We're all going on a summer holiday

[MinnieMountain]

Even if it means 2 weeks of quarantine
The anti -dementors are here to be reasonable and sensible about everything.

8 would surely be a more practical number than 6 due to the numbers of 2 children families. Not that it helps 3 child familes, but 6 is more than two families of two parents and their average 1.9 children each. I suppose I could leave DS2 behind as being the smaller child, he makes up the 0.9 nicely

Back in a pragmatic real world, you'd have to be a particularly Vogony dementor, with well-clutched pearls and very twisted knickers to object to a gathering of two families with children. The tone I get from Whitty and Valance at the briefings is that is the guide, they have to draw the line somewhere, and use your brains to deal with the small print.

I suppose that by the time you get to the teenagers hanging out stage, 6 from 6 househoĺds is plenty enough mixing.

The problem is you can't have too many caveats as you'd never cover everything and people can garble even the most basic of messages.

Anyway, I'm off for a picnic. Which will do more social harm, ham and pickle sandwiches or falafels?

Whatever number of people they settled on would not suit everybody - that's not possible. I am glad it will be a benefit for those that it is - particularly single people, single parents and only children.

I watched the news for the first time in weeks (just to get a summary of the briefing) and yes, the BBC really have sunk to Daily Mail levels. It’s very bizarre.

KaronAVyrus that's exactly what DH said. Clive Mirie's mournful tone was just too much.

I’m sure they chose six because they know many people are going to push it bit and exceeding six by two or three is still a small enough number of people meeting.

Going to catch up on the thread in a bit but just wanted to say congrats to @TrustTheGeneGenie
Really happy for you!!!

In Scotland they said 8 but that was guidance only so if you had 10 or 12 still ok.

Yeah bbc news sucks. Full of fear. The6 shouldn’t be doing this

Fearing the nation

But haven't Scotland said that it's 8, but only from one household, and although it's 6 here, it's not limited to households?

I may have got this wrong, I really was expecting a bit more tonight so am feeling a bit shit.

Congratulations Genie!

I am going to contact my sister and see if she wants to meet up with us. I will even drive into London and spend a fortune on parking if I need to - desperate to see her and with her, her DH and my family we make up the magic 6!

Me too, it's the disadvantage of being a rule bending dangerous buffoon, every time they loosen the restrictions I think, fucks sake, I'm already doing that!!

Do you think little kids count in the six? I would like to have a family over to play in the garden, but if you count the one and three year olds it's eight. If you only count 4 years old and above, it's 6...

I may have to use my instincts as a parent to overrule the rules.

Hmm, the quote thing didn't work. I was replying to this from @AnxiousElephant77

I may have got this wrong, I really was expecting a bit more tonight so am feeling a bit shit.

I do wonder what the infection rate has been in respect of 'blended' families. Although I stopped the dc from going to their dad's initially against the guidance, as I was a bit of dementor myself to start with, they've been going as normal for the past 2 weeks.

So that's us 4, then their dads family of 5, and his stepchildren's family. So we're up to 11. My fiancé has gone to work as normal throughout, although socially distancing.

All of us well.

Across 2 counties.

@TrustTheGeneGenie congratulations on the new job.

@SirSamuelVimesBlackboardMonito you're ahead of the curve. Tonights briefing was very disappointing. And Boris's refusal to talk about DC a big gamble.

@AnxiousElephant77 me too. Unfortunately I'm now feeling rebellious. I work in risk so will do my own risk assessment and act accordingly.

I think they should open playgrounds now, with the same idea of washing hands afterwards.

Another dangerous rule bending buffoon here. Although currently there is only one person that I am 'illegally' meeting with. I continue to argue that it is for the good of mine and dcs mental health, as well as that of my friend.

Yes to playgrounds

I can't wait until they open the playgrounds. The local school can take that awful tape off the play equipment then.

I've had a really sad day. Don't really know why, just felt really down all day. A bit cheered by being able to legitimately see my mum and stepdad at their house DD is 15m and will be buffooning around the garden with zero cares for social distancing and I don't care ..... and Rioja is helping too.

Yes to playgrounds opening!

Some Scottish councils are opening car parks at country parks and waiving charges... well done Angus.

I'm fairly happy with today's announcement, my 4 year old is officially going back and when I meet my friends now I'm only very slightly bending the rules because one of my friends has 3 children and I have 2 so that's 7. We can also have the in-laws over for a BBQ so it will be nice to see them at last.

I would like to know when pubs will reopen because of my job but that might be discussed in a few weeks. I don't know when we will be allowed to stay overnight somewhere, I have no plans yet anyway but I will be going to stay with my mum at the end of July so if things go in the right direction then it could be allowed which will be better than breaking the rules.

We are cancelling our holiday overseas to see my dad in October even though it will probably be allowed because we aren't sure how much of a holiday we will get. We haven't been since 2016 so when we do have chance for a holiday we want to do it properly which will be better for the kids. We are looking at May next year now which isn't that much further away, we are used to not seeing each other in person much anyway so it's not going to be any different. On the plus side the children will be another 6 months older so things have the potential to be easier.

It can't be easy if you are shielding watching everyone start to return to normal whilst you are stuck but hopefully the quicker we can get everyone mingling with success then the sooner they can come out and have a much lower risk.

Yes, please open playgrounds. Our local dementors have been complaining about kids on the play equipment. It's not fenced off from the rest of the park so have been keeping out of the park full stop as dd is too little to understand. When she is back in nursery next week I'll be taking ds up to play footie. Will be using the goal posts as well.

Well looking at weather no rain for two months I wonder if we will be looking at water shortages further into the summer. Driest May on record and no rain in April here either.

Neighbour social distancing this afternoon was nice to catch up with them. There is a wedding anniversary on Saturday so we are going to split some bubbly to mark the occasion.

We had a garden meeting of 7 but various family members kept popping in and out so was mainly 6

( not that I give a flying fuck anyway)

Queue along sea front for ice creams was humongous, so drove 30 seconds away from sea front to spar and grandson got himself a dairy milk ice cream on a stick for £1-10;
Bargain
No queues