A narrow defeat to the best team in the world. But still a defeat.
Ok. I thought we rode our luck a bit in the first half, and then everyone knows how the story ends when Citeh score after an hour.
Didn’t happen.
And then to get a goal, and then when they scored again, to almost get another one – I actually thought that we were a bit unlucky.
Still a defeat, but who expects anything else when they’re playing a billion pound team.
We keep fighting.
An afternoon of football seems in order, after doing some more prep for Monday’s shoot.
That does mean that I’ve spent an awful long time in front of screens today, but at least I’m watching some physical activity.
That counts, right?
Of course not, but the desire to go out and exercise again wasn’t really there this morning. We’re still suffering with the last efforts of this cold, wet winter, and it was nice and warm under the duvet.
I’m more than ready for some sunshine now. Next week is looking better though, including a couple of warm summery days of weather ahead of the next cold front.
Tomorrow. Less screentime. More legwork.
Possibly.
Today was split three ways.
Gym. Upper body today. And I’m feeling it.
Preparation. For a job on Monday. Formatting SD cards, perfecting shooting modes, checking batteries, cleaning lenses, watching the weather forecast.
And then some editing. Those Kruger photos, whittled down from over 2,000 to just 70. And they might get whittled down a bit more still, but I’m fairly happy with the vast majority of them.
Once I’ve got them uploaded for public viewing, I’ll share the links. For the moment, I’ve shared them with the crew that was there, just so that we can all enjoy reliving some amazing memories.
A quick placeholder post here, which I may or may not add to later.
A quick look at the diary this afternoon suggest that things may just run away with a couple of meetings, some school pick-ups, lifts here and there, and at least one concert. So let’s play it safe and pop a post on the blog to make sure that 11 years and 9 months of daily posts doesn’t come to a silly, abrupt, disappointing end.
I’ve got almost halfway through the photos from the Kruger trip, being very harsh and whittling them down into a folder called “Kruger – Final”. The idea on this first pass is just to separate the wheat from the chaff, then have another look in the fresh light of a new day and then separate the best wheat from the rest of the wheat. So then, “Kruger – Final” will inevitably then morph into a slightly smaller folder: “Kruger – FinalFinal”, and then if I’m still feeling quite stringent… well, maybe you can guess.
I’ll get it all done before the weekend.
So far, there are about 40 images in the first effort, with at least a couple of images of which I’m really proud, and at least a few that probably won’t make the next cut. But that’s what the process is all about, and hopefully, this is proof that it’s working well.
Oh good. A new variant of Covid-19. <party emoji>
If it seems like we haven’t had one of those for a while, it’s because we haven’t. Well, not an interesting one, anyway. This one though – sadly – is of interest.
Why? Well, it has 35 mutations on its spike protein. That’s the bit that our immune system recognises. 35 mutations means that it’s likely to be disguised (at least partially) from our immune systems, meaning that we’re more likely to become infected with it: even if we’ve had the vaccine or if we’ve had Covid (of any variant) previously. It doesn’t mean that we won’t have any defence against it though. More likely just a bit of a slower, poorer one.
We don’t know a lot at the moment: we’re not really looking for Covid as much as we have been before, so this could be sneaking in a bit under our radar. We’ve only seen 9 cases* in 5 countries, which seems like nothing, but at least 6 of those cases have no travel history, suggesting that they acquired the virus locally to them. It can’t just have appeared from nowhere: that indicates community spread.
And those 9 cases (UK, Demark, USA, Israel, and now South Africa) show very similar genetic sequences. That means that they haven’t had much time to mutate or change, and that indicates a rapid spread.
We’re not seeing millions of hospital admissions though, which might (hopefully) mean that this is not going to cause serious illness or mortality. But it’s likely there just isn’t enough of it yet for that to be a foregone conclusion. It is being found in wastewater screening, which probably means that there is a growing reservoir of undetected cases out there.
Honestly, scientists have been waiting for the next wave. There was never any chance of Covid just going away. And we’re still (yes wow, “still”, even after 3½ years, lol), in the early equilibrating days of what will almost certainly be a long-term virus/human relationship. Each party is still weighing up its opponent and figuring out its next move. Metaphorically, at least.
It remains to be seen if this variant will trigger a new public health crisis or will fall away without troubling us too much. At this point, the jury simply doesn’t have enough information to make any decision, and so we wait and we keep learning from the information we can get.
At the moment, it’s very much watch this space. And maybe hope for a not guilty verdict.
* I had to update this figure twice while writing this post.