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.

BACK IN THE COVID - Tier 2 diary, day 7.

After an excellent night's sleep (Fitbit gave me a green star!) I woke without the headache that had plagued me for the previous six days. My enfeebled brain had enough power to cogitate for a few minutes on the interesting, if troubling, idea that if my extremely cautious and strict self isolation from The Covid had let through a common or garden cold-virus followed by a touch of bronchitis then Covid 19 might sneak in the same way. These thoughts were quickly supplanted by the recognition that my brain could now actually focus again and positivity took over. I'm still weak, coughing and sneezing but much improved and on the way back. 

Boris has a date with Ursula tomorrow, 9pm, and no doubt he intends to charm his way through dinner helped along with some incredibly expensive (but French) wine and get his wicked way. Ursula unlikely to be impressed I think. That these occasions are largely stage managed is usually apparent and such an event in normal times would signify that a deal has in principle been agreed and the johnson will return from Brussels in Chamberlainesque fashion waving a peace of paper and proclaiming "EU trade deal in our time". Otherwise this meeting would have been more formal and a little less sociable but this time there are many unknowns.

What we do now for definite, whatever the outcome, deal or no-deal, both are hard exits from the EU and both will be extremely damaging. 

Ask any Brexiteer and you will find that there are no tangible benefits to Brexit. Usually in fact they resort to flag waving generalisms like, sovereignty, unelected bureaucrats, fish, borders etc but when pressed cannot be specific. Ask them questions like "So what EU laws or regulations are you against?" there is no answer, because there are none, (yes the johnson did lie about straight banana rules!). There are none because we voted for them in our Parliament (the EU Parliament remember, we had MEPs, it is called democracy). Point out to them that Britain is also run by unelected bureaucrats (The Scumbag, prime example, all of the Civil Service, Governer of the Bank of England, Head of the NHS, PHE etc,. not to mention failed MPs like Zac Goldsmith, that are made Lords so that they can be ministers by executive choice though not elected).

Fish is an interesting topic. We do not have "fish" by the way, we have waters. Fish do not have borders. Ask a Brexiteer "who owns rights to fish our waters" and he/she may not know that more than half of all rights have already been sold to the French. He/she might not know also that 90% of the cod in British cod and chips is imported, from Norway I believe. He may not know that 70% of our catch is exported. To where? the EU, and unless shipping times from catch to consumer outlet can be kept to under 12 hrs the market for fresh fish and hence the entire fishing industry is dead under Brexit.

Borders we already have control of. Leaving the EU reduces our control, it does not improve it. Why? Because in the EU the so called Dublin Agreement obliges any EU country to take back illegal immigrants that left their territory to come to Britain. Out of the EU it's our problem. Shortage of EU staff (because most of the EU doctors and nurses have gone home and left a 60,000 nurse vacancy problem and 40,000 doctors) which has obliged the UK to effectively open our borders to non EU staff and greater language problems. The impact on National security will be huge once our connections to EU policing are removed and data sharing is restricted. 

There are winners from Brexit, billionaires who unscrupulously plan to take advantage of the economic chaos, but none of us ordinary folks. Our car industry has collapsed and what is viable has moved with most other Japanese manufactures to elsewhere in Europe, the latest being INEOS who are opening a factory in France and not Bridgend as expected or Swindon. Hundreds of businesses have moved operations to Germany, businesses like to operate directly into their market. Put a paperwork barrier or tariff in the way and they will move to avoid it. The EU has already benefited from significant investment from British Companies which will compensate for a loss in Britain as customers. Above all the EU is now politically more united than ever, is significantly likely to succeed without us and has been able to almost guarantee that no other EU member would ever seek to follow our own example into national ruination and a laughing stock. Brexit has done a fantastic job in unifying the EU. The only country in history to impose economic sanctions on itself without any tangible benefit to its citizens.

So today will be a big day for Europe either way. It will be a significant day for us because whatever is agreed at least uncertainty might at last be removed. But also, whatever is agreed, it will be a significant loss to every UK citizen with the exception of a small group of disaster capitalists poised to strike on any opportunity for exploitation.  

The same group of people that either live in Europe already, have second homes there or who have paid for their own private citizen ship in Cyprus. The same group of elite people who dominate the modern Tory party and who lied and cheated their way into power in order to inflict Brexit upon us.

BACK IN THE COVID - Tier 2 diary, Days 1 to 6

 DAYS 1 to 6

We have been in Tier 2 for 6 days so far. Not much has changed, wave 2 seems to have gathered pace and although rates of infection are now receding the size of the onslaught is so great that daily death rates remain at an appallingly high level (today it was 397). This reflects how little has actually been achieved to protect the most vulnerable. As other European countries have discovered, short of locking the old codgers up for their own good and nailing up the doors and windows of care homes there are still many routes for the virus to get at them. We are our own worst enemies too. I have myself noted that too few older people have genuinely sought to understand both the virus and the rules, many are too blazé or dismissive and in any case who cannot completely understand that natural human desire and need to be with family, making the most of their affections, at the closing chapters of one’s story, true even more so in times of crisis and at traditional times of festivity.

Our family have decided to all stay within our own very tight bubbles this xmas. We want to ensure that next xmas no one is missing.

I have a feeling that we might be offered a vaccine before the end of the year which we will jump at. I have a special reserve of disdain and loathing for people who are gullible enough to believe so called ‘conspiracy theories’  and claim they will refuse. They put the rest of society at risk and in particularly their own elderly relatives by their objections and in my experience they are mostly taking the opportunity to garner attention for themselves. 

We should acknowledge that medical science has eradicated polio, smallpox, bubonic plague, typhoid, typhus, cholera, ebola and has protected many of us from once common conditions like diphtheria, whooping cough, measles, tetanus and genital cancers amongst many other dreadful, often fatal diseases. The scientists and other professionals that have achieved this I respect and honour and I will happily take on trust whatever they offer me this time too.

How many anti-vaxxers, I would like to know, refuse to holiday abroad if a protective inoculation is required! You can be sure also that their views would rapidly change if it were a matter of life or death administered by a roadside paramedic at an RTA!

I am ranting off again which must be a positive sign.

Life goes on then as it was before, I am still verbally gesticulating and imprecating the evil one’s urgent attention on naysayers, attention seekers and wrong doers generally but especially on this corrupt government of ours. It turns out that Sir Alex Allan, the johnson’s own ethics adviser did not resign exclusively at his failure to deal with Pritti Shitti properly.  He had issues with a ‘number’ of the johnson’s failures to deal with ministerial wrongdoing especially the Jenrick corruption affair which had no consequences for him even though he had admitted the illegality of his actions. 

Our resident wildlife continues to entertain us. The day before yesterday Cyril was racing around the now denuded ash tree at the top of the neighbour’s garden on our right side chasing away the pigeons roosting there one by one. Now Cyril is not the brightest of squirrels on the block but I am pretty sure that he was not after lunch so he must have been just having fun. The Woodpigeons however have decamped. Today they are, all five of them, distributed about a sycamore two doors up on our left. Cyril is responsible for all the hazel trees which pop up in our garden including a walnut tree now potted up and thriving. Small reward for the damage he wrecks on the beds and plant pots when hiding these nuts. It is now known that squirrels do not remember where they buried their nuts, they dig essentially at random in likely areas hoping to find one of the tens of thousands of nuts they buried previously. But we would not like to lose our Cyril. He comes down to the french doors sometimes, sits up on his back legs and peers at us for several minutes through the window from a few feet away. We wave back. 



Sadly this is Cyril 2. Cyril 1 died an unnatural and violent death by motorcar on the main road. He had a distinctive tail which waved from one end of his squashed little corpse due to the back draft from passing cars for some few days after his accident until the crows or fox had him for their lunch.

Another morning this week a tiny young field mouse, all ears and no body, scooted round at some incredibly nervous high speed in three complete laps of our bottom patio, disappeared through a hole to next door, came rocketing back, completed another lap and then gallantly clambered up 5 steps one by one and vanished. They live under and around the shedio and this one must have strayed down the steps and panicked. They visit in the shed sometimes whilst I paint and scoot under my feet. I say hello but they never stop. 

I took a Covid test yesterday having developed a nagging and continuous cough after three previous days of headaches, dizziness and feeling generally Moby Dick. 

Now I thought it would be straightforward. We have seen it on the TV news, a white stick poked up your nose and down your throat after giving your details and that’s it. I can report that it is hard work. To start with you must show your QR code. What? “QR code in the email we sent you” oh! Finds email, waves phone out of window. Then you get a kit to do it all yourself and quick fire instructions none of which you remember except the last injunction to NOT seal the last bag. NOT! You and your vehicle then pass on to the next ‘operative’ who directs you to a parking place where you begin to rip open the parcel. There are 7 items in there one of which is an 8 page A5 size instruction book with an exhortation to read the whole thing before proceeding. We did, and you need to. You get the white pokey stick, which  you stick down your throat first and then push the same stick up your nose. The stick you break in half and insert in a vial with a pinkish liquid in the bottom, replace the its screw cap and enclose in a clear plastic zip bag with some absorbent padding. You write your name on a receipt card which carries your bar code reference to take home. The bagged up sample then goes in the last ‘bio hazard’ container. We waved at the parking operative to signal our completion, she checked that we had put the right things in the right bag from 2 metres away and then, after explaining how we were to then seal it down ourselves after all, directed us on to the next station where we dropped my ‘bio-hazard’ in a very large grey box on its own. Bizarre!

So glad though to have gone through this surreal process at least once, an essential part of the experience forever to play its part in the future when we are reminiscing about life ‘Back In The Covid’.

And reminiscing might still be possible one day. The test came back negative.

BACK IN THE COVID - The Lockdown 2 Diary, Day 25 to 26

 DAY 25 to 27

As avid and observant readers of this gripping journal have probably noticed they have not lately been regaled daily with my outpourings, not consistently anyway. There is a reason for this: not bothered. It is all getting rather tedious. 

Admittedly we consciously chose to be as cautious as we were the first lockdown. Many people did not follow our example and judging by the vast numbers of vulnerable and elderly folks now dead or seriously ill we made the best choice. It was pretty obvious that there would be a second wave and that both the late start to lockdown and its premature termination with sufficient infected people out there, many of whom were asymptomatic, to make conditions for the duration of this last lockdown much more dangerous than the first. 

The government have spent £12billion with a private company to implement a test and trace system, a vital defence against a second wave, but this has turned out to be unfit for purpose. (Apart from a disgraceful waste of tax-payer money). 

My theory was simple. The first wave started with just a few cases brought in no doubt by travellers. Ending Lockdown 1 prematurely kick started the second wave with literally thousands of infectious people out there. Then, by allowing social drinking and other establishments to open, created just the right circumstances for vigorously infecting thousands more with this by now overjoyed little virus particle. A second wave was a given because of the way the first was handled.

So we stayed indoors and out of the way aided by and very thankful to our local Tesco for deliveries to the door.

As a general summary I think we have been a little desultory and underwhelmed by this second period of confinement. For the first, we were “up for it” as they say, and “on it”. Now it seems to be all eating, sleeping, doing the shopping on-line, putting the shopping away, Tweeting, blogging and Facebooking. 

Part of the problem is winter of course and early nights. The garden is getting its winter tidy up, bulbs are mostly planted, but other than that not much is happening while it takes it’s seasonal rest. We are not able to stay out there all day and long into the evening as we could in the summer months.

Jigsaw puzzles have lost their charm. We started one on the 3rd day and it has proved to be a bit of a bugger to say the least. I took a late walk up the top to check the greenhouses and here is my indefatigable other half slaving away on the most difficult puzzle we have ever attempted.



And this is the sum total of progress so far in 21 days.



Variety is what we are missing. Variety and that most illusive of all human needs, freedom. It is a strange feeling indeed but even when we are out we can feel it in others as much as in ourselves. Rules are fine when there is a fully understood purpose and it is for our own good but this only works for so long. After a while it feels like a hollow, empty and soulless repression. I imagine the same feelings are apparent in populations under a repressive dictatorship and that maybe explains the joyless atmosphere I experienced directly travelling in East Germany and Russia in the 1970’s.

I have two writing projects and two painting projects in progress which are getting scant attention. It seems that once you slip into a desultory mood motivation drops off equally for even the activities you most enjoy and this combined with another concern regarding physical inactivity is a double whammy. The less you do the less you want to do. Or at least that is how it has affected me, I say that because my wife seems to be coping a great deal better.

News of the first vaccine approval therefore as extremely welcome news!  

Lockdown 2 has now officially ended this 2nd December and we have transitioned into a tiered restriction regimen which is just a continuation of Lockdown in all but name. In the Swindon area we have been allocated to tier 2. We feel the same more or less. We had a late breakfast out this morning and coffees simply to break the spell.

As I have now set the pattern for mostly ad hoc blog posts I shall continue with occasional blog posts but with the title Back In The Covid - Tier 2. This feels like a low point. I hope it is an inflection and that future posts reflect a more upbeat attitude. 

In the meantime, gives self a determined and meaningful kick up the arse.

BACK IN THE COVID - The Lockdown 2 Diary, Day 24

DAY 23

Planning for the festive season has begun. There is no doubt that however it works out it will be unlike any other before or after although the latter sentiment is more in hope than in reality because we can no longer be sure of anything ahead. Not withstanding any government instructions which are confusing, self-contradictory and I suspect unenforceable, as a family we know how we intend to approach the whole thing. In fact throughout this pandemic we have, as a whole, behaved with intelligence and awareness. We have various vulnerabilities, clinical or age related, risks and attitude differences but overall we have tended to be wary of the virus rather than following the rules and looking out for each other. 

So far we have had near misses but no direct hits and with a viable vaccine about to be deployed we must not let down our guard for the sake of a little seasonal sociability which can be so painlessly deferred. Our intention is to behave so that when the next festive season comes along we are there to enjoy it and not be one of those to be remembered in the annual toast to the dear departed.

An added complication this year is shopping. We have been arranging weekly home deliveries but our last booking is the 14th December, there are no more slots available. This suggests that we will need to face the horrific idea of shopping in the week before the holiday at Tesco. This is going to be interesting. In the past I have taken a novel to read whilst waiting in the checkout queue. How it will work this year with distanced queues snaking all over the store is dreadful to contemplate. A novel, a portable seat and a light lunch might be called for this time.

In other news #diaperdonny is trending on Twitter in both the US and the UK and it surely is a national US humiliation in progress. A recount demanded in democrat heavy Winsconsin and paid for by the Trump Campaign ($3M!) has increased Biden’s lead! The dark neo- fascist forces that have chosen to sponsored popular but mendacious leaders, amoral showmen with distorted, elitist, domineering attitudes to the world and a total absorption with self advancement have made a strategic mistake with #diaperdonny and the johnson. These two have, it seems to me, caused their two parties (the GOP and the Tories now changed beyond recognition) to be so discredited that they will cease to exist in their new form. In both cases their undoing, perhaps their main undoing is that Covid-19 demands leadership with compassion, competence and confident reliance on scientific expertise to minimise its total impact in both health and economic terms. Neither the US or the GOP have such a leader. Even their cabinets, composed as they are of power hungry sycophants chosen for their loyalty rather than their suitability for office display nothing but laughable ineptitude.

History will record that the citizens of both nations were saved from the destruction of their democracy, an authoritarian dictatorship and a future in economic slavery by a virus. 

Back In The Covid - Lockdown Diary 2, days 18 to 22

Day 18 was a grey weather day calmer inside than out but that did not wholly prevent attending to seasonal work in the garden. As these last few days have progressed so the outlook has improved to frosty nights but gloriously peaceful sunshiny days. There is much beauty in the garden even now. This view through our recently flowered Fatsia japonica against bare branches of ash trees burnished by an evening sun thrills me every year.

But there is a beauty here of another kind altogether more precious to me than mere eye candy, a beauty that is freely available to all who would open their senses to it. It is close to impossible to put it into words. You either feel it or you don't. At this time of year, sitting out there for a few minutes peace and spiritual nourishment, it is like you have tucked up your own beloved, tangle haired child for her innocent sleep and are totally absorbed as you watch her drift off. 

I have been packing the greenhouses, clearing the plants and sweeping the patios. My Fuchsias have been inside for a few weeks already but there are a good few pots of tree seedlings and cuttings parked around the garden to prepare for repotting and a substantial Hydrangea anomola subsp. Petiolaris to cut back. This must be done before winter winds whipping across my neighbour's outbuilding roof do it for me. Once that thing becomes unstuck from the wall it will never go back and I prune it back to below roof height slowly and methodically to just under the eaves at this time every year.

It is  long repetitive task but restful and mindful. 

Tonight I worked right at the top and well after dusk into near total darkness, busy but intent, light peeping around an almost shut door, watching my child sleeping by me, random bits of clothing untidily discarded about her room and with her tousled, golden hair spread over the pillows, dreaming no doubt of spring. 

BACK IN THE COVID - The Lockdown 2 Diary, Day 17

 DAY 17

For an actual Sunday today feels unusually Sundayish. With our quiet morning coffee I thought about why this should be the predominant feeling, today in particular, and I write this listening to the music of Eric Coates deliberately to enhance the mood. I have two excellent Coates CD’s on the Chandos label recorded by John Wilson.



The obvious starting point then is the question, “why Eric Coates in particular?”. Coates is not well   known generally and amongst those of us more seriously interested in music is placed under the “Light Music” heading and largely ignored. Notwithstanding this unfair (in my opinion) treatment of Coates he is however very important in the psyche of persons of a certain age, my age in fact and the generation before me.

Why? Well if I tell you that the introductory music to Desert Island Discs is a tune called ‘By the Sleepy Lagoon’ it might give you a clue. He also wrote another well known tune called ‘Calling All Workers’ which was used as the opening theme to the radio programme Music While You Work from mid 1940 up until 1967, a program of popular music played twice daily mid morning and afternoon on the BBC Home Service.

With very little other entertainment the radio featured in most households in the 1940’s and 50’s, my family for example acquired its first television in about 1951. The internet was a very long way off and X Boxes not even dreamt of. So on Sundays, to the odorous delights of roasting beef and spuds and already in a state of satisfaction brought on by early sandwiches made with Mr. Nicholl’s thick cut Wiltshire bacon from a pig farm just north of Devizes we would play card games or do jigsaw puzzles or simply read. These leisure activities were not regarded as fill-ins or time wasters or cures for boredom. There was intent behind them, they were purposeful, as purposeful as any other common household activity and an integral part of surviving the still quite difficult post war years.

And we were family. Dad would be at rest from his 50 plus hours working week and Mum would be similarly relaxed and away from sewing heavy forces uniforms at Comptons. There would be no rushing about, maybe a walk out in the sunshine, rarely a walk to a local pub and a bag of Smiths Crisps outside. Rest was taken seriously as it should be but was taken with significantly less background anxiety. Work for most people was secure and long term, ambitions and desires existed but did not drive most lives with great force and importance because second by second access to our lives through advertising and sales promotions did not then exist. Sunday professional sport was banned.

Although we were a mainly non-religious family our parents sent us to early morning Sunday School after we were grown enough to ask questions just to get some private time together. This no doubt worked in our favour to improve the atmosphere at home by the time we arrived there for bacon sandwiches after chapel invigorated by terrorising our teachers with ‘alternative’ views.

I suppose you would call this nostalgia. Often this word is used in a pejorative sense comparable to maudlin but I embrace it whole heartedly. 

I think of it as opening a door. A portal accessed by a key consisting of trigger events that in the right combination invoke feelings or memories of feelings which can sometimes lead to maudlin but at other times warm and comfortable like old slippers. I embrace both. Living in the present moment is all very well and fashionable but no-one can prevent their best (or indeed their worst) experiences that happened in the past from framing every present moment with whatever feelings those memories engender without descending into the purely hedonistic.

This morning was quiet and calm. Calm and without undue cares or difficulties or deadlines or plans. An autumn mist lingered over the playing field opposite and amongst the trees and shrubs around the garden. A promising sunlight peeped over the top and small birds were about everywhere. We had both, my wife and I, a better night’s sleep after a poor week in that department. Possibly this was due to a busy but satisfying day yesterday on the garden’s winter clear up and a couple of strong pain killers each to retire on later. For some reason neither of us felt any need, pressure or urgency to do anything and even locked down in The Covid (and therefore more or less continuously restricted) this is a rare state of affairs to allow ourselves to luxuriate in. 

I had descended the stairs whistling ‘By the Sleepy Lagoon’  to the smell of fresh coffee. Silent levers must have tumbled into place to unlock this Sundayish feeling which we have indeed been luxuriating in all day and we have so enjoyed it.

BACK IN THE COVID - The Lockdown 2 Diary, Days 13 to 16

 DAYS 13 to 16

Absent without giving a **** is no longer a capital offence as it was in feudal times and in exercise of  my inalienable rights I took a few days out. It is necessary to stand back a little on occasion, taking the time to refocus the telescope through which we tend to look at events around us, more than just necessary, sometimes this is vital especially when so much confusion abounds. I believe my ‘telescope’ was not only out of focus but the wrong way round and it was right to put it down.  



I can now confirm however that I do give a ****! I do care about a great deal. It matters to me passionately that so much in terms of values, standards, respect for the rule of law, freedoms and democratic government especially in public life are being eroded to the considerable detriment of my descendants.

Today we are subjected to another unedifying example of this  government riding rough shod through the standards we were once rightly proud of and respected for globally.

This is where we are today. Government has been run by unelected advisors, both notable bullies one of whom was successfully sued by a mistreated employee who had a key role in election wrongdoing and was in any case already found in contempt of Parliament. They are gone now but their attitude prevails in whoever is left behind to make decisions for the inept and unkempt 10 year old brat of a haystack that currently occupies the top office in the land.

A minister, already responsible for a number of expensive mistakes, spent £3M on an emergency ferry company that had no ferries.

An advisor who broke the governments own lockdown rules and lied about the circumstances was not sanctioned in any way.

The government attempted to illegally stymie Parliament by proroguing it which was only stopped by taking it to the supreme court.

We have a government which rushed through the Withdrawal Bill, denying scrutiny, which they then claimed was not fully understood because they never read the small print.

We have a government that is not only prepared to break international  law but introduces domestic legislation (still in progress) which would allow it to break international law without domestic sanction.

We have a government that hails the ending of Freedom of Movement in 27 European countries for 60 Million UK citizens thereby depriving them of their rights and identity as a great thing.

A government that builds huge lorry parks for delayed ferry traffic on a flood plain.

A government that can spend £16 billion on war machinery but not £3 Million to directly feed hungry kids.

A housing minister who rewards party donors with preferential planning permissions, is forced to admit it and allowed to keep his job although proven corrupt.

A government that has so mishandled Covid that 70,000 excess tragic deaths were incurred (with more to come) and who destroyed the economy by ignoring its own experts and by being indecisive and late with every action.

A government that has handed out £billions to private companies for a Track and Trace system which is not working and PPE equipment which was not fit for purpose, over priced and made using Korean Slave labour in China.

A government that overrides lawful processes and appoints mates and donors to high office and that demeans the House of Lords by appointing policy specific supporters including a Russian Oligarch.

A government that has exploited, legitimised and fostered racism and division for political gain.

And today a bully, The Home Office minister, identified as having broken ministerial guidelines by the governments own officer responsible for policing those rules, who becomes the first minister (ever as far as I know) to escape not losing her job because she bullied people but “didn’t mean to”. A minister who, by the way, had already been fired once for breaking Ministerial guidelines and they did all this in National Bullying Awareness week!

We are subjected to headline grabbing but unachievable promises such as bridges to Ireland, world beating track and trace, no second lockdown, mass Covid testing, it will all be over by the summer and lied their way through a Brexit referendum by promising sunny uplands ahead and telling voters we “hold all the cards”, “no-deal is not an option”, trade will carry on as now, red tape will be reduced, no border in Ireland, no effect on jobs, Britain will prosper! There is such a long list of outlandish claims that it is impossible to recount them all concisely. The government must be aware, every time, that they are making outrageous and deceptive claims some of which are all out straight and deliberate lies.

Cronyism is rife, tax revenues are being filched and squandered, corruption abounds, mendacity and secrecy are the norm. No-one loses their job however badly they have behaved. Journalists are marginalised unless they avoid the hard facts and lawyers not in agreement with the governments law-breaking are openly vilified.

All of this covered up with continuous shape shifting, lying, dissembling and deliberate distraction to confuse and cover up.

So yes! I most certainly do give a fuck. I do not hold any particular political allegiance, I have voted for all parties at some time in my life but I do care about democracy, stability, the rule of law, honour in public life, human rights and freedoms. Above all I worship the truth like some people worship their gods. Without respect for the truth our civilisation will decline and the world for my great grandchildren in say 40 or 50 years time, will be an actual  dystopian nightmare and not just a smoking, shattered and lifeless film set with the bad guys in power exploiting a population of broken and demoralised slaves. That I do care about intensely.

Telescope adjusted.

BACK IN THE COVID - The Lockdown 2 Diary, Day 11 & 12

 DAY 11 and 12

There has been a Covid exposure in the family. Friday 13th might not have been as entirely lucky as it usually is for me. Unfortunately at this stage in The Covid, and I am sure that this is a common experience, war-weariness is setting in, guards are being dropped everywhere. We are at our most vulnerable with a considerable portion of society now getting infected, more vulnerable now in fact than at any time in the first lockdown. Back then conscientious concern dominated and ignorance reigned yet the spread and case numbers for this nasty contagion were considerably lower compared to today. Today our greatest threat is complacency.

On a brighter note the brussels sprouts season proper has begun with UK produce now in the shops the size of mini-cabbages. Some plants in the garden are enjoying an extended season thanks to weather atypically warm for November. This shone out today, our Golden Wedding rose, now looking much happier in its new home and just fabulous up close. Ours is not the garden for roses or indeed any plants except the very hardiest being stony, dry and generally impoverished but especially for roses. This is a new deep dug bed at the front of the house in good sunlight, back-filled with garden compost, feed and leaf mould especially made for our three favourite yellows.



Today was windy and sporadically wet which always feels colder than it is so that when we took a walk out with family and one of their dogs I for one was glad to be getting off home to the warm. I must record here that today and for the first time in The Covid there was a distinct feeling of relief rounding the corner into our street, relief and comfort that the safety of our home had been reached. I take this to be a sign that a little fearfulness is creeping in which is an altogether unwelcome feeling.

Golden Wedding was still pristine when I drew the blind and I could not help wondering if there is a rose name Diamond Wedding. I hope we get to find out.

Day 12 came and went. The johnson found a convenient way to hole up in the Downing Street flat for 14 days by having been in the proximity of an MP testing positive for Covid. It is pretty obvious he cannot handle Prime Minister’s Questions on a Wednesday in the House so this is suspicious news at the least. Facing Sir Keir after the soap opera carry on in No. 10 must have been just too scary to handle and scandals associated with PPE procurement seem to all be hitting the fans at once. 

The Clementine Clown that lives in the now barricaded Whitehouse until January is making a massive success of ensuring that the GOP gets as much bad press as possible. 

Brexit looms large on every news channel except the BBC and in another bizarre twist the massive  lorry park built to buffer up waiting freight trucks at the channel crossing has flooded. They built it on a flood plain. Yes, I kid you not, on a flood plain. This government’s incompetence is of truly staggering and historic proportions.

BACK IN THE COVID - The Lockdown 2 Diary, Day 10

 DAY 10

Daily confirmed cases are still high, today 26,860. Todays tragic death number of 462 brings the total UK death figure to nearly 52000. 

It is particularly grotty weather out there, to quote Ronnie Barker. The wind wapps up the side of our house at the best of times but today it is horizontal and carrying a continuous soaking of heavy rain which also pounds our windows at the front rather noisily.

It is wonderful, I love it. I am warm and cosy and already feeling the benefits of Thursdays Vitamin B12 jab. I have relished rainy days since boyhood camping weekends under canvas. It made others feel trapped and bored, I felt thoughtful and reflective and, though inside and protected, more connected with the woods and plants about me. 

So today was a nostalgic day, a cooked breakfast, light English music by Eric Coates and Earnest Tomlinson (*see below), a little reading, a little writing and regular supplies of my favourite tea, Ceylon, favourite because it brings me the heady odours of freshly cut meadow grass drying under the late summer sun of our courting days. Strictly Come Dancing is on the TV shortly and then another attempt at a starting strategy with this diabolical monstrosity of a jigsaw puzzle which for the record we started yesterday on day 9, lockdown 2, at 8:30pm.



For our TV dinner with SCD we had cold roast chicken with a warm lentil curry accessory together with a salad of mizuma, pak choi, spring onions and a topping of chopped pecans enhanced with a little balsamic drizzle and graced by a modest knob of organic cheddar.

Lockdown 2 day 10 has been a great day to be indoors so far but the invisible barrier at the edge of our property holding us captive is an ever present and menacing distraction that will just not go away however pleasant the day is.

*Tomlinson is almost unknown but worth investigating. He is responsible for a substantial body of mostly light music but other more serious works and some innovative symphonic Jazz compositions.

BACK IN THE COVID - The Lockdown 2 Diary, Day 8 & 9

 DAY 8

The tangerine tosser has finally arrived at the same conclusion as everyone else and as his denial and anger subside to be replaced with the misery of his reality he becomes one of the losers he loves to despise. The majority of Americans did not vote for more of the same divisive politics of hatred, racial discrimination and violence enabled by corruption and law breaking. His hair turning grey suggests that he has also been dumped by his stylist and it is rumoured that Melania might be intending to dump the charlatan too. Karma it seems is making the most of its moment.

Trumpty Dumpty is letting it be known that he intends to run for office again in 2024 on the grounds that two terms in office is permitted even if they are not served concurrently. Given the scale of his defeat I doubt whether the GOP will allow this to happen unless the party splits but demographic changes are much more likely to rally behind a less extreme candidate. Demographics is a wonderful and sobering force in politics, simple in operation but long term in effect. In 4 years time the older community who voted for Trump will have been replaced by the now 14 to 18 year olds who will not vote for him and who are also unlikely in sufficient numbers to vote for any GOP candidate remotely as divisive or contentious as Trump.

We also, in the UK, thanks in part to the bumbling ineptitude of a Prime Minister obviously out of depth, will benefit from the same forces. Interestingly both elections happen in the same year and probably at roughly the same time.

There is a definite inevitability about this moment in history. Our feudal past controlled by monarchies or religions (or both working together) has been whittled down over the years in spite of this elite establishment trying to keep feudalism in play. This power has been gradually diminished by better and wider education, communications and science through trench by trench warfare over centuries starting with our emergence from the so-called dark ages when religions dominated life and law. Ever wider admission into electoral franchises and the growth of alternative power bases necessitated these old establishment forces morphing into Conservative political parties condemned forever to maintain their support by appeals for stability and tradition but condemned to dissemble the fact that their very existence depends on a political system which allows an asset owning class to maintain and control a poor, indebted working class. I.e. feudalism in all but name or as I see it, economic serfdom or slavery.

But there seems to be (perhaps Iris Murdoch was right!) a dominating underlying force towards the good and away from evil which is, over time, weakening Conservative forces, religions and aristocracies, eroding their power and ensuring that at some point the battle would be obliged to move to open ground. 

Open ground is where we are today. The vestiges of feudalism are out of their final trench and it is hand to hand fighting now. Expertise is publicly vilified, corruption amongst the powerful is rife, governments are exploiting, confusing, spreading lies and diversions, flouting the law and testing the confinements of national legal constitutions and norms in a last trench attempt to avoid defeat and relinquish forever their power into the hands of the people. I believe that their defeat was always inevitable. I believe that time will record their defeat as coming earlier than it might otherwise have done thanks to The Covid.

The people of this nation needed the care and protection of those governing them but care and protection has not been forthcoming from those governments nearest in spirit to our feudal past. They have been visibly, sometimes corruptly, protecting and adding to their assets at the expense of the nation’s health, keeping workers at the rock faces of our economy whilst they hole up safely in their sequestered estates organising carts to collect the dead.

DAY 9

Friday the 13th. So this is the unlucky day that just keeps on giving. Trump is gone, the Corbyn faction loses its grip on the NEC, Cain is gone and the scumbag, Grima Wormtongue, the shitweazel in No. 10 has gone too. Something major happened and as usual we have nothing official so the speculation rife on social media is to be treated as a joke. The scrawny Gollumalike boldly left by the front door with a rather small box, retaining his security pass on a lanyard round his neck in a much too contrived theatrical fashion to be believed and even returned later for a photo opportunity, lonely and dejected at a wintry kerbside waiting for a cab, so I intend to restrain my joy until I see the next move. I personally believe that these events are all about Gove undermining the johnson with the aid of the scumbag and Cain (his boys from way back) and scumbags removal is a sign that Gove (and Murdoch) have lost this round. Next will be the removal of Gove from the Cabinet Office and the announcement of an extension to the transition period for leaving the EU. One or the other or both. 

You heard it here first.

On the whole it has been a very lucky day for us all.

We took a walk out today, four generations of us, to a local spot quite near to us with both historical and scenic interest but one we do not often visit. Luck is about how much of a fair share you win in this random lottery of an existence of ours but nature in all the chance events that characterise natural evolution and the world about us managed to do this at the Badbury Rings.



Surely, on the whole, it is a lucky day every day!

BACK IN THE COVID - The Lockdown 2 Diary, Day 7

DAY 7

It is the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month.

I am not a poppy wearer or indeed a supporter of the poppy idea. I do not need to advertise the fact that on this day and all others but especially this day I honour and remember those who fought on our behalf the evil that would have destroyed us had it not been for their brave sacrifice.

This man, my father, SAS 2 Regiment, lived to the end with indelible memories of apocalyptic piles of emaciated and naked dead humanity having been despatched in support of the Liberation of the Belsen death camp. Later he was to return after the war traumatised by working behind enemy lines so much that he kept a loaded Italian Luger pistol hanging over the bannister at home believing that he was watched and in terror of being captured for years after the war ended. 

He escaped with his life along with many others who escaped with their lives to suffer from their experiences and unrelenting memories but also to work for the repair of their country and the well being of everyone.

I remember them too. Bill and Jack who served in the Army but also Mum who served in the Women’s Land Army and Percy who was conscripted for work down the mines as a Bevan Boy.

I shall be remembering them with thanks honour and gratitude today and tomorrow and on every other tomorrow too. 

BACK IN THE COVID - The Lockdown 2 Diary, Day 6

DAY 6

These days in The Covid I hesitate to think ahead with thoughts such as when will it end, when will it be safe, will we survive or plan ahead. I believe this is the all pervasive influence of that contempt engendered by familiarity. It might also be influenced by the fact that we, my wife and I, now both 72, are a little reluctant to contemplate that this might be it and all there is until we both hobble off with our arthritic joints creaking, bickering as usual into  oblivion. I feel very sorry for our even more elderly citizens and especially for those younger folk tragically fighting terminal illnesses and for whom The Covid has potentially blighted and restricted what might be the final few months or years of their lives.



This is todays glorious autumnal anti-depressant but at the same time a stark reminder that in a few months time The Covid will have lasted for a year so far. Already, and even if vaccines are released before the end of 2020, we can anticipate a 6 months wait for a vaccine and another 12 months until life can return to unfettered normality with a more realistic expectation of 6 months beyond that. We shall be 74 perhaps. 

It is now 6 days into this new lockdown. We have altered in our approach, familiarity again, I suppose, we are not quarantining our shopping delivery for example nor are we washing  refrigerated products such as cheese, milk and frozen food with washing up detergent (yes we were!). We will shop if necessary, we are trusting our families instead of avoiding contact and accepting house visitors such as window cleaners, postmen etc as long as they keep their distance and wear masks. In fact in most regards nothing much has changed for us in the last 6 days except that we are more aware of breaking the law when we do. 

And this is not very clever! We are at least at 10 times greater risk than we were at the height of the first peak. The national death rate is nearly as high (getting towards the 500s a day) and cynically understated by a government that has changed it’s reporting rules to create a more favourable picture.

We are not alone. A Covid weary public is now following their own instincts and are now much less afraid when they should really be very, very afraid. A vaccine cannot come soon enough.

Off up the garden now for some more anti-depressant.