Blogging is back. Apart from one post last June there has been nothing, not a dicky bird, since I brought my Covid diary to an abrupt end on March 17th supposing, as I did, that Covid itself was nearly at an end. How wrong can you be?

Covid goes on. We have just fallen from the crest of a third wave and would have had a fifth lockdown had it not been for the johnson wanting to maintain open house and an air of normality for COP26. As a consequence people are still dying, upper 100s per day, more infection, possibly new variants of it, is being brought here through open borders from across the globe. It might therefore be too late to keep out the so called 'Botswana' variant from South Africa recently described as a super mutant. The johnson could not lose this opportunity for one final, tragic and potentially devastating cock-up to end the governments long list of failures. COP26 was widely predicted to fail and it did.  

My Long Covid lasted 11 months and I am writing today because after what seemed a second infection, or at the least a relapse with 10 days of the most violent headaches, there have now also passed two whole weeks of much reduced long-covid symptoms. Symptoms I am glad to be free of because they were cramping my style, fogging my brain, battering my already dilapidated memory banks and prostrating my person far to readily in a comfy chair. 

Long covid is a serious, potentially long-lasting illness and it's severity does not depend on how bad the original Covid 19 was for you. There are more than one million UK sufferers. I struggled to remember things, could not focus on any creative work, had bouts of extreme fatigue, mental and physical disinclination to be active and regular head and neck aches. I found everyday conversation difficult and serious conversation largely impossible. It seemed to me that my brain could not keep up with my mouth creating confusion and bumbling embarrassment. These symptoms continue but to a much lesser degree and I am calling it over, possibly more out of a determination to move on and a romantic optimism, but over, done with.

I'm back. I hope it lasts.

Finally on this subject, I had Covid, not too seriously, coughed violently for 10 days and it seemed to pass. My people were aware, I kept away and we all moved on. In the following ten months I was much more unwell. Apart from my dear wife very few people noticed or bothered and even today, nearly 1 year later, when I tell people about it I get responses such as "I didn't know" and they are surprised at the heart issues and all the tests. An insidious fact about long covid is that, like mental illness, not only is much of it unseen, no-one wants to engage and understand the condition if the sufferer appears to be getting by okay. Above all other considerations, this is why I still wear a face covering in busy places. Long covid can hit anyone, of any age even after quite mild Covid-19 and with a million plus sufferers already, is causing more NHS overload.

A second and related issue is this: If you acquire long covid in your 74th year, people with zero understanding and even less empathy assume that it's symptoms are due to age related mental decline. Well bollocks to them!

I'm back.

Today is a day of rain showers and dark skies with intervals of bright sunshine. In one such interval I took this photograph of a favourite tree, Chamaecyparis lawsoniana 'Elwoodii'. It stands outside of the Shedio and despite it being a generally difficult tree to look after I love it. It was planted in 1955/6 by the now deceased former incumbents, Mr and Mrs Clark. This cultivar has a flaw, it grows side branches on which the foliage and new branches grow too heavy for the tree to support. In a heavy wind they flop out like new arms never to return hence the sawn off trunks. Inside this tree there is an assortment of ropes, ties, old belts and at least one vehicle loading strap holding the whole thing in shape. Today it looks particularly attractive in the sunlight with its main branches at ground level wet and shining. In late Autumn it emerges, full of life, from the freezing mists covered in a coccoon of spider webs dripping and glistening.

This Lawson Cyprus supports a Woodpigeon's nest higher up. Mr Woodpigeon can be seen at his seemingly endless task of ripping fresh, springy twigs, exactly 200mm long from the as yet unadorned Tamarisk bush nearby and flying in with them. This tree is also a regular plaything of the Blue, The Great and the Coal Tits which can often be seen hanging upside down foraging in the lower branches in full view of our garden window which is only about 4 metres away. The work and maintenance required is well worth the rewards this tree gives back. It lifted, higgledy piggledy, our upper patio slabs but of course I forgave it.

In other news I have completed the next in my series of articles called 'Connections', part of my Sort-Of-Auto-Biography, concerning my wife's bust. If you are interested you can read it here https://www.opvscvla.co.uk/connections.html

Back In The Covid

 To my surprise the sum total of my Blog sequence, Back In the Covid, came to a total of 183 pages. Following a suggestion from someone else I have compiled these into one document amounting to a small book. This work is now complete so here it is for what it is worth, installed on my server, in PDF format in a large number of megabytes, which takes a few seconds to download. Insignificant compared to the time it would take to stay awake and read it! 

At the same time I have made this artwork to use as a cover page. 

Read it here BACK IN THE COVID

BACK IN THE COVID - The Lockdown 3 Diary - Conclusion

 BACK IN THE COVID

The Lockdown Diary 3 - Conclusion

It is the 17th of March 2021. It has been a full year since my wife and I entered the first lockdown in 2020 a few days earlier than the 23rd March when it became legally enforced. The Covid is not over and done with as yet by a very long stretch and although life around us is enjoying a few extra freedoms and there are positive signs ahead equally there are negative signs not the least being the number and unknown dangers of evolving variants in countries like Brazil, India, USA, South Africa and the UK where it has been allowed to spread uncontrolled throughout the population. Our future freedoms are now in the hands of scientists seeking to improve vaccinations and a treatment regime around them which, like the humble flu jab, will no doubt be offered regularly.

It is the 17th March 1722, 299 years ago. Daniel Defoe has, this day, published A Journal of The Plague As it had happened in London in 1665. There had been an outbreak in France in 1720 - 21 and 57 years later memories still wary of a recurrence made the whole subject popular in discussions and no doubt Defoe was tapping into this. Even today this book and a follow up volume remains the source of much of the popular imagery we associate with that dreadful disease. 

No doubt in the future there will be a wealth of records to work with for Covid 19 significantly more erudite than mine which must now come to an end.

Having myself had Covid 19 in November 2020 I am experiencing so called long Covid symptoms which are improving but are still limiting my ability to work and more to the point, concentrate. In short I’m done as far as this little enterprise is concerned. 

Readers might have noticed that towards the end of 2020 my diary entries stopped their monotonous regularity and then occurred several days apart and then weeks. This has been due to a weird form of fatigue which has become the nemesis I battle with daily. Not bodily weariness although it that feels weak, it is both bodily and mental weariness. In 2004 our granddaughter developed ME/CFS which is also a post viral fatigue syndrome and I now know how she must have felt and particularly how dispirited it leaves you.

So by way of a conclusion here is a summary of where we are in the Covid right now and how it seems looking back. Now being the period from 17th March until this finale is finalised, finito, le fin!

Spring 2021 arrives

Even though we are still suffering from late frosts the weather has been sunny and dry and escaping from the house into the garden is back to being a regular feature of our day. I think of April as the yellow month. Sophora, daffs, wallflowers, Forsythia, Erythronium, the young shoots on Acer ‘Drumondii’, more or less in that order, with a handsome finale  provided by these incredible tulips (sadly I cannot remember their variety name).

Total lockdown ended on April 8th when some kids returned to school and outdoor socialising on a small scale was permitted with food venues open for outdoors or takeaway consumption only. We acquire some other freedoms back soon but frankly I have lost track of exactly what and when. Covid mental fatigue seems to be setting in on everyone. Clarity and transparency from government is completely lacking, confusion is rife and interpreting rules to suit one’s own inclinations the order of the day. In short the whole thing is breaking down to the point where it will all seem to be over some time ahead of reality. The reality is that , like the common flu, it will never be ‘over’. There will be a third wave.

No doubt scientists are cracking on with the protection regime we will require in the future but plans are not being shared officially. There hints of booster jabs.  

We, as we have throughout, are following our own safety regime. At times this has been to the point of obsession in spite of which we both had the disease last November and to this day have no idea how it got us. My wife was fine after a few days. Neither of us had a fever but I had a racking dry cough for 8 days which cleared up as quickly as it started. The false sense of ‘home and dry’ was shattered another week or so later when the heart went crazy, breathing became laboured, eyes became sore and gritty, the sleepiness kicked in and my concentration/cognitive functions disappeared altogether. As I recorded here previously the worst was over after 3 months, heart issues were scary at the time but not permanent or life threatening however the post viral fatigue remains as do some of the eye problems. 

Health wise we have had an eventful 12 months. It was necessary to take a third and longer course of treatment for yet another PTSD breakdown and my wife who had called our GP for an indigestion concern, was unceremoniously ambulanced off to A&E bemused and somewhat put out, for a heart concern. She was sent home several hours later and advised to take indigestion tablets! All our other ailments continue unabated but no worse than a year ago. Frankly it is rather nice to have them back like the few familiar friends helping to clear up after a funeral party when the drunken but obligatory guests have all pissed off home and you can laughingly slag them all off.

We appear to have survived at least to this point and on the whole we are both feeling pretty well and positive.

In fact that has been our attitude throughout. I am unable to say how we would cope if another lockdown happens but so far all is well with us mentally and physically in so far as it can be in your 73rd year.

There have been no major ‘domestics’! We had our ups and downs, initially threw ourselves into the Covid with sterling grit inherited no doubt from our parents WWII experiences. We vacillated between fear of catching the virus and FOMO, especially in our relationships with the new great grandchildren. We worked things out , adapted our behaviour and tried to make the most of the positives. 

Our natural interest in life about us simply added covid to the list of priority issues we needed to understand and know about if only to see beyond the utter bullshit written in the press and rife on social media much of which is engineered by an extremely incompetent government more concerned about it’s own survival than the survival of it’s citizens. Sadly there have been more than 200,000 deaths many of which could have been avoided by a more timely, more competent and less cavalier approach.

During the interval between Lockdown 1 and 2 in early October, we managed a two week break in Devon at a self-catering cottage. Lovely to be by the sea but weird in a mask! Until then we had not eaten out at all since March.

As individuals and as a society our behaviours have changed. In some instances permanently, in others to such good effect that they have become desirable and should stay. The use of cash has taken a nose-dive. It’s days were numbered but it’s demise now guaranteed. Working from home has proved attractive to employers with expensive city office rents in their overheads and in some form will become the norm for any employee who only needs a computer and an office LAN to plug into and structures to do the latter have been extensively developed. Executives spending the majority of their time abroad can do away with their top floor, mostly unused luxury offices.

Booking system adaptations have worked wonders to keep people from infecting each other but are also of great benefit whether at the doctor’s surgery or at the local rubbish tip. They reduce waiting times and associated stresses by making the flow of traffic through them more predictable and regular.

On line shopping has become the habit of many, ourselves included. Why should we spend a couple of hours in Tesco on our feet and then queue at the checkout for hours when a weekly delivery can cost as little as £2. Clinically vulnerable people have been forced out of necessity for their own safety to stay indoors and let the shopping come to them. Many of these are elderly and this would have been perhaps the first time they have depended on ‘the internet’ for a personal benefit. The Internet has been our great friend throughout in fact. Especially our ability to face call the family and keep in touch.

These are just a few of the changes but in reality they changes in our way of life have been extensive. The internet as an integral component of the functioning of a modern society has been at the forefront of our fight against Covid-19. Here we are fitting in humour where we can by playing cribbage on line, making Covid memories of the better kind.

We saved money. It has been something of a revelation how much of our retirement income was being spent on eating out, usually for convenience rather than a special occasion and on car fuel for days out. This meant that we could help our family with some of their little emergencies and although some of this luxury expenditure will gradually drip back into our habits I doubt we will return to such profligacy.

I became fatter, by about 3kg or more, which, having started at the outset of lockdown as an incorrigible, even dedicated, trencherman, is not at all good. There is an upside; we have eaten much healthier meals than we did before lockdown and on the whole enjoyed cooking them as more of a relaxed regular activity than as a necessity, often a rushed necessity.

The bad things…. ?

I am a natural introvert and I have come to prefer myself as I am, indeed to enjoy it, but this has been a characteristic that societal pressures have obliged me to strive against from boy hood to the end of my working life. If I am honest this has been to the considerable detriment of my mental health over the years and the substrate upon which I eventually succumbed to PTSD following unmanageable trauma, trauma I might otherwise have survived. Lockdown 1 therefore came almost as a release, a mental rest break if you like and not at all resented. My wife and I both felt the same. We were holed up in our home each occupied with our own creative projects and either pottering about the garden or lost in a book of cryptic crossword puzzles. We were doing what we love best free from all the usual obligations and were, in addition, on  a voyage of discovery with each other. While the ‘great threat’ was raging outside, in our secure and cosy bubble we were looking out and caring for each other much more than we would normally reserve time for. 

We readily acknowledge that ours was an easy Covid especially with the help of our own  exceptional family. Although vulnerable and over 70 we never really worried for ourselves, our fears were for our children and their families but also for our community and humanity at large. Our concern drove us to an almost obsessive interest in facts and data (and the trustworthiness of it) and forced us to accept our role as responsible members of society. We obeyed the rules.

And yes, we strayed at times, corrected our course, strayed again and discovered how easy complacency can be reinforced by an ever present need for the physical presence of family especially such a close family as ours.

We had our sixth great grandchild, Harrison, in lockdown and the temptation to stray was unbearable.

It was , I admit, quite a struggle to put this conclusion into coherent thought knowing on the one hand that for humanity and our society as a whole it has been a terrifying, life changing and uncertain time. Tragedy has been all around us and ever present either in disruption, personal loss, job loss, business closures, loss of life, ongoing health issues or relationship breakdowns. Young mothers have struggled with protecting their families, working from home and kids at home, with mixed, incoherent messaging from a vacillating government. This has been a debilitating cocktail of stresses on family mental health. It is interesting to reflect upon how society’s structures, systems and provisions interlock to largely avoid mental unwellness in spite of the normal high stress levels which we have become inured to and which we take for granted (mistakenly I think) as the reality of life. Personal freedoms are critical to self care when it comes to psychological health. The importance of a holiday break at a time of one’s own choosing is not to be underestimated.

Health care, social care, education, welfare for the vulnerable, policing, the whole lot is damned fragile it seems and thanks to Tory government policy even more so due to under funding and under resourcing. The Covid has broken society in many ways, testing it’s limits and exposing the greed of inherent in right wing politics as it seeks to mitigate against it’s own losses and heap most of the bad consequences of this pandemic on the poor, the vulnerable and the defenceless who are suffering the most. Apparently to this government spending £37 billion on a seemingly non-functioning Track and Trace system or bunging a Tory party donor a lucrative PPE contract is far more important than feeding poor kids free school meals over the Christmas holidays in a pandemic for a paltry few million pounds.

For clarification I am not a socialist. I hold that membership of any political party an intellectually demeaning signpost to a partially closed mind. Capitalist economics works, socialist economics does not. Simple historical experience attests to this as a fact of life. However I know what is right and wrong and the twin disasters of The Covid and Brexshit have taught me that politics must stand with religion as the two greatest curses to have ever beset mankind.

Covid-19 is the sickness that threatens us from without. Covid, aided and abetted by that other great national setback, Brexshit, has however laid bare the sickness within, the deep ideological sickness of a society dominated and enslaved by a nationalistic, mostly religious, pseudo-feudal, privileged and rich elite, their supremacy perpetuated by an antiquated, undemocratic FPTP voting system. They are supported by an openly or unconsciously racist, nationalistic, elderly demographic who insist on pre-determining the future of those that follow and all of this is being maintained by a government driven to systemic mendacity, secrecy, a complete disrespect for standards and the law, authoritarianism, propaganda, control of the media and the marginalisation of Parliament. Covid has exposed the disturbing fact that our present ‘Lords and Masters’ do not value us as citizens or individuals and have a moral outlook which allows them to raise the value of wealth, especially theirs, above human lives, especially ours.

We have such an enormous amount of civilising to get on with!

But get on with it we must, for the sake of our grandchildren and great grandchildren and I am optimistic.  Education cannot be reversed, economic interest cannot be suppressed, the truth goes on being true no matter how clever the lies and always comes out in the end. The elderly demographic which keeps them in power has at most twenty years left for their insidious influence to count. Religion, which drives more right wing political ideology than most people realise is in terminal decline. Communication via the internet has put the world on our desktops and our mobile phones. Trump fell, Bolsonaro is falling, Orban is weakened by his need to oppress, Erdogan’s religous agenda is anti-youth and dictatorial, Modi’s failure to prevent Covid from overtaking India threatens his tenure as it did Trump and as it will Bolsonaro in Brazil. None of their damage is irreversible, some of it will take time. 

We will, one-day, return to more responsible, caring liberal government (small ‘l’)and rejoin the EU initially via the single market and the EEA. Not in my lifetime possibly but we will sometime, down the road and then we will reflect on what it was like “Back in the Covid”. As the bigger picture of history emerges we will realise that civilisation, during that tragic period, took a step forward not back and that The Covid paved our way to Enlightenment II.

Completed 30th April 2021

Postscript

I have one overriding and horrific mental image that will not fade. Embedded in my consciousness during the first few weeks of The Covid is a scene of mind numbing and fear-shivering horror in which a patient is dying alone in a hospital bed without family or loved ones around. This scene has been re-enacted on a cataclysmic scale. 200,000 plus lives in the UK alone in silently slipping away in unmitigated, uncomforted anguish.

A vital but vulnerable nurse stands by the distressed patient who has become a political plaything between the opposing forces of profit and economics on the one hand and medical science on the other. She too is traumatised, exposed to potentially fatal consequences and emotionally overwhelmed in her attempt to sustain such levels of selfless care.

She contemplates the gold ring on the blotched finger of this desperate, ravaged soul, a token of love turned symbol of loneliness and dread, cries a little more inside, and moves on to the next bed looking sadly back.

BACK IN THE COVID - The Lockdown 3 Diary - Day 1 to16

 BACK IN THE COVID

The Lockdown Diary 3 DAY 1 to 16

The best thing about long Covid is that if you have it then you survived short Covid. I have it! Everything else, in fact most aspects of everyday life, went to the wall including this blog.

We survived short Covid pretty well, the wife escaped almost untouched, myself not so lightly. After a few days of strangely unusual headaches I coughed so violently for a week that it was necessary to clutch my abdomen to limit waves of pain accompanying each spasm. A now permanent ‘floater’ has appeared in my right eye. Neither of us had a fever. My cough stopped as quickly as it started and after a few days of ‘productivity’ (as I euphemistically call the snots) it was done!

Several days later ocular issues became apparent, dry, sore eyes and a new sensitivity to bright light but this cleared up quite quickly as the days went on however at about day 20 I would say, my old ticker started banging off under my ribs at various times in the day and breathing began to be a little laboured. At the same time my heart felt like, it was missing beats, worst case one beat every three was being dropped, and I felt so tired that I could and often did fall asleep for more than an hour once or twice a day.

All energy, inclination and motivation disappeared and most challenging of all my cognitive faculties were struggling and confused. I struggled through a weird, but pretty Covid safe, alternative to Christmas and presented myself for an ECG and blood tests on the 30th December. 

All forms of caffeine have gone from my diet. It has been a daily struggle but I am now trying to steadily increase activity levels to attempt to return to a more normal level. Progress is damned slow though, writing has been so near impossible I have not bothered to try (until today). Four days ago some paint was applied to a canvas. A token gesture to be sure and more to do with wilfully defying natural laws than to any level of solid enthusiasm but I took that as a positive step.

I am told that my problem seems to be ectopic heart beats aggravated by Covid-19 now mixed up with anxiety symptoms thanks to my PTSD. Tomorrow I have a 72 hr Holster monitor fitted to find out exactly what is going on. 

I must report that I do not feel there to be an impending imminent death situation coming any time soon and I am improving albeit ponderously slow. My GP did not seem to be overly concerned either but to be fair she does have a pandemic to deal with. On the whole I am actually more frustrated than either worried or distressed.

Apart from being denied my strong black coffee that is!

Tier 3 lasted until 26th December when Tier 4 came and went and on January 5th we all entered lockdown 3. 

Here we are then on day 16 of Lockdown 3. Trumpty Dumpty has made his more or less unceremonious departure from the Whitehouse after shitting on the top seat of the democratic civilised world and President Biden is enjoying his first day cancelling out at least some of the damage that fascism has done to America. The UK has transitioned into a fascist run plague island where we are all cultural prisoners and poor kids starve while billions of working people’s taxes are spaffed up the walls of the mansions of a corrupt and self-serving master race.

No Brexit dividend has manifested itself on my doormat and dawn over the Sunlit Uplands of a post Brexit landscape have revealed only chaos at the ports, rotting lorries of shellfish and meat, bare shelves in the supermarkets and EU hauliers refusing to ship stuff to the UK. Our main cod fishing boat is unable to catch in Norway’s water and is holed up in port redundant. All the fish in our waters however are happy fish. Happy because our waters are now a safe haven where no fishermen can afford top catch them. 

The Sovrinnty lovers and forriner haters are also pretty unhappy because their fascist leaders told them that none of this would happen. How could they have known that fascists lie? How indeed. 

Meanwhile this is tonight’s fireworks display across the field from our house at dusk. 

Yes it’s not all bad! 

In fact I am quite optimistic. I have a vision of how things will turn out in the long run, an arguably beneficial outcome supported by a number of irreversible, incontrovertible  trends. Expect a diatribe on the subject soon, maybe next time, who knows! In the meantime there is the sky at dusk and in the words of my beloved father “It will all be alright in the end”.  

BACK IN THE COVID - Tier 2 diary, day 17 to 26

 DAY 17 to 26

Started on the 8th December here is an update on progress minionwise. No puzzle has ever taken us more than 7 days, our new target is to complete this before 2021.



I have not actually been at all inclined to do anything but sleep a lot since my last report. I thought the suspected Covid was more or less done with but no, it got worse, much worse. All the unpleasant details are not too interesting but let me just record that I have an ECG test booked for 30th December and blood tests to check for underlying cardiac issues. It has not been a good few days. My GP assured me that there there was no immediate danger of me pegging out any time soon, but just please avoid this disease at all costs and more importantly treat other people with respect. Behave as though you are carrying the virus  at all times. We have both, my wife and I, been extremely cautious and have worn our masks conscientiously. It is a little sobering to think that my wife has been more or less without symptoms and I seem to have had a false negative test. It would have been so easy to unknowingly infect someone else, someone close. When I described my symptoms to my GP she said that she would have come to the same conclusion. I have had Covid - 19 and its a bugger!

Talking of buggers, that unkempt, mendacious, 14 year old, racist clown that holds the top office in the land has made a big public deal out of agreeing a trade agreement with the EU. I have read it and it is a disaster. The EU seem to have agreed to a deal more a less the same as Teresa May’s plan (that the lying charlatan resigned over) by introducing monitoring arrangements equivalent to what the European Court would have adjudicated on but in new bodies with other names. 

This must be the first trade agreement in the history of the world where one side has sought to force trade sanctions upon itself, caused itself a loss in GDP of an estimated 6% and in which the paperwork to export goods to our largest market imposed by this agreement (which was zero) will be prodigious. Services and the financial sector (by far and away our most important exports) have not been addressed. 

Perhaps the most damning part of the whole thing is that academic qualifications are no longer mutually recognised. In the middle of a worsening pandemic when there is already a shortage of qualified doctors and nursing staff that is surely nothing short of suicidal. As with our withdrawal from the Erasmus scheme it is an act of disgraceful pandering to those who want to isolate Britain from the rest of the world for purely ideological reasons. It’s purpose is to prevent UK professionals seeking work in the EU. It is, like Brexit itself, a deliberate act of imprisonment placed on UK nationals.

Brexit is not yet done, the after effects will be massive, waves of disruption and the fallout will go on for years. But Vive La Resistance! The fight to Rejoin has already begun.

Handing over now to ‘Back In The Covid, Lockdown diary Tier 3’. Yes, we have been promoted to the third division. Almost no difference for us to a full national lockdown which I am sure will be announced soon thanks to a rampant new variant which has become known as the English Mutation by Europeans. I suspect that this is deliberate payback started by the Spanish to get back at us for calling the 1918 pandemic the ‘Spanish’ flu. A name invented by the British Government to avoid getting the blame for returning it to the UK from the trenches of WWI. 

This time it genuinely is the English Mutant a name which would be equally as fitting for our neo-fascist prime minister.

BACK IN THE COVID - Tier 2 diary, day 10 to 16

DAY 10 to 16

MY GP surgery has texted me, and all of its patients, urging us not call to enquire when the vaccine is coming because they are unable to handle the call volume. I take this as a good sign. They are planning for it. They are getting it. We are indeed on our way to a normalisation process but herd immunity remains a mythical ideal touted by mostly right whinge zealots who would rather have a strong revenue stream into their bank account than save their grannies. Expert opinion however, i.e. epidemiologists, assures us we are not to suppose that normality will come any time soon or indeed that ‘normalisation’ is in fact secure. There remains a massive amount of science and research to be undertaken in order to be sure about such factors as: how long does the vaccine protect? : how is the vaccine evolving? : virus’s mutate and tend to became more contagious but less dangerous, so what is this one going to do? : what is the efficacy and what are the side effects of vaccination over a wider section of the community?: what will be the percentage take-up? I suspect that at the very least there will be an annual vaccination program as there is with the flu. I very recently read that the Oxford research group are investigating the possibility of combining a Covid jab with the flu jab, now that would be a most welcome development. 

Longer term however the most important area to study and change going forward is how another virus like this can be avoided altogether. It seems to me that humankind must wake up to its role and responsibilities to look after our planet. This is our home in the Cosmos and our living environment and this debate is not just about climate change but more directly about interfering and damaging Earth’s processes, all of Earth’s living things and Earth’s ability to remain stable.  A worldwide ban on the abhorrent sale of wild animals for consumption, the harvesting of parts of animals for medicines, traditional or commercial, their use in the cosmetics industry and the wholesale destruction of the natural environment of all of our animal cousins is to me as important as the reduction of fossil fuel burning. We do, as a species, have a long way to go, a very long way to go, and we must get on with it before planet Earth reacts in the only way it can to survive which is to dispose us. In that sense WE are a virus on the body of Mother Earth. It is up to us to evolve. Mother Earth will survive. The species of Hominid, Homo notsosapiens might not.

The stock market has not yet shown its opinion on whether or not there will be a deal. Some cyclical stocks and house builders have recovered their dramatic losses of last week but no more. It is decidedly undecided. I expect massive changes when a deal is in the offing even if it is only insiders unwinding their short positions. There is no evidence of that as yet.

Today is finally the #DumpTrump day when the US Electoral College meets to ratify the election results. At least in the US the racists and neo-fascists will then have been defeated and a dictatorship avoided. That at least gives me hope that the johnson and his similar, if not the same as Trumps, UK racist, neo-fascist sponsors now also have a limited lifespan and that the rule of law and Parliamentary Sovereignty can be restored.

Finally for this update I am now convinced that in spite of a negative test I have had, and am recovering from, Covid 19. 

I have been pretty unwell but not in any way that I have experienced before. It started with a couple of days of headaches (an entirely, to me, new form of headache) dizziness and disorientation to be followed at day 4 by a persistent cough which slowly developed until it was bad enough to make me grip my torso to relieve the shear violence and pain of it. I have not had a fever or a sore throat. Just this violent coughing with bronchitis like quantities of what I shall euphemistically refer to as ‘stuff’, tons of it, with quite a runny nose. After 8 days it began to subside but has continued at a lower level as my lungs cleared. At that point extreme fatigue and sleepiness kicked in along with dry, sore and light sensitive eyes. Ocular symptoms occur in, according to one report, in 19% of Covid 19 cases and are mostly the same as mine. I have, even for me, been noticeably more confused.com and certainly finding concentration difficult. There are also other things that smack of an extreme event involving my auto-immune system. Specifically some random muscle aches and pains and random itchiness all over my personal person as well as my public person. In my mind these all add up to only one thing. 

Apart from which it has been substantially different to anything I have caught before. 

Today I am much better and I do feel as though nothing will get worse. Research has shown that PCR Covid tests are only on average 70% effective. In other words 3 out of 10 positive cases get a false negative result from the PCR test. It is too late now for another test but I will check to see if I can have an antibody test. Without that there is no proof that I have had the dreaded Covid 19 and survived (so far) but I at least am convinced that I did. 

It is now day 16, I am not eligible for an antibody test. Also the signs suggest that financial markets are beginning to price in a deal, no big changes though, short positions are still in place. As they say, well as I say, a shitty deal is better than no-deal and to catch up on other news the Electoral College in the USA ratified Biden’s win. The very creepy but very powerful top Republican, Mitch McConnell has endorsed Biden’s win to the absolute fury of Trumpty Dumpty. 

PS. If you would like to read about Shakespeare’s Works you will find it here

Connections

 

BACK IN THE COVID - Tier 2 diary, day 8 & 9

DAY 8 & 9

Nothing to say about day 8. A backwards step I would say and …… let us move on.

Somewhat more alert today, day 9 into tier 2, it is Thursday and you know what day that is! But after a few cups of tea it was necessary to administer a stern word with myself along with the “you lazy fat arse” epithet by way of a metaphorical finger wagging at self. I was forced to admit that having my usual Thursday bacon sandwich whilst still in my slippers and dressing gown at 11:00 am was a step to far in the direction of indolence.

Our nation has entered limbo land. We despatched a recalcitrant, lying, bloviating, mumbling, scruffy 12 year old who could not be trusted to consume a bowl of soup on his own without making a mess on himself to represent us in a negotiation where all outcomes are severely painful, to eat his dinner with the counterparty, a lady of great accomplishments, statesmanship, dignity and gravitas. Said lady no doubt gently and discretely wiping his drooling mouth for him, metaphorically speaking, by arranging that the meal would be exclusively fish. 

We are in limbo land because nothing seems to have come of it but a reconfirmation that neither side agrees with the other and neither side will compromise. All they could agree on was that the ball should be left in the long grass for the rest of the week and a search party would look for it again on Sunday.

For myself I am certain that a no deal outcome (Euphemistically termed ‘Australian terms’ by the government) is not only likely but planned for. Planned for all along to force as much from the EU as possible by making them think we are prepared and ready for it. It is a massive bluff. A massive bluff that will backfire spectacularly at our expense. Why? Because we are a long, long way from ready for it, and because EU unity is at an all time high and continued membership is popular amongst all 27 nations. They are united and they are fully able to weather the outcome of a no-deal UK exit. They know this. They will not blink. We, however can look forward to an apocalyptic start to the new year on January 1st 2021 when all ports to Europe will effectively be shut to European goods and, thanks to the Covid, UK citizens.

Port problems which forced a halt in production at Honda in Swindon are a taster of what is to come. The problem at the moment is excess traffic due to PPE equipment imports and protective Brexit over stocking. A minor problem compared to the imposition of customs checks on all goods in and out of the EU when at the moment there are none. 

I monitor the stock market on a daily basis. The stock market always knows first, always. The bigger players in financial markets are much closer than most to inside knowledge, indeed the more unscrupulous seek to profit from it by shorting the pound and certain stocks they know will fall heavily. They take their private actions which together accumulate enough to start a trend. Today the pound has plummeted against the Euro, cyclicals are 5% or more down and infrastructure stocks are steady. In other words the current trend indicates that a no-deal outcome is being priced in. That might reverse or might not. If a trend sets in over today and tomorrow then we will know by late Friday what the market expects to happen on Monday. It’s going to be a rough ride.

Something new for tomorrow. Hopefully I will continue improving health wise. But here is a flavour. I put much importance on the stories of things, objects, utensils, decorative things, furniture, any thing in fact that I live with. I have made it my way of life to accumulate things that add to the stories I live with everyday, especially of people I have been close to or have known. By so doing the objects themselves take on a life and importance of their own rendering them something other than objects. The people they are associated with live on in them. They live on with us and become an undying part of our lives and so I write, when I do so by hand, with my father-in-laws fountain pen. I drink, daily from my Dad’s Grandad mug, I use my cousins little wooden box to store my bling in at night and wear, everyday, my Aunt’s pendant celtic cross necklace and I wear one my Uncle’s old woollen jumper over my shirt in the winter garden. These are just a few of the 100’s of everyday items, some small, some large that we live with, all deliberately accumulated and in some cases rescued to enrich our home and our lives with connections or stories.

Most of these connections are small, a salvaged picture frame, a mug or two and so on (ad infinitum actually) but some quite interesting and worth recording.

From tomorrow I plan to begin a series of articles taking the more interesting objects one at a time and recording their history. Not finally decided on the format yet but I am now able to prepare a blog post on my smart phone so that, I suspect, is the most likely route I shall take.

Here is a preview of the first object in line.

The collected works of William Shakespeare.