Diary

How long until the tennis starts up again? Just 11 sleeps!

I had a couple of emails yesterday saying that the dog insurance is up for renewal next month. As the dogs get older the insurance goes up. That makes sense as they are more likely to get ill later in life. Molly is 8 and Charlie is 7. They are not exactly ancient. I had intended that when they came up for renewal I was going to switch to “Bought by Many” insurance. Apparently their premiums don’t rise each year. Sounds good doesn’t it? In the last year I have paid £18 per month for Molly and £15 for Charlie. As a Trailhound Molly is classed as a pedigree breed. Charlie is a Collie cross and so is a bit cheaper.

Molly’s monthly renewal figure is set to go DOWN to £15. Thats the good news. The bad news is that because she is now over 8 years old I would have to pay 20% of the vet bill on top of the £100 excess. I had a look on the “Bought by Many” site and entered their details for a quote. Common sense tells you that if they don’t increase the premium each year that it isn’t going to be the cheapest. What I wasn’t expecting was to get a quote for both dogs of £139. Per month! I don’t pay that much for my car loan and insurance! I have never claimed on either dog’s insurance. Next year Charlie will be over 8 so his monthly amount will come down but I’ll have 20% of the bill to pay. I’ll stick with the current insurance company for now.

From tomorrow we have to wear masks in shops. Masks have been recommended for use in small shops where social distancing isn’t possible but from tomorrow it is a legal requirement in all shops. You can be fined £100 if you don’t wear one. Apparently the police and Tesco have both said that they won’t enforce the wearing of face coverings. As I have said in a previous post I have not worn a mask so far but have no problem wearing one. I just don’t think they are necessary in the large stores. If it makes someone else feel more comfortable to be out in public then I don’t mind.

I went shopping in Tesco yesterday. Very few masks were being worn. A lot of people still seem to be quite nervous about being around others. There are a lot of people on Twitter saying they won’t wear a “muzzle”. I forgot a couple of items yesterday so I will be going down there tomorrow. It will be interesting.

The local hospital is under the spotlight a little. I’m not sure if it is 3 or 4 members of staff that have committed suicide at work recently. The hospital management are pretty poor and don’t support their staff very well at all. Lots more staff are working their notice. I have been surprised over the 8 or 9 years that Sue has worked there how badly the place is run. The amount of money that is wasted by the NHS is staggering.

Not many matches of interest in the exhibitions today. It’s a pity that a lot of the better WTA players are taking part in events with wacky rule changes. No thank you.

I’ll make the most of the quiet days before the fun starts on the 3rd.

Stay safe.

 

“Rafael Nadal drops huge hint he’ll skip US Open”. I must admit I thought I had already read this news as he was committed to Madrid and the French Open. The French Open seems to mean a little more to him and it wouldn’t be realistic to defend 2 grand slam titles with just a week between them.

Article from Tennis head.

Novak Djokovic tipped to ‘take advantage’ of Rafael Nadal decision by former world number one.

Tennis Head article.

Danielle Collins has been kicked out of an Exhibition event in America.

Article from Essentiallysports.com

Yesterday was a pretty busy one. There were some matches in the Czech republic that looked promising. I previewed them in a blog post. Liquidity wasn’t great. I missed the first one as I had a car load of stuff to take to the household waste site. I knew that when they opened again after being shut for most of the pandemic that there were long queues to get in. I was hoping that those desperate to get rid of their rubbish would have done so in the last few weeks.

As I approached the site there were a lot of signs warning about possible queues. As I got nearer there was a guy with a stop/start sign who looked bored to death. Great! No queue. As I reached the bend just before the site there were yellow diversion signs directing you into the leisure centre car park which is on the opposite side of the road. I could now see the entrance to the site. There 2 guys who were also looking bored. There were a lot of cones around the entrance and when I got there I saw that the cones blocked the entrance. The exit was clear and for a split second I thought maybe they were using some odd one way system and you had to enter through the exit. Pretty stupid thought to have. It disappeared when I remembered that there are spikes on the approach to the exit that would wreck your tyres if you went over them the wrong way.

I drove past the site and went round the small roundabout to come back past the site. This time there was a guy holding up a stop sign. There were a few cars being allowed in from the opposite direction. It’s on a bend and I couldn’t see where the cars were coming from. I just assumed they were coming down the road as I had done a couple of minutes earlier. I stuck a right indicator on thinking that I would just push my way in. The guy with the stop sign changed it to a go sign. He seemed to roll his eyes as he saw my indicator. As I got to where he had been standing I could then see that the cars that were being allowed in were coming from the leisure centre car park. The penny dropped. There WAS a queue. At least i hadn’t tried to push my way through!

I changed the right indicator to a left indicator and followed the diversion signs. They were using part of the leisure centre car park to get the queue off the main road.

Have people produced so much more rubbish during lock down that we now need to queue for 40 minutes to get into the tip? Someone on Twitter suggested that going there just before they close is a better idea as there are no queues. I’ll try that next time.

As you know I have spent a lot of time during Covid trying different things with the website. One thing that I have been testing is the header at the top. Before the virus came along the site was converting like crazy. Sales during the lockdown have been a lot better than I had hoped for but obviously there has not been the same volume of visitors. The conversion rate dropped a bit. I have gone back to the header image that I was using just before everything shut down. I personally think that the white back ground with an image of my face and trading screen on a monitor looked better. Obviously my face didn’t add anything to the over all look. I was pretty small. I liked the clean look of the layout. The old one looked a bit like all the other sites but it seems to grab people’s attention in those first few vital seconds when someone lands on the page. I guess my face isn’t my fortune. That will come as no surprise to anyone.

There were no matches worth trading today so I finished the set 2 thought process flowchart. Tradeshark members will find that on the members pages. Feedback as always is welcomed.

LESS than 2 weeks until the tennis is back.

Stay safe.