Well, after being super-efficient at getting things done yesterday, I got today off to a slow start by snoozing my alarm not once but twice and then wasting a good ten to fifteen minutes looking for my keys before going out for a run. I always put them in the small pocket of my bumbag when I go for a run. It’s often the last thing I do before setting off, so it’s not surprising that before setting off I looked in my handbag for the keys. Not there! I had used a smaller bag when I went out for a walk yesterday afternoon and so I went and looked. Not there! The pockets of the jacket I wore? Not there! I emptied my handbag, for,the second time, and looked in all the compartments, despite the fact that the handbag has a handy gadget for clipping your keys onto so you don’t mislay them. Not there! Eventually I found them, already in the pocket of my bumbag! Too efficient for my own good.
I have a sort of paranoid fear of losing my keys. If I were to lose them outdoors I have this fear that someone could work out which house they belong to and let themselves in. If indoors, there’s all the inconvenience. My key ring has the keys to our house and to my daughter’s house, as well as the key, the only key!, to the lock for my bike. If I lose that key I cannot lock up my bike - if I lost my keys while out and about I would not be able to unlock my bike from whichever fixed object I had attached it to.
Nightmare!
Truth to tell, I have never really lost my keys as such. Whenever they are mislaid they usually turn up in a short time. I am more likely to simply forget to take them out with me, sometimes with inconvenient consequences. And when we used to have the flat in Vigo, I have been known to take the wrong set of keys out with me.
My key ring also holds small versions of various cards: my library card, my co-op membership card, the small version of my daughter’s Tesco card, so that every time ai shop at Tesco she benefits! No card of any real significance is attached there. Any cards that could be useful to thieves are kept in a safer place - well, relatively safer! A friend of mine used to keep her bank card in her mobile phone case, one of those older phone cases which have a sort of envelope style flap, convenient for putting notes, shopping lists and cards in. She had her mobile phone stolen recently, lifted from her bag in Oldham indoor market. I must say it was most unlike her to have her phone in a situation where it could be quietly “lifted” from her bag without her noticing. When she realised, she reported the loss at once but by then her bank card had been used to do an £80 shop in a local Tesco store - one of the consequences of raising the contactless limit! Because she reported it promptly, however, the bank will probably refund her. Fingers crossed! When she replaces her mobile, she swears she will keep everything in separate (and safe) places from now on.
Mind you, none of the reports about Cornwall’s funding that I have seen mentioned the fact that Cornwall voted FOR Brexit.
John Crace has taken to referring to our prime minister as The Convict. Here’s an extract from what he had to say on the Rwanda plan:
“ … he mumbled something about Britain’s fine history of openness and generosity to refugees.
Er, hello. We took just 9,000 children in the Kindertransport. And only made a big fuss about congratulating ourselves for that because we hadn’t taken any adult Jews fleeing Nazi persecution. And then we made almost no plans to take in any Afghan refugees last year after the US withdrawal and had to hastily scoop up a few thousand interpreters and other key workers at the last moment. And even then we seemed more interested in getting pets out of the country rather than people in fear for their lives. So, not so great. A quick reality check. The UK is the fifth or sixth largest economy and takes just 0.2% of the world’s refugees.
Then the Convict got down to the nitty gritty. He wanted to stop the trade in people trafficking. But he didn’t want to do it by making it easier for people to claim asylum in the country. At present refugees are stuck in a catch-22. They can only claim asylum once they are in the UK but the only way to get here is illegally. Johnson didn’t want to address that. What he proposed was that any asylum seekers – including Ukrainians without a visa – who reached the UK without having been pushed back and drowned while crossing the Channel would be rounded up by the army and given a one-way ticket to Rwanda. Where they could rot while their applications were processed. And if they were cold, wet and frightened then so much the better. Teach them not to come to the UK.”
Whether anything will come of the plan to send refugees to Rwanda from the UK remains to be seen. It might be yet another dead cat. And then I also read that Israel deported refugees to Rwanda. This is from The London Economic again:
“Between 2014-2017, Israel is estimated to have deported around 4,000 asylum seekers to Rwanda and Uganda under similar plans to those outlined by the UK government.
Nearly every single one of them left.
Many were smuggled back towards Europe, facing capture by militias, Islamic State, and a perilous crossing of the Mediterranean.”
Hmm! We’ll see what happens in the UK’s case. In the meantime, there seems to be nonlegal way of seeking asylum in this country. I feel ashamed and let down.
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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