The Coronavirus thread.

[dad_of_jon]

Cycling is next to go unless selfish p***s stop riding in groups

I always cycle on my own, it's me time, besides i'm only good for 10-12mph - never head of a peloton going that SLOOOOW

 

[Dutto]

........ All you need is good quality cotton fabric, as a quilter our fabric is perfect, but in a crisis any good quality close threaded fabric should do so bedding should be in that category, 1/4" inch elastic, thread and any old sewing machine that can sew a straight line!

Just a bit of levity. The home-made face masks looked so much like the old fashioned sanitary towels that they brought back two memories:

1. Back in the 1950's there was a craze for "What's the definition of ... " jokes and the answer to "What's the definition of poverty?" was "A sanitary towel with a laundry mark." My mates and I hadn't had time to stop laughing at this gem of humour (remember we were only 15) when my Mum burst through from the kitchen and said "Changing times!" and carried on "When I was a lass, only the very rich could afford to send their sanitary towels to the laundry!" and proceeded to tell us how they were washed and ironed. We never told that particular joke again.
2. Only a few years back, I was complaining to my brother about the "Snake Belt" that our Mum used to hold up the home-knitted swimming trunks that she sent me to wear at the local baths. "Ha!" said my brother "I was always jealous of that belt. Mine were held up with a sanitary towel belt; and I didn't find out what it had been until I was about sixteen!" Times were hard in those days.

Whilst I was out on my ride today, I had to stop for a pee in Kensington (normally I go in Mcdonalds or a coffee shop but they're all closed so I found a little corner). A bloke walked past on his phone and I heard him say, "...we've got enough food for 37 days so if there is an extended lockdown we'll be ok". No wonder the pensioners cant get to the food with blokes like him about!

Er this pair of pensioners have enough food to last at least 60 days because:

1. We always have plenty of food in the house. It's a habit we have had since living 37 miles from the nearest supermarket, in days when we regularly entertained up to 18 people at a time.
2. The tinned and dried food that we store could probably be bought for less than £60; but used intelligently with the right spices I can knock up dozens of different meals.
3. We cook most things from scratch so the freezer is only a small one and of secondary importance.
4. We eat small.

There is no reason to hoard or starve if you know what you are doing and plan ahead.

PS
My second wife taught me how to cook; because if I hadn't learned I would have starved to death!

 

[steveinUS]

I've been working from home exclusively for two weeks, and this past week our company closed my office in response to our Governor's order to close non-essential businesses. (Actually, insurance which is my business, is on the exceptions list, but our office closed anyway.) My work computer is a small crappy laptop, to the company will be sending me a real monitor. I never thought I would hear myself say, "I can't wait to get back to the office." My productivity here is in the tank with all the distractions...too much beer...the dog...the news...the spouse.

Hand sanitizer is almost as rare as TP around here, so I have taken to making my own with happy results. Two parts of 189 proof grain alcohol to one part aloe vera gel, yields a 63% alcohol sanitizer. I'm making lots of it, sharing with friends and our kids who are out on their own.

The current order here allows any alcohol-related establishment to remain in operation for delivery, or take-out. They are also allowing breweries to sell kegs directly to the public, whereas before, kegs could only be sold through a "distributor" or a liquor store. Our local microbrewery has been doing a fair business in growlers-to-go. But I know they are hurting, they have a busy tasting room at the brewery in addition to supplying all of the beer to their two stand-alone pubs.

 

[pms67]

I’m a cyclist too but come on guys, cycling in groups two or three wide is going to cause chaos

 

[MyQul]

Just a bit of levity. The home-made face masks looked so much like the old fashioned sanitary towels that they brought back two memories:

1. Back in the 1950's there was a craze for "What's the definition of ... " jokes and the answer to "What's the definition of poverty?" was "A sanitary towel with a laundry mark." My mates and I hadn't had time to stop laughing at this gem of humour (remember we were only 15) when my Mum burst through from the kitchen and said "Changing times!" and carried on "When I was a lass, only the very rich could afford to send their sanitary towels to the laundry!" and proceeded to tell us how they were washed and ironed. We never told that particular joke again.
2. Only a few years back, I was complaining to my brother about the "Snake Belt" that our Mum used to hold up the home-knitted swimming trunks that she sent me to wear at the local baths. "Ha!" said my brother "I was always jealous of that belt. Mine were held up with a sanitary towel belt; and I didn't find out what it had been until I was about sixteen!" Times were hard in those days.

Er this pair of pensioners have enough food to last at least 60 days because:

1. We always have plenty of food in the house. It's a habit we have had since living 37 miles from the nearest supermarket, in days when we regularly entertained up to 18 people at a time.
2. The tinned and dried food that we store could probably be bought for less than £60; but used intelligently with the right spices I can knock up dozens of different meals.
3. We cook most things from scratch so the freezer is only a small one and of secondary importance.
4. We eat small.

There is no reason to hoard or starve if you know what you are doing and plan ahead.

PS
My second wife taught me how to cook; because if I hadn't learned I would have starved to death!

Seeing as this was overheard in Kensington, the richest borough in the whole of the UK let alone London, I doubt it was 60 quids worth of food

 

[Dutto]

Seeing as this was overheard in Kensington, the richest borough in the whole of the UK let alone London, I doubt it was 60 quids worth of food

Which only reinforces what I think about Londoners being spendthrifts!

 

[Richie_asg1]

Going to get my partners prescription today I had to navigate past two people with a dog on one side of the road who had stopped to talk to FIVE people with a pram on the opposite side of the road.
This went on for some minutes until I gave up and took my chances walking down the middle of the road between them. It was the only way I could get past.

Suddenly everyone around me is pressure washing their cars. Seems car washing is their new hobby.

 

[Drunkula]

I really do think there shoud be sniper towers to disperse group gatherings. I'm a pretty good shot and archery champion and I'd happily volunteer to shoot almost all my neighbours and for a fee would happily deal with yours.

 

[foxy]

Some interesting statistics.

 

[Pirate_Pete]

I really do think there shoud be sniper towers to disperse group gatherings. I'm a pretty good shot and archery champion and I'd happily volunteer to shoot almost all my neighbours and for a fee would happily deal with yours.

Could well be interested in this. Is there a discount for both neighbours?

 

[An Ankoù]

A bloke walked past on his phone and I heard him say, "...we've got enough food for 37 days so if there is an extended lockdown we'll be ok". No wonder the pensioners cant get to the food with blokes like him about!

That interesting comment has kept me awake for the last hour while I did a mental inventory of our kitchen to see hour long we could withstand a siege. We have a kitchen that reflects our extensive collection of cookery books. Nuff said. We have (between us) 4 kids with partners and some with grandkids who could descend on us at any time. The middle son turned up on the doorstep on Christmas Eve! We have a large, vegetarian, biker mate who can stretch a weekend into a fortnight (and he's very welcome and loves curry) and another one who's recently tuned vegan. So, as we live in the sticks, we always have a crust or two to fall back on.
Looking round the kitchen I see a 2Kg pack of risotto rice from Lidl in a hessian bag which we bought for decoration. With dried mushrooms (2 different tubs) and vegetables for the stock, that's risotto for ten (5 meals) and the left-over boiled veg mixed with mash, coated with breadcrumbs and fried, contribute to another few meals.
Bags of ordinary plain flour yield 4 large pizza bases per kilo. Plenty of tomato paste and olive oil. Need to get more cheese!
Litres of UHT milk, semi-skimmed for tea and cereals and full cream to make paneer (Indian cheese) or yoghurt. Hoard full cream milk. Cows have to be milked twice a day regardless. Paneer can go with dried pulses or spinach or potatoes or chick peas (Get Meera Sodha's "Made in India") to make a vegetable curry. Can't find mozzarella for the pizza? Use paneer. Inoculate a litre of full-cream with a pot of plain yoghurt to have a litre of yoghurt the next morning. Mash up some beefburgers from the freezer, get some mint out of the garden and a cucumber, and you've got a tzatziki.
Brewers. Mix the spent grain with flour to make bread or give it to the neighbour for her chickens in exchange for eggs.
Jams, pickles preserves. We have apple trees and (to the Wise One's disgust) brambles. I can't bear to let stuff go to waste and so there are at least 20 jars of various jams on the shelf- we give them away to our guests (we have two holiday lets and that's also why we already have enough bogrolls for 3 households)
I haven't even started on the pasta and that's without going out to buy anything extra. Of course there's meat and fish in the freezer as always- nothing extra.
It's spring. Just preparing the seed beds for tomatoes, salad, runner beans spinach, etc, etc.
My conclusion is that as there's only two of us and the dog, and we're under lockdown, there's no danger of going hungry even if the supermarkets were to close for 6 months. It would get a bit samey towards the end, I suppose, but perhaps not.
My point is this: If you're of the buy-as-you-need-it school now's the time to change so that you've got enough stuff in to enlarge your repertoire in the kitchen. Especially as you now have the leisure time to do it. It's not necessarily hoarding to put some lentils, rice, pasta, and tinned tomatoes (and full-cream milk) in your trolley. That's not to say hoarding doesn't happen.

Wasn't sure whether this should go in the foodies forum, @Chippy_Tea , it seemed appriate here, under the circumstances.

 

[MyQul]

Which only reinforces what I think about Londoners being spendthrifts!

For some in London that's a massive understatement. There are plenty of people who have so much money they simply dont know what to spend it on. One of my leisure bike routes goes through knightsbridge (of Harrods department stores fame) and the roads are chock full of high end super cars, lamborghini's and maclarens and the like. A few years ago I was in Soho and I even saw a Bugatti veyron (a car which I believe cost one million pounds) crawling along the streets. Which was funny as the streets of soho are narrow and many are cobbled and a veyron is very low to the ground.
Yesterday I saw a woman reading the coronavirus poster on the door of the Chanel shop. She looked as if she wanted to go in to buy something - at a time like this. Essential journey I think not!

 

[An Ankoù]

Yesterday I saw a woman reading the coronavirus poster on the door of the Chanel shop. She looked as if she wanted to go in to buy something - at a time like this. Essential journey I think not!

A bottle of Chanel with about 80-85% alcohol would make a very effective hand sanitiser.

(Beat you to that one, Dutto. And took your advice on the cologne. The shelves are still full of it.)

 

[Oneflewover]

Is anyone else failing to feel any sympathy for these muppets that flew halfway round the world during a pandemic and are then surprised when they can't get home? Expecting the taxpayer to then bail them out blows my mind....

 

[marshbrewer]

No, like you, I'm struggling to find any sympathy for them. But, I suppose that they are our idiots, and therefore our responsibility, sadly.

 

[MyQul]

Is anyone else failing to feel any sympathy for these muppets that flew halfway round the world during a pandemic and are then surprised when they can't get home? Expecting the taxpayer to then bail them out blows my mind....

But..but..holidays!!

 

[Oneflewover]

No, like you, I'm struggling to find any sympathy for them. But, I suppose that they are our idiots, and therefore our responsibility, sadly.

Sadly indeed

 

[MyQul]

This is an interesting read about how Trumps incompetence lead the the American virus explosion were seeing now

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/28/trump-coronavirus-politics-us-health-disaster

 

[The Baron]

I really do think there shoud be sniper towers to disperse group gatherings. I'm a pretty good shot and archery champion and I'd happily volunteer to shoot almost all my neighbours and for a fee would happily deal with yours.

Are you a real archery champion as I am finding it hard to comprehend that you are telling the truth Drunkula (with your past history)and if you are was it at Butlins you won it?

 

[MyQul]

A bottle of Chanel with about 80-85% alcohol would make a very effective hand sanitiser.

(Beat you to that one, Dutto. And took your advice on the cologne. The shelves are still full of it.)

Excellent idea! MrsMQ has got loads of perfume. I'll be going out smelling like a tarts handbag in future