Daily Chocolate Delivery

In the sales last year I bought this refillable 'advent calendar' and filled it up the other day with salted caramel truffles. Being 1st Dec I had the first one this morning, yum! Another extremely cold day with periodic snow showers. I was due to volunteer on Holt Lowes this morning, but gave it a miss. Instead I started making the felt figure for my friends' Christmas Craft Challenge - it's years since I've done any sewing! 

Our rainfall in Holt for Nov was 80.4mm, which is 80% over the average for Nov. That means we've had way above average rainfall for the last 5 months. In only those 5 months, we've had 27% over our total annual rainfall!  

Covid Update (for my record only)
Matt Hancock, former Health Secretary, finished giving his evidence under Phase 2 of the Inquiry this morning. I hope as a result of what we've heard, we end up with a National Health and a National Care Service, it's clear some of the issues came from Care Homes coming under Local Authority responsibility, but with overarching high level direction and some emergency funding and emergency PPE provision from the Govt. Also the Govt issued instructions to move elderly / infirm patients who were ready for discharge, from hospitals into Care Homes without testing (not available). This was partly to create capacity and partly as MH thought they were more likely to catch Covid in hospital. The scale of non-symptomatic transmission wasn't known then - it turned out that about a third of people with Covid didn't have any symptoms. There was also a problem with staff moving between care homes and spreading the virus. It doesn't seem to me that the governance works effectively for Care or between Care and the NHS, between the Govt and Local Authorities. The next session is next Wed, when Boris Johnson gives his evidence. 

At the time and now, one thing I know for certain is that the burden placed on a PM, Chancellor and Health Secretary during such a pandemic emergency is enormous and now I know they need a better structure to support them. They are also having to go through a lot of scrutiny via the lengthy and expensive Public Inquiry, chaired by a former Court of Appeal Judge, with most questions being asked by a Kings Council and which is quite aggressive at times. Personally I'd have opted for the model some other countries have adopted of simply focussing on lessons learnt, which is shorter, cheaper and will lead to quicker action.