Image copyright Ordnance Survey 2020

Is the Covid-19 virus really spiky?

Yesterday I went for a walk in the shape of a Covid-19 virus (I am not really sure why).

I feel I need to clarify this. It was the walk that was in the shape of the Covid-19 virus, not me. I wasn’t in fancy dress either, that would have been in very poor taste. You are probably wondering about your own wanderings now (see what I did there?) It is usual on a walk to go from A to B. During a coronavirus pandemic it is more usual to go from A and then back to A. When you are drawing a walk picture, you go from A back to A but visit a certain layout of points in between, all the time tracking your progress on a navigation device (in my case the OS Maps App). Think of it as a dot-to-dot but with more data usage.

Corona diary updates

• I walked to the beach and saw a man on a fat bike. The man wasn’t fat, neither was the bike, just the tyres
• Two of my not-climbing-yet French bean seedlings have germinated but one spent two days behaving like a teenager with his head stuck under the duvet. I had to give it a gently nudge out.
• The nudge I gave my French bean was perhaps more gentle than the ones I used to give my teenagers
• I found some sea kale on the cliff tops. You can eat it but I’m not sure even Crocodile Dundee would like it
• We had homemade sour dough pizza for tea last night. We do that most Friday’s. It was nice to feel normal for a while.
• I like a glass of ‘pink muck’ with my Friday pizza
• ‘Pink Muck’ is rose wine. So christened by a friend who prefers craft beer
• This friend is right to prefer craft beer because he is very good at choosing it
• He is also right to prefer craft beer because he lives in Cheltenham and they have lots of it there
• I suspect a lot of lager gets drunk in Torbay
• But maybe not so much at the moment

Conversation of the day

Wandering past the same lady three times on my local walk, whilst staring at my phone and looking rather odd.

Lady: Are you okay, are you looking for something?

This was a lady I’ve spotted before and often wanted to say ‘hello’ to.

Me: Oh. No. No thank you.

Awkward pause and slightly reddened face (mine)

Me: I’m drawing a picture on my sat nav.

Lady (into her phone): On her sat nav.

Lady (still into her phone): I don’t know how you draw a picture on your sat nav.

Word of the day – Cabriolet

Cabriolet has been chosen for today’s word of the day because today is sunny and at the Devon seaside sunny weather means three things:

• Unsightly vest wearing
• Burnt sausage eating
• Snazzy car driving

Although it sounds like your favourite bar of chocolate, a cabriolet is a car with a roof that folds down. Before cars came horses but horses didn’t have roofs so we had to invent horse drawn carriages. A cabriolet was a hooded, two-wheeled, one-horsed carriage, which bounced around so much it reminded French people of leaping goats (well something like that anyway).

The original cabriolets eventually gained two more wheels, lost their horses and gave people lifts in exchange for money. After horse drawn carriages and before Uber we had cabs. I can’t imagine ‘Ubs’ becoming a popular term.