Line-ups continue

Needing a few food items, I had to go to the grocery store. The line-up stretched a long way but there are not that many in line. Note the large gaps between waiting customers. Although I am well back in the parking lot, there are only about half a dozen folk ahead of me.

A note about No Frills. It is a discount grocery store. The plain white colour with big splashes of bright yellow convey the impression of cheap and the yellow is reminiscent of some of the least expensive products in the store. These  products, made especially for No Frills, come in plain yellow containers with simply black lettering.

Cars are not being driven. Result? An oil glut.

Yesterday the price of a barrel of U.S. crude fell into negative territory for the first time in history. Stockpiles of oil have overwhelmed storage facilities. Buyers were being offered something like $38 U.S. to take the oil off the hands of the sellers. Totally weird.

Take a look at parking lots. Compared to how they looked a couple of months ago, they are empty. People are not driving, planes are not flying, and oil is not being used. But the air is cleaner.

Rabbits have invaded

This self-isolation means no granddaughters keeping eyes peeled for rabbits in the yard eating budding tulips. And that translates into no blooming tulips this spring. None. Nada. Nothing. Zero.

Oh well, without the girls yelling "Rabbit Stew" and running outside hands waving, the little monsters have taken up residence at our kitchen dining-nook window. No point on doing any yelling after the blooms have been eaten.

The rabbits seem to be having as much fun watching us as we do watching them.

Front line workers go to work for us; we stay home for them.

There are no crowds out protesting social distancing and the temporary shutting down of many businesses in London. And to many of us, the workers who are still going to work are not lucky but brave.

The sentiment expressed on this sign, thank you to all the front line workers, is one commonly encountered. This is a tough moment and it seems everyone is trying to get onboard, cooperate and successfully see this pandemic through.

A comment reprinted from the group FB page

I joined this group because I love cities. Always have. To see what this new virus, the coronavirus, has done to our cities, to our way of life, amazes me. It has put so much under the microscope, so to speak, and what I believe we are finding is not good. 

This is an awful virus but it could be a lot worse. We, the world, is actually getting off rather lightly. We have to learn from this. We have to tighten up; we have to improve a lot of our systems. The next pandemic may be the bad one, the one that attacks everyone and just the old(er) and frail. 

I cannot believe, that there are people who don't understand that social distancing is not just for their protection, especially if they are younger, but one practises it for the protection of the seniors in their lives. Protest social distancing, gather in a big, tightly packed group, pick up the virus and take it home to mom and dad, to grandma and grandpa. 

Talk about the complete antithesis to how to run a proper urban civilization. I shake my head. (But I am proud of those who have given this their full support despite the difficulties, and the great unkowns - many people, and companies, are to be commended. There are a lot of fine citizens out there.

The comment above was a follow-up to my comments that accompanied the above charts which I posted to the Daily Photo FB page. These are but part of the information released and updated daily by the Australian government. Note the amount of illness spread out through the population and then not the deaths. The deaths are all among seniors, those from about 55 up. The peak for deaths is among those in their 80s. Just talking about the death without attaching sex and age group information is almost meaningless.

More comes from around the world than just the corona virus

 

I smiled as I put out tonight's dinner. More than just the coronavirus comes to us from around the world, I thought. The basmati rice came from India, the garlic from California, the lemon came also from the States, the yellow sweet pepper and asparagus from Mexico and the rainbow trout came from Chile. Only the tomatoes were local, grown in a hot house an hour southwest of London.

Why even the plate came from outside the country: Portugal. Thankfully the coronavirus has not made an appearance in our home and we hope it never does.

Kids now doing school work online

I was on Facebook when I heard a computer beep and a flashing light on my computer monitor indicated I had a message. Before I knew it I had my granddaughter on the screen, a little image in the bottom right corner showing the image that I was transmitting and I was having an online chat with my youngest granddaughter.

The little girl and her older sister are now doing their school work online. They are using a program called BlueStacks. BlueStacks works with Facebook and so with her school work done, the kid tried calling Judy and me. It wasn't perfect but it worked well enough. I now have BlueStacks loaded and I'll see how our online chats go in the future.