Category Archives: current affairs

current affairs, history, photography, quotes

Monthly Quotes

Our September collection of recently encountered quotes.

Bulut et al. found that sex could indeed improve nasal congestion as effectively as nasal decongestant for up to 60 minutes, returning to baseline levels within three hours. Granted, a good 12-hour nasal spray would last much longer, but it’s less fun. And some people might experience adverse effects from nasal spray, so having a natural substitution method for congestion would be helpful. The authors hope that there will be further studies to investigate whether masturbation has a similar effect for singletons.
[2021 Ig Nobel Awards, as reported at https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/09/feline-acoustics-the-smell-of-fear-and-more-receive-2021-ig-nobel-prizes/

Downing Street was first built in 1680 by Sir George Downing: an unscrupulous, brutal, and miserly man – which is rather fitting, given that the street which bears his name has been the home to so many politicians.
[https://historiclondontours.com/tales-of-london/f/of-mice-men]

Photographs are diary entries … That’s all they can be. Photographs are just documentations of a day’s event. At the same time, they drag the past into the present and also continue into the future. A day’s occurrence evokes both the past and the future. That’s why I want to clearly date my pictures. It’s actually frustrating, that’s why I now photograph the future.
[Nobuyoshi Araki (Japanese cult street-photographer), 10 February 2012]

Photography is lying, and I am a liar by nature. Anything in front of you, except a real object, is fake. Photographers might consider how to express their love through photography, but those photographs are “fake love”.
[Nobuyoshi Araki (Japanese cult street-photographer)]

Photography, well, not so much photography but life itself, is nostalgia I realized, having seen these moments: in this day and age of digital media, in the centre of Tokyo you see these sticks, right, they take these sticks and chase around crayfish and carp. Boyhood memories and stuff, that sort of nostalgia is the most important thing in life.
[Nobuyoshi Araki (Japanese cult street-photographer), March 2011]

If you have some sort of illness, disability, or are crippled – use that to your benefit. You also might not live in the most interesting place in the world, you might not have the best camera, and you might not have much free time – but these are all “creative constraints” which you can use to your benefit. It is all about your attitude, mindset, and the way you see life.
[Eric Kim at https://erickimphotography.com/blog/2016/08/10/12-lessons-araki-has-taught-me-about-photography/]

As photographers in the West, we are trained to shoot with prejudice. We are told to only photograph interesting things. But in the East, they are a lot less discriminating. A lot of the Eastern philosophy sees everyday and ordinary life as interesting and meaningful.
[Eric Kim at https://erickimphotography.com/blog/2016/08/10/12-lessons-araki-has-taught-me-about-photography/]

It must be kami [god]. What makes a photographer take a picture? What makes an artist paint a picture? It can’t really be explained. It’s a kind of instinct or impulse.
[Nobuyoshi Araki (Japanese cult street-photographer)]

I’m trying to catch the soul of the person I’m shooting. The soul is everything. That’s why all women are beautiful to me, no matter what they look like or how their bodies have aged.
[Nobuyoshi Araki (Japanese cult street-photographer)]

The Scientific advancements of the seventeenth-century and beyond were not something that occurred because an apple fell on Newton’s head. They were a part of a long tradition of scientific thought and inquiry that people just haven’t bothered learning about because the history is too complex for smug think tank guys to wrap their heads around in five minutes between power lunches.
[Dr Eleanor Janega on Going Medieval blog]

Moreover, medieval Europeans were absolutely committed to maintaining communal health, whether through sensible (and at times perhaps too harsh) social distancing, as we can see in the medieval treatment of lepers … medieval people were acutely aware of the necessity for providing for people suffering from an illness and also of keeping the general population separated from them.
[Dr Eleanor Janega on Going Medieval blog]

Yet we are still seeing several hundred deaths every week. In effect, it is as if a jumbo jet was crashing every few days. This is a toll of suffering and misery that, we are told, we must simply live with. After all, we have lived for many years with large increases in deaths every winter. Why are we suddenly getting so concerned? Yet we ignore how some other European countries, especially Nordic ones, have maintained high building standards and ensured that large numbers of their older population are not living in poverty, thereby avoiding this seasonal toll. But maybe the politicians have a point. Where was the public clamour as life expectancy of older people in the United Kingdom stagnated or declined during the 2010s?
[Prof. Martin McKee writing in BMJ, 14 September 2021]

The government says that its first duty is to keep people safe. This is the rationale for spending money on defence. It can, of course, decide that it no longer wants to assume the responsibility for safeguarding us from threats to health. But if it does, it should at least be honest about it.
[Prof. Martin McKee writing in BMJ, 14 September 2021]

current affairs, medical, personal, ramblings

Horrible Times 22: Lockdown 450

In this instalment … Today, Saturday 19 June 2021, is day 450 of lockdown for us.

And still not a lot has really changed since I last reported on Day 400

So why don’t we get the “bad” news over first?

  • In the last 50 days I’ve managed to get off the premises just twice. Once for part 2 of my annual diabetes check-up & shingles vaccination, and secondly for an optician’s appointment. That makes a grand total of just 9 “outings” in 450 days. Which is quite pathetic really, although rather understandable.
  • I managed to miss the partial eclipse of the sun on 10 June. I don’t remember when we last had clear skies, at a sensible time, for any astronomical phenomenon.
  • We’ve had two friends in hospital. One with heart problems, which have needed a pacemaker fitted; the other with a broken leg (luckily not a hip).
  • In other medical news I got a talking to by my diabetic nurse for letting my blood glucose control slip somewhat over the last year, and not losing any weight. Moral 1: must try harder. Moral 2: the medical profession need to understand quality of life.
  • And of course our pathetic government has delayed removing all Covid restrictions. I have to say I think this is the right decision, given the apparent extra transmissibility of the Covid delta variant. However it is entirely of the government’s own making: they could have nipped this in the bud by introducing travel restrictions to/from India in early April rather than waiting 3-4 weeks. But then this is entirely consistent with their whole approach.

In more positive news …

  • We’ve had a mini heatwave, which is rather a nice change from the cold wet weather which preceded it.
  • And the good weather has enabled us to get our runner beans planted, as well as a selection of salad leaf veggies. Nothing to harvest yet a while although I have harvested the first dozen chillies from last year’s plants (on the study windowsill) which I overwintered.
  • The good weather has also brought the roses into bloom. The garden is a riot of roses at the moment, including a dog rose flowering right at the top of our mature silver birch tree. Walking down the garden there is a heavy scent of roses.
  • Having found a very dead Rose Chafer on the patio table, I was finally impelled to buy a macro lens for my camera so I can take more/better close-ups. So far this has mostly meant flowers.
  • As well as splashing out money on a new lens I also bought two paintings by Adrian Daintrey at auction. For security reasons I’m obviously not going to post them here, but members of the Anthony Powell Society will find out more in due course (as Daintrey was a friend of Powell’s).
  • And finally, I’ve been doing quite a bit of work on my family history. I’ve especially been trying to unravel the Marshalls back in the late 17th and early 18th centuries around the Weald of Kent. I have a brick wall there in my father’s line; I’m sure there are connexions between all those I’ve found, but currently I’m unable to prove it – or satisfactorily work out exactly who is related to who. It doesn’t help that the men are all called Stephen, Thomas or William. The one guy with an easily identifiable name, Reynolds Marshall, seems to parachute in from nowhere in the late 17th century. It’s a tangled web which should be solvable, but for the fact that back then parish records were patchy and often haven’t survived. And along the way you get diverted down some (usually irrelevant) rabbit holes – so just who was the rather improbably named Samuel Drawbridge? Such are the joys of family history!

So what happens next? Well who knows. By the time of my next report at day 500 we’ll either have had all restrictions lifted and told we can go back to (some approximation to) normality, or we’ll be deep in another wave of Covid cases. Or, the pessimistic side of me suggests it might be both of those.

We’re not even in the lap of the gods, but the whim of our government. Gawdelpus!

current affairs

Ever Given

I’ve been reading these two items (and a few others) on the situation of the Ever Given, the giant boat what got itself wedged sideways in the Suez Canal a few weeks ago.
Ever Given in a Nutshell
Ever Given – What Happens Now?

The position seems to be a Byzantine minefield of convoluted international law, contract law and insurance. At least that’s how I read the two articles, viz:

The cause of the problem is still under investigation. Was the ship exceeding the speed limit? Was there mechanical failure? Was there human error? How much of a factor was the weather? Someone will likely be able to work this out as the ship carries an equivalent of an aircraft’s “black box”.

The ship, having been re-floated, was safety checked at anchor in the Great Bitter Lake. It was found to be sound and passed to continue up the Canal to Port Said at the northern end for further checks, before being cleared (or not) to continue to it’s destination in Rotterdam.

However the Ever Given is still at anchor in the great Bitter Lake and cannot move as it has been arrested by the Suez Canal Authority (SCA, an Egyptian government agency) pending settlement of the SCA’s claim for $916million in compensation (including $300million as salvage bonus, and $300million for loss of reputation).

But who pays what is, to say the least, complex as:

  • The hull is owned by Japan based Shoei Kisen Kaisha, and insured in Japan.
  • The ship is registered in Panama.
  • It is leased and operated by Taiwan based Evergreen Marine Corp, who will own much of the ship’s “fixtures and fittings”.
  • It is managed by German based Bernard Schulte.
  • Protection & Indemnity (P&I) insurance is by UK based UK P&I Club.
  • The Ever Given is crewed by 25 Indian seafarers.
  • It is apparently 85% loaded with around 18,000 containers of multifarious goods, owned by we know not who, on route from the Far East to half the western world.
  • At the time of the accident the ship was being piloted by SCA pilots, who are ipso facto defined as part of the ship’s crew.

The P&I insurers have failed to agree a compensation payment with the SCA and the ship’s owners have reputedly filed an appeal in the Egyptian courts against the ship’s arrest on the grounds that the SCA’s claim is excessive. This is scheduled to be heard tomorrow, 4 May 2021.

Meanwhile the crew (who are apparently being fully paid) are apparently free to leave the ship, and to be replaced, providing there are always sufficient crew to maintain the ship’s safety. Only the ship’s Master cannot leave as he is the ship’s legal guardian.

The estimated value of the vessel and the property on board is:

  • Vessel: Approx. $125million
  • Cargo: Approx. $500-$600million (and maybe more)
  • Containers: Approx. $30million

A total of $655-£755million and perhaps more; but likely less than the SCA’s compensation claim.

However it is reported that while the SCA can arrest the ship, it cannot legally arrest the cargo. But without the ship the cargo is going nowhere. Consequently it has been suggested that the cargo owners could launch a class action (but in which court?) to get the cargo released. But even if they did that, and the legal challenge succeeded, the ship cannot be unloaded: neither in situ nor at any port along the Suez Canal as none have the infrastructure to handle such a massive ship.

Even if it could be unloaded, and the containers transferred to other vessels for onward movement, this would be time consuming and very expensive – for which presumably the cargo owners would have to pay (unless they managed to claim the cost as compensation or against their insurance).

All that is without even thinking about the consequential losses and delays to other ships, some of which will have opted to go the long way round via the Cape of Good Hope, and others who sat it out in the traffic jam. Either way they’re incurring extra expense and delay to their cargoes.

That, my friends is the very simplified version of the simplified version. While it makes for interesting reading (I’m sad like that!) it makes me very glad I’m neither a lawyer nor an insurer!

current affairs, medical, personal, ramblings

Horrible Times 21: Lockdown 400

Today, Friday 30 April 2021, is our 400th day of Covid-19 Lockdown. And not a lot has changed since my last report on day 365.

  • In 400 days I’ve been off the premises just seven times: three to the dentist (one just to have some paperwork signed), for a flu jab, twice for vaccination, and one for blood tests. It really has been all the fun of the fair!
  • Noreen and I have now had both our injections of the Pfizer vaccine. Noreen went again to the Town Hall, whereas I went to the centre in deepest Southall. My experience was that this was not as well run as the Town Hall, and I seemed to spend most of the time moving from one queue to the next. Even so I was in and out in about 30 minutes. And Southall itself was grid-locked (well it was some Sikh holy day) and still the same dump that it always was. We now just await out booster in the autumn.
  • In less good news, I’ve had a really annoying bladder infection (I know, TMI already!). Yet again I’ve been impressed with our GPs’ being able to work with patients over the phone rather than face-to-face. This infection has resulted in two rounds of antibiotics (turns out the nasty little organism was resistant to the first antibiotic I was given), three rounds of urine tests and a visit to Ealing Hospital for an armful of blood tests (most of which were overdue for my annual diabetic check-up anyway). Amazingly most of the blood tests turned out to be OK.
    Ealing Hospital is the same appalling place it always was: a dismal ’70s concrete bunker which was never fit for purpose; badly signposted; and apparently staffed by the downtrodden. I hate the place and avoid it if at all possible; I just hope I never have to be treated there for anything serious.
  • Along the way I’ve also has two (different) Covid tests; both for research studies I’m signed up to. Luckily both were negative. Noreen has done one as well.
  • In good news the days are lighter, brighter and with longer daylight and the fruit trees and lilac are in flower. We’ve even had some warm sunshine, although it is still rather chilly unless the sun is out. The downside of this is that we’ve again suffered the daftness of changing the clocks. The garden was looking very ragged, but is coming under control now our friend Tom is allowed entry again and has done after several days work – although nothing much has been pruned over the winter.
  • Meanwhile the country continues to go to Hell in a handcart as our increasingly despicable government lies its way from one pathetic charade to the next. They keep getting caught out lying but seem not to care when any self-respecting government would have resigned long since and been banished.


Who knows what happens next?

I suspect the government will continue to ease the restrictions (regardless of the data) and I fear we’ll see a further spike in Covid cases over the summer and/or autumn when the great unwashed return from Costa Plenti. I can’t see us being clear of social distancing and mask-wearing this year. And we might even have another Christmas in lockdown – although I sincerely hope we don’t.

One tries to remain optimistic and cheerful through all the gloom, but as my father would have said “it’s hard to be optimistic with a misty optic”!

current affairs, medical, personal, ramblings

Horrible Times 20: One Year!

Midday today marked exactly 365 days of, partly self-imposed, isolation. What a strange year it’s been! Who could have guessed it would be thus. In the last 365 days:

  • I’ve been off the premises just four times. Twice to go to the dentist. Once for a flu jab and blood test. And most recently for my first Covid vaccination.
  • Noreen has done a little better in that she’s been making forays to the postbox and occasionally the post office.
  • I’ve generally been well. That’s apart from the depression which is, if anything, worse – but then who’s surprised about that?! But it does make motivating oneself to do anything a struggle. It hasn’t been helped by my back and a lot of tension across my neck and shoulders; unrelieved as I’ve not been able to get any massage.
  • However Noreen has had a nasty cellulitis infection and shingles. The former required many trips to the hospital.
  • We’ve been totally dependent on online shopping, and luckily have had no problems with supermarket delivery slots (except in the very early days when things were being sorted out). Everyone in the food supply chain has been doing heroic work through all this.
  • And we’ve been using our supermarket deliveries to also get provisions for our friend across the road, who is also isolating.
  • We’ve both managed to get our first Covid vaccination – something which wasn’t even a possibility this time last year. And we’ve been mightily impressed with the way the NHS has coped with all this. We await jab number two.
  • We’ve lost my aunt (to Covid, although aged 90 and with dementia), and three or four friends (apparently not to Covid). How odd are “Zoom funerals”?!
  • Needless to say face-to-face meetings and events have not happened. We’ve managed to continue some over Zoom, which is not a problem for me as I’ve been used to teleconference meetings since before the millennium.
  • We’ve added some extra, informal, meetings for our doctor’s patient group (of which I’m Chairman) just to enable people to keep in touch and have some additional social contact.
  • Meanwhile the house is a disgusting rat’s nest – which really doesn’t help the depression. When Covid struck we were trying to dredge the accumulated silt of 40 years, three parents, two jobs, and voluntary work. That has stalled, mainly because we cannot shift stuff out of the house: charity shops are closed and not taking donations, and without transport we can’t get anything to the tip.
  • The garden is pretty much a wreck. Although we managed to keep it roughly in order last summer, without our regular gardener the winter maintenance and pruning has gone by the board. The lawn is a meadow which comes half way up our fox. Besides it is so wet out there (yet more rain as I write this) the ground is like jelly, which makes working on it impossible.
  • On the good side, we’re both still plugged into life supply.
  • And we’ve been able to have some good food and wine – something we’ve made sure we do more of to add a little joy to the misery.

So what happens next?

The government is clearly keeping its fingers crossed and hoping for the best. Meanwhile everyone is expecting the worst with the medical experts warning:

All in all I wouldn’t be surprised if we’re still in this same position a year hence. It will be immensely depressing and disheartening, but I wouldn’t find it surprising. This, of course, assumes we’re still receiving supplies of life force!

Jolly times!

amusements, current affairs, history, medical, science, sexuality

Monthly Links

Welcome to this month’s collection of links to items you may have missed the first time round and might want to catch up on.

Science, Technology, Natural World

The Black-Browed Babbler, known only from a 180 year old stuffed specimen, has finally been seen in Borneo.

So you always thought those little vials used for vaccines were any old glass, or even plastic? Well think again!

More on vaccines … Here’s a series of articles on Covid-19 vaccine manufacturing and distribution.
First, Derek Lowe on some myths about vaccine manufacture.
And a detailed look at some of the supply chain challenges for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. [TECHNICAL and VERY LONG READ]
Another item on the challenges of setting up manufacturing and distribution. [LONG READ]
Understanding the vaccine source code, or how to build a vaccine at the molecular level. [LONG READ]
Yes, these are all long, and in places rather technical, reads but worthwhile nonetheless if you want to understand just what the pharmaceutical industry has achieved in the last year.

Here’s Derek Lowe again, this time looking at drug discovery and the immune system.

Sexuality

And now to things which are a bit less intellectually demanding …

So how about a piece on the way the penis has influenced scientific research, as well as a lot else! [£££]

Or a journalist writes about her experiences of reporting on the porn industry. [LONG READ]

Social Sciences, Business, Law

The Guardian seems to have just discovered that the Queen has more power than we thought – and they’re highly indignant.

History, Archaeology, Anthropology

A 17,000 year old conch shell hs been found in a French museum – and also found to be a musical instrument.

Two reports on the supposedly dramatic discovery that some of the stones of Stonehenge were previously a stone circle in Wales – one report from BBC, the other from the Guardian. Well I must say they haven’t convinced me: it all just seems to be no more than circumstantial evidence.

Oh, no! We’re back with the penis again! Amongst many archaeological finds during the building of the A14 trunk road upgrade in Cambridgeshire, there was a rare Roman penis carving.

Meanwhile on the Isle of Man a metal-detectorist has uncovered some rare Viking jewellery.

When is a history not a history? When it’s a chronicle. Eleanor Janega explains the differences between history and chronicles, with some history along the way.

Coming almost up to date, here, in two parts, is the story of one WWII SOE Resistance agent, found in the National Archives. Part 1 and Part 2.

London

The slightly curious history of the Priory Church of the Order of St John in Clerkenwell.

Lifestyle, Personal Development, Beliefs

Researchers are suggesting that feeding our pet cats meatier meals and playing with then more will reduce their toll on wildlife. Here are two reports, from Science News and the Guardian with slightly different takes on the results.

And finally … Oh, God, we’re back with sex again! … It appears that the Jewish community have lost sight of the fact that the Purim Hamantaschen cookies look like the female pudendum. No, I didn’t know either, but then why would I?

current affairs, medical, thoughts

Horrible Times 19: Easing Lockdown

So our dearly unbeloved Boris thinks he’s going to end all lockdown restrictions on 21 June. All I can say is that like everything which emanates from BJ’s mouth this is either madness or fiction – and quite possibly both. Let’s take a look.
[Links to some relevant BBC News reports at the end.]

  1. Lockdown ends on 21 June. But all UK adults aren’t going to be offered their first vaccination until 31 July. When do they get their second jab? Well at least 3-4 weeks later, which takes us effectively until the end of August, or 8+ weeks after 21 June. So we have a minimum period of 8 weeks with no lockdown and with the UK not as fully vaccinated as it can be. Does not compute.
     
  2. Can we hit the 31 July target? Given that the rate of vaccination is reported to have fallen in recent days, partly due to a lack of vaccine supply, this seems unlikely. Moreover the priority sequence for those under 50 has not yet been decided. Yes, it might be possible if we get the volume of vaccine we need. But there’s many a slip ‘twixt cup and lip.
     
  3. That is ignoring that we don’t yet have very much data on the effectiveness of the current vaccines against the new variants of the virus. Nor are there updated vaccines available (or even nearly so).
     
  4. So lockdown is eased in five steps on 8 March, 29 March, 12 April, 17 May and 21 June. (The media are reporting this as four stages by lumping together the two March dates.) These appear to be the earliest dates for each round of eased restrictions. They will only happen if four conditions are met:
    • The coronavirus vaccine programme continues to go to plan
    • Vaccines are sufficiently reducing the number of people dying with the virus or needing hospital treatment
    • Infection rates do not risk a surge in hospital admissions
    • New coronavirus variants do not fundamentally change the risk of lifting restrictions

    WTF do these conditions mean? They are flabby and woolly at best. Without specific numbers against them, published up-front, they’re worthless as the government can flex them any-which-way it likes. They’re about as ethereal as mist.

  5. When they return to school, secondary school children will be required to have two Covid (lateral flow) tests a week. It seems the first three will be conducted in school but thereafter parents will be expected to administer the tests at home and report the results to the school. How many parents will (a) bother administering the tests, (b) do the tests properly, and (c) report the results accurately? This is going to end well, isn’t it!?

I’m not even going to talk about the rest of contents of each round of restriction easing. As you’ll realise from the above it is all rather academic when we don’t know the detailed baselines and criteria being used.

But what I will say is that if this timeline is adhered to, we’ll most likely have an up-tick in cases in May (as a result of schools going back) and another one in August (due to incomplete vaccine coverage).

Now don’t get me wrong. I want to see lockdown removed just as much as anyone else. But I want to see it done safely. For everyone’s sake.

Links
What’s the roadmap for lifting lockdown?
Lockdown review: What are the risks of schools, pubs and shops reopening?
Covid: When will schools reopen?
Covid: Why can’t we unlock more quickly?
Number of UK Covid vaccinations falls by a third as vaccine supply dips

current affairs, personal

Horrible Times 18: Day 350

Today is Day 350 of my lockdown. We’re rapidly approaching a year of detention, and it seems pretty certain we’ll make the full year.

No checklist of good/not so good things this time, and this is the briefest of reports. Why?

Because basically nothing changes. We still have the same patheticly incompetent government. And the same NHS which is doing heroic work despite the government’s attempts otherwise.

There’s no real news on the home front since my last report. Again everything muddles on much as for the previous 350 days.

The only significant change is that both Noreen and I have had our first Covid-19 vaccinations – I wrote about my experience here. Oh and Noreen has had shingles – now luckily gone away – and her cellulitis is resolving but slowly and the whole area of skin is still fragile.

I suggested last time that the lockdown may be over by now, but it isn’t and quite rightly in my view. The case rate needs to be down in really low figures. I might start feeling comfortable with ending lockdown when the daily new case rate locally gets down below 100 – it’s currently around 1800, down from a peak of 10,500.

I wonder what fresh nonsense can be dreamt up in time for my next report on day 365?

Meanwhile remember the mantra:

HANDS – FACE – SPACE

And stay locked in your cell.

current affairs, medical

Social Murder?

Murder is an emotive word. In law, it requires premeditation. Death must be deemed to be unlawful. How could “murder” apply to failures of a pandemic response? Perhaps it can’t, and never will, but it is worth considering.

Thus opens an interesting and thought-provoking editorial from Kamran Abbasi in BMJ (PDF) on 4 February. As always I bring the tl;dr key points.

When politicians and experts say that they are willing to allow tens of thousands of premature deaths for the sake of population immunity or in the hope of propping up the economy, is that not premeditated and reckless indifference to human life?
… … …
At the very least, covid-19 might be classified as“social murder,”as recently explained by two professors of criminology.
… … …
If not murder or a crime against humanity, are we seeing involuntary manslaughter, misconduct in public office, or criminal negligence?
… … …
More than a few countries have failed in their response to the virus; the global missteps are many and well documented by the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response.
… … …
But the global picture does not absolve individual leaders and governments from responsibility.
… … …
[M]uch of the media is complicit too, trapped in ideological silos that see the pandemic through a lens of political tribalism, worried about telling pandemic truths to their readers and viewers, owners, and political friends … truth has become dispensable as politicians and their allies are allowed to lie, mislead, and repaint history, with barely a hint of a challenge.
… … …
The most important lessons from this pandemic … are less about the coronavirus itself but what it has revealed about the political systems that have responded to it.

However necessary, basically nothing is going to happen.

current affairs, personal

Horrible Times 16: Day 300

Happy New Year to everyone, from these dystopian times!

So we’ve arrived at Day 300 of my lockdown. Are we going to make it to a full year? Well given the current situation where everything is locked down until at least mid-February, it feels pretty much a certainty.

OK, so we’ve now got two Covid-19 vaccines approved in the UK (from Pfizer/BioNtech and Oxford/AstraZeneca). In that sense there is light at the end of the tunnel, although full deployment is going to take quite a while – like maybe a year. Yes, yes, I know what the government say, but do you really believe them? Although I hit 70 this month I don’t expect to get my first vaccine shot this side of Easter and it could well be later – does anyone know what the supply situation will be in two weeks, let alone two months?

But (there is always a but) we also have a new strain of Covid-19 which appears to be getting on for twice as infectious as the original. This has caused the number of cases of Covid-19 to increase rapidly again, undoing all the good work of the early-to-middle part of last year. It hasn’t been helped by the general stupidity of the (un)great British public who don’t seem to get the problem. But then the government also either don’t get the problem or they are terminally inept. (I suspect the latter; but maybe it’s both.) All of which means that although there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, the tunnel has just got a lot, lot longer – and with yesterdays announcement of stricter lockdown it got a lot, lot darker where we are.

London has been in Tier 4 restrictions (lockdown in all but name) for several weeks. While this is pretty strict, it doesn’t seem to be draconian enough. At long last the government seems to have come to realise this (for the whole country) with yesterday’s imposition of much stricter lockdown and schools & universities closed for face-to-face teaching (with a few exceptions) until at least mid-February. What larks!

Not that this makes a lot of difference to us. We’ve largely been living under “STAY AT HOME” rules since early March. I just feel sorry for those, like our friend Tom, who have no lifeline and have to work to keep the wolf from the door; and for those who are supposed to put their well-being at risk (not just healthcare workers, but supermarket staff, emergency services, …).

So I’m not going to give you a checklist of the good and not-so-good this time around; just a couple of points.

First of all Noreen has to a large extent (but not completely) recovered from the illness I mentioned back on Day 250. It turned out to be a very nasty case of cellulitis which required two weeks of daily trips to the hospital for IV antibiotics, and then a couple of weeks of attention from the District Nurses. We’re now in the healing phase. I won’t pretend that the whole episode wasn’t difficult in the extreme – for both of us! What was especially shocking was the speed and severity with which it hit, and one can quite see why in days of yore, and with no antibiotics, it would have killed people very quickly. On the other hand, with a very few exceptions, Noreen was hugely impressed with the skill and care of all sections of the NHS: our GP, the Practice nurses, hospital doctors and nurses, hospital transport, and the District Nurses; and we mustn’t forget the couple of friends who turned out to provide emergency transport at short notice. Another good thing is that it has made us both slow down some and get to bed at a more sensible hour.

Needless to say this put a large spanner in the works and meant our Christmas was exceptionally quiet and low-key even by our standards. For various reasons we ended up with a lot more meat than we could cope with (no, just don’t ask!) so we now have three large joints of various sorts in the freezer. We also have a good supply of wine, beer, gin, soup and chocolate laid in. Just as well given the weather is getting colder. It can’t be all bad!

So what next? Well who knows? I guess we just have to plod on and hope; there seems to be no guessing what’s going to happen next, nor what our lords and masters are (not) going to decree we must do. Surely 2021 can’t be as bad as 2020, can it?! But maybe I won’t put my last shirt on that.

With luck I’ll bring you another episode on Day 350 (Wednesday 24 February) by which time this new lockdown may be over – or it may not. Who knows?

Meanwhile please follow the rules and remember:

HANDS – FACE – SPACE

Oh and you’re not allowed out of your cabin on pain of being keel-hauled.