A busy few days since we arrived home

So having made the rather difficult decision to leave our Florida home about 15 days early we are now faced with some rather cold weather for the first few days but then eventually it improved for about a week with bright sun and temperature in the mid 15C and started the difficult task of adjusting to the new time zone. In the meantime our buyers were having some challenges with their legal people but hopefully now resolved.

With regard to the current Corona Virus 19 epidemic which is sweeping the world , although when writing this today about half a million people have been affected with just over 30000 people dead which is really not good. However what worries me is the statistics which show some misleading information with countries using obviously different methods to record the infected and deaths and some countries have an alarming death rate per hundred infected compared to others, this is odd. Also most people seem to be dying from CV19 rather than the plain old FLU which affected many people in the UK in recent years, in fact there are figures showing that in the 2017/2018 period over 17000 deaths were recorded in the UK, so is there confusing in these stats, who knows and only if you do a post mortem can you really understand if they died as a direct result of the CV19 disease or were they just suffering from it whilst dying from FLU, perhaps we will never know.

In the UK there are many complaints the the Government did not handle this correctly and yet if you look around the world the same applies to all other Government’s as well it seems, certainly in Europe where the death rate is very high in Italy and Spain don't tell me they were prepared as no government or health service can ever be prepared to handle this type of event. So why is this??? Well when just about all Governments around the World spend absolute fortunes on purchasing Military Arms just in case we need to attack somebody or to defend ourselves from another power but if we did not spend this money we would have enough money to invest in healthcare to the extent required. Can you just imagine how many Hospitals and Staff we could have now if that money had been spent this way.The last major wars involving Western Powers were the Mid East in Iraq etc etc which have now pretty much finished as all involved parties have had enough unnecessary bloodshed with nobody ever being a winner. In fact there are many losers if you around the world today with the amount of people leaving many Mid East and African Countries for a better life elsewhere and taking major risks in doing so. perhaps less on arms deals and more spent on feeding and housing those people affected by the wars. NATO and UN really do sort this out because the heads appointed to these organisation mostly come from little known countries, one wonders if they are put there for that reason in that they wont get involved when USA takes on somebody, who knows.

It is also impossible for a Country to run with only 60% capacity all the time, France can do this in places but the cost is enormous and people always want lower taxes and more free services which is incompatible

Coming back to CV19 even the EU could not coordinate the response, and the so called Schengen Agreement allowing free travel is dead and buried, at least for now. There were lots stories floating around about and American Scientist who was working with the Chinese to help make this virus but this is mostly untrue, however who can you trust nowadays?, you cannot trust Governments and you cannot trust the Global Press who just love a sensationalist story and if they cannot find one they make it up by using that famous word COULD  or even AN EXPERT SAID  News papers are a nightmare.  Having watched the recent Government updates from Number 10 with reporters all asking very stupid questions when the same question is asked every day by a different reporter is surprising that the Government spokesman don't lose their temper and often asking inflammatory questions and/ or twisting the words of the speaker!!!! I don not trust the press anymore as its impossible to tell fact from fiction.

here endeth’ todays lesson

THE WORLD HAS GONE Completely MAD!!!

Please see the following chart which gives an excellent overview of the Corona virus 19 around the world, you can also access it everyday at the following link
VIRUS REPORT

So at the moment you have approx 150 thousand people affected and 70 K recovered which quite a good rate and is growing better every day.,. but somehow we have this really urgent need to empty the shops of toilet paper and anything else we might need as though  there was about to be a World War.
People have stopped travelling and now wearing masks which make no difference whatsoever unless you carry the virus and then should be at home and keeping away from people. 
We are still Florida with our originally planned scheduled to return on the  the 31 st March, but now all hell has loose with people stopped flying and Airlines grounding thousands of aircraft and laying off staff, its really quite ridiculous. So now we have rebooked our flight nearly 2.5 weeks earlier than planned as if we wait any longer then flights to the UK may also stop.  We now return to cold wet weather and no swimming pool at 33 C and  BBQ dinner outside in the evening listening to the birds. There are 37.2 billion people in this world and if 20% off them were affected I would accept the conditions imposed by countries about travel
Some weeks ago we saw some wild boar's accross from us having fun, see photo

There are many people who do not like the US President and perhaps he is not the best of speakers, but sometimes if you are good at your job its really not important ow you present. I do get fed up with the smarmy politicians with lovely smiles and great teeth and brilliant at presenting but most of them were pretty rubbish at doing the job, this applies to pretty much every Western government, as fas as I can see. I do remember a very good guy in my ex company who was an excellent computer technician and he new everything there was a to know. In small group discussions he was excellent but put him in front of a group of people to explain how the systems operate and how they should be used was a complete disaster.

This morning we visited another house in Rotondo West which we have booked for next year, its not yet complete but we could see what it would be like going forward and its enormous, its amazing what you get for £ 400K here. There is a huge deck area  eclosed in the lanai with a really good swimming pool and nice views over the wider part of the canal. Also it much nicer fitted out in the kitchen and bathrooms than other houses we have stayed in so looking forward, providing the virus problem has been resolved, to staying there next year.
Oh well back to the pool.

The PRESS is an ASS

Here we go again, the press have nothing accurate to report and so they make up headlines to try and shock people. Can you imagine why they should ask Juergen Klopp the Manager of Liverpool what he thinks of the Corona Virus and his reply to the various reporters during the past week has been classic intelligence. He says he is just a football manager and no expert on medical matters. You might as well ask the UK Chief Medical Officer  should Liverpool play a 4-3-3 and should they rest Salah. They also  tried to ask both Piers Morgan and also Mr Brexit himself Mr Nigel Farage and they both distanced themselves from the subject and they are not medical experts.
Have also seen this morning that Prince Harry was made to look a ‘charlie’ with a pretend phone call from Swedish ECO Activist Greta Thunberg, this apparently was on two occasions. What makes people do this???. Harmless jokes can be OK as once in my early years we had rather a silly guy on our booking office that when approached by the London Zoo a certain Mr Wolf, that they had a large snake to ship out he asked what size was it and they answered laid flat out out or rolled up?? NO harm but just a bit of fun, but this stuff with Harry is a bit much. Perhaps they should contact the Grand Old Duke of York and pretend to be his ex girlfriend whom he allegedly met in the Caribbean on several occasions? now that would be an interesting phone call.
Have just seen the budget basic information, looks like a man with no arms chucking money about. Good to see the large investment in Weybridge at the Government Research Centre which actually is in Addlestone, but Weybridge sounds so much nicer..
Life carries on pretty much the same each day with time spent swimming, blogging, reading and swimming with the occasional shopping. Food prices here are quite low although eating out can get expensive as they put recommended tipping amounts on the bill of 17.5%-20%-22.5% which compared the miserly approx. 10% in London. Quite frankly we don't care if we do not eat out as we can easily enjoy good quality home cooked food following our various Costco raids. We bought four huge steaks in Costco Sarasota a couple of weeks ago and each steak would and does feed three people and the pack of four was US$ 38.00.
Having watched Chelsea whip Liverpool and Everton recently and then see Tottenham play like they had no interest in winning was quite poor.
The Noel Groves biography is coming along quite slowly and I try to spend about an hour a day on it but as you go along you keep remembering bits that you did not include or that you might have even forgotten. I am up to 1985 now and about 60 pages, I am beginning to think its going to take until the end of this year to finish.
Most airlines are reducing the number of flights and even Virgin was reportedly flying empty rather than lose their airport slots, how silly is this?. We are due to fly out on the evening of the 31st March back to London Gatwick and are expecting to here at some time in the near future about possible flight changes. Lets hope our airline does not go bust in the meantime.
Well that's it for today the pool beckons'.

Rotondo West Holiday Home

This is our third year at Rotondo West, Florida after being given information from a friend who stayed here some years and said it was nice. Its very easy to find somewhere to stay in Florida providing you book early enough and I don’t mean weeks I mean a year or more. Each year the SNOWBIRDS as they are referred to come down from the North American States and also Canada to escape the harsh winters. They either fly down and rent a car and stay in similar places to us, or others with a RV ( recreational vehicle) often the size of a huge bus make their way down and park in one of the many RV Sites which are all over Florida, some a really excellent places with swimming pools and restaurants whilst other a bit more out in the sticks often look rundown. Did you know that 1 in 10 of the US population live on what they call Trailer sites, some of which are pretty horrible and its a big sign of poverty in a country which seems to haver it all, but does not.
In our past years of travel in various places in USA we have been appalled in condition some people live and its not unusual to see a couple of really beautiful houses next to run down old houses with the yard filled with old cars, cars which have outlived there day but they could not afford to pay for the return for recycling and so they buy another car every few years and when it dies they just dump it in the yard and get another one.
Anyway back to Rotondo West. This is a huge site of about 35000 acres and it has had a chequered history. The original idea was to be on the East Coast of Florida in the Palm Beach area but although some of the ground was obtained it crashed financially soon after. Then some years later somebody thought the concept was great and purchased some old farmland which was subject to flooding, a bit like the rest of low lying Florida, and started a huge sales campaign in the North of the Country and people started putting down money for their dream home and each month they would get a status report, such as the outer wall are up, or the electrical work has started , the kitchen is being fitted whilst customer were still sending money but actually nothing was being built and it was huge con.

The owners were found out and so another entrepreneur came along and actually started to build houses but of such poor quality that owners started to complain. This last owner was funnelling money to his Gambling Companies in Atlantic City and finally it was again taken over by a new investment company and banks who were also owed loads of money and together with the residents it has become a great place to live. There are still quite a few plots for sale and you can buy a plot and build a three bedroom house with pool for about £ 250K and for £ 350K you could two lots and a huge 8000 sq ft house.
The residents activities are huge from gold, to to tennis from flower arranging to mah-jong, you name it somebody has a course for it. There are currently about 4000 houses with a population of around 9500. One of the original ideas of this site was to have business enterprises in the centre of the site with people living around but after a while and the history of the site this finally never happened. It is also a deed restricted site and so compliance is important, you can park an RV or a boat on the driveway permanently and so an area has been set aside where you can park them away from the housing. Englewood is the local town and Port Charlotte is not that far away and in these two areas everything is available from shopping to restaurants, cinemas, hospitals. Hospitals in this next of the wood advertise their services and if providing A & E services near the hospital on a main road you will see a signboard giving the average waiting time to be seen. The longest I have seen of the many signs is about 18 minutes.
We seem to have a different house each year and this one we are in is the nicest and not overlooked although the swimming pool is a bit to shallow one end but the temperature up and till today has been good but now it looks like the heather has broken and so let hope they can fix it quickly.We have already booked for next year Feb/March 2021 , we could not get this one as already fully booked but the one are renting next year is pretty much just across the road and in the process of construction. It might be ready before we leave here and so we can take a look.
Its a little cooler, yesterday and today and down to about 24 Centigrade yesterday and up to 25 today and then back for the rest of next week to 27/28 C, Unfortunately the pool heater seems to have stopped and so we have asked them to repair as soon as possible.
Time for a coffee!!!!

To put Corona-Virus in a true perspective

This is what 100,000 people look like

This photo is of Kyle Field Stadium in the United States of America. It hold just over 100,000 people which is the total amount of people known to have contracted the Corona –Virus. Within this stadium you will see one smallish section which seats 3000  people, which roughly equates to the same number of people who have died from the Virus. The number of people in the world today is not fully known but in 2017 it was 7.2 billion and expected to be 7.7 billion by the end of 2019 and so looking at pure numbers its a very small amount indeed.
By comparison, whilst not underplaying the risk see following figures.

Road Accidents.
On average their are 50 million people affected by road accidents with 1.35 million deaths
Smoking and drugs
around 20 million people die each year from drugs and smoking
From Cancer
Nearly 10 million people year DIE from cancer apart from the millions who are cancer sufferers.

Again I am not downplaying the subject but highlighting how the press has got it totally wrong. Yesterday their was a photo of a store in UK where all the toilet paper had been taken, what it did not show you was the next day that all the shelves were stocked again. Today whilst shopping in the local PUBLIX Supermarket (very much like Waitrose) there at check out was the National Enquirer Magazine, that pillar of honesty, with the headlines 100 million American with catch the Corona Virus and at least three and half million will die. I would presume they based this  on another set of  USA figures that show that there about 100 known cases of people infected with about 6 deaths so far recorded and most of the deaths were due to people having other challenges. People who smoke or take drugs or have high blood pressure and Diabetes and are over 70 are more likely to than a six year old kid that doesn't smoke or have any other illness. Also please remember the population of the USA is roughly 330 million and so with 14 people dead as of today and perhaps 120 affected. If you are good at percentages you can work it out.
On UK TV just recently they interviewed a woman who had bought enough stocks of food and toilet paper to last out a long war and she had obtained over 150 cans of food plus a lot else and then she had the audacity to blame the Government  for the problem of shortages and price rises. If she was an intelligent woman which clearly she wasn't she did not understand that by overstocking and causing others to do the same, aided by the stupid newspapers and TV Companies, that it would create an artificial shortage which has the effect of raising prices to which she was again blaming on the Government quote ‘Who Cannot be trusted’ , actually the quote should really refer to her.
Creating food shortages is always a worry but who will  be the most affected, perhaps your granny who is in a care home and  even another family member in hospital for an unrelated illness could suffer as food supply has been totally disrupted by these stupid people.

OH Well back to the swimming pool

An interesting but frustrating few days

Well I am not sure if I have mentioned before in this Blog but we are in the process of selling the house and generally downsizing. This is a result of the cancer issues I experienced recently  and now, for the moment, considered free, but you never know. So in discussion with Jennifer we decided that having a really large and car moving forward does not really make sense as neither of us would like to live in the present house which so beautiful but rather large.
In November the fantastic Toyota Land Cruiser was sold and a a much smaller vehicle from Lexus purchased and also its a hybrid so we are joining the partly electric brigade. The thought should just one of us be living in Piplin was to much and the work involved in selling and moving is also tough perhaps when recovering from the loss of a loved one was to difficult to consider and hence the house on the market. Three days before we left the UK we agreed a sale price and matter passed to Solicitors and sometimes no news is good news but suddenly not in case as the buyer has started hesitating for reasons to be fully  established anyway lets wait see what happens over the next few days.
So what do we do when in Florida, we are no good supporters of restaurants as we can as a good a dinner at home as out and at less cost but most importantly for Noel we know exactly what's in it. In our earlier visits to Florida we have been out for dinner and I enjoyed the fried coconut prawns and not knowing that Coconut and deep fried food is not good for me caused me many concerns on the way home in the car, I don't want to repeat that. Similarly Pizza seems to upset me and again after a pizza I really need to look for a loo pretty fast, not a way to enjoy an evening out and so if we do go I choose boring if not repetitive to avoid unnecessary anxiety. Talking about anxiety I read today that in a documentary about Bill Clinton and his relationship with Monica was quote ‘To overcome some of his anxiety’. Not sure Jennifer would fall for that line.
So in addition to not going out much we do shopping, go to the local market and general read, swim , eat with the occasional glass of wine. However this year I remembered that in early 2015 and on a cruise from Southampton via the West Indies and Panama Canal to San Francisco  with some days with not much to do I had started to write a brief history or biography about me and eventually Jennifer as I often think that it would be really nice to discuss with my Mum and Dad and also their parents about their lives and growing up in France and during the war and what it was like having babies during this time, etc etc. And then it occurred to me that perhaps our children and their children might be asking the same question at some stage in the future and so I started writing a biography which |I thought would take not long to do. Upon returning from the cruise I planned to finish it but somehow never got around to it and then in June 2015 the BIG C arrived and I totally forgot it.
Well this year I thought I would start on it again and have finished in a couple of days but somehow as you start writing it all starts to flood back about painting my uncles car to a big accident in France to moving to Hong Kong and suddenly I am to 60 pages and only at 1978 with a lot more to go so this will take some to complete but eventually I hope to pass on to family members to read or use as toilet paper if they have not be restocked the shops  after the Corona Virus outbreak.
The Corona Virus is certainly a worry but in terms of comparing to the amount of people dying from car crashes or drug overdoses and many diseases the amount of deaths and people affected is minimal and yet the Newspapers are in panic mode driving the fear so that shops are emptied of home essentials and  using anything they can get their hand to cover their face although it does not make a blind bit of difference. Having lived in Asia for many years and understand that the locals wear a face mask when they are ill, Ie if they have a cold or fly they ear a mask but you don't wear a mask if you are fit and well and so you can tell who to be near or not.

With the crazy things people are now wearing such as face mask, plastic bags and boxes and anything else they think will work is quite stupid as its generally known that hand washing and not touching your face is the best way forward. Flights are being cancelled by the thousand, shops are being emptied of stock thereby creating an unnecessary shortages, the world has gone mad and supported by the media and social networks.

Lets hope they don't cancel our flight home on the 31 st of March as we will be stuck in the hot sunny weather for a while longer..could be worse though!!!