BACK IN THE COVID - The Lockdown Diary Day 20

Worrying times. Boris Johnson has been admitted to Intensive Care. His policies stink but as a fellow human being we wish him well and hope his recovery is speedy. Predictably perhaps No. 10 denied vehemently as “disinformation” reports from Russian journalists that Johnson was needing oxygen just one hour before that fact was officially announced and two hours before he was taken into intensive care. The general level of fear in this country has been exacerbated with government-by-dis-information throughout this crisis. Speaking of which Cummings is not in much evidence these days.

I had resolved to give my back and legs some rest today and designated today as an art day. I have continuous projects in progress all the time, several in fact, writing, painting and a combination of the two available as the mood or inspiration takes me. The weather was variable and breezy but spring like, weather which has the unfortunate consequence of firing up next doors barbecue, turning up the volume on their 1980’s classic crap and irritating both my taste buds and olfactory apparatus to distraction. They are out there now, having a post prandial communal slop about in a coronavirus soup flavoured with red wine dribblings that they have brewed up in their hot tub to the dulcet strains of Mungo Jerry!

I find myself a great deal less tolerant of that kind of dissipated holiday-like behaviour in others when so many people are either suffering themselves or grieving a loss and when the atmosphere of fear is so all pervading it seems to be clawing over the hedges like a smog spoiling the sunlight. It seems to me that we have a duty at this time, to ourselves and to others, to be respectfully restrained in our general demeanour. Or to put it another way, you might not give a shit but don’t flaunt it.

And so to tomorrow. A little more digging I think. I have made a list for the morning when the weather forecast is fair again and retire hoping that there is better news about Johnson’s condition and that such a government announcement is the truth for a change.