BACK IN THE COVID - The Lockdown Diary Day 12

Weird sort of day today. Sunday brunch was our starting point after a late rise. Catching up with social media and news is taking longer and longer every morning. So much so that it will soon require a second cup of tea in bed to cover it. The clocks went forward overnight which put us farther on in our day so we decided on brunch by the seaside and a salad dinner later on. Beautiful day at the seaside but this view on our place mats is about the nearest we will get to an ozone boost anytime soon. Such a pity that we couldn’t put the clocks forward four months!



After a Sunday brunch comes the constitutional and off we set in quite the strangest and eeriest ambiance I have ever experienced. We passed a few strangers, some with their dogs, discretely keeping their distance. Normally strangers in the street would find themselves cheerily hailed by your’s truly with the minimum of a good afternoon but with their heads were down and their eyes set on another distance it was hard to get a warm response. Much more than social distancing is happening here. Brexit turned half of our society against the other, SARS-Cov2 has made us frightened and wary of each other. This is social breakdown and to say that I returned home profoundly sad to be both exiled from the EU and now isolated from my fellow citizens is an understatement. 

BACK IN THE COVID - The Lockdown Diary Day 11

I have read this morning that in Italy and Spain they are not taking emergency patients to hospital who need ventilating unless they are UNDER 60. This surely is agism. If it happens here there should quite rightly be an outcry. People of this vintage have spent their hard working lives contributing to society and paying for the services now being deployed in this crisis and should at the very least be treated as equals not as too old to be worth saving. Many of them helped rebuild Britain through the straightened days of rationing after the last World War and have, more recently, been forced by this government to bear the brunt of austerity policies. I have today heard from someone in the UK who was told that the NHS would not respond to them even though they had severe breathing difficulties so the signs are ominous indeed. If that were not bad enough those people who have ignored and abused social distancing rules (and still are!) are not the over 60’s but members of the dickhead classes who presumably will go to the front of the queue for their tracheotomies and oxygen tanks! It make my blood boil!

There can be no better reasons to STAY AT HOME, KEEP YOUR DISTANCE and LOOK AFTER YOUR OLDIES 

Some, perhaps more useful, information worth checking on. Many food suppliers in the hospitality industries, hotels, restaurants etc,. Whose business is effectively on hold have started up new online shops to sell their products directly to the public.

I am cooking a curry tonight. I am always very liberal with the onions and garlic. Social distancing can have, even in normal times, many positive benefits.

BACK IN THE COVID - The Lockdown Diary Day 10

Help for the self employed has been announced, trillions of financial stimuli are floating around the globe, half the country is going on a paid furlough, the NHS is suddenly everyone’s friend and yet two things 1) people have just voted for the party that has spent 11 years downgrading and underfunding the NHS and 2) there is never enough money to invest in science, technology and education, living pensions are not affordable, the cost of welfare has been driven down, austerity is necessary and yet trillions can be spent fighting a virus at the drop of a hat. Let us fight this virus then reflect upon the lie exposed before we vote again. Too much of Britain’s wealth is in the wrong bank accounts and in normal times they are very clever at not only holding on to it but convincing the gullible that they should be allowed to. They are like so many stinking Smaugs smoldering under their country piles but raiding the country to grab more of our wealth and build and an even bigger pile to gloat over.

Little things. Focus on the little things. The Bee Flies I mentioned yesterday are little things. Small but very beautiful beasties. I never knew we had them until I found one indoors about 4 years ago but they are quite common. You will not generally find Bee flies amongst the cloud of nectar feeding bees, wasps and hoverflies that fill our gardens with their noisy vibrations in summer. Bee flies emerge earlier to feed on spring flowers using their long proboscis and at this time of year are to be seen alternately darting and hovering in the sun between plants or at rest on a sunny patch of soil or a leaf before quickly darting off again. Bee flies are a harmless type of horse fly in the family Tabanidae and go by the name of Bombylius major and here is one captured today.



This patch of ground itself is interesting, it is where my long dreamt of pond was going to be dug,  Was! Yesterday I decided to call it a day on that dream and take it as collateral virus damage. I am not going to go out, cannot get supplies and by the time this is all over I will not have the energy left to see it through. Work started today on clearing the ground for what will become garden planting areas.

BACK IN THE COVID - The Lockdown Diary Day 9

Having worked pretty hard over the last few days we sat for an hour in the quiet outdoors listening to the birds chattering to each other and absentmindedly watching the Bee Flies typical of the warm sunny weather to be enjoyed at this time of year. Sharon made use of our little decking area and I enjoyed the sun perched on a mound of work in progress. We both of us have a pretty strong whistle and are in the habit of answering the bird calls back. Since some of them are clearly making territorial signals this interchange to and fro can go on for quite a while. I am not sure why it had never occurred to us but if we are good enough then our feathered resident might bugger off to someone else’s garden. Or as Sharon put it “if you are not careful our Great Tit might think there is an even bigger Tit lives here”. Not quite sure how to take that.

BACK IN THE COVID - The Lockdown Diary Day 8

Week 2 already. The time has gone remarkably quickly. Today I am intending to prepare my latest painting for the last stage, work which is largely cerebral, ideas get chewed around in a feverish spurt of coffee propelled thinking, spew out of the point of a pencil and at that point either die or survive dependent on how well sketches coagulate on the page. This can go on for days, weeks or longer but in these times of crisis it matters not one iota. It matters little anyway. I have never worked for “ambition or bread, or the strut and trade of charms” to quote Dylan Thomas but it is interesting to note how the value of time has altered. I am not referring to that value which time acquires the nearer we creep towards annihilation although we must acknowledge that the possibility of that outcome is real for many of us right now and is a factor in the way we value our days. I am referring to how refreshing it feels being free from any need or pressure to meet timetables in days not filled up by any visit or activity and empty of obligation. It does not matter if a job is left incomplete or not even started. We have already learnt how to gratefully and with good grace allow ourselves to be loved and cared for, not an easy thing for us fiercely independent-to-the-point-of-rudeness baby boomers. We are now, out of necessity, living in the moment because in our restricted locked down days there is only the moment and outside of that moment only another. I am in admiration of all those on the front line working to protect us and for my family as apprehensive as anyone would be but at the same time seeking out and enjoying, where it is possible, the positives and there are some.



Try not to get too chilled out though. Here I am scuttling hot foot up the Via Vulpes to the greenhouse having left the windows and door open thereby leaving the heater to warm up the entire country.

BACK IN THE COVID - The Lockdown Diary Day 7

We live opposite a sizable school playing field and typical of such maintained sports fields it is frequented by seagulls. I think they must be attracted by fertiliser, probably fish meal, regularly spread over it. Seagulls are therefore resident all year round in quite large numbers.
Today the sunshine was warm, glorious and uplifting and with our local seagulls making their usual row we felt positively ‘on holiday’. We are settling into this lockdown quite comfortably I think. Busy in the garden, regular coffee in the warm outdoors, not, deliberately not, rushing or working to a timetable or even caring if the job is completed, chatting to the neighbours is the very essence of living in the moment, involuntarily and forced to, but relishing the experience.
Some long overdue fence-painting was completed today and a little green house work. I managed to surprise myself in the greenhouse.



Our neighbour to the left is an industrial robot service engineer and keeps, for example, food packaging lines working. Why he has not been declared a key worker is beyond me. Another neighbour, who works in the NHS related stories of people ignoring keep out signs, climbing over barriers, wandering around in secure areas and for a good ten minutes we swapped stories about the general stupidity all around. One of the least attractive things to come out of this crisis is how much of the UK population is either lazy minded (can’t be arsed, as they say) or just plain thick.
Later our garden was filled with loud music from a neighbour who’s family decided to relax in their hot tub, all of them, all together for about the next three hours. Someone can correct me if I’m wrong, please do, but surely it is a poor idea to congregate in a hot warm environment, cheek by jowl, even if you are all in the same household. Guess which neighbour’s family was relaxing in Corona soup, the engineer or the nurse. The nurse! (I shit you not! As they say!)

BACK IN THE COVID - The Lockdown Diary Day 6

Gary Pockett was taken to hospital and had emergency surgery to remove an infected appendix. He will be back to his beautiful little family today for a quick recovery but they will all need to stay in isolation for a while.

The now long overdue total lockdown enforced by law agencies is coming, probably later today. Rumours of a cabinet mutiny abound and any case the French will quite rightly close their borders if Johnson does not get serious and start following expert advice. Starting 7 days two late and who knows how many unnecessary deaths. I have been following the cases and death statistics and it is now so bloody serious I have found it better to swap over to a logarithmic scale.



The sun is out again. I am anticipating that the weather will deteriorate in a day or two and intend to spring clean the bird boxes, make essential repairs and put out some fresh fat feeders. The garden was very peaceful. We are not far from a main road but there is always an ambient thrum as the world goes about its business up and down Cricklade Road. Today was noticeably, even eerily quieter. The calm was welcome. As the Buddha said. You cannot calm the storm. Calm yourself. The storm will pass.

I am getting increasingly pissed off with whiners and holier-than-thous complaining about stockpiling as if panic was avoidable. I suspect they were so busy climbing to the moral high ground that they were too late to the shops and are inconveniently short of a few things or were simply not paying attention. People should think before mindlessly circulating moralising memes around the internet. In any case stockpiling is sensible, reasonable and what is more saves lives. If your government is telling you to get indoors for possibly three months of isolation you are going to get some stuff in. We are going to be reliant on others but we did our best to keep that need to a minimum for their safety. Of course we should be concerned about those who are housebound or otherwise vulnerable and running short but panic spreads like a virus itself and it is for government action to stop both. Being merely human, we cannot stop either.

Why does stockpiling save lives? Because fewer visits to the shops yourself or indeed your family if you are confined indoors the fewer people there are out there spreading the virus about. There is a direct relationship between the amount (or extent) of social distancing and the number of deaths. The greater the distance, the lower the spread, the fewer the deaths. As of today there are 100 deaths in crowded London and 6 in the whole of Wiltshire. Social distancing at work. So the message is stockpile and make fewer visits to crowded supermarkets reducing people at large and avoiding close contact for hours in long queues with strangers.

The real blame for shortages lies with the government who should have dictated to supermarkets, there are only 7 main supermarkets after all, to control supply to average amounts right from the start. You cannot blame people, especially those with families to support, when all they are doing is looking after themselves and their loved ones.