Snow Hill

Apparently it appears they did know but kept quiet about it as they had paid for course.

Thank you, she only has the cough as a noticeable symptom and painful chest and back which is probably the result of the cough. She has probably slept about 18 hrs in the last 24. I haven’t tested myself today as yet, With high pollen difficult to determine whether Hay fever or something else. It is noticeable however 2 individuals on the course who are believed to have attended whilst positive are keeping quiet, the others are understandably angry, as all but one have now test positive.

The U.K. supported the introduction of both ETIAS and EES when they were put forward pre 2016, apparently the U.K. will have its own versions in 2025, subject to all the usual government IT caveats.

Not a good start to the week, my wife has tested positive, seems those she was with on a course last week didn’t just have hay fever like they said, as she and 3 others have all tested positive this morning. 🤬 Be careful out there.

Same here, some of the non chain restaurants are only open 4 days a week, staff shortages are the main reason. One of our favourite pub restaurants has removed some items from the menu and its specials list is much reduced, combination of staff shortages and supplier issues. I read last week in a trade publication that there are a record 174,000 vacancies in the hospitality industry. P&O need to start making it clear to their customers that there maybe times when some of the speciality restaurants may not be available and not leave it until they board the ship to find out. Sindhu is always the restaurant we eat at on the first night of most cruises, we love the food they do and would eat there almost every night if we could, if it wasn’t open it would put a downer on the cruise.

Not surprising given that land based restaurants are also have supply chain and staffing problems, P&O are not immune from this disruption which is expected to last for sometime yet.

Yes, taking of Biometric data including fingerprints, should eventually do away with passport stamps and will automatically keep a track of the 90 days in 180 days rule.

Prior to that there is the EU EES System (Entry Exit System) due to go live In November at airports and seaports.

The house was left to the City of Paris upon the death of Victor Hugo, the house is operated by the Paris Museums and guides are employed by them. The guide we had said the house is effectively a little bit of France in Guernsey. If you fancy a seasonal job this link gives the qualifications needed. https://www.maisonsvictorhugo.paris.fr/en/professionals/seasonal-guides-hauteville-house-guernesey

It’s an amazing place we went there on our short cruise to Guernsey a few years ago. If I remember correctly the guides are always of French nationality.

Just planted on my beetroot after clearing bed of weeds that have shot up in the last week. Soil is dry despite the rain on Saturday and soaking it with hose last night. Problem with a south facing garden and 25C heat, it soon evaporates. Some final needing to put out, but will do that when it cools down and sun not so intense. Forecast say it’s going to get hotter over next few days, then rain showers on Friday. I might be in garden until dusk this evening.. Just come indoors to cool off.

I understood that Flam now restricted the number of cruise ship passengers in port at any one time to 5000, Iona would normally exceed this so must be travelling at less than full capacity taking into account the number of passengers on the other ship docked.

Never had a problem with motors burning out on the 3 Capturs I have owned all the mirrors folded OK. As I said in a separate post Renault informed me that the missing chips for the mirrors will be retrofitted to Capturs and Arkanes as soon as they are available.

My DiL is Store manager for a large clothing & homeware retailer, she and the deputy manager are the only full time staff in the store, which is one of the chains larger stores. All the other staff are part time, fixed hours or zero hours contract, this is not a unusual scenario in retail stores across the country.

Finally test drive the Captur Hybrid yesterday, after having 3 Capturs, sad to say next car won’t be one. I found the seats very and uncomfortable, nothing like the the ones in my RS Line petrol version which are quite comfortable, there was a whining noise when in electric mode and you felt the petrol engine kick in, it was seamless on the Toyota & Honda cars. Delivery time would be February 2023, possible that adaptive cruise control won’t be adaptive and wing mirrors won’t fold, but should be retrofitted at a latter date if not present initially. Will be dropping into Toyota on Monday to see if I can improve on deal for Yaris Cross.

Currently 27C here, however on patio feels like 47, we face directly south!! Have some gardening to do, but 🥵, will leave mowing the law until this evening. Heavy rain forecast for tomorrow so will not need to get hose out to water the bedding plants and the vegetable beds.

Regenerative braking technically counts as self-charging, but as my son who works in the EV industry says it is not effective enough to fully recharge an electric car. The industry is working on this but still in research phase.

Back from an afternoon of test driving the Honda Hybrid, we had 30 mins in it earlier in the week, but today we had almost 3 hours, drove around 60 miles covering motorway, A roads and in town driving, the telemetry said I achieved 68.9 mpg, almost twice the mog of my current car under similar driving conditions, slightly less than the Yaris hybrid which returned 69.9 mpg. Much of the town driving was on electric, I must say figures are impressive, no longer considering any petrol alternatives and would appear diesel cars have virtually disappeared amongst the new small and mid range cars. The outside temperature was 27C, the air conditioning kept us cool in the car.

My first car was a Ford Escort 1300L, Bronze In colour, I think it was an accident prone vehicle, 2 days after I had it, it was hit by the milkman in his Milk Float, the milkman apologised profusely and the car was fixed by the Dairy. Whilst out driving to work a van rolled back into me whilst I was stationary, his handbrake cable had snap, not much damage, fortunately, just needed a new bumper which my stepfather installed. Third incident happened whilst driving down a narrow country Lane to pick up my then girlfriend from her job, an unsecured farm gate swung out and hit the wing of the car causing a few dents and scratches. Needless to say I changed the car as soon as I could after these incidents.

Interesting following complaints to Renault about what the salesman quoted, I has a phone call from them this morning to apologise for the misleading information given by the salesperson in the dealership. They have currently stopped installing the chips of the wing mirrors in favour of using them on other parts of the the Captur and Ariana, they have already however put in place a recall for vehicles to retrofit the chip when more come available, the mirrors will fold at some point in 2022 or 2023. There are however some elements that have been withdrawn from the spec and these would be detailed to the customer before any deal is signed. They will be speaking with the dealership to suggest additional training for their sale staff. They were also concerned that they had not retained a Hybrid Captur for demonstration purpose across their various outlets. Following that call I had a call letter from a different dealership about 25 miles away to offer me a test drive in a Hybrid Captur on Saturday, I suspect Renault U.K. had initiated that call.

I went into dentist at about 3:30, score was around 120 for 4, I went to post office after dentist visit, when I got home Bairstow was in full flow, an amazing afternoon of cricket and what an innings from Jonny Bairstow which almost broke the record for the fastest ever century by an English male batter, a record held by Gilbert Jessop back in 1906 of 76 balls, Bairstow took 77.

Technically it’s late spring, summer doesn’t start until June 21st at time of the solstice. The meteorological summer and other seasons only came into use in the early 1990s, before then we only the astronomical definition of the seasons.

Today I am test driving a Toyota Yaris Cross Hybrid, unlike my aborted non- Renault Captur Hybrid test drive on Saturday, Toyota have confirmed that have a car to test drive, unlike Renault, question will be asked if folding electric wing mirrors are present and working in the model, after Renault Salesperson’s ridiculous claim that there was a world wide short of chips for folding wing mirrors across all manufacturers.

The problem with vague phrases such a “operational reasons” it gives rise to all sorts of speculation and theories, if they were open and transparent with the reasons then it’s likely many would accept the reason and thus see of fall in complaints. This seems a recent trend I recall when we were on the Aurora over Christmas/New Year 2013/14 we missed out 2 ports, the first was Lisbon due to what was expected inclement whether on the horizon captain said we might get in, but getting out maybe difficult, he managed to get a berth in Santa Cruz de La Palma, which we throughly enjoyed. The 2nd port was San Sebastián de La Gomera, this time the reason was that a Saga ship was occupying our our proposed berth, unable to disembark due to high winds. The Aurora hung around for a while, but the decision was made to move on to Funchal for an earlier arrival. In both cases the passengers were told what the reasons were, no hiding behind bland 2 word phrases.

Notice yours is petrol version, the dealer has one that colour in showroom, but sadly no hybrid, which has an up to 9 month delivery timescale.