When is a shop not a shop? When it’s a fast food outlet? Some quotations. Fires. Museums. Cognitive testing.

On the radio news just now they are talking about face mask wearing again. The main thrust is the matter of takeaways, ie food shops. Now what is the difference between a generic shop and a food shop. At the moment you don’t need to wear a face mask if you eat in a restaurant but you need to give your details in case they need to contact you in the event of someone having the virus. Surely if you pop into a sandwich shop to buy something for lunch then you should wear a face mask. The problem is that in some places you can sit down and eat on the premises. If so, do they need to take note of your contact details. Oh, dear! Another little bit of muddled thinking and nobody working out the details.

And it all comes into force tomorrow!!

But, as I think the TV programme Have I got News For You pointed out:

“MPs go off on summer recess as there’s not much happening and everything is pretty much under control.”

All sorts of things seem to be going on however, with reports on this and that.

Here’s a quotation from before the last election that Phil passed on to me:

“It could be that Mr Corbyn manages to run the gauntlet and get elected. It’s possible. You should know, we won’t wait for him to do those things to begin to push back. We will do our level best. It’s too risky and too important and too hard once it’s already happened.” (US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, June 2019)  

Just something to think about...

And we worry about Russian interference!! Oh, wait a minute - Americans speak our language... don’t they?

And here’s something from Keir Starmer:

“Ten months ago the Prime Minister received a report that concluded Russia poses an immediate and urgent threat to our national security. Boris Johnson had no answer when I asked why he sat on that report for so long.”

Indeed! I suppose Keir Starmer never sits on any reports.

Now, what’s going on with France and fires at the moment? A fire in a flat in Grenoble ended up with two brothers dropping from a third floor window - the ten year old apparently dropping his three year old brother and then climbing over the edge of the balcony and letting go himself. My source of info doesn’t say why two little boys were alone in a flat but I am quite impressed by the older child’s togetherness.

As museums and art galleries struggle to work out how to keep going in our new normality, I came across this:

“Museum curators have engaged in an online battle of the bottoms, assembling on Twitter to present their most captivating behinds, as part of a campaign designed to engage would-be museum visitors who, with many galleries closed because of the coronavirus pandemic, cannot ogle the buns in person. The #CuratorBattle began in April, but it was June’s theme, #BestMuseumBum, that has had people enthralled for weeks. Soon, categories blossomed to include: bee bottoms, Tudor bums, angular side bum, divine booty, tessellated maenad posteriors, weaponised bum, spectacularly tattooed behind and potato-shaped animal butts.” 

There you go, just a bit of imagination needed.

Meanwhile, over the other side of the Atlantic, one man getting on in years, Donald Trump, has been suggesting that another man getting on in years, Joe Biden, should take a cognitive test to see if he is really sharp enough to be POTUS. I was amused by this report about the “difficult” cognitive test:-

“Donald Trump, the president of the United States, has insisted that a cognitive test he took recently was “difficult”, using the example of a question in which the patient is asked to remember and repeat five words. “Person, woman, man, camera, TV,” Trump explained, saying that listing the words in order was worth “extra points”, and that he found the task easy. “They said nobody gets it in order, it’s actually not that easy. But for me it was easy. And that’s not an easy question,” he told Fox news medical analyst and New York University professor of medicine Marc K Siegel.

Trump said that a year ago he asked former White House physician Ronny Jackson whether there was “some kind of cognitive test” he could take, he said, “Because I’ve been hearing about it. Because I want to shut these people up. They’re fake news. They’re making up stories.’”

Trump went on to explain the test, saying that after several questions, the doctor returned to the list of words, asking Trump to repeat them. “And you go, ‘person, woman, man, camera, TV.’ They say, ‘That’s amazing. How did you do that?’ ‘I do it because I have like a good memory? Because I’m cognitively there.’”

 Well, what can you say?

 Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!