on the back foot and then she laid into John Swinney the Education Secretary and all his inadequacies. I understand Swinney is to face a vote of confidence tomorrow and this can’t have done home much good.

Looks like this could be my last night sleeping outdoors. There are thunderstorms and heavy rain forecast for tomorrow and I don’t want to get my fur wet!

Thursday

I was woken up in the middle of the night by rain. Fortunately, it wasn’t too heavy and I was nice and dry under the bushes. Anyway, I slept well and was back by the time Wilf woke the rest of them up.

It’s A level and BTEC results day. Those getting BTECs all seem to be happy with their grades, probably because they are mainly based on continual assessment over the length of the course so the students mostly know what is coming. The same cannot be said for the A-level results, lots of unhappy students here. Lots of the grades given by teachers have been reduced by the results algorithm. I suppose if it was just the odd one being reduced by one grade then the results would be acceptable, but that not what has happened. When you hear about a whole group of students at one school where they where all predicted to get C all being reduced to U does seem to be a bit odd. I think we will be hearing a lot more about these A-level results with a lot of pressure to do the same as the Scottishland results.

Bozzie has flown off to Northern Ireland this morning where he is having talks with the new Irish Teashop Micheal Martin for the first time since he took the position. Martin and Bozzie bumped elbows as a COVID-19 compliant greeting. Martin was hopeful of a trade agreement with the EU being signed, saying he thought that a “Landing Zone” was in sight. So just which side is going to blink first?

Grunt Shatts, fresh out of quarantine from his highly foreshortened Spanish holiday, flew up to Scottishland to visit the site of the Stonehaven train crash. He said the site was horrendous and there would be a full enquiry. But isn’t there always an enquiry into any train accident? I thought it was automatic.

In today’s coronavirus news, apart from the UK death numbers going down by over 5000 because of the revised counting method, today’s only 18 new deaths were announced by the NHS all of which had underlying conditions bar one who was 86. Even without the reduction in death numbers today we have been overtaken in numbers by India. A new track and trace app is going to be tested on the Isle of Wight. AstraZeneca have signed more agreements to licence the Oxford vaccine to Mexico and Argentina who can make up to 250 million doses. They will not have to pay a licence fee while there is still a pandemic.

I read that a Vietnamese freighter, MV Global Six, carrying a load of rice has run aground in the Philippines. The accident appears to have been caused by the officer of the watch falling asleep at the wheel. I wonder just how often this happens and the officer gets away with it because the ship is in open ocean and doesn’t hit anything.

The 15th August is the 75 Anniversary of the surrender of Japan in World War 2 and a two minutes silence is to be held at 11 am during a service with the Prince of Wales in attendance at National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire, which will be followed by an RAF flyover. The Americans will not be joining in as they recognise 2nd September as the end of hostilities with Japan as that is the day that the official surrender documents were signed on the US battleship Missouri.

The Highland Council has decided to install trowels in 90 lay-bys for people who need an urgent toilet break. It seems that public toilets are few and far between in the Highlands, but they will also be putting up signs directing people to the nearest toilets. The idea is for people to dig holes and bury their waste. The council actually have just over 100 lay-bys but could only source 90 trowels so its hard luck if you stop at one without a trowel!

Friday

Well, I’m glad I changed my mind and slept indoors last night as it rained a bit in the night. It was not as hot either and I was around begging for breakfast as soon as the humans appeared. Bozzie gave me a few cat snacks to keep me happy before breakfast.

This morning the main story seems to be about France going back on the quarantine list at 4 am tomorrow morning. It has been mooted for some time but it was only announced at my bedtime last night. There are lots of Brits on holiday in France and quite a few have been rushing to try to get home in time to avoid going into quarantine. But there are not a lot of seats available on any method of transport and they have all put their prices up. France were not alone, also added The Netherlands, Aruba, Malta, Monaco and the Turks and Caicos islands but not so much fuss about them.

So we have signed up with two more vaccine makers today for another 90 million doses. We now have signed up for enough vaccine to give everyone in the UK 5 doses and have some left over. The UN is asking “rich” nations not to sign up for more vaccine than they need so that the poor nations have a chance. I think we have just said bollocks in so many words to the UN.

Since England changed the way it counts coronavirus deaths to bring it in line with the rest of the UK the daily numbers of deaths continues to fall. Only 11 deaths were recorded today. In contrast the number of positive tests is on the rise. This seems to be related to the increased number of tests throwing up cases which are so mild that they would have otherwise have gone unnoticed. The fact that the number of cases needing hospital treatment is also decreasing supports this theory.

Hammersmith Bridge is in more trouble. It has been shut to cars, buses and lorries for some time due to cracks being found in its structure. Now it has been found that the recent warm weather has worsened the condition of the structure and it was closed last night to even pedestrians without any notice being given. This morning walkers, joggers and even cyclists were turning up and finding the bridge closed off by barriers. Some couldn’t be bothered to make a detour and just moved the barriers out of the way and carried on.

People in one area of Liverpool, Litherland, have been complaining that giant rats have appeared in the area. A man has posted a video online of a caged huge brown rat that he caught in his house. I must say the rat looks to be much bigger than the ones I occasionally catch round here. I am not sure I could take on rats as big as that, it is nearly as big as me! Time to get the Mutt doing the job his breed is famed for. The council says that there isn’t a rat problem in the area but the evidence seems to contradict that. They are, however going to restart their rat baiting program in the areas. Mind you, that may not be of any use as I hear that similar giant rats in Milton Keynes are immune to poisons and make a meal of it.

Saturday

I am happier this morning as it is much cooler, I even slept well. However, there is heavy rain and thunder & lightning forecast for this afternoon so I shall not be going out in it. It was yummy chicken flavour Felix in my bowl this morning, so all told it’s off to a good day. Bozzie was up early for a Saturday as he was off to Staffordshire for the VJ Day celebrations. He had another new suit on and recited the poem “For The Fallen”. He has been practising hard to do it from memory because he didn’t want to have to read it.

This morning the TV is full of people who have rushed home from France to avoid going into 2 weeks quarantine. Lots of them complaining that they only got just over 24 hours notice of the change in regulations. However, I understand that if Wee Krankie and Mark Ducks and Drakeford had got their way they would have only have had a couple of hours notice. Bozzie’s lot and the big fat Irish woman told them they were being unreasonable and insisted on that extra day.

I see the WPC Dicks, whom I wrote about on Monday, has been found guilty. We now have to wait to see what her punishment is.

The row over the A-level results continues with lots of youngsters complaining that they have been downgraded by two, three and even four levels. The Government seems to be quite resolute in that it’s not going to change its mind and accept the recommendations of teachers as the Scots have. If schools decide to appeal results the Government has said it will pay the fees. However, the pressure is building from Tory backbenchers and I think that something might happen before the GCSE results come out on Thursday.

Another step in the coronavirus battle this morning. Casinos, Bowling Alleys, Ice Rinks and Child Soft Play areas were allowed to open from midnight. In addition, theatres were allowed to open but with very strict conditions on social distancing for both performers and audiences. Ladies will also be happy as beauticians are now allowed to work on their faces but only if masked. Some casinos were very anxious to get back into business and eight in London opened up at one minute past midnight. I understand there were long queues of gamblers waiting outside and that business was good.

The number of positive coronavirus tests was down a bit today but is still averaging just over 1000 a day for the past week. However, the number of deaths was down again and was only three for the whole of the UK bringing the rolling daily average down to 13 for the past seven days. This certainly seems to back up the claims that the more people you test the more cases you find. But the cases you find are the ones that are very mild and do not need hospital treatment.

The Irish tourism industry has really been suffering in these coronavirus times and Irish people have been urged to avoid non-essential travel and to holiday at home. But the chairman of the Irish Tourism Authority, Micheal Crawley, has chosen to ignore his own advice and has gone on a family holiday to Italy. Details of his holiday emerged this morning and with hours he had resigned.

Right oh, that’s another week over and I’m off to see what’s for supper. Chat to you again on Monday.
 

©️ WorthingGooner 2020
 

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