04/05/21 COVID tests and boules stance

There is some myeloma content in this post. Be patient, we'll get to it. But first...

I did a government COVID swab test on myself earlier. All went well, negative result as expected. Then I went to report the result on the government website. You have to enter the reference number of the lateral flow test thingy - it's printed on it, and there's also a QR code. The print is small, so I used a magnifying glass to read it. Then I took a high-res photo and expanded it. I entered the number and the website said you can't use a test kit twice, that one has already been used. So I did the QR thing and that came up with the same code. I know I was reading the code correctly, which means that somebody else has mis-read their code and entered mine instead.

If that result had been positive, I'd have been called in for an antibody test for no good reason, although considering my immune-compromised and fully vaccinated state the result would have been interesting. Bugs, bugs, bugs... Result: test not recorded. I'll do another one tomorrow. Maybe that's why they include a "spare" in each pack of seven tests.

We had a good walk in Admiral's Park, including coffees (really rather good) and toasted sandwiches for lunch at the Central Park Cafe. Activity targets well met.

Boules. The conventional stance is with both feet together inside the circle, or (for a right-hander) with the right foot ahead of the left:

This man shows the feet-together stance as well as the crouch. I'm working on the crouch but have a long way to go to make it work for me. However, my instinctive stance is standing with left foot ahead, against all convention. Had a long discussion about this with a couple of other players last Sunday. I explained that I  have issues with both legs - left one had that huge osteolytic lesion and plasmacytoma at the start of my myeloma (see? Got there!) and right one had Achilles tendon surgery. So I think I'll stick with what feels natural for me, whether other people like it or not.