Covid FLiRT variant – caravan – St John’s Eve

We have a variant not being reported in the stats thus far. This from The Independent.

• A group of Covid mutations has recently emerged and is collectively referred to as FLiRT, according to the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA).
• Covid hospital admissions increased by 24 per cent in the week to Sunday, from 3.31 per 100,000 people compared with 2.67 per 100,000 in the previous week.
• Professor Lawrence Young, a virologist at Warwick University, said the figures should serve as a “wake-up call” to those who think the virus has gone away. “The virus hasn’t gone away and is certainly not a seasonal infection.”
• The UKHSA blog (more than a month old)  has it that they descend from JN.1, which had variant BA.2.86 as a parent. JN.1 was responsible for the largest (>90%) proportion of infections when the UK figures were last published in April. 

Politics today can stay residing on the news pages.  However there’s an interesting analysis by The Guardian on who of the Tory Grandees are forecast to lose there seats, keep their seats to to close to call. See that the haunted pencil is in the first mentioned category.

Caravan day today. Cleaning, finding where I’d hidden stuff (I spent a good hour looking for one connector and then found it in a hidey hole in the van I’d forgotten about) and getting things working, remembering how all the controls work. There’s really not much, just remembering where the hot water, fridge and loo control are and what they mean – it’s pictograms rather than words. That means you have to learn a whole new iconography. Fortunately most of them are somewhat obvious, but not all.

In prepping the van I’m giving thanks for WD40 and lithium grease. I have to fabricate some storage, preventing things moving around as much as they did last year. It’s supposed to be a four berth -dream on. It would be just OK for two.

The original owners, first time caravanners, bought it from new for a family, I understand, because of its compact size. I don’t think they were well advised. They sold after a year, and I chanced upon it. There’s couch seating for four at the front which I leave permanently up as a small double bed, and a dining room table (for two) which converts into the kids bunks. The kids would have to be quite small for them to be comfortable. The phrase ‘compact and bijou’ comes to mind. The show loo and washbasin are all in one, and practically you have to streak in the main body of the van before showering. If you’re not alone you need to be very friendly. There is a small awning and I eat in that, but that holds two at the most. If you a family of four, if there would be inclement weather it would be challenging, to say the least. 

There’s one plumbing leak on the bathroom sink tap, so that will wait for the service engineer who’s due on the morrow. I think I was in the right place at the right time when I bought it.

More stuff before hols is getting all the camera kit together – it’s been breeding a bit.

Supper is in, slow roast lamb which will do me for about three days. It’s a hard life sitting outside typing this. Work tomorrow is concentrating on passing on what I’ve been doing, the legacy.

Music

St John’s Eve, June 23rd, the day before Midsummer’s Day which is the feast day of St John Baptist, unusually celebrating the birth rather then the death of a saint as St John  was supposed to have been born six months before Jesus. (The feast of St. John the Apostle is 27th December).

It is the focus of ancient celebrations worldwide, the one I know of (and intend to go to next year) is the lighting of a beacon atop Chapel Barn Brea near Sennen and the festival of Golowan in Penzance and in Yorkshire traditions of hospitality. Celebrations occur all over Europe and further afield. In rural Ireland there is Oíche Fhéile Eoin, lighting bonfires on hilltops, reflecting maybe a linked Celtic type heritage. Source.

Henryk Mikołaj Górecki (1933-2010) St.John’s Eve from Vistula Broad Waters based on Polish folk songs