Riverside Walk and Donuts

This morning I needed to take a swimsuit back to Next in Milton Keynes - I had ordered two different sizes to try - and decided to combine that with a walk. M suggested going somewhere we hadn't walked before so we went to Stony Stratford. Milton Keynes is a new town built over the past 50 years, which incorporated four existing towns, including Stony Stratford, and several villages. The river runs around the town and there is some lovely open parkland and river walks. We did about 2.5 miles altogether, so not a particularly long walk, but a very enjoyable one. The bright blue sky is a bit deceptive. It was a beautiful day, but there had been a frost overnight and it was still a little on the chilly side. 

After our walk we went to a donut shop that R and H had both recommended and bought donuts to take home for an afternoon treat - Biscoff for TG, chocolate orange for me (although in the end we shared them and had half each), and cinnamon sugar for M who has plainer tastes. TG definitely deserved a treat as she had French, physics and English tests this morning, in three consecutive lessons. She says she thinks they went OK. In the car on the way to school we chatted about assessments and exams, which led to talking about learning styles. Like me, she is a visual learner and finds it hard to keep focused for a whole day of listening to teachers talking. This is why school at home with online lessons suited her, as there was less talking and more time to work by herself. We both think she will enjoy Sixth Form (the last two years of school) as she will have free study time during the day, which will give her a change to refocus. 

My second day back at work yesterday went more smoothly. I was in our searchroom supervising researchers, and the computer in there was mostly working pretty well. I had to learn various new procedures but they are all pretty straightforward. As background work I was trying to reformat a large batch of photos to use for an online exhibition; it was a bit fiddly and occasionally the computer went on a go-slow, but after Monday's tech frustrations it was still a big improvement. Spending a whole day with different people was not as strange as it was on Monday, though it does seem odd having our already small group of staff split into two and never seeing the people on the other team. 

In good pandemic news, 95% of over 50s in the UK have now had at least one vaccine dose, which is quite an extraordinary figure. Another really encouraging figure is that of over 74000 patients admitted to hospital with covid between September and March, there were only 32 who had received their first vaccine dose more than three weeks earlier. What an extraordinary scientific achievement these vaccines are!