You get some bargains in the supermarket. I got a bottle of Talisker recently for£24 in Waitrose, next time I went there it was£40. For those with loadsamoney you can get the more exclusive brands for£800 from a little off license in the City. I'm told that it "flies off the shelf" when it comes in.
I don't mind a drop of a nice single malt, but super exclusive bottles at £800 a pop is way, way out of my league. Besides, I can't believe it would taste 20 times as good as my favoured tipple, to justify it being 20 times as expensive. Diminishing returns are strictly for those with silly money.
Why all the excitement about holidays abroad? The state of Europe with Covid, why do all these people need to go there? And with quarantining on return being purely optional it's asking for the third wave to "Wash up on our shores". I know Cornwall is fully booked, but there are plenty of other fantastic places to go without going outside the UK.
I've never understood the modern obsession with foreign holidays. Like massive gas guzzling, £200 per-tyre four wheel drive 'sports utility vehicles' and £1,000 smart phones that must be discarded for the newest model every 12 months, air travel is absolute poison to the environment of Planet Earth. As bad as the millions of tons of plastic waste in the oceans. People only want to get serious about saving the planet when it does not put a crimp on their lifestyle. I've only ever flown twice in my life, as part of my work about 15 years ago. I have a smart phone, but it's a cheap one. And I was only effectively forced to buy it recently because the software on my older phone was no longer going to be supported. And I'm going to be penalised soon for driving a 16 year old car (well looked after and serviced) rather than buying or leasing a new car every few years. We have some pretty strange ideas about sustainability in this country. (sorry, strayed a bit off-topic. The pandemic really has cleaned up the skies though. People living under the airport flight paths must be thankful).
I largely agree, apart from foreign holidays being a strictly modern obsession, which my pedantry takes issue with.
We booked a June holiday in the Scilly Isles last year, together with both kids and their partners, which thank goodness scrapes into the regulations for that month.
I was referring to the availability of cheap air travel to Spain and that kind of sunny destination. How long has that been going on? Around 50 years at a guess. I recall comedies like 'Carry On' and 'Are you being served' (the movie) as well as a TV comedy called 'don't drink the water' back in the 1970's? All taking the mick out of cheap hols to Spain or the Islands. Maybe it's snobbish of me, but I always thought those shows were laughing at moronic Brits getting sunburnt and food-poisoned on holiday at jerry-built concrete hotels (and thinking they were having a good time) rather than the poor foreigners who had to put up with us.
Have to admit I'm partial to the odd foreign holiday, but not to the likes of Spain or Greek islands etc. I prefer US national parks (or theme parks ). But wouldn't dream of going abroad at the moment during the pandemic - I think that's madness. Nothing wrong with holidays in this country - Lake district, Wales, Isle of Wight, Norfolk, New Forest, North Yorkshire moors to name but a few.
I hope to go to my flat in Scarborough when my Wife can travel. Haven’t been there for over a year and a half. I really love it up there.
A 15-year-old in-law was sent home from school recently with a persistent cough and a high temperature. She was given a swab test for Covid which was positive. Other family members were given similar tests which were negative, so she was given another swab test- positive again. She was then given the more accurate PCR test, which proved to be negative. So I'd sat that the government estimate of 1 in 1,000 tests being inaccurate may be optimistic.
So, have we finally beaten Covid ? New cases today at just 1,730 and new deaths at 7. We haven't seen those sorts of figures since very early September 2020 and we didn't have vaccines then. Surely with over 60% having had the first jab and many many more now getting the second jab, plus newer vaccines about to come on line and boosters promised to tackle any new variants, all the evidence says we've got it beaten doesn't it ? Not suggesting we take risks and unlock too early, but surely we'll be rid of this thing soon. If so, huge huge thanks to the scientists and researchers who created the vaccines. We can only imagine what would have happened if that hadn't been possible. Probably 10's of millions of lives lost worldwide.