Just when we think that lockdown can't get any worse, they now bring us to Tiers! We were in Tier 4 along with great swathes of this part of the country. Then they put more than three quarters of the country in Tier 4 with just about all the rest in Tier 3. At least I have my Father close by, so I am in his Bubble, I do his shopping and visit him to check he's ok every week. My Wife is in her Mother's bubble, she also does her shopping and visits, so we feel quite fortunate that we were able to see them both over Christmas and Boxing Day.
My daughter is back on furlough again after the bookshop had to shut again, just as the Christmas rush was starting and thankfully I went and collected my son from Bournemouth, where he is at University, a week before all the Tier 4 thing kicked off. He'd had his 2 Covid tests, both negative, so he was able to come home. The added positive (no pun intended) is that he is living in a house and not in Halls, so has much more freedom of movement and not restricted by the University. He is of course desperate for a haircut, having not had one since he went back in September and was booked to get one just before Christmas. This of course was cancelled due to the new restrictions, so it's looking like another 'Dad and Sister' salon haircut (Been there before, see post 6)!
As Bournemouth is now in Tier 4, I suppose technically he can go back, as he won't be leaving a Tier 4 Area, just going to another part of the one big one that they have created! But I think for the time being he will be staying where he is, at home and doing his course online from here. Thankfully with the aid of Zoom, he and his 2 co-presenters are able to record their Radio show and then send it into the Radio station to be broadcast (Nerve Radio, Wednesday 5-6pm). (player.nervemedia.org.uk/)
I'm still searching for a new full time job, but not quite as intensely as before, I have been offered a few days a week working for another removal company. Much as it's roughly what I did before, this is all loading and moving whereas my last job was more deliveries, with some removals. It was still lots of loading and unloading but less furniture, my nearly 60 year old body is starting to feel the effects, but whilst the offer of work is there I will carry on. There are not that many delivery jobs out there and those that are, are generally for the big parcel delivery companies, some of whom you supply your own transport but don't do that many drops so you won't earn that much and probably need another job as well, the others are 5 or 6 times as many deliveries / collections and are on quite a tight time scale, although all local to a particular area.
I will probably have to go Self Employed, work as a Sole Trader, then I can register and sort out about tax and NI. In the mean time I will carry on looking and at the same time look into the Sole Trader side of things.
Like everybody else, I need to be earning some money to feed the family and pay the bills, but like so many others out there searching, there isn't that much and with the lockdowns, tier systems and general retail and hospitality closures it is getting tougher and tougher for everyone.
And for anyone who is reading or listening to this and is also looking for a new job, you have my best wishes and I really hope you find something.
My Children are a joy! I know that I have mentioned before that Thursday night is Lasagne Night, which involves making a lasagne that is half meat and half vegetarian. I've been making this delightful dish since the beginning of the original lockdown, and with my sons help we are now dab hands at it. Boxing Day however is on another level; we always have Turkey and Ham pie on Boxing Day, I'm pretty sure that I did this last year, but this year I nailed it!
It is basically, fry onions and mushrooms, stir in the meat, add cream and seasoning then put it all in the pie dish and cover with pastry. That of course would be easy enough, but my Dad does not eat onions, so I have to do a pan for him 'onion free', then of course there are the children who have to have a completely separate one with 'meat free' meat. So there I am cooking three pies as well as the roast potatoes and vegetables.
The trick is in the preparation, I started early and everything was ready and prepared beforehand, I worked out the timings and bosh, cracked it! As with all Christmas meals there was some left over, so I sent my Dad and my Mother in Law home with some, so they could have it either on Sunday or Monday.
For more years than I care to remember I have been planning on converting my Dad's Cine films to video and then be able to transfer it to DVD. As Cine is mechanical and Video / DVD is electronic, there has been no easy way to convert, except to project the film onto a small screen and film it with a video camera, onto a Hard drive and then copy to DVD. Yes, it's as complex as it sounds and nearly twice as difficult.
We need to bear in mind, that my Dad has probably not far short of a hundred spools of film, some are the small spools that have come straight from the camera and only last 3 or 4 minutes. Most however, are on 200ft reels, which are just larger than the diameter of a CD and they last for about 20 minutes each, then of course there are the 400ft ones, but he only has a few of those. Basically it's quite a monumental and daunting task and I want to say, something I almost wish I'd never taken on. Thankfully I never promised anyone that I was going to do it and I never set myself any deadlines, only the hope that I finished it or most of it, before my Dad dies. He hasn't died yet, I'm OK!
I have bought, over the years, a couple of converters. These are basic devices for converting film to video. One is just a small screen and a mirror, you project onto the mirror and film the screen. The trick is to get the picture square, and believe me that isn't easy. The other is basically a box which you put the projector up to one hole, the camera up to another at 90° and film the image from a mirror in between them. I'm sure if I had spent more time and got the equipment set up in a place where I could have left it to copy, I would have got on a lot better. The upshot is, I've converted not a single frame!
Then halfway through the lockdown my eldest cousin got in touch with me as he was in the process of converting his Dad's Cine film to Digital format. It turns out that between him and my Auntie they have bought a film scanner, which simply put, it seems that you attach your spool of film, feed the film into the scanner, set the frame per second rate, adjust the exposure and press go. I know from talking to him that it is a little more complicated than that and you need to keep an eye on it to ensure that it doesn't jam, but during the lockdown he has managed to convert all of the film that he had of his Dad's. He got in touch with me primarily to ask if I knew if my Dad had any of his Dad's film and whether I was interested in him converting my Dad's films.
Quite frankly I jumped at the chance, I told him that my Dad had a box full of film and that I would take it round to my Aunties in time for his next visit. A week or so after he had taken the films away, he rang me to ask if I was aware of any more film, as there seemed to be quite a lot of years and holidays etc, missing. I ventured into my Dad's loft and lo and behold, another box, as full as the first was lurking up there. I have since passed this on to him and bit by bit, more and more family films, weddings, holidays, Boys' Brigade Camps from the 1970's have started to appear on his Google Drive. There is some very cringeworthy footage of me as a baby, but also some brilliant footage, and I must get this online, of 20 or 30 boys climbing all over The Flying Scotsman at Carnforth Railway Museum in 1976, before The Scotsman had been restored. That would never happen now, you'd never get anywhere near it.
So it would appear that I have been saved in my mission by some very useful technology and a lockdown.
Oh, Happy New Year everyone, let's hope 2021 bring a little more cheer than 2020, although I doubt that it will for the first few months!