Monday 13th April (Bank Holiday)
Sit at the computer and plan my run route. Looking for something off-road.
Red dot in middle is my House. Heading south on the farm tracks towards the bridge over the motorway is my initial thoughts. The bit past the Mobile Mast, although not ROW is frequently used.
Once over the motorway it's a short tarmac section to join the footpath past Umberton's Farm to access Cutacre Country Park on it's western edge. A bit more info can be found here https://www.logisticsnorth.com/country-park/ . I had felt that the park could be a potential site for a cross-country course so it would be interesting to see how the grassy bits had progressed since my last visit.
So here's my route
I kept to the paths, 10k distance, a little too much 'out-n-back' for my liking but pleasant enough. The park is coming along. As seen in the satellite view it's still has a fair amount of bare earth on the eastern edge. Water areas have filled in nicely with an abundance of reeds etc. On my return I see a 'keep out' sign has been erected to stop access to the paths heading North and Southwest of the farm buildings. Curtails plans for exploring the the path heading Southwest. I have some degree of sympathy for the farmer, the potential traffic across the land has probably increased 10-fold with the nice weather and everyone out for walks.
Tuesday 14th April
Return my attention to the problem of 'roly' rat. I'd had no response to my email, so ring only to find said company dealing with existing customers only. Try another who agree to come out on Friday to take a look and put down some traps.
Try other options for the access to Cutacre Park
This heads across the fields close to the trig point. Footpath a bit bumpy, and evidence that cows have been on it. Discount this bit as a regular route. Run along Plodder Lane to join the footpath across the motorway. There's a small car park for the Country Park just off the A6. Amazed to find 5 cars parked in it. Thought the government advice was quite clear, no use of cars to get to the start of walk/run/cycle. Vary my return route and come across a group of 4 youths playing 'self-isolating football' in the play area on the edge of the housing estate. Give them a wide berth. People aren't getting it. Getting angry. Thankfully, don't come across anyone else contravening the rules by the time I get home. 7.5K completed.
Wednesday 15th April
Back in work. Informed that someone from the 'Comms' dept will be coming to film the swabbing process, so that we can inform the staff what to expect. I'm volunteered to take part. I reason that given the mask, visor and head-gear no one will recognise me. We find a willing member of staff who had an appointment anyway to play the 'patient' and prove how easy (cough,cough) it is.
Here's the link to the video, I'm hoping it'll work, see if you can spot me!!
Thursday 16th April
The planned 2nd site for swabbing has now changed. The other clinic potentially ear-marked has been deemed not suitable due to access issues and now the Etihad complex is being offered up as a location. The only downside is that the Council is now involved and are pushing this to be a 'self-test' centre. We voice our concerns, that in it's current format no-one is realistically going to be able to achieve adequate swabs on their own.
Apparently this is a government-led initiative, trial period of 2 weeks for frontline staff. Beginning to see this as a numbers game. A bad test is often if not worse than no test. We managed 68 staff swabbed today.
Friday 17th April
Pest control man arrives and inspects the site. Explain what I've done so far and he checks round the house. I'm reassured that they'd be unlikely to access the house. I've had no more sightings all week but am hopeful with the four 'humane' traps put in place. Essentially a black plastic box with some brightly coloured blue pellets and pink cubes for them to nibble on. The treatment will involve a further 2 visits, so he'll be back in a week.
Todays run is a further variation of Monday and Tuesdays, with an outbound leg along Plodder Lane and returning via Umberton's Farm. 10.35K on the watch.
Saturday 18th April
At the time the video was filmed we'd swabbed over 700 staff and got 250 back to work. I'm hoping by the end of my weekend shifts we may have hit the 1000 mark.
59 staff swabbed today. A good number compared to the previous Saturday. Process have now been put in place to ensure that services (such as mine) which usually operate Monday- Friday have a manager on-call to accept phone calls from staff to record their first day of sickness. Normally if you fall ill over a weekend, then you phone in on your first working day ie Monday. At the moment the guidance is to try and swab ill staff within 3 days of them developing symptoms.
Sunday 19th April
941 the total so far. So we need 59 to make it to 1000. We're off to a very slow start. I then get a message that a lady from the Council will be dropping by to see how we do things as she'll be overseeing the site at the Etihad. I'm hoping that we'll have a few for her to watch, if not it'll be names in a hat and one of us will have to pretend we've got Covid 19.
A big sigh of relief from all us swabbers as the bookings for the afternoon pick up a bit. Our guest from the council arrives, I talk her through the process and she observes a couple of swabs being undertaken, one of which proves our point that a 'self-test' could not have been undertaken sufficiently well by the individual concerned.
She gets our point, but says that she's just been tasked to set it up and shows a lot more interest in the IT set up and the paperwork side of things. They start Monday.
Despite an improvement in the afternoon bookings, we fall short of our target by 13.
Catch-up phone call with the parents. All well at their end, carers are helping them helping with the shopping. I would have been due to go and visit them the following week but obviously that's all off for the foreseeable future.
TF
No comments:
Post a Comment