I snagged a beautiful seashell in wonderful condition I've been wanting her for ages !
Was slightly disappointed that she is missing her nose splotch though possibly from age ?
I have a 35th anniversary seashell with nose splotch so I guess it doesn't matter too much x
Here she is http://imgur.com/a/c2n5VVQ

She's a beauty, she's on my (short) G3 wish list as well. But I'm not actively looking for G3's at the moment (not enough space), so I'll not rival you on your hunt anytime soon, I promise.  Good luck in finding her! There seems to be one with a fixed price on eBay at the moment by the way, she seems to be in excellent condition.

On Ebay  I can't see the listing, must not post to uk x

Quote from: kellybates1993 on March 13, 2020, 03:33:22 AM

I'm also from the Midlands, it's crazy how it differes county to county, me and my family have been made to self isolate for 7 days as of this morning  me and the kids all have a bad cough a sore throat and a fever and body aches all over.
we called the doc and were told to stop school and work for 7 days and isolate.
It feels like a really bad case of the flu, I really can't see how it would be corona as we don't go far afield or out much at all lately, it's a shame they didn't offer us testing.

So the flu is obviously going around too.

But you are not going to know if it's corona or flu unless you get tested. Because governments have no ability to test all but severe cases, the corona virus numbers are very MUCH higher than "confirmed cases".  Lots of people might just have a small cough and a low fever and have it.

So, I'd call your doctor up again and ask if you can get tested for the flu. There's NO reason you can't be tested for that, and if you had that you wouldn't have corona virus. You also can get medicine for flu if need be if it's early on.

I took your advice and gave them a call, they said with my and my families symptoms that we unfortunately wouldn't be allowed to enter the gp surgery at all for 14 days !
This is news to me and worrying news with my youngest being so vulnerable.
I was told to call the 111 hotline that's been set up for corona virus but it just goes beep beep beep??
We are all ok, lots of fluids and rest and we've all had painkillers so I'm not panicking but I thought the gp would have maybe offered us testing,  as of now I can't see any reason it would be coronavirus  but we are just following orders.

Post Merge: March 13, 2020, 06:44:08 AM

Quote from: kellybates1993 on March 13, 2020, 03:33:22 AM

I'm also from the Midlands, it's crazy how it differes county to county, me and my family have been made to self isolate for 7 days as of this morning  me and the kids all have a bad cough a sore throat and a fever and body aches all over.
we called the doc and were told to stop school and work for 7 days and isolate.
It feels like a really bad case of the flu, I really can't see how it would be corona as we don't go far afield or out much at all lately, it's a shame they didn't offer us testing.

Wishing you and your family the best.

Are you West Mids or East? West seems fairly unscathed at the moment. Mind you, where I used to live in London - both those areas only have 1 confirmed case as well despite all the tabloids trying to whip up drama about London's case numbers. When you look at it nationwide by region - and the BBC had a tracker thing by postcode - the reality is something like 1-3 cases in a much larger local population. But of course that's only confirmed cases.

On the subject of flu, I don't suppose the NHS is going to do tests for that. But over here vulnerable people are encouraged to have a flu jab and every winter a huge number of people do (also sometimes a pneumonia one in the older population). Even though they are not the same, I imagine people who don't need an annual flu jab are probably better placed to fight off covid19. I would expect the NHS not to do a test for flu, so unless things get really rough, it's better to just follow the govt's advice for now.

UK govt have been testing people who were in contact with an infected person or who came back from an infected area but from yesterday are now testing generally - BUT they did say only the ones which required medical care/in hospital, so mild cases will go under the radar. They don't test for things like flu or other viruses unless the case is serious and requires more detailed treatment, so trying that path would just waste time. They refused my sister a test for glandular fever three times already this year, even though they're sure that she had it.

One concern I have is that prior to this the govt were talking about letting our A&E close (despite the fact A&Es in the UK are overcrowded and especially here where there are only 2 full hospitals anyway treating a large area of England and central Wales. It hasn't closed, but it makes me wonder what resources are actually available here if and when it finally arrives.

I think all this has made a lot of people take stock. There's hardly been a conversation about Brexit here in some weeks despite it dominating the news for the last three years prior to this. What will happen re that nobody knows or apparently cares right now. My hope is that at the end o this crisis the UK and Europe will sit down and talk like sane people understanding there are bigger things than scoring points that need to be repaired. I suspect our economies will all need us to take a cooperative effect.

Stuff like this brings out best and worst in people. People have stolen hand sanitiser from hospitals and madly stockpiled stuff, which has caused many vulnerable people to complain they can't get essentials and put a huge strain on foodbanks which the govt still doesn't seem to acknowledge are a thing. But on the other hand some local areas are setting up volunteer networks to help high risk people get supplies so they don't have to go out. If it wasn't for worrying about bringing it to my folks I'd be involved in one of those but I will be helping them if rules change and I need to do so - there are a lot of older folk in this area (several of whom are probably the kind to hit death with a walking stick if it came to call, if I'm perfectly honest about it).

BBC had an article about someone with the virus and my mother read it and said that it sounds identical to what she had last April/May time - dry cough that she couldn't control, fever that kept coming back, pneumonia that required hospitalisation. It took her a few weeks to recover. It's not that either of us think that that was covid19 but it made us all think a bit about what other similar diseases actually have been circulating in the past. Govt made a big thing about this being different from Swine Flu (which was bad) in 2009-10, because people have some immunity to flu in general and it was easy to get an innoculation done fairly fast. But then again they also keep saying that coronavirus is related to other diseases like the common cold. I think we really don't know what we're in for yet here.

However as of today some premier league football people have been diagnosed, so it looks like there's going to be some upheaval in the football, even though the govt has not ruled out their games.

Also, the US ban on flights to/from Europe doesn't affect the UK at the moment which seems a bit nuts since we have the disease here too. There's some concern about people getting the Eurostar here to get a flight to the US anyway. Nobody here knows how Trump intends to enforce keeping out anyone who has been somewhere infected in the last 14 days, since there are no passport stamps or visas within the EU, even outside of schengen. So basically a person can come from another infected country to the UK and onto a plane to the US undetected...bringing more infection onto our systems along the way. Unless the US intend to ban people based on their passports - but at the same time that would bar someone who'd spent 20 years in the UK who happened to come from France or Italy. I just don't see how that's going to work, and a lot of airlines and jobs are taking the strain.

One British airline (flybe) has already folded and tourism everywhere is way down.

East Midlands here close to derby, my mum recently returned from Spain but I'm unsure of the situation over there, shes recently been through a few airports, I had completely forgot about that 
And I'm sorry but did you say people are stealing hand sanitizer from HOSPITALS? jesus christ 
My son is due to have an operation on his kidney at the end of this month but it's all so uncertain now, the fact that people would steal hand sanitizer from such vulnerable people makes me feel sick, I hope this is over with soon,  all of my direct family are over 65, my grandmas 90 my grandads 91 my mums 67 and my aunts 66 and my uncles 61.
I'm just worried sick
Stay safe x

I'm glad we have a thread like this, because the shoutbox is going to explode if it carries on there and it's literally something that's affecting us all. Community is pretty much the watchword.

I live in the UK, in the Midlands.

There are no confirmed cases in my immediate region yet.
The neighbouring county has 2 reported cases, both came from trips to Italy, neither have been publically mixing since their return. The wider region has something like 6 or 8 confirmed cases.

It's a surreal sense of normal here at the moment. Stockpiling is happening in this area but the worst thing is hand sanitiser (we always carry it so have some but will have trouble replacing it if this continues). Our local store had tons of toilet roll on Monday - by Tuesday morning it was all sold out apparently. No problems getting rice, pasta, etc. Antibacterial soap and wipes, it's hit and miss. We also have had some flooded communities here in the last few weeks so that's probably also aggravating the situation. It may also be keeping visitors away, however, as tourist areas were the ones that flooded.

Everything else is as normal. We're being told to wash our hands and be considerate of other people when coughing, sneezing, etc. Especially on public transport, but this is running as normal. There's been no local advice to change anything but some events in the midlands have been cancelled, especially at the NEC (Exhibition centre) in Birmingham.

UK nationally is currently not closing schools or cancelling large events because govt believe the science doesn't support doing so, but I think local communities are making their own decisions about this kind of thing. There's also no ban on travelling except advice not to travel to the worst infected areas.

I feel like quarantine could have been handled better and people in infected spaces abroad should have served quarantine time there and only returned to the UK when it was clear they were not infected. But I do think it's too late to think about that kind of policy now. Just repatriating people with the virus to their homelands spreads the virus. Quite a lot of onus is put on people to self-isolate. Many are. Some are refusing to.

I have more concerns about my parents/sister than myself getting it. Of all of us I'm the lowest risk candidate.

The UK govt has said that mild cases may have flown under the radar so our figures may not be 100% but it seems to have spread more slowly here SO FAR than in some of our neighbours. Nobody really knows why, but they expect it to go up so it's day by day.

I am focusing on my garden, my writing, and we're going walking because here you can easily go walking and meet hardly anyone.

On a personal note, because of the awkward timing of finishing my PhD, I was taking this year out to write articles and try and get an academic post for the autumn. However, my academic field has cancelled so many conferences (being Japanese studies) and the job market is currently nonexistent so I guess that's also on hiatus and I'm in a wait and see...

I'm also from the Midlands, it's crazy how it differes county to county, me and my family have been made to self isolate for 7 days as of this morning  me and the kids all have a bad cough a sore throat and a fever and body aches all over.
we called the doc and were told to stop school and work for 7 days and isolate.
It feels like a really bad case of the flu, I really can't see how it would be corona as we don't go far afield or out much at all lately, it's a shame they didn't offer us testing.

I live in a small English village, it's quite bad here.
People are panic buying, shops are crazy empty.
I have 3 children one who is immune compromised so I'm pretty worried, don't take this as dooms day talk I suffer from anxiety and take regular medication I'm just very worried.
And all of my family are very elderly and ill already,  I'm basically surviving on valium and stress styling my ponies.

Quote from: kellybates1993 on March 12, 2020, 01:27:16 PM

I'm actually not sure...I think I may have one?
She was a random find at an antique shop in York
http://imgur.com/a/xVkI2Tg

I even wondered for awhile if she was a fakie but she looks similar to the pony posted so maybe not.

That's Princess Sapphire (also known as Royal Blue, her US name), from the same set. She is not a fakie

oh my goodness I didn't realise, I'm looking through the set now, they are lovely x

Ohhh amazing, I recently blew around £250 on hqg1c ponies  they are just amazing! I got the full artistry girls set that look like flutters and some doubles of them.
I also got a beautiful unicorn called I think it was puppy love or something similar, 2 puppies as the cutie mark.
I just adore all of the ponies they make I hate to think of them going out of business