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Isolation - what will you do?


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If we get widespread lockdown, lose pubs etc,

 

Let's look on the bright side.

 

A putative house, a hacksaw and a h'opportunity to work in peace.

 

I suspect that a number of Building Projects will speed up...

Edited by Ferdinand
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15 minutes ago, Ferdinand said:

If we get widespread lockdown, lose pubs etc,

 

Let's look on the bright side.

 

A putative house, a hacksaw and a h'opportunity to work in peace.

 

I suspect that a number of Building Projects will speed up...

 

What will I do . . . . ?

 

Hope we don't get cold temperatures in a house with no heating because working from home is painful at the best of times without now not being able to leave.' II'll miss my weekly trips to the Hilton with work, purely for heating and a bath!

 

I can now continue to try and declutter in preparation for our build flogging off random bits and let other people dismantle them. Sold our old plastic oil tank for £100 today and someone dismantled an old coalbunker for £10 yesterday. Less work for the builder to do...

 

I'm also mourning the fact our May holiday to the Maldives and India is now looking less likely and will probably be cancelled ☹️

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I will just get on with building the house.  There will be the garden to tend to soon, and next winters firewood to start chopping and stacking.

 

Then there's Building control for a temporary habitation certificate and a VAT claim to submit.  I wonder how BC will cope with that if they are locked down?

 

Would a trip to the boat class as "essential travel" as long as I promise not to go close to anyone else?

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15 minutes ago, ProDave said:

I will just get on with building the house.  There will be the garden to tend to soon, and next winters firewood to start chopping and stacking.

Basically what he said, except replace "house" with "extension".

 

One issue I foresee is I work from home anyway!

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I have been 'self-isolating' for a week now, for something that seems as if it *may* be the bug, and continuing to work from home as usual, just doing without the weekly meet-up in town for an 'office day' and going to the pub.

 

Unfortunately with the rules change tonight, my family is now joining me on lockdown for a few days at least (depending on how we do the arthmetic).

 

Rgds

 

Damon

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I am in a bit of a soft self isolation, basically kids had a short fever at the weekend (all clear now) and they were off school from yesterday (will be for 7 - 14 days).

 

I have been working from home to look after them.

 

If I go full self isolation then that means working from home with kids which is going to be a struggle.

 

My wife is self employed and looks like her business and income is going to stop completely next week! ?

 

I work in a serviced office by myself and walk to work, and have very limited contact with anyone really so I am half thinking of keep going to my office and self isolate there.

 

If you are self employed / sole trader that can't work from home, you are stuffed.

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1 hour ago, Moonshine said:

If you are self employed / sole trader that can't work from home, you are stuffed.

I am still working until I get some symptoms that make me self isolate or until told otherwise.  At the moment we are still being told to go to "work"

 

The phone has gone very quiet recently. I suspect when all my jobs in the pipeline are done demand will drop off as people decide their jobs can wait to save having potential carriers in their homes.

 

If things get desperate I do have a fall back that I could start drawing a pension that is due in 3 years time.  It is available to me any time, so who knows this situation may actually trigger me into retiring a bit earlier than I had planned for.

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I have got lots of little jobs I have accumulated for a scenario such as this however working in retail I will have to be ill before I can do any social distancing and Dave Lewis who is usually very smart about sending emails to inform us of things affecting the business has suddenly gone quiet! I’m most upset about the fact that my daughter is due a much awaited new baby after losing one two years ago and because I can’t social distance myself god knows when I’ll get to see him/her although they only live 10 miles away but being in a supermarket environment then going to visit would be foolhardy.

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18 minutes ago, ProDave said:

I am still working until I get some symptoms that make me self isolate or until told otherwise.  At the moment we are still being told to go to "work"

 

The phone has gone very quiet recently. I suspect when all my jobs in the pipeline are done demand will drop off as people decide their jobs can wait to save having potential carriers in their homes.

 

If things get desperate I do have a fall back that I could start drawing a pension that is due in 3 years time.  It is available to me any time, so who knows this situation may actually trigger me into retiring a bit earlier than I had planned for.

Careful with the pension, it will have lost a LOT of money recently.

 

Being young my pot was £14k, and since all this its now less than £12k, obviously the bigger pots will have lost a lot more

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1 minute ago, MikeGrahamT21 said:

Careful with the pension, it will have lost a LOT of money recently.

 

Being young my pot was £14k, and since all this its now less than £12k, obviously the bigger pots will have lost a lot more

[smug]

it's actually a civil service pension in all but name. Paid by the treasury and with no "fund" to back it up. (so no fund to crash in value)

 

My other small SIPP is sitting as cash because I was nervous about the markets even before this, so is worth exactly the same as it was.  People kept telling me I was missing out on dividends by keeping it as cash.  Well I am glad to have missed out on a 30% or more drop in it's value.

[/smug]

 

Of course the government could enact legislation to stop the early drawing of a pension.  When I signed up to this at the start of my career it had a fixed retirement date of age 60, it was only quite recently that the ability to draw it from age 55 onwards came in.

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I am lucky to be already drawing my private pension and I love staying at home pottering with a 1001 jobs, my wife works in social services but I am urging her to work from home as much as possible (otherwise I will have to stick her in the caravan on the drive ?).

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I'm not a very sociable person by nature, so being stuck at home won't be a significant problem.  For us, the changes we must adopt probably won't have a major impact, the main adaptations are going to be working around the logistical challenges of getting food safely.  Not a biggie in the overall scheme of things.  We have a reasonable small shop and post office in the village, so we'll probably switch to using that, as the risk from shopping there will be massively lower than shopping in the supermarket in Salisbury (already had one death from this in Salisbury, a 59 year old man, so we know their are probably hundreds of infected people there).

 

We may be able to work with our village shopkeeper to set up some sort of local delivery system, to further minimise the risk from contact.  Given that more than 50% of those living in this village are over 60 this may help a lot of people, although it will inevitably be a bit more costly, I think.

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We're already isolated due to our location, so not much will change in that respect.  My best friends live some distance away and we only get to see each other every couple of months or so, so that shan't be so different to usual.  My greatest concern is how the elderly MIL and SIL will manage if one or both become ill, as they are in Bournemouth and both vulnerable.  I think, as with so much at the moment, we will cross that bridge when we come to it.

 

Other than that, I have plenty of books and need to figure out why my battery system isn't charging as I expect it to.  They'll have found a vaccine for corona virus before I figure that one out!

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15 minutes ago, Jeremy Harris said:

I'm not a very sociable person by nature, so being stuck at home won't be a significant problem.  For us, the changes we must adopt probably won't have a major impact, the main adaptations are going to be working around the logistical challenges of getting food safely.  Not a biggie in the overall scheme of things.  We have a reasonable small shop and post office in the village, so we'll probably switch to using that, as the risk from shopping there will be massively lower than shopping in the supermarket in Salisbury (already had one death from this in Salisbury, a 59 year old man, so we know their are probably hundreds of infected people there).

 

We may be able to work with our village shopkeeper to set up some sort of local delivery system, to further minimise the risk from contact.  Given that more than 50% of those living in this village are over 60 this may help a lot of people, although it will inevitably be a bit more costly, I think.

I've had a family and friends texting me saying how will I cope with the isolation... I replied saying that actually going out and being social would be more of a shock to me! lol

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8 minutes ago, vivienz said:

 

Other than that, I have plenty of books and need to figure out why my battery system isn't charging as I expect it to.  They'll have found a vaccine for corona virus before I figure that one out!

 

I've spent the past half hour sorting out my wife's ebook reader.  She stopped using it ages ago, as she prefers real books, but has now decided that it's sensible to get it working again to avoid going to the library (which may well close before long anyway, I expect).

 

The battery system may be playing up because the batteries were completely discharged during that recent power cut.  Not sure how these things behave when the batteries have been depleted, TBH.  Which make/model of inverter/charger have you got?

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Just now, Jeremy Harris said:

 

I've spent the past half hour sorting out my wife's ebook reader.  She stopped using it ages ago, as she prefers real books, but has now decided that it's sensible to get it working again to avoid going to the library (which may well close before long anyway, I expect).

 

The battery system may be playing up because the batteries were completely discharged during that recent power cut.  Not sure how these things behave when the batteries have been depleted, TBH.  Which make of inverter/charger have you got?

 

If your wife doesn't do it already, you can put an app on a smart phone or laptop to borrow ebooks and e audiobooks from the library, as well as read digital issues of many magazines.  The app can go onto a Kindle fire, but not an older style kindle as the format is different.

 

Re. the battery charging, this is something that is prior to the power cut, which didn't seem to change anything.  I will get back with some more details later - time to do the VAT before the accountant breaks quarantine to chase me for the figures, then into the factory for work-related stuff.  Essential, of course.

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One thing I'll probably be doing is setting up a group for our lane (or for a number of houses each way), perhaps on the system that Joan Bakewell uses.

 

Does anyone know which one it is?

 

Also the lady who had dad build that C shaped bungalow in 1970 is turning 100 this month, so I'll give her a phone call.

 

Plus I have to think about helping tenants, and which ones are genuinely vulnerable with not a lot of reserves - a small number are in high end furniture manufacturing which is dependent on retail, and at least a couple have sproglets less than 6 months old.

 

And today is car insurance day, so I need to do it before forgetting and driving out.


Ferdinand

 

Edited by Ferdinand
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https://www.insidehook.com/daily_brief/history/how-isaac-newton-made-social-distancing-work-for-him

 

"...in 1665 when Newton — then a student — went through his own period of social distancing. This was during the time of the Great Plague of London. Newton left Cambridge and returned to his family’s home in Cambridge, where he had long stretches of time to work alone on various questions that had been on his mind. While there, he had a breakthrough regarding the nature of motion and gravity — a narrative you might already be familiar with. But that wasn’t all that Newton accomplished in isolation. According to Brockell’s article, Newton came up with vital early theories of both optics and calculus during this period."

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Our village is a pretty good illustration of the way social distancing was practised during the Black Death.  The centre of the present village is about 3/4 mile from the centre of the old medieval village and church.  When the plague struck, the villagers buried their dead in pits around the church, then built new homes where the village is now.  The old village fell into disrepair and has all but disappeared from the landscape, except for the church and a manor house. 

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