Who is Philip?

Since the revelation that Dominic Cummings is actually an evil genius who hoodwinked us with his trip to Barnard Castle, I have been watching all announcements looking for a hidden meaning.

If you missed Have I Got News for You then you might not realise that a book called ‘Brewer’s Britain and Ireland’ (2005) the listing for Barnard Castle says this:

“Barnard Castle - A Durham dialect term for a coward that derives from the Northern rebellion by the Catholic Earls in 1569 when Sir George Bowes refused, despite many opportunities, to leave his fortified position in Barnard Castle to engage in battle. Hence the expression, Come, come, that’s Barney Castle, meaning ‘that’s a pathetic excuse’.

When I showed it to my daughter she said, “That’s amazing, could he have known or is it just one of those brilliant coincidences?”
I, as the faction writer, plumped for the idea that he had mapped the story out before he started because he was from the area and so developed a grudging respect for him as a Machiavellian genius.
She, as a writer welded to the truth who sleeps with a copy of McNae’s Essential Law for Journalists, was more inclined to believe that truth is stranger than fiction or that the universe is sending us a message that all of us, except the Prime Minister, could see.

The Scientists have been very interesting to watch, wildly sending semaphore and morse code messages with their eyes, on the suggestion of the Prime Minister. Blinks and twitches that convey a fear that it all might be a bit quick and over confident.

Professor Van Tam has become one of my favourites. He’s not afraid to tell it like it is.
“Yes, I’m happy to answer that. In my opinion, the rules were clear. In my opinion, the rules are for the benefit of all. In my opinion, the rules apply to all.”
He also uses headline grabbing phrases.
“Let’s be clear, we are in a very dangerous position. Let’s not go ripping the pants out of it.”
No writer could refuse a phrase like that.

Yesterday’s press conference was with Jonathan Van Tam and Oliver Dowden, the Sports and Culture minister, who looked like he’d forgotten he was ginger and had spent the day outside and was all about restarting professional sport. It’s perfectly understandable. An economy that is built on poor people gambling away their hard earned money in the hope they will get rich can’t survive unless we get back to watching 22 men in tight shorts race around after a ball. It’s not really something I’m interested in, so I can’t get quite as excited about it.

Professor Van Tam told us that he is a mad Bolton Wanderers fan. I wondered if that was a metaphor for something. Then he went onto say, “The return of professional sport is a nice Philip for all of us,”

What?

I replayed it several times. I asked my family to listen. Yes, he definitely said ‘nice Philip.’.
What’s a nice Philip? I only know one Philip and he is nice but he has nothing to do with professional sport. There has to be a hidden message in the phrase but I can’t work out what it is.

Free as a bird

It’s a beautiful weekend. Lockdown restrictions have been eased, we can see most of the Secret Seven in our back gardens (don’t tell George!) and it’s all fine (unless you are clinically vulnerable then it’s up to you to avoid the virus, which is fine because you know what it looks like).

Except, it’s not yet. The restrictions lift on Monday.

Let that sink in for a moment.

Monday.

This weekend, if you meet two friends in the park or have people who are not in your household in your garden you could be fined £100 even though they will be perfectly reasonable activities on Monday.

My garden has been bird party central. I’ve had to explain the rules to the dog. We’ve been very clear. He can chase pigeons out but only when they are not at the bird feeder. He must chase pigeons that are sitting on the blue tit box. He can chase a pigeon if it pecks the head of a baby starling but he can’t chase the starlings that shout and peck at each other’s heads all the time. To make it even clearer for him I’ve named most of the birds.
“Look, Fred is on the blue tit box!” I shout.
He looks, checking to see if Fred is a pigeon.
“Now, now, Billy, be nice, don’t peck Bobby on the head. You know better than that,” I say.
The dog’s ears prick up. He looks for pigeon that should know better, he rises on his haunches ready to spring and starts a low growl at the back of his throat.
“Leave it!” I tell him.
He flops back down under the sun lounger, exhausted by all the mixed messages.

Free as a bird seems a strange term. I suppose when you see them swooping in the sky, that’s how they look but I’ve been watching the blue tits since the beginning of lockdown and free is not a word I would associate with their current existence.

It took Sid a little while to find a mate. He had a thing for the bird in the mirror but no matter how much he tried to woo it the stupid thing refused to come out. When he found Sheila he brought her to see the mirror bird. They were both enchanted and would have considered a modern threesome but mirror bird refused to budge. Sid had made a very nice nest in the box and so Sheila forgave him his obsession and moved in. Sid worked harder than any little tit, collecting food to feed his love. He still refused to eat all the woolly bugs from the apple tree but thanked me for the meal worms and fat balls. A few weeks ago both Sid and Sheila took it in turns to leave the box. The chicks must have hatched. They were even more grateful for the suet block.

 Now, the chicks are almost ready to fledge. They’ve moved onto sunflower hearts. They poke their heads out, looking at the freedom that it promised them, waiting until they can go to the feeder themselves.

“On Monday,” Shiela tells them. “You can look but you mustn’t go yet. It isn’t safe. There are unseen dangers out there but don’t worry they’ll be gone by Monday.”

I’d rather have the clap than a BBQ

Yesterday was the last opportunity to give the NHS the clap. I’m not sure why but ten weeks is enough. We can all go back to moaning about how long we have to wait for a GP appointment, how rude the reception staff are,  how disgraceful it is that end of life care is a charity and complaining that we are paying too much tax. I was initially sceptical about the weekly clap but I think I might miss it.

Now that R is at 0.9 and not close to one at all, Boris Johnson is ‘confident’ that his five tests have been met and there won’t be a second spike, allowing further relaxation of the lockdown rules. He got very excited about this and told us all to have a BBQ with five other people in our garden.

If they’re sure, then I’m all for relaxation of rules and I won’t mention any nagging doubts or how South Korea are tightening theirs because they have 40 new cases a day.

Yesterday’s briefing saw the warning bulb go back to green. Matt Hancock appeared on morning shows, laughing hysterically at ... Honestly, I’m not sure what he was laughing at but bless him, he was a lot happier than he has been recently. Boris Johnson, Chris Whitty and Sir Patrick Vallance were at the podium to deliver the good news.

Journalists are still trying to do a good job and get clarity for us. Can we camp in the garden? Can we go to the toilet? Can we pop to Durham to test our eyesight if we have coronavirus symptoms? Don’t blame them if they can’t move on from the D.C. story, as I wrote yesterday, it is almost impossible without an ending and journalists are writers who need the truth.

This announcement led to a few funny headlines. The Daily Mail are treating it as a green light to get back to their suburban swingers’ soirées, with their “THE JOY OF SIX” headline. Even the simplest of headlines has allowed people a chuckle.

Some have commented how difficult this is going to be for S-Club or the Secret Seven and one person, cleverly commented, “I think we’ve been aware of that for a few days now, no?”
I saw one person tweet that they weren’t interested in a BBQ but were looking forward to the announcement of a barber queue.

I’ve never been a fan of a BBQ so, I’m with Chris Whitty. I saw his face when Boris said the B word. His eyes swivelled slightly back into his head. His virologist mind ran through all the dangers of people meeting to share a load of poorly cooked meat. He thought of all that food that would be touched with unwashed hands. He pictured chicken, black on the outside, raw in the middle causing an outbreak of Summer Vomitty Disease. He thought about drunken snogging, people all using the same toilet without cleaning it, how most people’s gardens aren’t actually big enough to fit six people in all 2m apart.
“No, no, we never want to be drawn into politics”, they said, while their eyes sent SOS semaphore messages.

Flip the Script

I’m sure I’m not the only one struggling at the moment. I’m not going to say that we are all in this together because we will all be finding different things difficult. Some of you might be angry about Dominic Cummings and others might be furious that everyone seems to be picking on a man with a four year old. Some will be wanting lockdown over now and others will be feeling like it’s too soon. You might be following government advice to the letter and feel cross with those who are bending it or be living your life as normal wondering why other people are getting so stressed.
You might have lost your job or saved loads of money on petrol and eating in restaurants.

We are at the point now, where we can’t even say that we are all in the same storm, even if our boats are different.

I didn’t write yesterday, as an act of self care and also to give you all a break from my ranting brain.
The truth is, I’ve got stuck. I’m finding it difficult to move on. I think it’s because there hasn’t been a satisfactory conclusion. It’s like getting to the last ten pages of a novel and being told you can’t read the end.
“But, I want to know if they lived happily ever after,” you protest.
“Don’t worry about that. Just move on. Why don’t you read another book?”
Impossible!

When you get stuck with a story when writing, one thing you can try is to ‘flip the script’ write the story from someone else’s point of view, or look at it from a different perspective. It usually helps.

Oh, who am I kidding? That’s not going to cut it this time. I could stand on my head and look at the whole thing with someone else’s eyes and I still wouldn’t understand. I can empathise but I don’t understand and that bothers me.

I noticed that they’ve changed the lightbulb again. In yesterday’s briefing the green alert stripe has gone and we have a blue bulb. Test, track and trace. Not easy to say after a few beers. Anyway, with no app we now just have to remember anyone that we were near for more than a quarter of an hour if we get sick. This could be interesting, as I can barely remember my name when I’m ill.

This isn’t helping anyone. Ok. Stop wallowing. Get to a point where you can write about the baby blue tits.

Flip the script.

This is the story from the virus’ point of view.

I’d just like to take this moment to say, “thank you,” The last few months have been quite a ride. No, really. You have no idea. There you all are moaning about me, changing my name once people gave me a nickname. I’ll be honest, I quite liked Rona. It made me sound friendly. Much better than COVID19.

None of this was my fault. I was quite happy pootling around in Asia giving bats a mild cold. I didn’t expect to get trapped inside a pangolin and then get transferred to you humans. It was hard at first not to kill you and I would like to apologise for that. It’s always bad manners to kill your host but your lungs aren’t what I’m used to.

It takes a while, you know, before you get the hang of it. I had a fantastic time with Super Spreader Steve, I didn’t kill him and Brighton is great. Have you been? If not, you should. They’re very friendly. He went to lots of very nice pubs. The football and the races were also fun. I got around quite a bit. 

Westminster wasn’t great though. There were a lot of people there I would have preferred not to see the inside of. Honestly, for the cleverest people in the country, you wouldn’t believe how grubby their insides are. I could hear them all, bleating on about hand washing and keeping distant from other people, all while they were going from the toilet to the bar, dipping their hand into the bowl of free peanuts before squashing into a packed room to shout at each other and shake hands without washing their hands once. I know soap kills me but hypocrisy makes you want to kill your host. 

Then people started to get a bit wise to me and made it harder for me to travel around. I understand your point of view. Honestly, I do. I mean, I’d do the same if you kept killing me but in my defence I was having a lot of fun. The rest of London is amazing.

Two months ago I found myself inside a particularly grubby creature. He had been in all the meetings about how to stop me but decided that this would be a good time to visit Durham. Have you been to Durham? It’s not Brighton is it? It’s a bit gloomy up in the North East, even the sun doesn’t go there often. 

So, I’ve decided that I’ve had enough. It’s taken me a while, I know, but you humans are not as much fun as I thought. It still might take me a while to get out completely but after being in Dominic Cummings and going to Durham I’ve decided I prefer bats.

Sorry, once again if I’ve killed anyone you love but it really wasn’t my fault.

That’s better. Script flipped. D.C. did us a favour. I’m off to feed the birds.

Such a Cynic

It’s all over. Stop worrying. You can’t catch it outside. You’ve asked my mate questions. Stop picking on him. Go shopping. Buy a house. Buy a car. Send kids back to school. Don’t hug your mum or dad. We’re washing our hands of everything.

Yesterday, BBC Radio 4 had a programme about how the teaching of classics was a way of keeping the poor in their place. The rich ruling classes could pretend that meritocracy existed. They knew that the amount of schooling to read the classics in the original Greek and Latin was beyond the purse of anyone but the already monied. I didn’t have a classical education. Greek philosophers and the conjugation of Latin verbs were replaced with dinosaurs and learning the names of how lions appear on heraldic flags but as I’ve got older I have become fascinated with how wound into our society and our thinking they have become.

The people who rule us have had this classical education. They know all the Greek Philosophers by name and understand their teachings, applying them to life, as if nothing has changed in the last two thousand three hundred years.

The Greek philosophers fall into different categories, or isms. Often these are named after the person who invented them.

Listening to the programme, I became fascinated with the Cynics. For them, the purpose of life was to live in virtue, in agreement with nature. They were early, eccentric eco-warriors. Cynicism comes from the Ancient Greek word for dog-like. The most famous of the cynics was Diogenes, who lived on the streets in a ceramic urn. The man on the radio said that there isn’t much written by the original cynics, which probably isn’t a surprise. I can’t think a Greek urn on the corner of a street makes the best writing desk.

I listened to the programme, fascinated. They seemed to think that we should reinvigorate cynicism and at first I agreed. I approach everything we are told by the government with a touch of cynicism. Then they told us about a Diogenes speech, where he defecated on stage. The idea was repulsive enough to make me want to give up cynicism immediately. They explained that it was a very well timed message to seal his shameless and fearless message. Having listened to this in the morning, I can’t have been the only one half expecting Dominic Cummings to end his statement by dropping his trousers and adding some much needed fertiliser to the non-existent blooms in the Downing Street rose garden.

I know they are all ‘cleverer’ than us. They know how to manipulate. They understand the classics. However, I just wish that if the threat is passed they could be honest with us and let us do the things we want to, like see the people we love. The cynics wouldn’t have been very impressed to find their techniques used to put economy over love and nature.

Suffered Enough

No, not Dominic Cummings or the Prime Minister. When the Daily Mail and the Guardian agrees then the government has seriously mucked up. People are rightly cross. I wrote to my MP (twice) and I don’t need to write any more about it here.

It’s the Long Suffering Husband I’m talking about.

Twenty nine years ago, he woke up and put on his hired suit and thought he looked quite silly in it. The weather was perfect, just like today and he had no regrets, other than wishing he’d chosen to wear something else. His best men and ushers took him to the pub opposite the church.
“Are you sure, mate?” they asked “It’s not too late.”

I have seen pictures of how people are celebrating in these strange times. They have banners and balloons and cake. Special meals are ordered in. Couples go for picnics.

We talked about it and decided that our daughter could cook the Lasagne for tea and he could go out and play golf.
“Is that all right?” he asked, “Shouldn’t we celebrate together?”

I told him that it was fine. He’d suffered enough. 29 years of marriage certainly is enough to have earned some time off for good behaviour.

I’m going for a walk. Perfect!

Angry

There’s lots to be angry about, not least a government that have implied that we don’t care about our children if we didn’t drive halfway across the country to infect our parents and give the whole of the North East one of the worst death rates, a scientific advisor who is prepared to suggest that an intelligent man whose wife had flu-like symptoms looking after his own child was a safeguarding risk and a Prime Minister that seems to be missing. However, I’m not going to mention those at all.

No. What I need to talk about is proper professional signs with apostrophe errors.

I understand that apostrophes are confusing and I’m sure I have made mistakes but I don’t pay thousand of pounds to have it printed on signs or get someone to check it. I do know that misplaced apostrophes can be missed by even the most anal proof reader. I missed one on the Estate Agent’s document for selling my Mum and Dad’s house: It said, Lovely 1800’s house for sale. I know, how stupid of me numbers can’t have possessions!

So, I went for a little walk to calm down about the thing I’m not going to mention at all and then I saw this sign.

I couldn’t see a trackway belonging to an HGV (although that would still be a nonsense sentence). I looked around. There were several HGVs. There was also a children’s play park that was being ripped apart. The sign on the fence said that the park was closed due to Coronavirus, which I did understand before the thing I’m not going to mention at all. However, even when I understood it, ripping it up seems a little harsh. I walked a little further and saw a sign on the Mosque door. It said, “All prayers cancelled.” I’m guessing that whichever God you pray to might be a bit busy with all of this and maybe we don’t deserve help anymore but I hope they aren’t all cancelled because then what what the point of me shouting, “Oh God. Can’t you even get the apostrophes right on council signs?”?

Cummings and Goings

I’ve been thinking a lot about advisors over the last few days, since I finished The Mirror and the Light. It is such a brilliantly written book that even though you know Thomas Cromwell must have been a bit of a dodgy character you are on his side all the way. In about 500 years time someone could write a novel about Dominic Cummings and make him sound......not wierd, maybe?

People in power need advisors. Preferably, they need lots of them, so that Groupthink mistakes don’t occur. However, each advisor will have their own agenda and when one becomes as powerful and influential as Cromwell was, the only way to get rid of him for a mistake was to make sure he was beheaded. The other advisors couldn’t risk letting him resign over the Anne of Cleves error, whispering in the King’s ear and changing his mind.

I have been particularly thinking about the Scientific Advisory Group, that they had to pretend was for all emergencies, otherwise they would have been known as SAG which doesn’t sound as wise as SAGE. This group contains some behavioural scientists and it is those I’ve been thinking of recently. These scientists must have known that a significant proportion of the population would not understand how far 2m was, or would not believe that the advice to meet one other person wouldn’t mean that ten of you couldn’t sit around a picnic blanket. They will have known that some people wouldn’t have obeyed the rules and that others would be overly obsessive with them. They will have known that most people don’t wash their hands very often (honestly, Psychologists love a hand washing study) and they will know that it takes people about 3 days to start to adjust to new freedoms. There is no coincidence that two weeks after this is the exact date that Boris will announce whether schools are to start to go back on June 1st. This is when they will know if there has been a rise in hospital admissions.

I have had a sense of unease that we are being manipulated and not fed all the facts. I worry that they know this is how people will behave and it is all a big experiment. If they suspect that the virus has burnt itself out (like SARS did - no vaccine was ever developed and there have been no known cases since 2004) then they have to test it out and the only way to do that is to get people mixing again.

I have always thought that they haven’t given us suspected end dates for lockdown to avoid Third Quarter Phenomenon. Psychologists studying space travel noticed that mood became lowest just over half way past the mission (Harrison & Conners 1984). Bechtel & Berning (1991) named the phenomenon and since then people have studied the factors that cause it. It doesn’t appear to matter how long the mission is but knowing that you are only just over half way through makes people depressed, anxious, irritable and unproductive. I wonder if the psychologists advising, suggested avoiding giving firm dates so that the whole country didn’t get depressed and angry at the same time.

By now, you will have seen the Mirror’s breaking news story that Dominic Cummings and his wife travelled from London to Durham when they were sick with Coronavirus, so that his seventy year old parents could look after his young boy. You will also note that he was discovered by someone who heard him dancing with his son in their garden to ABBA. Oddly, he’s not denying it. He has called it fake news, which is particularly odd when he says it’s true. Unless it is fake news and he knows that because he planted it.

I know, I’m becoming properly paranoid but bear with me a moment.

Cummings has been part of the SAGE meetings. I’ve never had a problem with that, government advisors should be there so they can advise on the political position. As a communications expert, he could advise on things like the slogans. What if not enough people are breaking the ‘rules’ to properly test it? What better way than for people to get upset with him.
”One rule for them, another for us,” we cry.
“I haven’t seen my mum in months and he visits her when he’s actually got it.”
“That’s it! I’m on the M1 tomorrow!”

For me, the timing is particularly suspicious. Breaking news at the beginning of a sunny bank holiday weekend. Someone getting this story now when it happened on the 27th of March seems bizarre. If I had seen him I would have told the papers that day and telling on people isn’t my thing. It is also weird that his wife wrote a very convincing article in the Spectator about their Coronavirus experience at the time that didn’t mention leaving London. The detail that makes me most suspicious is that he was discovered because loud music was heard and the neighbour looked over the hedge to see Cummings dancing with his son to ABBAs Dancing Queen! This is a gift for headline writers:
“Mama Mia Cummings Goes Again.” I haven’t looked this morning but I’m sure they will be there.
Also, he’s not that stupid that he didn’t understand the rules that he helped to make.

Dominic Cummings will, eventually, have to resign. However, will it make any difference? He can still whisper in his mate Boris’ ear. He doesn’t need the money and there will be other opportunities for him but if the aim was to get people out there, taking risks they wouldn’t take if the advisors were honest with them it will have been worth it. A no blame experiment for the government.

Housework Dulls the Brain

I had a brilliant day yesterday but today I’m a basket case.

 In this, mental health awareness week, I thought it was time talk about something important. Why do we call it mental health? It’s the opposite, surely? We are becoming aware that an awful lot of people have minds that are the opposite of healthy. Sorry, I was sidetracked there. That wasn’t what I was going to talk about at all. It was just a thought that popped into my holey brain, like, ‘can cats be allergic to people?’ No! Don’t go down that route! What I was going to tell you about was housework.

You see, I had a great day yesterday. I was feeling on top of the world, all my routines had fallen into place, the sun was shining, I did yoga, played my flute, fed the birds, chased away the fat pigeon who likes to sit on the bird box every time the blue tit pipped at me, did a bit of work, wrote something, massaged my feet, watered the garden, fed the roses, walked the dog, made a cake and read my book all before lunchtime. The Long Suffering Husband went to play golf and as I was in such a good mood, I decided to do some proper deep cleaning type housework.

The house sparkled. The skirting boards gleamed, door handles reflected faces, bathroom sinks squeaked, you could slide on the kitchen floor with white socks and they would still be pristine at the end. My house is not normally like this. I own a glass cleaning cloth but I’m no Mrs Hinch. In fact, I found a bag of fermenting carrots at the back of one cupboard.

Blue Moon rose.

I went to bed, exhausted but happy, or so I thought.

This morning, I feel dreadful and I can only conclude that housework is bad for me. I used to have a fridge magnet that said, “Creative minds are rarely tidy,” and another that said, “Dull women have immaculate homes.”
Clearly, housework dulls the brain. I advise against it.

I’m choosing optimism

“What a bunch of pessimists!” I shouted at the evening news.
Cambridge University has already decided that all of its lectures next year will be online.
Rolls Royce have made a load of people redundant because they don’t think they’ll survive.
I’m not against making plans for every eventuality, in fact I think that is not only wise, it’s necessary but to decide one way or the other before you actually ‘know’ is stupid.
The University’s decision could economically destroy the whole of the Cambridge area if students then decide they might as well live at home, save their accommodation fees and treat their studies like an OU course. Rolls Royce’s decision is equally detestation for Coventry, Daventry, or whatever Midlands town with a tree in they are based.
Marks and Spencer’s have said that shopping will never be the same again.

Nobody knows what is going to happen. It’s too early to make those decisions. Some measures have been relaxed and as you will have seen from pictures and videos of Southend beach that not everyone is observing social distancing. You might get angry about that but what if the numbers continue to fall? If they do, some children will go back to school. Clearly, four year olds don’t know what social distancing means and they lick everything. You might get angry about that but what if the numbers continue to fall? If they do, a few more children will go back and shops will open. By then it will be very difficult for people to maintain strict social distancing and there will be lots of people out there that never wash their hands. You might get angry about that but what if the numbers continue to fall? Then bars and restaurants will open and drunken snogging of strangers will resume. You might get angry about that but what if the numbers continue to fall? Then we will be back to normal. The virus could have mutated to become less virulent and we will all be able to breathe a sigh of relief.

I know that’s wild optimism but that’s what I choose.

Red, White and Blue ..... and Green

Red, White and Blue, what does it mean to you?

This a line in the song, “There’ll Always Be An England.” This was a tune that the Youth Orchestra played in its very first concert. We had planned to repeat that concert at the beginning of May to celebrate our 20th anniversary, which has now been postponed. However, we had decided to replace that particular song with one of our favourites (nursery rhyme themed) because the song felt too jingoistic. It’s a shame, really because there is a lot to like about this song, as an anthem. It has a nice melody, some fanfare like triplets and some lyrics that I can get behind.

I like a song to make me think and a well placed question can make you do that.

Our school has always been fantastic at topic based teaching. To be fair, we have some excellent teachers who could deliver the most brilliant lessons if you had only given them the telephone book to work with and that innate creativity is probably why topics work so well for us. In lockdown we have continued this approach, setting a topic a week and giving parents lots of ideas and resources to choose from. Last week, to coincide with the 75th anniversary of VE Day the topic was Brilliant Britain and even though I’m not a child who is meant to be doing the homework, it did get me thinking about what makes our country great and, bizarrely the flag.

When I was a child, I had an encyclopaedia type book with lots of pictures in and I became obsessed with the flags of the world. I learnt them all off by heart and started to look for patterns in them. For example I can still remember that Lebanon, Cyprus and Canada were the only ones to have plants on them (Eritrea had been annexed by Ethiopia at the time and Macau was part of China, so weren’t in my book). It was an obsession that lasted several years. When I was in school there were a few topics that seemed to come up in more than one year. Obviously, there was World War 2 (our national obsession) but also Tudors, dinosaurs and heraldry. Heraldry seems an odd choice but I expect it was an easy topic, as it enabled teachers to get us to learn long words like chevron and rampant and hook us by appealing to a seven year olds ego and allowing them to design their own flag. We spent time making the flags of England, Ireland and Scotland and put them together to make the union flag. I was always impressed with how clever this was but felt very sorry for Wales.

Learning about heraldry made me realise that colours were important, as I had always suspected. I had a bit of a thing about Countries with black on their flag leaning towards violent dictatorships.

Red, white and blue, what does it mean to you?

The flag. Why did we choose those colours? Traditionally, white is for peace and harmony, blue for determination and good fortune and red is for power and war. I’ve always wondered why we didn’t have green in our flag. Green is a symbol of agricultural influence, prosperity and fertility. In the song it says, ‘There’ll always be and England, while there’s a country lane.’ Many of us have been exploring those lanes in lockdown and noticed just how much green there is. It’s not just true for England. Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland probably have even more green. I think it’s time we changed our flag. Even the government have realised how important agriculture is in our Country and now that we can’t pay people from other Countries tiny amounts of money to harvest our crops they are having to ask all furloughed workers to consider doing this back-breaking work for little reward. They have set up a website https://pickforbritain.org.uk/, where I expect everyone who voted for Brexit is logging on to do their bit. Wars now don’t involve bloodshed and no matter how fondly we reminisce about them it might be time to drop the blood red from the flag and go green instead.

Blue, white and green. I can’t think of an appropriate rhyme at the moment but that’s only because I’ve been too busy with my green preparations.

The local council delivered our pink recycling sacks but instead of being in easy to store rolls they were in a big package, too big for any drawer or cupboard and not in anyway that you could pull one off without undoing the whole pile.
“I’m not very impressed with how they’ve delivered our recycling sacks,” said my friend on our, now permitted, socially distanced exercise walk.  “I preferred rolls.”
I agreed and when I got home decided that it needed fixing.

Fixed it

I sent her this picture with the caption ‘fixed it’
Apparently, I have too much time on my hands (as many of us do now), which is further evidenced by this very long rambling blog, just to show you a picture of my drawer. I’m sure you can agree, though, it is a thing of beauty.

Eton (a controversial opinion)

“What are Eton going to do?” I asked my daughter, when I was trying to get my head around whether it was right for schools to be opening in the phased way they are.
She snapped at me and I couldn’t understand why, until she told me of the flack that they were getting because they had announced that they wouldn’t open. She had misread the tone of my question. I genuinely wanted to know what Private schools would do. Because they are Independent they truly had a choice.

I fell into the trap, though, of using Eton as a generic word for all Independent schools. Although, I had asked her about Eton because it used to be on her patch when she was a junior reporter and I know she still has lots of contacts.

Since then, I have seen vitriol launched at Eton (and occasionally Harrow and Winchester) for their decision to tell parents they won’t be fully open before the end of the school year. This is something I think we have to be careful of. Whatever happened to solidarity amongst teachers? Don’t get me wrong, I would much prefer there was no Independent school market and that everyone had the same opportunities but this is not the time for that argument.

These top private schools are still run by teachers, who, at the heart of it, want the best for their students. They will also still feel some pressure to support the government and be under even more duress from the parents (or customers, as you could more accurately describe them.) Those school leaders will be just as torn as any head in the private sector.

We need to let Eton (and the others mentioned) off the hook for other reasons too.
1. Eton is not a prep school. Boys start at 13. This is the equivalent of an upper senior school and sixth form college. Senior schools are only being asked to consider some face to face time with years 10 and 12 before they break up for the Summer but not before the 4th of July.

2. Eton College breaks up for summer on the 3rd of July.

3. Eton, like other schools, hasn’t been completely closed. Boys of key workers have been in, as have the International borders. Potentially, that sounds like more than many schools have been teaching.

4. They will also have, just like other schools, been providing work, email support and possibly zoom lessons for their students. They are still under as much pressure as they ever were to provide the very best for their boys.

5. The idea that some face-to-face time with year 10 and 12 is needed for most schools is to remind some pupils that in those years they are (and always have been) expected to work through their holidays. It’s unlikely that boys at Eton aren’t told that and many will have Nannies and tutors to continue their education over the summer.

If Dulwich Prep had announced that they wouldn’t be following the government’s advice we might have reason to get cross but should we be more upset than the schools in Liverpool that have decided it’s too soon to plan for a June 1st opening, or the schools that have decided to only open part time, or to all year groups on a rota?

These are difficult times, it would be nice to cut everyone a bit of slack.

The Puncture Monster

I’m very worried about our children. That is, the children of the UK, not my children, who are adults and have got most things pretty much sussed.

Yesterday, the Long Suffering Husband and I went on a bike ride. It was the same route we took just under a year ago. That time, the LSH got a puncture and we had to be rescued by our son. Since then, whenever we go out he takes a puncture repair kit and a spare inner tube. I prefer to stick to country lanes, where cow parsley brushes your legs and kestrels hover at the edges of fields above you but to get to them there is a choice between footpaths and roads. In normal times, you would take footpaths. But these are not normal times: there are people on footpaths, which makes social distancing impossible. We had to ride down the busy road, where Sunday drivers, who are in such a hurry, feel it’s better to knock you into the curb than wait to overtake. Anyway, it was on this road, at exactly the same spot that the LSH got another puncture.

“Kids today wouldn’t know how to do this,” he said, handing me the inner tube to find the puncture.
“Not many knew when we were young,” I pointed out. “You did because you cycled to school and I remember Dad teaching me after I had to push my bike home five miles from one of my country rides.”

As we were working, a family on their daily walk, passed us. The little boy was terrified almost to the point of tears. In his mind, being anywhere near another person was going to kill him.

After 911, I knew a child, who developed a terrible anxiety disorder, where they couldn’t go into any building taller than a normal house. They had seen planes crashing into tower blocks on TV so many times that in their very logical little brain, they had decided that all the tower blocks in America had been destroyed by an aircraft. It took a lot of work to get him to let go of that fear enough to live a normal life and even then I suspect he is plagued by anxiety and an irritable bowel.

Us humans are naturally fearful. We are designed to fear death and our bodies respond in a way that gives us the resources to run away from the TIGER that is about to kill us. However, as we have evolved, the actual tiger is less of a risk. Now, the thing that might kill us is more subtle. At the moment the TIGER is a new invisible virus that we don’t really know very much about.

There are many things that could kill us but anything new always comes into sharp focus. Add into that the fact that governments have traditionally used fear as a method of control and it is no surprise that we are all in such a state. John Adams (American founding father) wrote, “Fear is the foundation of most governments.” Fear works best to control a population when we are at war and it is no surprise that this government, who has a leader well studied in Churchill, have treated this virus like a war.

You may be someone who thinks that they haven’t done enough and that might be true, only time will tell but if a government is going to use fear to get us to do something then they have to realise that they have to work much harder to undo that fear If they want us to do something else, it’s  no good to continue to show us daily deaths and hope we will get excited that only 400 people are dying a day. Tell us about one death and we think that could be us. Tell children that being near people will kill them and you are going to have to work really hard to convince them that it’s fine now. What reason do children have to believe that anything has changed, especially when adults are being encouraged to wear masks in public places?

Suddenly, being seen as the puncture monster yesterday made me realise just how hard teaching is going to be until the TIGER starts to look like a kitten for everyone. Governments have to work much harder to convince us that we are safe because, as the Stoic Poet Seneca said, “There are more things likely to frighten us than crush us. We suffer more in imagination than in reality.”

Schools

Why do they always have to talk about schools at the weekend? School leaders are stressed enough, give them a break at weekends.

Yesterday’s briefing was awful. It was almost like they didn’t understand any question they were being asked.

“What happens if after the first few children go back to school the R goes up?”
“The R is the rate of infection. We need granular data.”
“Why can a child take their own lunchbox but not their own pencil case?”
“*laughs* I’ve never been asked such a stupid question. Children aren’t interested in what anyone else has in their lunchbox.”
“As, deaths in diabetics account for a quarter of the deaths in hospital don’t you think you should change the guidance to put diabetics in the extremely vulnerable group.”
“You don’t understand. Type 2 diabetics are just fat. Use this time to lose weight.”
“As most primary school teachers are women who is going to look after their children?”
Sorry, I didn’t listen to the answer because I was shouting at the TV. Childcare isn’t a female only responsibility. Let the Dads multitask.

Gavin Williamson takes a question from a pirate as he insists
that choosing children who lick everything to go back first
is about minimising contact.

I previously liked Jenny Harries but I think she needs a break. She is so desperate to find the granular data (whatever that is) that she’s forgotten that she’s talking to real people about their real concerns.

As a teacher, I can’t wait to get back to school but I really want it to be a good experience for the children. I think that most teachers expressing concerns are doing so for the same reasons - they are concerned that it won’t be right for the children. Four and five year olds in school don’t sit at an individual desk; it’s not how they learn best. If the government insist that they want these children back in school first because they are missing out on the most learning then they need to let them go back to an environment in which they can learn. However, if we are honest, we know that this is a lie. They need to get the country back to normal and these few children going back first is a test. We know that but they can’t say it.

If I were a parent of a child due to go back, I honestly don’t know what I would do right now. I’m not someone who is particularly scared of the virus and I do believe that the country has to start to get back to normal in gradual steps but I would want them to be able to learn in the best way. As it is a choice whether to send them back or not, I know that I would be having sleepless nights over it. I think this is an unfair position to put parents in. It’s been difficult enough as it is.

However, I’m an optimist and I know that whatever people do it will be the best thing for them and their families, just as whatever schools do it is always with the best interests of the children in mind.

It could be Rotterdam or Home

This year Eurovision is cancelled but the celebration of the evening goes ahead. We have cheese, snacks and drink.

Here we go. Lovely Graham. He’s not Terry but we can forgive him under the circumstances.

First, there is a recap of the best Eurovision of all time. We’ve got our score sheets, olives and we are ready.

Sweden 2015 - Heroes of our Time. Great Lights. We were in Wales the first saw this. It stuck in our head but it was also the first time I had Perl Las cheese

Israel 1998  - Dana International - Diva. It’s not the best song but what a dress. Catchy chorus. 

Australia 2016 - levitating Australian with a great voice. Slightly dull song. “I like her sparkly box”

Cheese key change gets extra points. They are all scoring highly because we love Eurovision.

Uses of a box: it’s of perpex boxes. Dizzy floating boxes.

Bucks Fizz 1981 - Making you mind UP.

THAT’S HOW TO DO EUROVISION. It won’t score well on staging. That dance is the best. Flossing before it became popular. The Long Suffering Husband was in the Brecon Beacons at the time. This show is great for reminiscing.

Elani- Cyprus 2018 - She’s like the girl in Music and Lyrics but not as good. We can appreciate the dance sequence but there could be a lot less wind. The dog has turned it into smelly vision. 

Luxembourg 1965 - a proper orchestra. She’s singing into a sandwich. She’s cute - probably about 10.  It’s not going to score well -unfortunately  no points for colourful costumes or fireworks

Sweden  2010 - More wind. The dog is going into overdrive. It’s actually snowing. I’m struggling to concentrate. I feel cold. It’s not cheesy enough. We all have Claudia Winklemen hair now.

Ireland were the best! They’ve ruled them out because of their obvious dominance.

Ah, it’s Santa, playing chess.

Ukraine - This is brilliant. 7712 7712 77123. If you phone that number you get Vladimir Putin. This is Eurovision. I love you. A little bit of sexual harassment too.

Drink to Terry. Time to get tearful and sing the Floral Dance.

Italy 2019 - Moody Ma. Sad little boy in the background. Nope don’t like this, even if he has a nice shirt. It’s quite intimidating this one.

Sweden 1974 - That’s it game over. How can you beat Waterloo. The winners! I’ve mucked up my score sheet anyway.
Every man has a Benny haircut now.

Belgium 2015 - Flashing Images and strobing. Totally forgettable. Is it me, or are the harmonies weird? Good lights.
“Don’t look at me. It’s a panel of experts.” OK Graham. We agree.

UK 1996 - Spice Girls influence. This is good for the UK, why don’t we do songs like this anymore?
It might be a bit too try-hard.

Germany Lena 2010 - I like this one. She’s having a great time and I like the flappy arm dance. I could do that dance.

Italy 1958 - Volare - the performance for that time is great. He does look like he’s holding on for dear life. That’s a proper band. What a banger of a classic.

Israel   2018 Netta Toy- crazy lucky cat chicken. She’s good! This will score well. It’s got everything and no wind.

UK 1976 - Save your kisses for me. I learnt the dance at Brownie camp in Danbury. I can still do it now.

Austria 2015 - Incredible make up, brilliant dress. Bond theme. What’s not to like?

Norway 2009  - Fiddles, boyish charm, push ups, great song. The bow hair is making the violinist in the family twitch. I quite like a bit of gypsy violin.

Katrina and the Waves 1997 - UK very last win. How? Who did we pay to win this? It’s a bit happy clappy church.

My top 3: ABBA, Netta, Ukraine.
My daughter’s : Ukraine, ABBA & Israel, Norway

Results to follow......


The winner is ABBA Waterloo - the right winner!

Part 2

This year’s songs

 Johnny Logan bringing the mood down.
What?
30 seconds of each one.
Pass the cheese!
Israel -
Norway -
Russia - This is fun. My kind of dance. Why are they apologising for the pandemic?
Georgia - Fancy showing us a black and white clip.
France - This might have done well. We like a ballad. He’s good looking. Pretty tidy bookcase.
Azerbaijan - This would have been good. Num num nah nah.
Portugal - puffy sleeves and a piano
Lithuania - it’s a TikTok dance!
Sweden - This is good. It’s so sad. Well never know....

Heroes of our time - nice Wisteria

Latvia - that’s weird.
Belgium - hoover phobic - that’s me! Look at those instruments. We like real instruments in Eurovision. However, it was probably too depressing. Stay healthy
UK - That’s quite a nice song. I’m not sure about the splits in a snowy forest.
Belarus - bland
Finland - nice dog. He’s sad.
Macedonia - floor rolling dance. He looks happy. Who is he kidding? “We’re all winners tonight.”
Switzerland - I want toblerone now.
Serbia - that’s a proper Eurovision song

I’m bored now. Eaten too much cheese. It was all the talk of God and masks.

Iceland deserve to win for that.

Poland is on fire! Literally.

Is Effed off a way of saying hello in Israel?

My vote goes to Israel

Part 3

Rylan. Love Rylan. Love Eurovision and love the alphabet. We’ve got tea and biscuits. Love biscuits.

Thinking (an inner dialogue)

I need a day off.
It’s Saturday. Of course you can have a day off.
Is it?
It can’t be Saturday again. It was only Saturday three months ago.
Time is funny like that.
But my neighbour isn’t cutting his grass.
It’s only 6am. Far too early.
Oh, time is funny isn’t it?
But I still need a day off.
Well have a day off then. Stop whinging.
But I can’t, can I?
Who do you think you are?
I’m not really sure.
It’s not like you’re Chris Whitty or a headteacher. Just have a day off.
OK but I’m not sure how.
That’s silly, you’re not even working.....properly.
Not work. I don’t need a day off from work. I need a day off from thinking. I think too much.
All owls think too much.
I think that I need to stop thinking.
See, you’re still thinking. You are thinking about thinking.
Yes, that’s just it. My head is full of whispy cotton wool thoughts that can’t be caught.
Meditation is supposed to help.
It was during my morning yoga that I first thought that I needed to stop thinking. That’s what meditation does for you.
Oh, I see. How about a walk?
I think more when I walk. It’s when I sort out the thorny questions like, ‘Can you actually change a virus’ R rate? Isn’t the R just a measure of human susceptibility?”
Good luck with that then. How about sleep.
Nope. Still thinking. Weird dreams and questions about where I could get myself a guard penguin.
A guard penguin?
Yes, there’s no Covid19 in Antarctica.
Right. You really do need to stop thinking. Have a day off.
I need a day off.......

Thankful that I’m not a headteacher

I am so glad that I’m not a headteacher right now. I wake up every morning and it’s the first thing I think. I can’t imagine anything more stressful.

Whatever you think about schools I can tell you that I have never met one headteacher (and I’ve met a lot) who didn’t have the best interests of the children in their school as their number one priority. Even headteachers who I’ve disagreed with or those who seem completely out of their depth did everything because they thought it was best for the children.

The teaching profession is about to take a big hit in the publicity stakes. We are about to portrayed as lazy and difficult by people who want us back at school and uncaring, unfeeling monsters by those that think it’s too soon.  We are, in fact, a large group of individuals, with unique ideas but because we are many, we also have some power. Teaching unions will be able to argue with government on behalf of individuals with concerns.  This will make us a target for anyone who disagrees with anything that any teacher says. Obviously, we can be our own worst enemies, sharing and commenting on articles in the Daily Mail, designed to denigrate us, that are about as true as saying bananas are round. Commenting on it might make people wonder if bananas are secretly round. Sharing it ensures more rubbish is written.

Anyway back to headteachers.

Imagine that you have spent your whole career teaching children. You have learnt how they learn best and you were a good teacher. You didn’t go home and cry every night, children made you laugh, they liked you, you liked them and they remembered some of the things you said. You gradually took on more responsibility. You ran clubs to help some of the children who were struggling, fed some toast for breakfast, engaged others with their favourite hobby. You attended meetings once the clubs had finished and finally got home at about 9pm to mark some books. If you had got to this point in your career and you weren’t already going home and crying every night or had lost the ability to sleep then you might consider training for a headship. Suddenly, instead of being responsible for the 30 children in your class, you are in charge the hundreds in your school. Not only that but you are the boss of scores of staff: teachers, teaching assistants, office staff, cleaners, cooks, dinner ladies and the caretaker. You are also accountable to all the parents. This all has to be done on a limited budget set by a government that puts in higher and higher hoops for you to jump through.  The buck for thousands of people’s expectations stops with you.

Are you feeling stressed yet?

Well that’s nothing. Add in the current situation.

For the last six or seven weeks (yes, I’ve lost count) you have been running a school that is scattered. Children are not coming in every day between 8.30 and 3.30 unless their parents are key workers, out in the community in daily contact the the virus. You have been managing staff working from home, pupils work, parents expectations. You have still been talking to social workers about how to protect the most vulnerable. You’ve been delivering vouchers or school meals to the children you know will go hungry if they don’t get lunch at school. You have had hourly communications from government, via the local education authority. You haven’t had a break at Easter, or half term because the virus doesn’t know about holidays. Luckily, no one told the government that the virus doesn’t understand weekends either but you have to be grateful for small mercies. You are desperate to keep your school community together as best you can. You might have resorted to making videos where a wild-eyed optimism covers your worst fears, or writing overly long Twitter messages that don’t even make sense to you. Time no longer has any meaning, your own children have gone feral and you haven’t been able to hug your parents, either.

Stressed yet?

That’s nothing. It’s time to get back to normal.

There’s nothing you want more than to get back to normal. You loved your job. Yes, it was pretty stressful and often thankless but there’s nothing you wouldn’t give to get your school community back to normal. Except, you aren’t being asked for normal. Now, you have to make your staff stretch.
42% of your children are due to come back into school. These children will need to be taught in classes that are half the size of normal, which means double the teachers. There will be more key worker children, as teachers go back to teaching but no one has any idea how many that will be. The rest of the children, working at home will still need to be supported: lessons planned, feedback given etc, so some staff will have to be working from home doing that. Some of your staff will be in the vulnerable, or extremely vulnerable category and won’t be able to come in. Some of your staff will be frightened. Some of your staff will get sick. The government has confirmed that parents won’t be chased if they don’t send their children in, so you can’t know how many children you will be expected to provide for. The children that come back into school will have to follow social distancing rules. Remember, that all you want is the best for the children. Every fibre of your being worries how this will affect them. You know that you have tried to instil resilience and a growth mindset (they were buzzwords a few years ago) but this is hard. Your whole career has involved studying how children learn best and you know that they don’t learn well if they are scared and that many children can’t sit still at a desk for five minutes let alone a whole day. You have been asked to stop the children socialising and you think of the number of nit letters you normally have to ask the office to send out. You think of the two children who normally are put at opposite ends of the line in assembly by their teacher, who, when you look up are suddenly sitting together in the middle, as if they ate opposite end of a magnet. You think about the children that chew pencils or spit when they get frustrated. You know colleagues, maybe in other schools, who caught the virus from pupils before lockdown and still try to believe the government’s insistence that children can’t transmit the virus. Some parents will want more reassurance than you can give them. However, you know you have to try.

If I was having a bad day, I would often console myself with the fact that I wasn’t the person who was responsible for testing these thermometers.

Now, I’m just glad I’m not a headteacher.

Golf

Golf is over rated. Honestly, if you are getting cross because you can’t hug your mum and other people can play golf then stop, you wouldn’t want to play golf anyway. Trust me, it’s not even a nice walk: you can’t take the dog and you have to keep stopping.

Nice countryside - shame about the sand and holes

Don’t tell the Long Suffering Husband, as he’s rather fond of a game of golf and has been missing it in the same way I’m missing the swimming pool.

In a gradual easing of lockdown restrictions it can seem unfair when not everything happens at the same time.
“It’s not fair! Why can he play golf and I can’t swim?”
Actually, it isn’t fair. This has never been about fairness.

In a world where we are trying to get back to normal, the country has to prioritise who they can afford to lose first  so it seems entirely reasonable to sacrifice golfers. I mean, what contribution to society do they actually make?

Obviously, I’m joking.

I shouldn’t have needed to write that but these are strange times.

The LSH’s golf club is not letting their members play with one other person from outside their household. They are maintaining a strict Womble policy. (I know - one ball - but the LSH mumbles).
I thought that once the course opened, the Long Suffering, would be clicking to get a tee time like someone desperate for Glastonbury tickets but instead he seems happy to just keep in touch via the WhatsApp group. I say WhatsApp group but as he is a member of the Vets (they let him in because he retired and yes he is technically much too young) I think it’s all done by email.

They have been having their weekly competitions and every Wednesday his phone pings a million times a second as the random number generator alerts him to every score on every hole. I have to say that it is much quicker. A round would normally take all morning but these seem to be over by about 10. Last week, he won a £10 gardening voucher that he is overly pleased with now we can go and get plants.

The Veterans group are lobbying the golf course owner hard to relax the rules. They are keen to get back to playing normally as soon as possible. The LSH struggles to understand.
“They’re all in their Seventies and Eighties,” he says, shrugging his shoulders. “They are in the vulnerable group and should stay at home.”
“So maybe they’ve assessed the risk and decided that they are probably going to die soon anyway and they’d rather spend their last few years actually living.” I suggested.
The LSH has decided that as he probably isn’t going to die in the next few years he can afford to take a break from living for a while.

I’m quite glad because it has been very useful having a house fairy around, while I flit around in my usual creative but not entirely productive fashion.

Home

What does home mean to you?

Home is the only place I watch TV. I used to also watch at my parents house and my daughter’s flat but I suppose they are both home in an abstract way.

Thanks to a misunderstanding from yesterday’s blog, where a friend thought that Nigel was my dog, rather than the dog on Gardener’s World I have discovered the delight that is Grayson’s Art Club on Channel 4 and more especially a new TV animal to get overly attached to. Kevin the cat is quite special.

I’ve watched the first two: portraits and animals and they are, quite simply, the best thing on television. It’s a programme that would work whenever it was on but is absolutely perfect for right now. I don’t know why I was surprised because Grayson Perry is a genius, as is his wife (whose books are a must read if you are at all interested in psychology). There is a beautiful, calm chemistry between them. He calls her Philbert and she subtly psychoanalyses every thought he has. The cat wanders through and Grayson says, “I think a cat makes a home.”

Since then, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about ‘home’ as a concept.

Home is more than the building you live in. It’s the people you have in it, the pets, the things, the thoughts you have that bring you back to yourself. Some people don’t feel that the place they live is home.

For the last six weeks we have been asked to stay home to protect the NHS and save lives. For many of us that has been a good thing. We have reconnected to what home means. People have spent time with their family, cared for their pets, cooked, gardened, exercised, watched TV, read books and generally spent time on the things that make them feel happy. The people who have found it hardest are those who are not living where their heart believes it is home; people whose home is scattered over more than one residence.

Now that home doesn’t feature in our instructions we are sad. If we have to be alert then the instruction is to leave our home. However, if home is not the building then maybe we could all take ‘home’ with us.

For me, home is a sense of peace. It’s a feeling that I am where I’m meant to be. I agree with Grayson and think that a home without a pet wouldn’t feel much like a home and even if the dog does fart constantly and walks out the room whenever I walk in we would be lost without him. The garden, with its squabbling starlings and roses whose scent take me right back to making perfume from petals in my garden as a child are an important part of home for me. Home is a place where my family are. Even the family that are not with me reside in my home, in albums as photographs, in notebooks of stories I’ve written, on the walls in the art of my mum, in the garden as my grandma’s lily of the valley start to push their heads through or the rose bush that we planted Dad’s ashes on comes into bud. It’s the place where we nourish ourselves; where we eat cake and, now, every meal. It’s a place where we can make things.

I was inspired to sew cat buttons onto the latest baby cardigan
from my comfortable knitting nest

The next episode I’m going to watch has ‘abstract’ as a theme. I think I’m there already. Home is an abstract concept that has shielded us from the coronavirus. I have a picture in my mind of myself surrounded by my ideas of home, batting away green virus balls and keeping me safe.  That works, right?

The Fear

I have the fear again.

You have probably read this and agreed. You are still afraid of catching the virus. There is a lot of fear out there created by the government, who wanted us to stay indoors, so that our fragile health system didn’t collapse. Now that they want us to start going out and about again they’ve forgotten to reassure us that the risk is slight, or down, or never as bad as they made out in the first place. They could have started to publish recovery rates, or details of how the R rate was under 0.5 (unfortunately, I don’t think it is). They want to get the economy going again, which is a good thing. We have to get back to normal at some point and doing it gradually makes sense.

For me, it’s not the idea of trying to get back to normal that is frightening.

It’s the idea that it’s just common sense.

Again, lots of you are agreeing. You are thinking that you have common sense but your neighbour doesn’t.

This is what frightens me.

There is no such thing as common sense. We all have our own interpretation of what is sensible in any given situation. I have friends who think it is sensible to sleep in a tent for a holiday and I can’t think of anything less restful.

This matters now though because there are consequences to not following the rules. Police have powers to stop and even fine you for doing the wrong thing. Laws need to be very clearly defined for the protection of everyone. Police shouldn’t be asked to use common sense when applying them.

Even the cabinet aren’t clear on the interpretation of the new rules and if the people who have made them don’t understand them then saying we need to apply common sense is just ridiculous.

Even worse than the legal aspect, is the fact that we are all so keen on policing each other. We live in a world where we are constantly exposed to public shaming. If you take a selfie on the beach and post it on your Instagram page some people will think it wasn’t common sense to be on that particular beach and there will be anger and fear thrown at you.

I was thinking about the rule on meeting people and realised that depending on how it is interpreted it would be too easy to break. The government are confused about this. First they said you could meet your mum and dad outside, providing you stayed socially distant then they said you couldn’t meet both.

At the weekend, I dropped a piece of cake to my sister. I put it in a Tupperware box, left it on the doorstep, rang the bell and walked away (a walk-by-cake-ing). It was on my daily walk, which I was taking with my daughter and the Long Suffering Husband. My sister wasn’t in but as we walked away from her house she was on her way home. So we stopped and chatted for a little while in a socially distanced way (except her dog, who launched herself at me. Dogs feel they’ve been abandoned by people they love but don’t live with). This was before the new rules and common sense told us that there was nothing wrong with this. However, now the government has clarified the situation it turns out that my sister was breaking the rules. Obviously, I did nothing wrong. I was with my family and I met one person but she met three! How irresponsible! You see how ridiculous common sense is?

So, I have the fear that we are about to enter a phase where confused, frightened, angry people are all shouting at each other.

It’s not surprising that all of this is happening in the Japanese micro season of mimizu izuru (worms surface.)

Yesterday, was a sad day for me anyway and Nigel died too.

Nigel and Nellie in the Gardener’s World Garden.

Alert!

Here are some things I’ve become alert to:

• If you’re not angry, you’re not paying attention.

• Boris Johnson is a terrible Prime Minister, however history might paint him

• Confused, metaphor heavy messages create great memes.

• The government did leak everything to the press in advance of the statement.

• They never wanted construction and manufacture to stop in the first place.

• They only said one exercise outside at first because everyone got angry.

• The government have a plan to ease the economy back without killing too many people. 

• Their plan is clear in their own minds but isn’t communicated effectively.

•  Giving people a week to decide what they wanted to hear means they won’t have heard the message, so it seems confused.

• People will still be angry

• Nicola Sturgeon has taken as long to read The Mirror & the Light as I have (I know she’s been busy).

• They didn’t travel out of their own town when there was the Plague in Tudor times, if they didn’t have to.

• The King didn’t have to, so he survived.

• Medicine hasn’t moved on as much as we’d like to think since Henry the Eighth.

• Staggering schools reopening will be a nightmare for already stressed headteachers (who have worked through all their holidays)

• Coming out of lockdown was always going to be harder than going in. Any nuanced approach is going to be impossible to police. It’s going to take personal responsibility.

• If you give someone a confused map and they get lost then you have to question whether that is their fault.

• Living through history is blooming exhausting. Pass the caffeine, I’m trying to stay alert.

Be a Lert

I’ve caught myself actually holding my breath thinking about the announcement the Prime Minister plans to make at 7pm this evening. I’m sure I’m not the only one.

It is tempting to criticise a government and think that you would do it so much better if you were in charge. Mostly, I would caution against that because we don’t know, do we? There’s so much we don’t know but I think the announcement of an announcement has been a terrible idea.

For a start, it’s just really undemocratic. These are difficult times that will affect each section of the population differently. A local MP will be able to argue the case for their area; that’s what we elect them for.

It is also dangerous for big decisions to be made by small closed groups because of a psychological phenomenon called Groupthink. This is where the group thinks as one and therefore stops noticing any flaws in their plan. This is how they failed to intercept the attack on Pearl Harbour or let the Challenger Disaster happen.

It puts the press in an unenviable position too. Johnson and Gove know how journalists work; they know who to leak to and what to let them have. They know that we, the public, will be desperate for details and be lapping up any snippet of information they let them have. Even if it’s wrong, it’s a way that they can test public opinion on their ideas, whilst simultaneously destroying our trust in the press.

We are being treated like children. The government says, “We’ve got something that we need you to do. We aren’t going to tell you what it is yet because we can’t trust you. We’ll let you know in a week when you’ve had time to get used to the idea.” It’s like when you warn your toddlers that it will be bedtime in two hours. I keep seeing comparisons with the New Zealand and Scottish ministers, where they speak to their country as if they are talking to adults. Well, maybe not adults because you probably wouldn’t have to explain the tooth fairy to proper grown ups but at least intelligent children.

One of the problems of this approach is that if they don’t trust us then it makes us far less likely to trust them.

Anyway, it has been a week since it was announced that there’d be an announcement. It’s Sunday and the papers have their snippets of leaked information, from various sources (some accurate, some lucky guesses and some just wrong). I’ve looked at some of the headlines and decided that as I can’t hold my breath any longer I would just write Boris’ speech for him now.

“Never in the field of human alpine tunnels have we encountered anything quite so difficult. What we, as a government, have asked you to do has been a challenge. We have asked you to stay at home, protect the NHS and save lives and you, my friends, have risen to these labyrinthine demands in spectacular fashion. You have been prodigious in your efforts to stay at home but we, as the Conservative Party, have become cognisant that you are a bunch of otiose pheasant pluckers who are languishing like pigs in ...
The chancellor, Rishi Sunak, has been extremely generous in putting together a package of measures but it is time to bring that to a close, which is why we are changing the message. 
We set out our five tests that had to be met before we eased lockdown to fire up the engines of our vast economy. The powerhouse demands fuel: coal, nuclear, sunlight. So, today, I am going to set out the roadmap for coming days and months ahead. 
Of the five tests, reproduction, is my chief concern. Willy Johnson is doing very well, thank you. The R rate needs to be as low as possible but like Hercules, cleaning the stables, this is an Augean task. 
We have to be certain that any relaxation we make to the restrictions doesn’t risk a second rise, as any up-stir could impact on reproduction. 
Therefore, from Monday, we are changing the message. We have changed the warning lightbulb from red to green and now our country needs lerts.
Perfectly clear: go to the Isle of White, download the app and be a Lert!”

Now we know, we can breathe for the rest of the day but I will be there at 7, trying to work out what a Lert is.

I Was Wrong

Yesterday, I sounded grumpy about people celebrating the VE anniversary. I’m glad to be able to report that I was wrong.

To be fair to myself, I was never against bunting and cake, commemorating the end of a war, or making learning exciting to hook the interests of children. For me, it was more a dis-ease at forced camaraderie and accidentally promoting a ‘war is good’ message.

When I went for my walk, I found that I was cheered by the decorations, the feeling of hope and the idea that humans always find a way around their difficulties. The celebration probably wouldn’t have happened like this if we hadn’t been in lockdown.

Our local council had plans in place and I know that if things were different, my Youth Orchestra would have probably been at the park, playing Lambeth Walk, We’ll Meet Again and Let’s All Go Down the Strand (‘Av a banana). People would have been encouraged to commemorate with street parties but I doubt as many would have done. With children off school there was plenty of time to make bunting, chalk flags onto the pavement and make scones (another way of getting grubby fingernails clean), the whole town came to life more than would have normally happened.

As I walked I had small conversations with people. We talked about the weather and what they were drinking. Each street that participated had done so in different ways. My favourites were those where older couples were just sitting in their gardens with a pot of tea, saying, “Good Afternoon,” as you walked by. Some streets, had everyone out in force but it wasn’t a surprise.
“Normal for King Street,” I muttered to myself before consoling two small ginger girls by saying,
“Ooh jam tarts. Perfect. You have the most authentic VE Day tea I’ve seen,”
“Thank you for saying that,” their mother said, as their faces brightened and their red rimmed eyes paled. “They’ve been really upset that ours wasn’t as good as the neighbours.”
The most authentic street seemed to be Victoria Road complete with opportunistic bike theft.

One street had the speeches of Winston Churchill blaring out and another looked dangerously close to getting a bit snoggy and gropey (made up words) as the alcohol started to flow. I’m sure there will be backlash in the papers today as people are pictured not observing social distancing rules but I am unable to get cross about that because all I saw was hope.

When the Nazi forces in Germany surrendered 75 years ago, the world felt hope. Yesterday, the sun was shining, people talked to their neighbours and felt hopeful that we will soon be out of this lockdown situation, without the complete devastation of our country. There was also a feeling that even if Boris announces another 12 weeks of lockdown then we will cope.