Well that was an exhausting day. And I have five more to go. Of course it didn’t help that I had the #QBLockdownHunt thing to do as well.
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it all. Please to tell your friends if you did. There must be some more people out there who would be willing to give a few pounds to help One25.
Here’s the link to the fundraiser.
I have no idea what is happening back in the UK. I hope Bozo doesn’t manage to destroy the country before I get back.
Today started well. The weather was fine, the pollen count was low, and there were no urgent emails from clients. So I decided to go in search of hormones.
The car was a bit reluctant to start today, so I took a very circuitous route into town to get some charge into the battery. That’s probably contrary to one of the ever-changing Lockdown regulations, so if any of the “Gender Critical” mob are reading this, there’s your smoking gun. You can report me to the Authorities and have me taken away for re-education.
Boots was very quiet and the staff were very helpful. However, as all I had was an email copy of the prescription, they couldn’t fulfill it immediately. They need to phone my doctor and confirm that they are the only people I have approached. When they get that confirmation, they can order the hormones. But in order to find out if they have had confirmation I need to be able to get through to them on the phone, which is easier said than done. If I can’t get through after a few days I will have to go back and see them.
For some unexplained reason there was a massive queue at Tesco when I got there. It took forever to get in. They still didn’t have any flour, but I got a few things I needed for the Canada and France food list. There were a few more people wearing masks this time, including me, but we were still very much in the minority.
When I got back home there was a cement mixer blocking the road. I now have one neighbour and two people immediately across the road all having building work done. Being a builder is clearly a key occupation.
Well, that was another day of doing day job stuff and not getting out to hunt for hormones. Still, earning money is good.
On which subject, the government has launched its scheme for helping self-employed people through the period of Lockdown. They told the BBC that most people eligible for help have been contacted and invited to apply. But my tax account wrote to me this morning to say that no one is being contacted and we should get on and apply. So I thought I would give it a try and see what happened. Needless to say, I was found to be ineligible, and the reasons that they gave for turning me down were very obviously incorrect. Anyone who has had dealings with the Department of Work & Pensions over the last few years will not be in the least surpised. These days trying to get money that you are entitled to out of the government bears a striking ressemblance to trying to get an insurance company to pay out on a claim. I suspect that a lot of middle class people will get a terrible shock.
Anyway, as I said, I am getting some income. So no panic just yet.
Meanwhile I am pleased to say that I have met my initial target for the One25 fundraiser. I’ll be announcing a new target for the 6 days of the campaign tomorrow. In the meantime I should get back to developing things to entertain you good people.
Well, that plan didn’t last long. I got an urgent request from a client this morning, so I spent the day earning money rather than going out to search for hormones. Tomorrow, maybe.
Given that there is no football, the most popular sport in the UK at the moment seems to be competing to find how many times you can catch government ministers contradicting each other in one day. The official government strategy appears to be that if you give as many different pieces of advice as possible then one of them will turn out to be right and you can claim that was what you meant all along.
Another radio show has gone off to Ujima and should be with you at Noon on Wednesday. Enjoy!
I’ve also done some hours on the day job and more work on the One25 fundraiser, which I am pleased to see is now at 34% so we are one third of the way to the target. Keep it going, folks!
I got a paper acceptance for an online academic conference on queer history, which is also good.
And finally I have done an important piece of self-care. I have got a new prescription for hormones. I have a little while before I run out, but given the difficulty I had getting hold of them last time I’m taking no chances. Of course this means that I have to go to a pharmacy. Tesco do have one, but unless the woman pharmacist is on duty (and she seems to only do Mondays) I’ll probably get told that there’s nothing available. That means that I have to go to town tomorrow, for the first time in 60 days. I wonder if it will still be there?
I also wonder what the rules are. As someone sagely noted on Twitter this afternoon, the UK has gone from “masks are a waste of time” to “masks are compulsory” without the intervening step of “here are some masks you can buy”. I have scarves. It will be interesting to see what people’s attitudes are out there. Or, for that matter, whether any pharmacies are open.
Guess who almost forgot to do a post today?
In my defence, it has been a very busy day. I’ve had a radio show to produce, and I have been doing a lot of preparation for the One25 fundraiser. Both are going to be fabulous, even if I do say so myself.
I gather from the fury on Twitter this evening that Bozo the Clown has made some sort of announcement about getting the UK out of Lockdown, and that it is nonsensical PR spin rather than anything approaching a plan. No one should be surprised. The only way that Bozo could organise a piss up in a brewery is if he had a bunch of servants he could get to do the work for him. Which, of course, is often the case. Unfrotunately in this particular case all of the (civil) servants likely to do the work are telling him things that he doesn’t want to hear, so he’s having to sort things himself, with predictable consequences.
Thankfully I do not have to go back to work while maintaining social distance and avoiding public transport. I have plenty of work I can be doing at home. Those of you who are being sent out to die for the sake of Bozo’s stock portfolio have my deepest sympathy.
Huzzah! I have water again.
What I had forgotten since last time this happened is that the water main, although it is in my driveway, doesn’t just affect me. It affects the landlord’s house too. So he had a vested interest in getting things fixed. The deal was that he by-passed the letting agency, who are not answering their phone, and I managed the leak until an emergency plumber could get here. I ended up having to switch bowls every 15 minutes to avoid a flood, for four hours. But once the plumber got here it was simply a matter of experience and the right tools and he was done in 10 minutes. Phew!
Anyway, I have been doing some preparation for the One25 fundraiser, including recording a few things in advance and sorting through my photo library. I do hope you enjoy it (and please pledge). I’m certainly enjoying the food (by which I mean that I have TimTams).
Well, today has been additionally interesting.
First up I had to deal with a support question on one of the websites that I manage. It turned out to be much more complicated than I’d anticipated, and I’m currently waiting to hear back from the hosting service. Thankfully they are in the USA where it is not a bank holiday.
While I was in the middle of that I took a break to wash up after lunch and found a large puddle on the kitchen floor. It turned out that the cold tap on the kitchen sink was leaking. This is a known problem. It has done it before and the only way to fix it 100% would be to replace the entire sink unit, but the landlord is unlikely to want to pay to do that, so every so often I need to get a plumber to fix it.
The last time it happened was over Christmas in 2018. This time it happened on a bank holiday. This is a clear sign that Eris loves me.
It is relatively esay to deal with. I fill up some jugs with water, and turn off the water at the mains. The leak isn’t so bad that I can’t turn it back for an hour or so a couple of times a day when needed. The only issue is that the stopcock is outside, but at least the weather is decent. Doubtless a plumber will be round in a few days. Hopefully Monday.
It is unlikely to be earlier because of the aforementioned bank holiday. The country is apparently celebrating something called VE Day, which used to be about the end of WWII in Europe but is now something entirely different. These days we are supposed to celebrate something called Victory Over Europe Day. As I understand it, this is to commemorate the glorious victory in which the British, led by Winston “Boris” Churchill, single-handedly defeated the Evil forces of the European Union lead by Hitler, Mussolini, De Gaulle and a bunch of faceless bureaucrats from Brussels.
With the government planning on loosening the Lockdown restrictions and me needing a few bits and pieces for cooking for the One25 Fundraiser, I decided to go to Tesco today while it is still comparatively safe to do so. I was quite late getting there as I had to wait in for an Amazon delivery, but I only had to queue for around 20 minutes to get in. Everyone was well behaved, and this time I saw four people wearing masks (out of 100+).
There’s still no flour. Not even rye flour. I’ll cope.
But they did have Welsh Cakes!
This is beginning to feel entirely like normal. I attended a meeting (albeit by Zoom) for a couple of hours in the morning. I listened to my radio show. I did some Day Job work. And I attended a feminist book club in the evening (I have persuaded them to read The Calculating Stars. Result!)
Of course I am entirely unhappy about all this work because all I wanted to do today was sit and read Network Effect, the new Murderbot novel. Fortunately there have been meal breaks. I’m about half way through and absolutely loving it.
Apparently the government is talking about relaxing the lockdown constraints. I’m considering going to Tesco tomorrow so I can get some shopping done before the stores are full of sick people.
Another productive day! One radio interview recorded (for next week) and a few hours of Day Job done.
Also the fundraiser is now past 20% of my goal, which is very pleasing. I’m starting to think of all sorts of things I could be doing. Several of them involve food prep of various sorts. It is very annoying not being able to buy flour, and having other things on a long lead time. However, I did order a few products today, including some very famous Australian food. I suspect that some of you can guess what that is.
Our government proudly announced today that the death toll from C-19 is now over 30,000, and we have the highest number of deaths of any country in Europe. Winning! Friday is VE Day, which the Daily Malice has re-named Victory Over Europe Day, presumably in honour of this momentous achievement. The Financial Times, which continues to be the only useful opposition newspaper in the country, puts the death toll at well over 50,000.
I’ve seen a lot of people complaining about too many Zoom meetings, and this morning a friend posted a link to this National Geographic article on “Zoom Fatigue”. Although the headline gives the impression that’s all it talks about, the article goes on to note that Zoom is much less tiring than face-to-face meetings for people on the autism spectrum. I certainly wouldn’t class myself as autistic, but equally I don’t recognise any of the causes or symptoms of fatigue that the article describes. I guess I must be a lucky, in-the-middle sort of person.
That was another fairly productive day. I did several hours worth of Day Job. I did a batch of laundry and cooked food for a few more days. Most importantly I got the One25 fundraiser launched (see below).
I keep recording having done stuff because I still feel very lethargic much of the time. I’m trying not to push myself because I worry about relapses and post-viral fatigue syndrome. There’s very little that is screamingly urgent, but it would be nice to get more done, even if it was only reading.
In the outside world people are starting to talk more and more about things like track-and-trace apps and health passports. Most countries are looking to implement an app of some sort. Most also understand that track-and-trace is useless without a proper testing regime. The UK shows no sign of having the latter. It is also going with a highly non-standard app, the point of which seems either to put a few million quid in the pockets of friends of Cummings, or for some nefarious spy-on-people purpose, or more likely both. Our best hope is that it will turn out to be about as effective as hiring shipping services from a company that didn’t own any ships was.
I expect that most of the people frothing noisily on social media about how they won’t install the app will buckle and do so once they realise that they won’t be allowed to do anything outside their home without it. Personally I’m looking at removing just about every app from my phone so that there’s less for the government to spy on.
I seem to have been productive today. I finished reading a book. I finished editing next week’s radio show. And I finished doing the Wizard’s Tower accounts for April.
Regarding the latter, as a small press, any month in which you sell over 3,000 books has to be a good month. Admitedly more than half of those were copies of The Green Man’s Heir when it was on sale for 99p at Amazon, but even so it is a lot of readers.
Also we were treated to a fantastic F1 race this evening. OK, it is only sim racing, but Charles LeClerc and Alex Albon put on a brilliant show. There are two major benefits of the sim races over the real thing. Firstly overtaking is much easier because the game doesn’t model the slipstream effects that make it so difficult in real life. And although the cars might appear to be in different liveries, they are actually identical in performance so the race is down to driver skill, not who has the best aero package and engine.
By the way, I have discovered that as a community radio presenter I do actually qualify as a key worker and can apply for a C-19 test. However, my nearest testing station is, I think, at Bristol Airport, which is over an hour’s drive away. I’m very comfortable just staying at home, thank you.
Wow, 50 days. Admittedly I have been to Tesco for food on three of those days, and I have occasionally had delivery men knock on the door, so it hasn’t been total isolation, but that’s quite a stretch of time to have mostly not left the house. I’m starting to feel guilty that I’m OK with this, because so many of my friends are getting more and more wound up about it.
Today is apparently a weekend day. I have a radio show to produce for next week so I have been busy. We are going to be talking about sex and books. Sounds good to me.
Oh, and the Formula E continues to be entertaining.
The first of the month is always an admin day for me, though sometimes other stuff happens too. Today I had an online meeting, and I recorded an interview for next week’s radio show.
The latter was good timing because today is #RadioFromHome day, a day intended to raise the profile of community radio and the work we are doing during the crisis. I’d like to say that it will help encourage the government to offer some money to help community radio stations to stay afloat, but given that our current government is about as loving and friendly as a squad of hungry Humboldt squid that doesn’t seem likely.
Talking of the radio show, this week I’ve had a number of people turn me down for interviews because they are too busy or otherwise unavailable. I can put a show together with what I have, but if anyone has something they’d like to talk about that might be of interest to the women of Bristol and is available to record an interview over the weekend do let me know.
Something interesting has been happening to the official government statistics on C-19-related deaths. They continue to report daily totals that are mostly in the 600-800 range, and which are always less than the total for the same day in the previous week. But that’s because prior days’ totals are being raised. I can’t remember how many deaths were originally reported for April 24th, but I know that it wasn’t 1005 because the daily totals never got over 1000 on any day. Now that isn’t even the highest. We’ve now got 9 days with over 1000 reported deaths, and a peak of 1172. Possibly they are being more honest about the numbers in the past, but what does that say about the numbers we are getting today? Or about the claims that we are past the peak?
Well that was great. Museum from Home was hugely successful. I’m really happy for Dan and Sacha, who have put a lot of effort into this. Who knows, maybe they’ll get their own TV show one day.
In among all the museum and free ebook excitement I found time to sling some chicken curry into the slow cooker, so that’s food sorted for a few more days.
Bozo has apparently announced that the UK is past the peak as far as virus cases goes, and the data is still supporting that. On the other hand, we are still running at well over 500 deaths a day, so if we lift restrictions now things could get a lot worse very quickly. And the government has still not made any significant steps towards managing the exit process.
Today I did the shopping thing. It all went very smoothly and I now have enough food to last me another two or three weeks. Interestingly the food selection in Tesco seems to have reduced somewhat since last time I was there. The cheese selection in particular was very disappointing. This suggests that Lockdown is having an effect on the food economy.
One thing that is plentiful is toilet paper. There was loads of it on the shelves. Some of it was even on sale.
On the other hand, there is still not a spoonful of flour to be had. Why that should be I do not know.
I saw only three people wearing masks. Two of those were Japanese. But everyone was well behaved.
Life continues to be busy. In addtion to the new Salon Futura, I have been working on this year’s fundraiser for One25, the Bristol charity that supports local sex workers. You may remember that last year I walked 125 miles for them. This year I will be giving up something for 125 hours. And no, it won’t be chocolate. There will be more about that next week.
Tomorrow is #MuseumFromHome Day on the BBC. I will be on social media much of the day to support my pals Dan and Sacha. I also have a contribution of my own to launch tomorrow.
And of course tomorrow there will be a new piece of Lockdown Reading.
Phew!
I almost forgot again. Sorry. I’ve been in the middle of an book review that has been very difficult to write.
Last night the cough came back. I have no idea why. Possibly it is something to do with the change in the weather. Anyway, I got rather less sleep than I wanted, and have had a mild headache through the day, but I’ve been fairly productive.
Today also marks two weeks since I last shopped for food. As it was raining heavily I elected not to go to Tesco where I would potentially have had to stand in the rain for 10 minutes. Tomorrow or Thursday may be better. Alternatively I could wait for next week. I’m out of quite a few things, including fresh fruit and veg, but I can certainly survive for several more days. I’m treating this as practice for January, because I am still expecting a hard Brexit and major food shortages. I’m learning a lot about what it is useful to stock up on.
If there’s a break in the rain tomorrow I’ll probably go out. Thursday is Museum from Home day on the BBC and I want to be on social media supporting Dan and Sacha. I’m also a bit worried that the government will relax the lockdown restrictions way too early, and that going out will become dangerous.
I forgot to do a post yesterday, didn’t I. Not that I had a huge amount to report. I was busy.
Today has been much of the same. I have recorded an interview, made a Museum From Home video, and done some Day Job work.
Video editing is hell. So is being in a video. I am so not television material.
Today’s big news, other than Bozo claiming that over 40,000 people dead was a great success on his part, is that doctors in the US have had an idea as to how to help male patients survive the virus. They are going to try dosing them with oestrogen.
This isn’t quite as mad as it sounds. We’ve known for some time that mortality is higher among men than women. This has led to the anti-trans brigade on social media crowing that C-19 is a Y Chromosome Plague that will somehow wipe out all trans women because we are “really men”.
Now there are reasons why having XX chromosomes is good for your health. Having two Xs is a backup strategy. If a gene on one chromosome has an unhelpful mutation, the chances are that you’ve got a correct version on the other. This makes XX people somewhat more disease resistant than XY people. But equally oestrogen is good at helping your immune system and doctors in China have speculated that it might help protect against C-19. It is also possible that it is testosterone weaking the immune system that is the issue. This paper suggests that might be the case (thanks to Julia Serano for the link).
So there’s a whole bunch of different biological reasons why XY people might be more susceptible to C-19 than XX people, and that’s without starting on gender-based issues such as men being more likely to be heavy smokers, work in high-stress occupations, spend more time on crowded communter trains, and so on. But this is a crisis, and we should try everything. Maybe the estrogen trials will work.
Some people on social media have been worrying that if the trials do work then there will be an even worse shortage of estrogen than there is now. That’s certainly likely, though it is easy to make and the recent shortage in the UK was caused mainly by government stupidity rather than a real shortage.
Of course if oestrogen does turn out to be an effective treatment then the anti-trans brigade will start yelling for all trans women to be arrested because we are using valuable medicine that is needed by their menfolk. And despite having spent years complaining that hormone treatment for trans women is untested and dangerous, they will want immediate deployment of it to save people from C-19. Consistency has never been their strongpoint.
In better news the UK has now had a whole week of the number of deaths being lower than they were on the same day in the previous week. That’s a good measure of progress because it eliminates daily patterns in the data. It isn’t over yet by any means, but it looks like we are getting there. Now we have to resist the temptation to all rush back to “normal” before it is safe to do so.
Today is a Saturday. I am sufficiently aware of the calendar to know that. Saturdays are often days when I watch a lot of sport on TV. Of course there’s no in-person live sport happening right now. The TV companies are gamely trying to keep up interest by showing classic matches, but it isn’t the same.
The other alternative is esports. Most sports simulation games that I have seen are deeply disappointing because they are nothing like the real thing. But there is one exception. Motor racing simulations are very close to real racing. Indeed, top flight drivers spend a lot of time practicing in simulation rigs, because running their cars on an actual track is very expensive.
The result of this is that it is possible to stage a simulated motor race that looks almost like the real thing on TV, and which professional drivers can compete in and enjoy.
The Formula 1 races they have had thus far have been more of a PR stunt. Neither Vettel nor Hamilton have risked their reputations by competing, and celebrity guest drivers have clogged up the back of the field. However, Charles LeClerc as proved that he’s the class of the field by easily winning both races held thus far.
Formula E is different. They are running a full 8-race season with two separate championships. The Challenge races will feature a range of guest drivers including up-and-coming drivers and professional esports racers, driving for the usual Formula E teams. Trans racing driver, Charlie Martin, has a seat in the Techeetah team for that. The main championship features the actual drivers from the physical races, driving their usual cars. A couple of them have had technical issues and not been able to take part, but the vast majority of the drivers have competed.
As a spectator, I’ve found the racing just as much fun as the real thing, especially now they have turned on realistic damage. They ran a practice race last weekend without it, and that ended up being more like a fairground dodgem car ride. The drivers themselves asked for damage to be turned on because it would make a better test of their skills.
So hooray for Formula E, who are once again breaking new ground in motorsport. And hooray for Charlie who finished a creditable 18th out of a field of 24. She’s the only woman in the field, and the level of competition is a step up from what she’s used to, so she’s doing really well.
Out in the “real” world, UK deaths are back above 800 again today. The numbers fluctuate from day to day, and they are certainly not growing exponentially as you’d expect from an out of control pandemic. But I think it is still too early to say that we are past the peak.