Living on a border without a wall has some advantages but who would have thought that differing rules on a pandemic would play a part in our relief. Let me digress as is my habit. Here in Northern Ireland's borderland we are still in an odd, politically enforced, selective lockdown - odd because it has daft rules and enforced by one party against the will of four others but the one party then changed its collective mind in a U Turn a few weeks in. It couldn't spin itself out of its self serving mess. I can't sit in a cafe and have a cup of coffee even if I'm six feet away from the nearest customer. I can work with someone all day, side by side, but I can't have a cup of tea with them in their house. I can buy a bottle of whiskey but not a pair of socks. If I were religious I could go to a place of worship for personal prayer but not the funeral of a neighbour due to very tight restrictions on numbers (mind you we live in a place where even attending a funeral is far from a straightforward matter - but that's another storey - oh I couldn't resist that one.) In fact it's so crazy for now we have a sad link with our American cousins - until 20 January next we both live in a kakistocracy - but at least their troubles end in 44 days time while ours will still be here when my as yet unborn great grandkids will become pensioners. Anyway enough digression (it must be a form of lockdown syndrome) the Irish Republic has almost fully re opened. All shops and cafes. That'll do nicely. So off we went across an unmanned border to this edge of town place for some more Christmas decorations and a bit of normality - it's not my idea of a place to go as it's full of the usual chain store and tat shops that I've so little interest in - the only exceptions for me are their on site cinema and a Costa coffee bar. The parking is free here with room for hundreds of cars. There's just one fairly basic public toilet to cater for the desperate. There's a KFC that's worth missing and a local cafe I don't go to as it doesn't have any food items or prices displayed in their windows. So while my wife shopped for stuff I contemplated a flat white in the Costa coffee bar, but no, it was so darn cold I decided to hold off until we got to a nearby Tesco which has a cosy warm Costa coffee bar within. I have previously written several reviews on the Costa within Tesco on Yelp but they've disappeared so I ain't writing any more. As I write it's been a momentous day for the LGBTQI community here in our kakistocracy - they can now change their civil partnerships to marriages. Yes we are being slowly brought from the dark ages (but we still have people who would take the swings out of budgie cages on a Saturday night) toward a civilised society and boy oh boy is it hard going - we must protect the State from religion here rather than the other way around. Now we here are just a few days from re opening our cafes and restaurants and we'll stay open now through Christmas despite the fact our Wu flu deaths are stubbornly high not withstanding our being quasi locked down and still more avoidable hospitalisations and deaths are likely to remain high well into next January. read more