Here in The Covid all is calm and peaceful. Our french doors are very slightly ajar because heavy rain with thunder has just started and a delicious fragrance, for myself at least, of earthy, garden dampness is wafting by me in one direction while I write as Mendelsohn’s 2nd string quartet wafts by me in the other. From here I can see our new productive area which is now feeding us with a variety of leaves. It needs to get a spurt on though. We have serious competition from gastropods and woodpigeons who have no regard to our needs at all.
Yesterday was not a good day for yours truly but today there is, I am relieved to say, a tangible improvement in my overall health and the old war wound is a little less troublesome. I am not normally coy or secretive about how I am healthwise but now is not the time to go into details. Later maybe. In the meantime I should record here that yesterday a heavy metal tube fell on my head due to a combination of stupidity and clumsiness brought about by the weakness of a body motivated by stubborn determination to get on with something useful. I have a painful lump to remind me to ease back a bit.
The Covid has caused many people to think about stuff they might not otherwise have been bothered with in their normally busy daily lives. Is that a good thing? I think so. My feeling is that there is far less apathy about. How many of us have walked by Colston’s Statue in Bristol (I have, many times) and have not felt any disturbing impulses amongst the synapses and neurons? How many were aware that Churchill’s views on race were little different to today’s white supremacists? How many people would have even known what a SPAD was but are now very aware of the Scumbag in number 10 and are rightly concerned about his influence over the johnson, the extent of Scumbag’s power, who his backers are and what sinister machinations are going on behind the scenes. (Much of which appears to be elitist power grabbing at best and at worst downright corruption).
Climate change has been brought to the forefront of consciences that would not, in normal times, have troubled many folks, people can now smell and feel the difference that The Covid has made in their own senses. The debate about cash in society has also taken a turn. Paper money (or as it is now, polymer money) has been threatening to disappear from the high street for a while now. Resistance has been strong but now it’s the bad guy for an altogether different reason and for one have not spent a single penny of cash for the 88 days of lockdown so far.
None of these issues are new. They have been with us for some time but they are gathering new dimensions from different perspectives and many more in society are engaging with the debates surrounding these and many other issues that matter than they ever were before.
Todays news is that the government has made a U turn on its plan to end free school meals for eligible kids during the summer school holiday after the public intervention of a soccer star. Only this government could have exposed itself to such a despicable, heart breaking, callous and inhuman proposal in the first place. I hope beyond anything that society as a whole does not stop engaging with important issues and fall back into the complacent hedonistic way of life that was common before The Covid. It would appear that this government is covertly trying to undermine our entire way of life. We are going to need all of our wits about us.
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