Personal & Finance Updates – Page 2

July 2022 Update – Financial Bear Market Update, Holiday fun and the Large Unexpected Outgoings category (Sad Pet story)

Hey all, I hope everyone is keeping well. It’s that time again where a blog post update is due!

Financial Bear Market Update

Financial Update – Early July 2022

The below figures are taken from the 9th of July.

Monthly investment (Mar 22 to Jun 22) – £1500 each month
Savings rate (Mar 22 – Jun 22)– 55% average each month
Investment portfolio – £225,836.18
Cash is king fund – £1500
Crypto Punt – £0 (classing this as £0 despite being around £400)
Emergency fund – £100
Big expenses / holiday fund – £500

Total Liquid Funds = £228,436.18

As you can see from the graph above, my portfolio has taken its biggest dive since the Covid pandemic. As similar to then though, as much as I of course don’t like seeing it go down – I am not too bothered as I know so many other people are genuinely suffering from energy prices rises, fuel increases and general inflation across the board. Peoples pensions that are stock market invested (the majority) are also suffering so there is a sense of collective suffering and not that it’s just me, that makes it far more bearable. If this gets far worse and it continues to create anything similar to 2008 then my ability to retire early might be pushed back a few years. That is not exactly a genuine sob story I can tell to anyone is it?

I have marked my crypto investment as £0 more as a psychological weight lifting mechanism as during the recent crash, I decided that I had pretty much lost my punt investment and anything that was still there or if it ever bounced back would purely be a bonus. You can also see my cash is king and big expenses fund are both much lower than before and that’s because of a large unexpected outgoing I will talk about in detail later on.

I must admit that every time it comes round to investing monthly now, I really do feel like I am getting cheap prices so to speak. I feel like DCA (dollar cost averaging) is working it’s charm. I won’t need it to reach the same high to make the money back in the future. I am essentially buying the dip and lowering my average cost which is a very crypto/Wall street bets type of saying but when it applies to investing in the world economy as a whole, I am very confident it will indeed rise again (if it doesn’t, we are all buggered!). If I chose to invest in certain sectors only, individual stocks or things such as crypto then I feel I have no guarantee at all it will bounce back and even worse, I could be feeling pain when something crashes but it would have no impact on the majority of people – If Dogecoin crashed for example and I had my life savings in it, most would be unaffected but my life would be turned upside down…I think that my investing approach has again been justified and validated for myself personally similar to like it did the last time when Covid caused a crash.

How is rising prices affecting me? My fuel bills are rising and this is noticeable due to having to now be in the office three days a week instead of two. It would be even more painful if they changed this to five but for now it will remain at three thankfully. My energy plan has recently changed to the new price cap as I was on a year fixed package. This has caused my unit rate has to more than double for both gas and electric but due to it being the summer, I haven’t noticed this much yet but the winter will be interesting. A lot of the food and drink I buy seems to be mostly the same price when deals are on but I have noticed a few things rise, I can certainly cope with it for now but I am sure it will get worse over the year. My other household bills have certainly risen but nothing too bad at the moment either. I am still finding my general outgoings are kept within budget but part of that is due to my food and fuel allowances still being higher than I have used over the last couple of years, the buffer is being eaten into but at the moment I am still in the green every month.

Holiday fun (Amsterdam trip)

It’s been postponed 4 times since I booked it in 2019 but I finally managed to have my holiday to Amsterdam in late May. It was superb! I think the long wait made it even better and the fact that there was no masks anywhere really – not in the airport, on the plane or anywhere in Amsterdam itself made it better as it was the first 100% normal holiday I have been on since 2019.

We went to the Ann frank museum, had a day out in Rotterdam where we also went to the zoo, went on a night time canal cruise, saw a medieval dungeon live show and spent loads of time being very very chilled out so to speak :D. It was really what we both needed. The weather was very mixed but that really didn’t bother us, we aren’t sun worshippers by any stretch of the imagination and usually prefer city type breaks full of activities rather than just tanning ourselves on a beach somewhere hot.

Despite me going to Amsterdam around 8 times now, this was only the second time with my partner as the other times were lad holidays. We did lots of new things we hadn’t done before including window shopping in all the malls we had never seen before, exploring random canals and roads we had not been down and also had one night drinking instead of chilling…it was very expensive to get drunk so I was glad we only did that the one night. We found cheap local supermarkets that the locals tend to use that were a bit further out in the sticks and had the best chips I have ever tasted with a sweet curry sauce that was simply to die for…Amsterdam 9 here we come!

Large Unexpected Outgoings category (Sad Pet Situation)

So after having a wonderful holiday away in Amsterdam. I came back to a sad situation with my pet cat which is at the time of writing still on-going. I had asked my next door neighbour to feed him whilst we were away. He has a chip on his collar which lets him in and out of the cat flap so he is free to go outside. When I got back home, I noticed a letter on my kitchen table which said that unfortunately whilst I was away he had lost his collar and had been outside for 3 days, my neighbour had fed him but he wouldn’t let her near him to put his collar back on. I wish she would have told me as I could have just said to take the batteries out the cat flap and it would then fail open so he could go in and out without the chip. This of course was only slightly annoying as he had eaten as she put food out the back garden and a cat can certainly survive being outside for three days so that didn’t bother me too much.

The next day when I woke up, I noticed that he was circling a fair bit before he sat down, more than normal. When I was downstairs and saw him more clearly I could see he was going round in circles most the time and his one eye didn’t look right. I called the vets immediately and was told to take him straight away. They did a physical examination and could not find anything wrong physically but suspected a neurological problem and gave him some steroids and a neurological pain medicine. They then referred him to another vet that had specialists in neurology.

Prior to going to the new specialist vets, I was informed that if I wanted to have a full investigation into his issue which would include a physical examination and an MRI scan that this would cost around £3500. I couldn’t believe how expensive this was but after research it seemed like it was the going rate. He was getting worse and we didn’t really have a diagnosis for him so I felt I had to pay for the scan to find out what we were dealing with to at least give him a fighting chance at recovery and to simply find out why he was becoming so poorly as I needed to know. He is 14 years old by the way. I was frustrated with how expensive it was but I knew I would pay the money as he means so much to me. I’ve had him as a companion for almost half my conscious life.

The diagnosis was that there was a brain stem lesion that is more likely to be an abscess caused by infection than a tumour although a tumour is also a possibility that has not been ruled out. With the amount of inflammation, a defined outer edge to the lesion, how quickly symptoms showed up and the fact he was outside for three days, the diagnosis of an abscess was given with the information available to us. He has since as a result been given high strength antibiotics. His walking has somewhat improved but he has since been unable to eat properly and can only lick food so I have been giving him gourmet paste cat food mixed with water which he loves. It can take months for the antibiotics to penetrate the brain stem fully so I currently don’t know how things will turn out, there is certainly a chance that this could still be a tumour as well but there is at least some small hope he could recover as even if this is not a tumour, a brain abscess is fairly deadly on its own. Surgery was ruled out because it would damage the brain stem in the process and was far more risky to do, not to mention that this would cost northward of £8000.

To bring this back to finances a little more, I don’t have a £3500 unexpected outgoings fund. I only give myself £1000 a year for unexpected large bills. This kind of unexpected cost has never occurred up until now and it just shows that such large outgoings do happen from time to time. It could happen again in terms of a huge car bill, house repair or other such expense. Now I was fortunate because I had a Cash is King fund where I had £5000. I have had to raid this but this has saved me from selling any investments during a period where that’s the last thing I want to be doing, it has also saved me from investing less each month in order to cover the costs. I am certainly grateful for that fund and it makes me want to keep it going forward.

I looked into how much I might have been better off if I had pet insurance for him from a kitten. It turned out that with all the premiums and having to co-pay 20% due to him being over 10 years old. I would have paid around £3300 anyway even if I had insurance which made me feel a bit better about not having it. When the neurologist vet originally asked me about my pet insurance and I said I didn’t have any, they said – ‘oh dear’.

For the first time in years, I haven’t been able to invest my monthly amount of money before I get paid if I wanted to. I have had to actually make sure I have enough money in the bank. I haven’t been able to borrow from myself so to speak or use my own interest free overdraft as I have been far closer to £0 after all my bills and disposable income have gone out. This has felt very strange to say the least as for the first time in 8 years – when I get paid actually really matters. I am more conscious of my pay day. I am now gradually trying to build up my cash again by saving a bit more each month by not spending as much on going out and buying stuff. I need to slowly get back a healthy buffer even if it won’t be as big as before. I need to shield myself as much as possible from failing my Project 2235 and this will only fail if I don’t continue invest £1500 each month or if I have to sell any of my investments.

I think it’s important to say that I have no regrets in the slightest over spending this £3500. Even though it did annoy me, I didn’t question it. Paying the £8000 to have surgery may have gave me pause for thought depending on the likelihood of success but thankfully that decision was already made for me.

Thanks for reading my post if you got this far, I appreciate it as always. Would love to hear your thoughts and how you’ve all been getting on.

TFJ

March 2022 Update – European War + Financial Update, COVID Positive, Gangster monk in action & More

Hey all, I hope everyone is doing well. It’s time for an update and what a time it is right now in the world for one… Just when it looked like we were beginning to break free from Covid into a new normal especially here in the UK with all restrictions being removed, we now are all witnessing what most would of thought was a thing of the past, a European war – yes a war from a Russian invasion! Not a special military operation Mr Putin. I will touch on that as part of my financial review update, I will also talk how Covid finally got me followed by talking about how Gangster Monk as mentioned in my last post has been in action delivering on my goal to almost have my cake and eat it when it comes to my journey towards Financial Independence. I will finish on a more personal update with a goal to be held accountable to in front of you all!

Finance Review during a European War

Financial Update – Mid March 2022

The below figures are taken from the 14th of March.

Monthly investment (Aug 21 to Feb 22) – £1500 each month
Savings rate (Aug 21 – Feb 22)– 55% average each month
Investment portfolio – £225,836.18
Cash is king fund – £1500
Crypto Punt – £1002
Emergency fund – £144
Big expenses / holiday fund – £4160

Total Liquid Funds = £232,642.18

As you can see from the graph above, my portfolio has taken the biggest hit since the Covid pandemic started in early 2020. This however is of course trivial compared to the horrific ordeal so many people are going through now in this war, and that goes for both sides when it comes to the human tragedy and sufferings that come along with war. I may have lost a lot of money and this might even stop me hitting my £250,000 Project 2235 target by the end of the year but the circumstances make the psychological hit of that easy to take if so.

Some of you may notice that my Big expenses fund has grown and my Cash is king fund has reduced. This is due to me transferring £5000 for use during this calendar year to enable Gangster Monk to live his dream. Unfortunately this was needed as my matched betting profits have now been exhausted so I had to fund my Big expenses fund from my other cash funds as I still need to contribute and invest £1500 for the rest of the year so I can hopefully still achieve my Project 2235 target.

My unexpected outgoings fund has taken a battering and is now fairly low at £144. This was due to a huge bill to fix issues with my car, such a relief though having that fund as it shielded me from that cost. The £5000 cash injection to my Big expenses fund can and will be used for unexpected outgoings until I build this back up over the next few months – I will get an extra payment from my side hustle in a month or so which will put that back above £500 and will get some more top up from a no council tax bill month too. As for the Crypto fund – Well, I’d rather not talk about the crypto fund, that’s a source of occasional thought pain mixed with embarrassment but then I just end up laughing at myself and move on… I will not sell! I just keep telling myself this is like an extreme emerging markets part of my portfolio and to be fair it is a small percentage anyway so it’s no real issue. It doesn’t stop me from feeling stupid though! I tried to ride the wave of FOMO others would have but it came crashing down on me, but I certainly knew the risks!

Russian Invades Ukraine (A European War in 2022)

When Russia was building up its forces along the border with Ukraine and in the Crimea, I really did think that it was all a bluff personally, a show of force and nothing more to achieve whatever his aims were. I was incredibly wrong on that front. I did not expect an invasion to occur and have been mortified to see the last couple of weeks unfold. It really is just plain awful and it seems the scenes and devastation will get far far worse in the weeks to come.

I can’t pretend to know what Putins intentions truly are, how much of what he says is lies versus actually what he really does believe himself too. As some commentators have pointed out, he really seems to have personalised this conflict and is now almost in a corner. Even if he takes the country militarily which will be very difficult, he has no hopes of holding it. I think what terrifies me more is what he will do whilst in this metaphorical corner he is now in and if and how he we will bite, as this cornered angry animal so to speak has nukes for teeth. He will need to keep face and come away with a win and I am just not sure how he will end up doing that at the moment. It certainly does worry me. I can’t believe this has happened in modern times on the European continent. I thought such things were things of the past, this will create a new normal now internationally as a result and I feel like that’s such a tremendous shame – The fact we are in essence going backwards – it’s quite depressing.

I will finish by saying I feel sorry for all of the suffering in this war, and that includes young Russian soldiers who are losing their lives having to fight for this cause. I have seen countless videos of events and I take no pleasure seeing dead Russians being taunted or prisoners of war being humiliated as I have occasionally saw. It all saddens me if I am honest. I can only hope this all ends as quickly as possible – I just can’t see that happening anytime soon with current events.

Covid Positive – It finally got me…

So I finally succumb to getting Covid, it was almost inevitable of course. I did manage to miss it for 2 years and was very lucky to get it after having 3 Covid jabs and to also get the more mild omicron variant instead of the earlier ones. Part of that was no doubt just plain luck of course combined with some preventative efforts. The irony however is that after going away on many weekend trips, nights out, going to Dublin and basically partying a lot in essence when we of course legally could, I ended up catching it at work of all places. My boss had the pleasure of unknowingly being almost certainly the one who gave it me whilst I was on the rota to be in the office one day, he didn’t know he had it of course so no blame is possible but he tested positive when he got home that day I was with him. Our office room pretty much has zero ventilation and I was with him for several hours so it was bound to happen.

The extra downside to getting Covid was the timing as I was going to Liverpool for the weekend. I even joked with my boss after he messaged me saying he was positive that if you ruin my Liverpool weekend that was coming up in a few days that I will kill you! Low and behold, on the Saturday whilst in Liverpool I woke up on the morning feeling incredibly hot, fatigued with a persistent cough. I pretty much stayed in the hotel that day and tested negative but I was confident it probably was Covid. On the Sunday I tested positive as expected and I ended up driving us back home early, it was also unfortunately the day where we had the bad storms with very heavy winds so the drive back was pretty awful and of course was made even worse by feeling so poorly.

I spent the next couple of days pretty much in bed taking regular top ups of paracetamol and ibuprofen which helped keep me going. I had awful headaches and my cough was incredibly annoying. It was like a flu to me but a flu is bad enough, it was certainly not at the cold level. My immune system it seemed had in effect carpet bombed my body to try and deal with the Covid virus and I certainly felt the full impact of that as a result.

I ended up being positive for a full 12 days although I was much better after around 4 days but the more gutting thing was that I passed it on to my partner and my dad who was in Liverpool with me on the Friday (which was a good night by the way 😂). They have both got through it now though so that’s all that matters. I still don’t feel quite 100% and I have a lingering infrequent cough and also find I need need to clear my throat at times. It also affected my right ear by blocking it for a full 3 days which was one of the worse symptoms for me, apparently the omicron variant can cause that which was news to me. Even though it ruined our Liverpool trip and we lost the next 2 weeks to self imposed quarantine, I am just grateful that we all got though it, many others were not so fortunate.

Gangster Monk in action

As a reminder, in my last post I talked about how my ideal strategy going forward Post 2235 would be to act more like a gangster monk than a monk or gangster, I wanted the best compromise between living life well now even if it would move out financial independence by a few years in the process. It was all about a hedge in effect as to the risks of moving towards it at full speed when that might have resulted in depriving myself a little too much and also the greater risk of it all being for nothing due to unforeseen future circumstances.

Despite this being a future decision, this was in effect the life I had already been living at least for the last couple of years anyway. I was certainly more ascetic monk like in the years previous to that which I now think was a slight mistake but it’s got me to where I am now though, so no regrets. This lifestyle of the past 2 years had been possible due to the presence of past matched betting cash funds but these as mentioned earlier have now run out. I made the decision to create the money that I would have post Project 2235 as a result of investing less now by liquidating some of my Cash is King reserves. I could therefore be a Gangster Monk in advance right now.

For fun, I just wanted to show some real world examples of what this has looked like in the past couple of months when it comes to purchases and activities.

*So there is a funny end to Air Max 95 story so to speak. I tried them on and they fit nicely and looked great. I went to pay for them and had to queue for around 10 minutes. The man started to bag them up but when I showed him my blue light card, he said that discount was only available online, he checked and they had none in stock online. It seems that I was over powered by the inner monk and could not bring myself to pay full price. I said no thanks and walked away…Part of me is glad but I must admit I really did like them trainers and I can’t find them anywhere online now 😅.

Personal Goal – Fatness be gone!

So it’s time to get personal! I am not sure if I mentioned on here before but when I was younger I used to be quiet large. I ended up losing all that weight around university time (around a 4 stone loss) and have since pretty much been a stable weight – not thin by any means but not fat either. I have gone up and down by around 5 pounds on average I’d say at different times but otherwise it’s been remarkably stable to be fair.

I have though over the past 6 months started to put more weight on and I am now around a stone heavier than my normal weight. I therefore hereby commit to losing that stone prior to my trip to Amsterdam in May. I will still keep Friday as a cheat day where I get to drink and indulge a little bit as if I get too strict, it will end up back firing on me as I need to have some room for treats too, life’s for living too!

My goal and aim is to lose 2 pounds a week on average over the next 8 weeks. I will be doing this by mainly lowering my main meal portions, cutting out some snacks that have started to sneak in and to do some minimum level of fitness in between (this is more for all the other benefits that come with doing this than for the weight loss alone). I will likely no doubt end up coming back from Amsterdam 1 stone heavier, but that’s an issue for another blog post to worry about 🤣. Wish me luck!

Thanks for reading my post if you got this far, I appreciate it as always. Would love to hear your thoughts and how you’ve all been getting on.

TFJ

Summer 2021 Update – Freedom & Self Isolation, Crypto Punt & More

Hey everyone. Hope you are all doing well as we now start to emerge into so called Freedom in the UK or England at least. It’s certainly a good time now for me to give you an update on what I have been up to the last couple of months 😀 from fun away and isolation 😮, to some crypto FOMO…

Let’s start with a good old summary review of my finances.

Finance Review

Financial Update – End of July

The below figures are taken from 25th July.

Monthly investment (May 21 to July 21) – £1500 each month
Savings rate (May 21 – July 21)– 55% average each month
Investment portfolio – £220,351.52
Cash is king fund – £6500
Crypto Punt – £2005
Emergency fund – £1151.64
Big expenses / holiday fund – £1331.16

Total Liquid Funds = £231,334.32

My finances are still moving nicely in the right direction. I have maintained my £1500 monthly investments whilst still spending a good amount of money on living life well, which is the most important balance I focus trying to maintain – living for both now and the future.

I still feel that now my portfolio is over £225k and is often above £230k. It feels so close to a quarter of a million that I often now tell myself when focusing on gratitude for what I have, that I have a quarter of a million in liquid investments as it’s so close to that now. It feels great psychologically as I don’t think it would feel that much different now at all even if I were to hit it exactly.

For those eagle eyed out there that have noticed a crypto financial figure in these numbers, I will now discuss this with a tail between my legs so to speak 😅…

Crypto Punt

What can I say? I’m now a billionaire! I didn’t think it would ever happen if I am honest but I now have over a billion….magic coins. Yes that’s right, I hope you are envious of this fact. I finally succumb even myself to FOMO and got involved in crypto.

I really don’t like crypto if I am honest, I have talked about it before on this blog. I certainly don’t believe in it long term, I don’t think it’s better than fiat currency as I think there’s so many negatives around it which I won’t go into now. Needless to say, I am not a fan. I have however been following crypto for a long time on and off and I have to be honest, there’s been lots of shadenfreude when it’s been tanking and then slight annoyance when it’s been rising.

A couple months ago I had the chance to invest in DOGE when it was 0.04cents and I was tempted on a few separate occasions to take a punt but decided against it in the end. I did partially regret missing this afterwards but when this was combined with the massive cryptomarket bull where Bitcoin reached $60k, an epic FOMO storm was created within me when the possible next DOGE was put forward, I won’t name it for now… I didn’t want to miss out on another opportunity, I felt the need to scratch the itch I’ve had with cryptocurrency and having read somewhere where it was suggested sin simple terms – would you be more annoyed having not taken a punt with an amount you can afford to lose versus annoyed with missing the chance of a large gain. I thought yeah why not, take a punt with less than 1% of your portfolio that would then still give you a nice risk reward ratio but would not change your life in anyway were you to lose it all. I would then have a small bit of skin in the game as it were and maybe this was the best compromise for me. I wanted to ride the wave of hype and collective FOMO and be able to get off before it came crashing down, easier done than said yeh?

Well fast forward to now, I got in about 3 days before crypto went on a downward spiral to where it is now. Superb timing no doubt on my part. I am now 43% down but I will not sell because of course I would risk missing out on a future rise which is certainly possible and that would be too annoying plus in a strange way it’s been pretty exciting along the way I have to admit. I did the old thing of checking the balance daily, reading Reddit, watching YouTube videos etc to now having graduated to only having some price alerts set on my phone and checking once a week or so manually. Will I lose it all or will it 10x, 100x? Who knows. All I can say is to people who have done similar to this, see you on the ******* Moon! – A cold desolate wasteland that doesn’t support life and that costs a lot of money to get to.

Liverpool weekend trip

Me and my partner really love going to Liverpool and we now almost make it a legal yearly requirement to at least go twice. We like to go once in the spring/summer and once in November/December for the Christmas winter market. I originally had booked Liverpool when Boris announced when Phase 4 freedoms would come into effect so if there hadn’t been a month delay (which I fully support) we would have been there during minimal to no restrictions and at a time what I thought would be with very low COVID numbers like last summer especially now that we have so many vaccinated, I certainly was wrong on that one!

We really had a great time as to be fair since the restrictions loosened on May 17th in England and you could once again go in doors in pubs/museums and restaurants etc, things felt normal enough minus the lack of being able to dance perhaps. We did lots of walking, shopping around, drinking & eating and saw some live music once again which was lovely.

Self Isolation

We had a great time in Liverpool but it did come at a cost. After being home for 3 days we both got a message from the NHS app saying to isolate as we had come into contact with someone who went onto get COVID on the Sunday whilst away. This could have been from when we were queuing to get into a few pubs on the Saturday night (technically Sunday early hours) or maybe the train journey on the way back but who knows for sure. Up until this time, we had only had to isolate for one day previously when waiting for a test result of another member of the household but this time around we would need to isolate for 6 full days.

I went back home to my house to reduce the risk in case I had got COVID but she hadn’t as I didn’t want to affect anyone else. I must say this was very strange at first to be truly under house arrest fully on my own, well I did have my cat but he isn’t the most talkative to be fair. I quickly ordered in some food shopping and a friend dropped a few odd bits around and then it was just me on my lonesome.

This self isolation was to be put to good use though. I finally had absolutely no excuse to declutter my home once again and this time more thoroughly than I had ever done before. I planned to go through every draw, every wardrobe and all cupboards. I wanted to act as though I was moving home and even made up some cardboard moving boxes where I would put valuables of my own that were sentimental, a box for my late moms sentimental items and also boxes of other things that I would not be leaving in their final home so to speak. Everything else was to be put in my garage ready to be taken to the tip! This was the clean out of all clean outs.

I am thrilled to report that I fully succeeded in this. It was a very mixed experience as I found many things from my childhood, many things belonging to my mother such as diary’s, pictures I had never seen, things she had kept from her youth and valentines cards my dad had sent to her, cards that I had wrote to her when I was very very young. It was half upsetting, half fascinating but was so rewarding. I felt a huge weight had lifted as I had been needing to do it for such a long time but would always find it hard to start. It was very heart warming to see my mother as being a teenager, a young woman in love and someone now my age. I found the whole thing put me in a deep reflective mood that lasted a good few days. I am so so grateful for the self isolation as strange as that sounds as it finally allowed me to get this done.

Otherwise during this isolation, my work carried on as normal as I could of course do this from home. I had to cook more for myself that I’ve been used to in the last year which was interesting too, I felt like a student again- beans on toast 🤣. I also got to play a little bit more of my PlayStation 5 so it can’t be bad can it…and most importantly, neither of us actually had COVID in the end.

Manchester weekend trip

When I booked the Liverpool trip a couple months previously, I also booked a weekend away in Manchester 2 weeks after Liverpool. Thankfully, our isolation ended before this so we could still go. We had only been once before on a day trip and we wanted to give it a proper visit by staying overnight and for a whole weekend.

I must say, we really enjoyed it far more than we thought we would. The night life was really good and we went to an Irish bar and saw some quality live music, there was loads to do around Piccadilly gardens and with the tram so close to our hotel, Wetherspoons so close and the train station – it was all so effortless. Apart from just drinking and eating, we went to the Manchester museum and the saw that lovely T-Rex fellow in the picture who was called Stan. We also really liked the amount of shops and especially liked the Arndale centre. My only regret is not arranging to meet up with weenie who I have no doubt wasn’t all that far away ☺️. This time around, we did not get any pings to isolate when we got home thankfully.

Freedom and Dancing

So as I write this it’s almost been a week since freedom day in England. This of course has been fear day in equal measure for many people. My own thoughts on this is that I do get the argument of ‘If not now, then when?’ And that it would be worse if we did this going into the winter but I just think personally that we should have still mandated masks in supermarkets, public transport and public buildings and perhaps still limited very large events to reduced capacities. I think this would of been very important psychologically at the least in making people not forget that we are not through this yet and also to help make many people feel safer and to still reduce some risks to people no doubt without much inconvenience felt.

I could not resist however myself going out on the freedom Friday to Birmingham so that we could finally get to have a dance and some normality if just for a few hours. We stopped over night and danced for almost 3 hours straight in a cocktail bar. It was absolutely brilliant but did feel a bit strange and perhaps invoked some nervousness or Feelings of – is it right to do this? We wore masks on the trains and in other pubs until we got to the table but in the dance club, it wasn’t practical to wear masks whilst dancing so we had a few hours where it felt again like 2019. We won’t be doing it again for a while but it was great and thankfully no pings yet and for now our lateral flow tests are negative still!

Work

There really is no change on the work front. The rules haven’t changed for the NHS which I think is the right thing so we still have to have the 2 metre rule and masks whilst in the office. I still go into work on a rota 2 or 3 times max a week which continues to be a great balance.

I am very conscious now though for our hospital that the next couple of months may be very delicate and difficult for our staff. With the numbers rising and expecting to rise higher and higher we will see more patients hit our hospital which we are already seeing now. I can only hope the gamble pays off and we manage to cope until we reach the peak and then it gets better from then. Here’s to hoping for all our sakes!

Well, I hope you have enjoyed reading my update, let me know your thoughts and what you have been up to, Any dancing or is it just me that’s a bit mad?

TFJ