ADs drinking al fresco at The Sleeping Swans

[BogRollBOGOF]

ADs, grab your thermals, long johns and winter woolies, we're finally off to drown our sorrows at the Sleeping Swan!

Sorry meant "just because you can doesn't mean you should"

I think if you can then you bloody well should. Have to be honest and say I’m completely over pandering to the pathetic now. Get a fucking grip! I text one of my friends last night to say hurrah, the local Next has opened their fitting rooms. She text back to say that’s terrifying, it’s too soon. She’s same age as me and a damn sight fitter and healthier. What the fuck has she got to be so scared of!

YY @LivinLaVidaLoki Pubs and restaurants will have ordered/taken delivery of their perishable food like fish and chicken. The "just a few more weeks" brigade seem happy to risk food waste

What on Earth is there to be scared about in changing rooms being open? Given we tend to go into cubicles on our own I cannot see how this is a covid risk at all. It's all a bit mad! When things open up next week I intend to take advantage of it, just in case it is all snatched away again! My oldest needs a bra fitting and I want to take my little ones to soft play.

Who knows! To be honest I suspect she has a bit of health anxiety. Always watching hospital programmes and being “scared to death” whenever someone our age has health issues. It’s really quite sad.

@smallandimperfectlyformed mirrors.

The mirrors in changing rooms scare the shit out of me.

Well the mirrors are definitely scary to me atm!! It is sad though when people who don't have many/serious health issues become very anxious about covid or any other virus. I can understand if you or a family member had a serious health problem this would be very frightening but I have less understanding when there is little to no reason. Not no understanding because I am not a cow and it must be horrible to live like that, but I am certainly less willing to live under restrictions because someone is a bit worried!!

Have to confess to doing a double take at my reflection. Still seem to be the same size but am sure bits of me have relocated. And not in a good way.

I don’t understand her fear but she likes to be very much in control of her life. A restricted diet, set exercise on set days, won’t entertain any ad hoc plans so something unpredictable like Covid is probably completely out of her comfort zone. It’s a shame because she’s a lovely person and I hate to see her so terrified of a virus that is unlikely to be a threat to her.

[quote LivinLaVidaLoki]@smallandimperfectlyformed mirrors.

The mirrors in changing rooms scare the shit out of me.[/quote]
DM always covered or kept well away from mirrors during lightning. I remind myself that she had minimal scientific education and her mum/ grandma, none.

Went into town today. Mainly pokemon hunting but also to get the DCs new school shoes. It's a street-facing shop on a side street which makes life easier. I loitered in the doorway and conversation was as pleasant as ever, and the shop's small enough that it didn't feel awkward there. Ds2 is bigger than DS1 and one size smaller than my sandals.

Good to see town looking alive, and the first time the far end has not been dead for a long time. I went 16th March last year before any official measures and it was already devoid of office workers.

Pleased to see Leicester City win. They deserve some feel-good factor. I loved the hugging frenzy at the end

Sacha Lord has been assaulted.

twitter.com/Sacha_Lord/status/1393686406237675520?s=20

That's disgraceful @MercyBooth

Our poor country, such open hatred and dividedness. (Not sure if I’ve invented that last word?)

Someone on the welsh thread thinks me seeing my elderly neighbours indoors is breaking the rulz, despite the fact she is celebrating soft play for kids, really show me the evidence that I am a greater risk than rug rats (who I adore by the way)

Things are seeming as mad as last year at this time now.

I’m feeling so uneasy about the way normal, everyday life is setting up to change in the world and how little I feel able to control it. It’s horrible and I am having trouble trying to reconcile my own thoughts and fears about how things are going to be going forward. I really really don’t want to live the rest of my life under these conditions, anyone else?

Rather naively I thought that with an apparently successful vaccination programme and the promised easing of restrictions this summer, the covid fear would start to subside and more people would get back enough of their lives to mean proper resistance to any future suggestions of lockdowns and restrictions. But the latest Boris and the Doom crew announcement has shown that too many are still feeding from the fear train and will happily be accepting the upcoming propaganda trail all the way up to more restrictions and lockdowns.

I have also been reading about the new EU health pass which begins on 9th June. Thankfully they have not gone as far as making them a vaccine passport but everyone must now have one to access normal life and it will now record that you are either fully vaccinated OR have recovered from covid in the past 2 months OR have had a negative pcr test within the last 72 hours of whatever it is that you are trying to access. Interestingly, it seems each EU country are applying this pass to different parts of normal life to each other. France, for example, have said that there must not be a two tier society and so the health pass will not be applied to everyday things such as shopping, going to the hairdressers, to the cinema or restaurants. It will instead be required for larger scale events like theatre shows, large gatherings for exhibitions or sport events. Austria looks the opposite and is applying it to eating out or going to the hairdressers!

BUT I don’t want to live my life like this! As I am not in a risk group and have had and recovered from covid with no issues, I didn’t really want to be vaccinated at the moment. But equally, I feel forced to think about it because otherwise I will forever be queuing up at a lab to get a swab shoved up my nose just so I can go to an exhibition! This forced coercion really puts me off more. In addition, I think it looks inevitable that they will be vaccinating children and I really don’t agree to that when there is no risk to them of covid and yet unknown risks of having a new vaccine. I believe this because the “health pass” is for all persons over the age of 11.
Unless those aged 12-18 are equally going to be at the lab getting swabbed every other day just so they can participate in school or club events, it is obvious to me that the powers that be have already decided that children will be vaccinated.

As I said at the start, it just feels that this really is going to be the “new normal” and it won’t just fade away after another year or so when covid becomes endemic across the world and I feel so unhappy and powerless about it. Most of all though, I don’t want this world for my DC either. I want them to have the freedom of travel and life exploration they should have without forever being treated like they are disease carrying lower humans.

If anyone has any suggestions as to how I can accept and get over this and move on I would be most grateful because right now I can’t shake this horrible uneasy feeling that there really is a higher plan behind all of this and our lives are just never going to be the same again!

I can’t help @Lostinacloud as I agree with you and am feeling very wobbly.

I’m in Scotland and already Glasgow has been kept in lockdown for another week “cos new variant.”

I got vaccinated just to be able to get out and about as it was sold as the answer. I’m feeling duped.

It's one of the reasons I am hesitating. I am still on the fence for jabbing.

@WouldBeGood the Glasgow and Moray thing is ludicrous and so unfair to all the people and businesses. I think it will go the same way in the hotspots of England as well before long!

I’m in France and we’re only just getting over the sodding Kent variant so we still have all of this next variant crap to come at some point! It just seems so conveniently timed in the uk and also, whilst the hospital figures are not backing up the scaremongering, re-imposed restrictions are happily put in place again.

I am absolutely gutted that the friends and family we had planned to finally be able to see after over a year will likely not be able to come all because Boris and Nicola et al never had any intention of letting overseas holidays go ahead. It’s playing havoc with my mental health but in some ways it’s making me even more determined not to have the vaccine because it’s the last sodding bit of defiance and control i feel I have against the tyrany!

It is horrible @Lostinacloud

And even more depressing here is the acolytes lapping up being “kept safe” by Nicola and shouting for ongoing border closures

I haven't been on here for a while, but my dsis has just booked a table at a well known restaurant chain and they asked if we are all vaccinated? Wtf? Are they going to ask for proof? ( she thins I've had mine but I'm holding back)

It’s crazy to me @dingit. Why do we have to tell all and sundry our medical history? And once most of the vulnerable people have been vaccinated, along with anyone else who chooses to do so for whatever their own personal reason is, why does it matter anymore who is walking around or sitting at a table with mild covid? I say mild because anyone with a heavier dose would be at home not feeling like going out anyway. Covid has surely then become only as dangerous as any other winter respiratory virus and we’ve never had to do all this crap to prove we didn’t have a common cold before booking a restaurant!

So Glasgow is locked up still, didn't know that and Restaurant chain asking for vaccine data which is nuts IMO

I'm glad I got my first vaccine before some of this ramped up, and so much of this undermines the positives of the vaccine.

I've ordered a sunflower lanyard to avoid aggro in some non-essential situations. I don't really like appropriating the scheme for this, but I avoided indoor things July- Oct last year that I could have done and I'm tired of compromising myself like this.

We've made our bookings to visit the ILs. MiL is apparently OK to have DH and I in the house as we'll be double vaccinated... but the 8 & 10 yos will have to stay in the garden... Yet there's been a photo of a teenage cousin inside...
Err yeah, like that's going to work! IL top trumps has become more evident in the past 10 years or so, but it's pretty galling when we're paying €€€€ to go over and that's our holiday for the year. I can handle sitting in the garden, but two-tier visiting like that is not fair on the DCs.
For all the saving grannies comments over the past year or so, my two did get a short straw in the doting grannies department, and on both sides neither has much more than polite interest in the kids. (Probably why I lean towards over-sharing as their needs consume a large part of my life and no one in RL is particularly interested and I need to express it somewhere).

That's really sad BogRollBOGOF I wouldn't want to take my children there in those circumstances (but I am not judging you if you do take them). My girls have only one living grandparent and thankfully she is a nice one but that is rubbish for you. Share away here about your boys, I am interested!Yesterday there was a picture on Twitter of Joe Biden outside without a mask, all of the adults didn't have masks on but there was a little boy who didn't look older than 9 to me wearing a mask. The way we have treated children over this is despicable!

@ISaySteadyOn Me too