Anti Dementors picnic at the Loch.

[TheGreatWave]

Starting a new one.

Just planned a major slaughter for Sunday. DS2 is emigrating early July and we haven't seen him and his GF since Christmas. They had a wedding planned for mid June and are still hoping they can get married but it's still up in the air until the next announcement. We are driving 2.5 hours to where they leave for a park meet up - they are in a tiny flat. Just waiting for them to suggest a suitable location. Can't wait.

It's OK Nihhloxica, my DNA is set to save all mankind

Phew found you

Had a productive morning hiding fb dementors 😴

My main take away re disaster movies is that they all fail to show just how much washing up is involved in a pandemic

On Facebook I mean!

Not literally hiding them in cupboards etc 🤣

weedsnseeds a friend of mine visited her daughter in NZ back in February, flying via Singapore as they started to get cases. Her other daughter and son in law flew from China, where they work, to meet up too. They are a family that not only gets every bug going but also get things badly - it's a standing joke that they keep a hospital bed ready for them. They managed not to infect New Zealand and didn't have a sniffle between them. I met up with her a few days after she got back and I'm still here.

Hiding them in cupboards sounds fun though.

CountryGirl There are more people like me? So we can set up a small community of survivors in a big country house somewhere then?

@barkandcheese actually you can find figures of the number of children that die from normal pneumonia in a year but it's not readily available ( and it is more than have died of covid-19) but it is a small proportion of child deaths which are mostly accidents ( a child died in Edinburgh because a wall in the school gym collapsed on her)

@Nihiloxica I agree with what you are saying. I'm furloughed and am hating the venom being spouted towards the furloughed. It's really affecting my mental wellbeing. Feel battered by it, plus feeling pretty crap that I'm unwanted by my work - that's my own insecurities coming through, but still it's how I'm feeling.

I need back to work - I've worked since I left school, with 2 periods of maternity leave. I need the mental stimulation, I need to earn my own money. I need to not worry as much about being made redundant, yes, I'm worried about childcare, especially as the current thought here seems like part time learning in August. But I will cross that bridge when I get to it, I hopefully would be able to work one day at home ( I'm part time working 3 days).

The dementors don't want to know about how being furloughed is actually pretty rubbish for a lot of people. And instead delight in putting the boot in.

Real life dementor spotting to report. Been to M&S for nice treat food as I'm fed up cooking. Women wearing gloves and a face mask. Hissing at people who got too close despite everyone being very good at minding their space.

Woman constantly touching mask, pulling it up, pulling it down, cornering mouth but not nose, pulling all the covers off the ready meals to check the contents before deciding which one of the identical 25 she wanted. Needed to ask where something was and shrieked NOT TOO CLOSE!! at the poor staff member.

People have really gone nuts.

Found you again thank the lord.

I live overseas where we have to wear masks when we leave the house.

The stazi dementors are DIALING 999 if they see someone without a mask.

I am usually a positive and optimistic person but ye gods these are testing times.

Domina “ I normally go in by train but they’re doing compulsory face covering ”

Shit, I didn’t think anyone in the UK had made these compulsory.

I just saw someone out running in the woods wearing a mask. I did wonder if they were wearing one because they were worrying about catching covid or because they were sick of dementors complaining about runners huffing germs everywhere.

There are some figures on general child pneumonia deaths here...
statistics.blf.org.uk/pneumonia

In 2012, of the 28,952 deaths from pneumonia:

58 were among those aged 0–14 years of age;
1,374 were among those aged 15–64; and
27,520 were among those aged 65 and above.

it also says

"In 2012, a significantly higher proportion of people developed pneumonia in the East Midlands and the North West of England than in the UK generally"

"In 2012, pneumonia was around 45% more common in the most deprived quintile of society than the least deprived. This difference has been fairly consistent over recent years"

Sorry I'll stop now. Similar pattern though isn't it. It is also associated with diabetes too.

Sockyarn I had the same last time in M&S!

But mine was a middle aged man in a mask, he hissed at me and ran away!

Sock just curious, was this in London?

just I hope you feel better soon.

Lots of children get pneumonia. I think a lot of the Covhysterics have never heard of illness.

I keep seeing people in their own cars wearing masks and gloves.

My mum was making masks, she sent me some so I stick one in my pocket just in case. I’ve only worn it once - to see if I can pull faces at my DH without him seeing. He can

No, @LilacTree1, Glasgow. Unlike most of the other supermarkets round here, M&S doesn't have a one way system or anything on the floor asking you to socially distance. Staff not wearing masks, except for the lad at the bakery counter.

All very civilised, apart from the hissing mask dementor. (And even better, when I got to the till I realised one of the packs of chicken I had picked up had no bar code, rang for help and hte manager told me just to take it free of charge. Clearly couldn't be arsed looking for the code).

The head spoke to me at drop off this morning and confirmed the arrangements for after half term. His main concern was that I sent both boys in full time, as it doesn't work for them if people dip in and out (they had been going in 4 days).

Y5 - 6 key worker pupils, in their own bubble, taught by their usual teacher. Focus on 11+ preparation. Though who knows when the 11+ might happen - normally 1500 children descend on the grammar school in a single morning - unlikely to be possible even in September.

Y2 - bubbled with Y3, so about 10 key worker pupils in total and taught by two teachers on a rota basis - neither of which is his usual teacher (she's shielding), but both are very nice and have previously taught my older son.

It's bloody fantastic. I'm delighted. My Y2 boy is more than ready for juniors so it's also great news that they have bubbled with the year above rather than the year below.

So sensible, no drama, just getting on with it.

Has anyone else seen the travellingtabby.com site? It has coronavirus stats for Scotland. I think it is my patronus. Because it's got actual figures and not a load of dement-y shite about "not being through the peak yet".

Sock ah, okay.

Good news re the free chicken!

Just to add, she’s not going to Cambridge, but other unis are likely to do the same

That’s not what’s being planned by DD’s London university. They’re looking at online for the first term only. They haven’t figured out how to get the interaction with the online stuff yet, but they’ve got four months to sort it.

If I knew someone who had an undergrad offer for a year of online teaching I’d be advising them to defer for a year. I think what's planned is poor value for money, even with face-to-face tutorials.

Apparently there’s a suggestion that some universities will go under because of cash flow problems caused by deferrals.