Latibulate

 I was going to write about how holidays aren’t long enough, the day that went missing, the elegance and demise of the semi-colon, other punctuation facts from the late 1800s, how much I love Halloween, and a murder, but the government have done it again and I find I’m drawn to Suzie Dent’s word of the day. 

Latibulate - to hide in a corner in an attempt to escape reality.

The government in another excellent display of leadership spent the day sending Dominic Raab, who has perfect fingers for cello playing (don’t tell me you hadn’t noticed), on the TV to explain that the government had exactly the right policy; they’d learnt from the French; they had ruled out a second lockdown because the tier system was better. Then, on Friday night, as we were all settling into our PJs and making our cocoa the Times front page appeared on the news wires: second lockdown imminent. The article was full of details that could have only come from being told about what was actually discussed at the meeting. The government, again, thought they’d give the story to their buddies in the press and see how the public reacts. They know that by the time any announcement is made, even if it is as early as Monday, we will all be resigned to it, whether we agree or not. It’s quite clever but not exactly statesmanly.

This news will make us all behave oddly this weekend. We will stock up on loo roll and things we think we can’t do without. I’m grateful that I still have the emergency pastries I bought for lockdown 1 in the freezer, so there’s no need to panic, although I might take a trip to the bookshop and the lovely little chocolate shop in town. 

We might all rush out to see the people that we won’t be able to see for the next month. Oh, who are we kidding? Last time it was 13 weeks. Do any of us feel we can do that again?

This rushing around will then make the government think they do need to go to Lockdown Two: Electric Avenue. They’ll say, “See, we were right, we couldn’t trust people to stick to the simple tier system. We made it as clear as a muddy puddle and you didn’t stick to it, so you only have yourselves to blame!”

I’m advocating the latibulate approach and will be hiding in a corner until this is all over, maybe with a book, some chocolates and a list of names. The world has gone crazy and we are being governed by children, who play Chinese whispers with the public.

Even the dog isn’t sure if it’s worth going out.

All hail, Julius Caesar and Biggus Dickus, MPs of Maldon

 There’s almost nothing I find more comforting than a list of names. I know, it’s weird, you don’t have to tell me. I first noticed this particular weirdness about myself when I was at university. I had come back from the phone box, where I’d had my weekly chat with my mum. She had mentioned, in passing, that Dad had been in hospital a few weeks before. I was horrified. How could he have had a suspected mild heart attack and not told me? What if he’d died? I imagined the conversation.

“How are you?”

“Yes I’m fine. Aunty Mary, next door, slipped down the stairs. We always said that that canary would be the death of her. Oh, by the way, did I tell you that Dad died?”

To be fair, I understand now. It wasn’t his first, or last heart attack. It was mild; just a little warning that the by-pass he’d had three years earlier wouldn’t last, so absolutely no need to stress about it. However, at the time, I was stressed and felt that I was being kept out of the loop.

I sat in the corner of the kitchen, trying to comfort myself, reading. My housemates came in.

“What are you reading?”

“The telephone directory,”

“Why?”

“I love it. It’s comforting. All those names and addresses. All those potential stories.”

My first job, after Uni, was to work on a questionnaire design project. To ensure the validity of the sample an element of randomness had to be built in. This was done using the electoral roll. In those, pre-internet days (early 1990s) that meant a trip to the library of the place you were going to conduct the survey and sitting for several hours, noting down names from the random numbers we had chosen in the office before I left. It was one of my favourite parts of my job. I got to see lots of London borough libraries and just loved the lists of names. You could tell a lot about the residents of a street just from their names. A street of Elsies, Bettys and Freds were more than likely retired working class. A street of Julies, Susans and Kevins were young newly marrieds. Now, of course, all that information is online and with the click of a mouse I can be online looking at a comforting list of names.

As the news gets more depressing, the whole of Europe laughing at us, again, for leaving our second lockdown too late (let’s hope they are wrong) I find I am drawn to lists of names more often. Luckily, with the Moot Hall history project I have a good excuse to look and can convince everyone that I’m doing research, rather than just comforting myself with a list of names. 

“What are you doing?”

“I’m writing down the names of everyone that was in the workhouse in 1909.”

“Why.”

“It’s comforting. All those names. All those potential stories.”

This wasn’t going to be what I told you about when I started this blog but I thought you needed some background.

I was going to tell you about a new source of name lists that I’ve found that has made me quite excited. The website historyofparliamentonline.org has fascinating lists of all the MPs of each constituency from about 1470 onwards. This wouldn’t normally be of much interest  to me, as I prefer the untold stories of everyday people but who doesn’t like a list of MP names?

“What are you doing?”

“I’m reading the names of every Maldon MP there’s ever been.”

“Why?”

“It’s comforting. All those names. All those stories.”

Just why someone wants to become a member of Parliament has baffled me for a long time. It is probably the original form of virtue signalling.

1510-1523 - Sir Richard Fitzlewis, Thomas Hintlesham, Thomas Cressener, John Strangman, Thomas Wyburgh, John Bozom.

*thinks* I expect he was a bit of a tit. 

1539- 1545 - John Edmonds, William Bonham, Edward Bury, Henry Downs, Clement Smith, Nicholas Throckmorton.

Ooh, I know that name. Wait. Was he anything to do with Elizabeth Throckmorton? She was Queen Elizabeth I maid of honour and the woman who secretly married Sir Walter Raleigh. I checked. Yes he was her father. That would explain why they think the Elizabethan lady portrait in the Moot Hall is her.

1610-1620 - Sir John Sammes, Sir Robert Rich, Charles Chiborne, Sir Henry Mildmay, Sir Julius Caesar.

Wait? What? Julius Caesar? Blooming immigrants.

1754-1761 - John Bullock, Robert Colebrooke, Bamber Gascoyne.

“And your starter for ten is...”

1820-1827 - Joseph Holden Strutt, Benjamin Gaskell, George Mark Arthur Way Allenso  Winn (he has all the names!), Thomas Barrett Lennard, Hugh Dick.

*sniggers* Silent g Julia, you child.

I lost the rest of the day to finding out about Hugh Dick.

I wonder if the locals secretly referred to him as Biggus Dickus.

I hope you have been as calmed by these lists of names. We are still living in very strange times and I think we are all going to need this kind of comfort.

All those names, all those stories.

It’s big in Japan

 Paul Holywood has a series that Channel 4 want you to watch on catch up, the department of trade want to brag about the new soy sauce markets they’ve created and Slough have a Japanese garden that you should visit to eat your lunch. The first two are certainly true and the third is almost all we could talk about after this week’s Bake Off.

In our house, we love Bake Off, think Japan is the most beautiful place with ever visited and have a weird soft spot for Slough.

This week’s episode was a bit of a disappointment, as one of our favourites left. We called him Ben but his name was Marquelle (although not one of those strange Irish names but apparently just Mark L). We couldn’t understand it because we thought that Ben would know everything about Japanese Patisserie. His avocado cake with hidden baby avocados was the most kawaii bake I’ve seen and if it was inedible then it was probably more Japanese than most. 

Before the show aired, we thought about what to bake. My son suggested a chiffon cake but I decided on a mille crepe cake because I’d had a nice one in Kyoto. It was lemon flavoured because matcha is a taste I’m not planning on acquiring, just as I won’t be adding red bean paste or bonito flakes to anything I bake.

The other reason this episode was disappointing is because we’ve got to the stage where we are invested in the bakers. We don’t want any of them to go. Except Lottie. The hatred for Lottie is about to start, because no one like a young confident woman, especially one who is funny.  (Just to be clear: I don’t want Lottie to go either). Hermine (pronounced like the fur) was my tip from the beginning - the dark horse that would be overlooked until the end, when she’d suddenly win, despite never having star baker and always being in the bottom three, prompting racists to get very upset. If you hadn’t been to Japan or been a young person immersed in the cutsie culture of anime then her cake looked just how we would have imagined Japan. I expect, though, that the favourite to win is Peter, which would be cute, as he is a super fan.

Hermine talked about her inspiration for the week. Japan was obviously a place she had never been, or thought about. It’s somewhere that middle aged, middle class couples or teens obsessed with Picachu, visit. It’s not somewhere a French speaking, London accountant from Benin in West Africa with a young family would be very interested in. She has, however, been to Slough.

My daughter lived in Slough and it was her first patch as a new reporter. This makes us oddly fond of the place.  Hermine said that her cake was based on the Japanese garden where she sat to eat her lunch.

“What?” My daughter shouted at the telly.

Her phone was out and she was tapping away, looking for evidence of Slough’s best kept secret. 

“No, I can’t find a Japanese garden. It can only be Herschel Park because that’s the only park you might stop and eat your lunch.”

It’s difficult to imagine a place less likely to be a Japanese inspiration but cuteness and perfection are so big in Japan that I’d love to see what the Japanese would make of Slough. I’m sure they’d hang some lampshades from an ugly alley and paint cute faces on them.

Grimly avoiding the formites

 At the beginning of the pandemic there was a lot of attention placed on hand washing and not touching anything. These days the emphasis is more on ventilation, staying apart from each other and wearing a mask. This is because, as always happens with something  new, the research changes what we know.

When the virus first appeared we didn’t know how it spread. It made sense to take all the precautions. Researchers looked at how long the virus lasts in different situations. They found it on surfaces and discovered that in lab conditions (no sunlight, no ventilation, no competing germs) it could stay alive for longer than they thought. These droplets of virus on surfaces of things are known as formites. Unfortunately, it is unethical to ask people to touch these formites to see if they can then infect a human, so researchers published without the final piece of the puzzle. 

The reason that they thought that this might be a method of spread is because some people got the virus who said they hadn’t been in close contact with anyone else. To me, this seems unlikely, because humans need social contact, it’s wired into us, so that even people like me, who would prefer no one got closer than 2 meters to me, ever, are finding it impossible to do that. When the lady with the false leg was knocked over by her dog because it saw mine and ran around like an idiot I had to help her up. When a child in school comes in on a cold day, holds their tiny blue hands up and says, “Feel my hands,” it’s impossible not to enclose them in your own for a bit of warmth.

Now, they are looking more at aerosol spread, where drops of virus hang in the air and that is why mask wearing is being encouraged.

As humans we don’t like this unseen fear. We would much prefer the formite theory. If we are going to be got by the unseen danger we would prefer to be able to clean it away.

We smother alcohol gel over everything (small children constantly lick their hands breeding a nation of alcoholics) and clean things with antibacterial sprays and it makes us feel safe.

Or does it?

I might be unusual but I prefer to be in places where this doesn’t happen. I don’t want to be forced to think about all the dirt and bugs that are around us all the time. We don’t live in a pathogen free world and coronavirus isn’t the only thing to worry about. The more I’m forced to think about the one people are concerned with the more aware of all the other things that can go wrong. 

The Long Suffering Husband has been climbing the walls a bit recently. I’ve been back at work but his retired life hasn’t completely restarted, so we decided to get away for a couple of days. Going somewhere to shout at the sea seemed like a good idea and as we weren’t allowed to go to Wales we settled on Norfolk.

Some people will absolutely love the lengths the place we are staying is going to in order to keep its customers safe from coronavirus. I’m just finding it grim.

It is a lovely pub with an excellent reputation for food. When we arrived it was blowing a gale and before deciding whether we would eat that even the LSH checked something he’d seen on the website.

“Oh no Sir, you won’t be eating outside tonight.”

Our accommodation is a converted stable at the side of the pub. When we came back in we had to follow the arrows and were snapped at by a member of staff, who squirted us with hand sanitizer and snapped at us for leaving our phones in the room (there’s no signal and we like to talk to each other over dinner).

“You have to check in to every building with the app,” she said, “The government says so.”

We were then shown to our table.

“We were told we weren’t eating outside,” we muttered under our breath.

“It’s not outside, it’s the hut,” she said.

We weren’t convinced and nor were, by the look if, of the other people out there already, shivering and trying to move away from the rain blowing in through the door.  

I think our distress had been noticed because before we could order we were moved inside.

After we had ordered we watched the waitress clear another table. She sprayed everything; the table, it’s legs, the fabric chairs. Then she picked up the tray and as she was going down the few steps decided to clean the handrail. This caused her to drop the whole tray, sending leftover food, plates, water and broken glass everywhere.

When she returned with our food she insisted that we take it off the tray, not because she was clumsy but to protect us from the virus. I did snigger. I couldn’t help myself. I imagined the plates levitating onto the tray in the first place. 

As we left the restaurant we had to follow the arrows, which took us straight though an enormous puddle. 

We might have avoided the formites but there was a grimness to the evening that I could have done without.

In Defence

 Marcus Rashford won the public vote. He is a problem for the current government for several reasons.

1. His message is simple and clear. We are desperate for a simple clear message.

2. He’s not political. If the government say that Labour were worse then it doesn’t matter to him he just wants the problem fixed. We are desperate for an a-political solution to the virus. What we wouldn’t give to have them work together right now?

3. He’s genuine. He knows what he is talking about it because he has lived the experience. This is a problem a lot of people have with politicians who get subsidised lunch and an expense account telling people how to spend the £160 a week the government gives them. 

4. He also isn’t poor, so they can’t accuse him of jealousy. And he’s famous and well liked.

The more the Conservative party dig back against what he is saying the worse they look.

For some reason this upsets me.

I think it’s because it’s not entirely fair. 

The party didn’t vote to starve children. That wasn’t the question. 

As I continue and defend the government I will be putting myself in an odd position.

Not agreeing to extending free school meal vouchers over the holidays is about their belief that there is a better way to sort out the problem or a belief that the problem isn’t as bad as people are saying. Both of these things can be simultaneously wrong and right. It’s a Schrodinger’s cat. 

Let’s tackle the belief that it’s not as bad as people are saying first. It is true that for some people on universal credit there is no problem with feeding their children. It’s also true that some are just shit parents who are making poor choices. However, for many, and this is where Rashford’s experience is key, it is really hard to feed children in the school holidays on the money they have. Maybe the conservative MPs who think the problem isn’t as bad as people say have only met the Pop Larkin characters, who are claiming benefits for their children, despite making £1000s a day, trimming the trees of posh people for cash. They might only know the family who take 3 Florida holidays a year but wear their badge of poverty as an excuse to claim every extra benefit going. Perhaps they don’t know anyone who loves their children. 

Now to the idea that there is a better way to ensure children are fed. This is where I have more sympathy for the government. The extension of free school meal vouchers into the holidays seems to you and I to be a simple approach that would work but I don’t know. I haven’t seen the data. I’m assuming that they have. Maybe increasing universal credit, or providing childcare (so parents could work), or funding training. or recruiting more social workers to spot the problems, or doing nothing so that businesses and charities step up to fill the gap is more effective.

It is also true that there isn’t a bottomless pit of money, even if they have found Theresa May’s magic money tree, they do still have to balance the books and also keep the people who can afford to feed their children happy. 

I’m quite disturbed by the amount of abuse of MPs I’ve seen. It really isn’t as if they have taken anything away, only decided not to give any more. Whatever we think of our MPs they do have a very difficult job. It’s up to us to vote for the people that will follow the same ethical standards as we have and to put pressure on when we think they are wrong but abuse, death threats and targeted campaigns based on a false statement they they have voted to starve children isn’t fair and will cause even fewer genuinely good people to go into politics. 

Marcus Rashford’s Twitter Feed

The government, in another, ‘let’s shoot ourselves in the foot and limp around a bit more’ move, whipped their MPs to vote against extending free school meals during the holidays for children who are entitled to them during the school holidays. Many MPs stayed quiet about why they voted with the government and I expect, for many, it was just because they had been told to. Many of us do things at work that we only do because someone tells us that it is our job to do it.  Others decided to go public and get quite cross about the whole idea. 

“I do not agree with nationalising children,” said the MP who had a nice bowl of fresh homemade soup and walnut bread in the member’s lounge at lunchtime for just £2.71. Nationalising MPs is fine. It is the weirdest thing for him to say too because the nation’s children are, to a certain extent nationalised. We decided that looking after all the children of our nation was important. Children are not a private commodity. We can’t buy and sell them. We all contribute to make sure they are educated. They get free healthcare. We look after their teeth and their eyes and we have whole teams of people dedicated to making sure their parents can give them what they need to grow into healthy fully functioning members of society. The same MP also announced that to give into this request to make sure children didn’t go hungry in the holidays during a pandemic was virtue signalling by a celebrity on Twitter.

Virtue signalling is quite a new insult that people who are proud of their iniquity use to imply that anyone who has good thoughts and expresses them is irresponsible. The implication is that they are not really kind   (because altruism is a concept that people who use this insult don’t understand) but are just saying these things to make themselves look better. 

Marcus Rashford is, apparently, a footballer. I’m late to the MR fan club because I don’t understand football and the hero worship of skinny boys who chase a round thing around a field with no trees, kick each other in the shins and spit a lot. I didn’t know that he was already beloved for his football skills at Manchester United and only came to my attention when he started talking about how hungry children, whose parents rely on the free school meals, can be during the holidays. It wasn’t something I’d thought about before because I hadn’t needed to but he had. He could talk about the experience personally and he managed to persuade the government to change its mind during lockdown. He also seems nice. 

It goes without saying that I think it’s a good idea to make sure children are well nourished. I also think it makes economic sense. Just think of the amount of money we could save on healthcare for those children when they grow up? Just imagine. Less heart disease. Less diabetes. Less female cancers. We might even have a heath system that could cope with a novel virus.

So, Marcus Rashford has become public enemy number one, as far as conservative MPs who don’t want to spend a little more to feed poor children in the school holidays. Unfortunately for those MPs the public disagree. They disagree quite strongly and swearily and so the government officials have been told to turn all their replies off. This is a shame because then they will never know just how the public feel but I can see why you wouldn’t want to wake up to a million profanity laden death threats.

I am currently reading a book called The Legacy of the Rural Guardians for my work on the local history project I’m involved with. The Guardians kept coming up in the court documents and I wanted to know more. Being a Guardian in Victorian England was a job that no one really wanted but was considered the duty of the ruling wealthy classes. The guardians were responsible for overseeing the workhouses. Trust me, this is not something we want to go back to but we have always looked after the poor and those who can’t fend for themselves, we’ve just got better at it and have been able to help more people earlier.  It seems as though the Guardians were the original virtue signallers. They didn’t really want to help the poor but they had to do it to justify their own worth and wealth.

Marcus Rashford doesn’t strike me as a virtue signaller. I’m sure he earns a lot of money. I believe footballers at Manchester United do. I thought a look at his Twitter feed would give me a clue. Was he someone who was saying, “Look at me! Aren’t I amazing? Telling you all bout this to make myself look good. I’m quite good at football too. Love me because I’m amazing.”

What I saw surprised me. It’s worth a look if you want to have your faith restored in human kindness. I’m not going to say anymore. Take a look for yourself.  

 

https://twitter.com/marcusrashford/status/1318980281999761408?s=21

Read the pinned tweet and then scroll down. Just be warned that if, like me, you couldn’t sleep and are feeling a bit fragile then you might need tissues.

NASA: We love you

 Everything is a bit crummy. The news is hellacious (I’ve no idea if that’s a word) Social media is a bag of poxy direness. It’s nearly half term and everyone is tired but our Welsh holidays have been cancelled. 

We need something to cheer us up. 

What could that be? No one had any ideas. Everything we tried didn’t last long. We always ended up back on the blooming pandemic and the repugnant government.

I’ve always loved NASA on Twitter. The accounts are full of exciting scientific discoveries and pretty pictures. Little did I know just how much Twitter needed NASA.

One of Nasa’s incredible moon pictures.

Twitter has started to get to the end of term tired. Children were biting each other and crying, “He said he’s not my friend!” As it was Twitter and not the playground the language was more colourful. Coronavirus, Brexit and a looming election in the USA were bringing out the worst in the English speakers on the platform. I collected some new words for my upcoming book -Twatter: a guide to the profanities of social media - but it was all rather depressing.

Then a breaking news alert appeared on my phone from The Independent newspaper. It said, “NASA to make major announcement about the moon”. 

My first thought was, “Oh no. Maybe it’s not made of cheese.”

I wasn’t alone.

This was the balm that Twitter needed.

Twitter needs no more than a headline to ‘know’ the story but this time it was funny.

“We’ve licked it and it’s delicious”

“Crack out the crackers and chutney. Liz Truss has just discovered a new exciting cheese market.”

There was speculation about the type of cheese from Swiss to Edam and from Red Leicester to Wensleydale and some suggestions that were less cheesy.

“The moon is a real Jaffa cake and not cheese after all.”

It started to get a bit silly.

“We’ve found the dark aside of the moon and there are thousands of people in dinghies waiting to cross to the light.”

“The clangers are real. It was a documentary.”

“Dancing on the moon is impossible.”

“The Atari hotel is on the moon.”

It also turned a little dark.

“Oh my God. The moon is going to plummet to earth because 2020!”

“The moon’s haunted. The man in the moon is real.”

“Oh dear, the man in the moon has died. What next? Fuck 2020!”

“The moon is pregnant.”

“We’ve found the string holding the moon in place and it’s quite frayed, about to snap and come hurtling towards the earth.”

The wonderful thing about NASA is that they have said there will be an announcement about the surface of the moon on Monday. There’s still plenty of time for even more creative speculation.

Get the crackers out. I’m busy eating cheese and watching the speculation until NASA finally announce that there are aluminium particles in the surface of the moon (or something equally boring to non scientists who only care about cheese, ghosts and the clangers.)

Over to BJ

 It’s just unprofessional, isn’t it? Why can’t they use each other’s proper names? Maybe I’m old fashioned but I’d quite like to go back to the days when the Prime Minister was called Mr Johnson. I’m not against the use of the full name but I do think in a professional televised briefing they shouldn’t be calling each other Steve and Boris. Even worse is that they seem unable to call Johnathan Van Tam by anything other than his initials. Weirdly, it feels a bit racist too. You know when someone with an Asian name gives up on your terrible pronunciation and says, “It’s fine, just call me Jo.”  However, his name is Jonathan. Jonathan! How hard is it to say Jonathan? It’s not even as if Van Tam is tricky either. 

It irritated us so much that every time he said, “I’ll leave that one to you JVT,” we wanted the deputy chief medical officer to reply and say, “Over to you BJ.”

The management of this pandemic is going from bad to worse. Tier 3 restrictions have been placed on Greater Manchester after talks fell through. Andy Burnham, who I’m ashamed to say I’m finding quite sexy, wanted to make sure there was enough money to support people affected by the restrictions. They had nearly agreed a deal but now we are leaving Manchester with a no deal and we might actually be at war. 

I just wish there could be a bit more honesty and everyone could stop using the virus as an excuse for avoiding everything we don’t like. BJ should have just said, “Nope. Manchester. Don’t like it. Let’s just shut it down.”  Instead, he said that it wouldn’t be fair on places with low infection rates. What he should have said was, “Devon, Cornwall and Norfolk beautiful, it’s not fair. Essex? Meh, oh go on then.”

Lots of people are using the virus as an excuse to avoid what they don’t like.GPs have stopped seeing patients, some shops have early closing, hospitals are refusing visitors and we’ve all loved the excuse not to visit difficult relatives.

At the end of my swim yesterday parents who couldn’t read the sign were lathering Johnson’s baby shampoo into their toddlers and chatting absentmindedly in the showers. 

“What are you going to do then?”

“We got a letter from the school saying that birthday sweets are allowed but they need to be brought in 72 hours before and then children should take them home and put them in a cupboard for three days before eating them. I can’t do that. I can’t add to anything. It’s all bad enough, isn’t it?”

I understand that schools are trying to put in procedures that don’t have them accidentally breaking the law and it’s probably good to be cautious but we all know that birthday sweets is one thing that nobody is going to miss. It’s a faff and a pressure parents could do without and definitely something that teachers don’t have time for, especially at the moment. They are already run ragged with extra hand washing, no break times, lack of caffeine (hot drinks were already banned in the classroom and mingling in the staffroom is out), less lunch break, as they help serve dinners in the classroom and trying to keep five year olds in a seat. The stress of how you make Christmas fun and exciting when your school Father Christmas is shielding is beginning to take its toll. Would it be better to be honest with parents?

“We’ve had a look at all the things that take up unnecessary time and we’ve decided that giving out birthday sweets isn’t going to happen, oh and while we’re at it, we are never going to do show and tell again. It’s pointless. Your child will feel the pressure to stand up and talk and will end up talking for half an hour on the fluff in his pocket.”

Now, I’m reminded of someone again.

Over to you BJ

“This is a very narrow path, oh, look at the fluff in my pocket.”

Mad World

 All around me are familiar faces, worn out places, worn out faces, going nowhere, going nowhere.

This was the earworm that greeted me when I woke up at stupid O’clock. For some reason I had been dreaming about making pie for Matt Hancock. I was cross with him because he didn’t like any of my suggestions.

“How about Lemon Meringue?”

“Nope. Can’t have that, the topping reminds me of Boris’ hair.”

“What about a normal lemon tart?”

“Lemon tart? Do I look like a lemon tart kind of guy to you?”

“No. You look like a Bakewell Tart. It’s disgusting.”

Hide my head I want to drown my sorrow, no tomorrow, no tomorrow.

We finally settled on a Manchester Tart to remind him of school dinners but he still wasn’t happy.

“Why do you have to keep talking about Manchester? I keep telling Burnham that we’re all in this together and so it’s perfectly reasonable to sacrifice Manchester as well as Leicester. It might be okay if you make it a three tier tart.”

And I find it kinda funny, find it kind of sad, the dreams in which I’m dying are the best I’ve ever had.

I’ve always thought of it as a Christmas song. I quite often teach it to my choir during the run up to the festive period because it feels so appropriate. This year, however, I won’t be rushing around like an idiot, trying to provide a year’s worth of live music in just 3 weeks but the song is still with me, feeling more appropriate than ever.

I find it hard to tell you ‘cause I find it hard to take, when people run in circles it’s a very mad world.

Because I couldn’t sleep I decided to read the first in a series of long articles by the Financial Times,  ‘What went wrong in Wuhan,’ and I learnt something that I didn’t know before. Reading is great for that.

I’ve always wondered why this virus won’t burn itself out like SARS did. If they could get on top of that one in the East before it reached Europe then why didn’t they manage to do that again? You might know this already but I’m going to share it with you, just in case you didn’t and are as amazed by it as I am. SARS was a late shedding virus. That means that it wasn’t infectious until people were very sick and in hospital, which makes it easy to control. COVID-19 sheds early. It’s infectious before people are sick and because many people get it without being too ill that makes the spread even more likely. It might just be that in a free society it is impossible to contain. It was much easier for China to shut everything down and order its citizens to stay put than it will ever be for us, even if it took them a bit of time to acknowledge the problem. Reading the article, I’m not even sure if it did originate in China (because France have found cases from November) but was just noticed there because the wet market is an ideal spreading ground (just like our food processing factories in Leicester) and they had the experience of SARS to notice it. Just to be clear, the article makes a much fiercer point that it is all the fault of the communist government for not allowing people to talk about it.

Mad world, mad world, mad world, mad world.

Now, I’ve shared my 2am reading with you. I’m off for a swim before making a 3 tier Manchester tart to be ready for Bake Off later. It is pastry week, so dreams can’t be rather useful and Tears For Fears were genius prophets.

Comedy of Errors

 I have been wondering what Shakespeare would have made of this pandemic. Probably nothing because he tended to steal other stories. He liked historical things that had already been written about. I can see the appeal of that. Once the dust has settled and everyone knows what they think about it, it’s much easier to be ‘right’ about the history. This, however, means that the truth of the situation for some people is never known.

The way I feel about things at the moment is that it has been a comedy of errors but who knows how that will be perceived when we are out the other side? 

Every day the government announces something that makes me ask, “Why?”. 

Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors contains the quote, “Every why hath a wherefore,” and I am spending far too much of my time trying to find the wherefore. In the play it’s a simple (haha Shakespeare comedies are never simple) case of mistaken identity and twins. It’s set in Ancient Greece and based on a story by Plautus. There are plays on words and metaphors that even Boris couldn’t think of.

It feels as though everything they try to do to make it better actually makes it worse. The less places people can go, the more they crowd into the spaces they can. Tell people they can’t socialise in their own town but can in the next town and they will move the virus about a bit more. Tape up two thirds of the chairs in the A&E waiting room and every time someone goes to the loo or for a blood test or to see a nurse or hand in a urine sample or get a new bowl to vomit into someone sits in their chair with no one to sanitise the seats in between. Make a test and trace app that drains a phone battery and gives random alerts when you haven’t left the house in four days and people will turn it off. Provide the police with details who have tested positive and people will be much less likely to confess who they have seen if that is against the law and could incur a huge fine. 

It’s all awful. I want to stop thinking about the wherfores.

I had a weekend where I tried very hard not to think. I went pumpkin picking and stocked up on things for my favourite time of year. I’ve always loved halloween. It’s pretty and orange and what’s not to like about celebrating the fact that humans make up stories to explain the unexplainable?

I haven’t quite got the hang of this Instagram thing.

We had a great time with lots of laughing. I was a little unstable and even more clumsy than usual. We decided to just watch the ladies pushing each other round in a wheelbarrow, as I fell over just trying to pick up a pumpkin. We took photos and I didn’t notice my camera lens was fogged up. This morning, however, my brain was back on the why?-cycle. 

I’m taking comfort from the fact that Comedy of Errors was one of Shakespeare’s shortest plays and hoping that’s a clue. It would be lovely if when we look back history won’t even think it worth a mention.

Tales from the Waiting Room

 I’d like to introduce you to my fish. Apparently, he is going to be with me forever but I’ll just learn to ignore him. He looks a bit like this but less fluffy.

The last few days have been interesting, in the version of the word, that is the famous Chinese curse. I know that we are all living in interesting times but for some that is tipping into the truly horrific.

It started with flashing lights, then felt like I’d been wearing my swimming goggles had been too tight and then I had a dark line come across my vision. I rang the optician. No appointments until next week. I asked if they thought these symptoms were ok to leave.

 “No, go straight to A&E,” they said.

 I laughed and thought it was overkill and rang a couple of others. They all said the same. So I rang 111. A nice young girl, who made me feel ancient by saying, “Ahh bless you,” several times went through the triage questions and concluded, “It’s your eyesight. You need to be at a treatment centre within an hour. Tell reception about this call. They have an emergency ophthalmologist there.”

At this point the story is going to divert away from me and onto the truly horrific. I’ll tell you more about the fish later but he really is a small fish in comparison.

I don’t know if you’ve had anything to do with medicine since the beginning of the pandemic. If you have then I’m sure you have your own tales from the waiting room. You might have stood in a queue outside a doctors surgery in the rain to collect a prescription with elderly people who have holes in their shoes being shouted at because they are at the wrong place for their flu jab. You might have waited all day for a call back from a pharmacist. You might have argued with the receptionist that you can’t take a call from a doctor ‘whenever’ because you are a teacher and discussing your post menopausal bleeding in front of a class of 6 year olds wouldn’t be appropriate. You might have waved a loved one off in an ambulance to be told that you might hear from someone in about 6 hours. 

Whatever your stories, they won’t fill you with confidence that our health system is coping. It seems as though fear of this virus has allowed the mis-treatment of people under the guise of ‘government rules’. 

At A&E you are not allowed to have anyone with you. When I arrived it was already full. All the seats that weren’t taped up were taken and people were standing around the edge. Naively, I thought that 111 had already done the triage part and that I would be in the queue to see an optalmologist. However, I had plenty of time to watch the room as I waited nearly two hours to see a nurse who thought my blood pressure was high (despite a normal reading on the screen) and then another, close to, four hours before I saw a doctor.  People were ill and scared. 

There was a woman in pyjamas and dressing gown who was having a panic attack in the corner. An elderly man in a wheelchair couldn’t hear his name being called and missed it five times. There was a young woman, who could have been as young as sixteen,  in tears who asked several times if her mum could come in. Her mum was outside making smiley faces at her through the window and they constantly texted. Her request was met every time with a curt, “No!” and an implication that she was stupid. There were a few women with their maternity folders in their bags, clutching their stomachs, whose husband were made to wait in the car park. There was a woman who had to keep lifting her mask up to vomit into the cardboard bowl they had given her. A special needs girl rocked and screamed in her chair.  

After a while there was a bit of a kefuffle at reception. A man was told that he definitely couldn’t come in. Only the patient was allowed. 

He argued the point but was firmly told, “No!” 

Then there was a little confusion over whether he was the patient. He wasn’t. 

Then he said, “I get this a lot. It’s prejudice. 

It’s an unconscious bias. You don’t even know you are doing it.”

The receptionist was furious. 

“I’m really offended by that,” she shouted, “I resent the suggestion that I’m racialist (sic). It’s the government rules.”

“But the government rules says that as I am her carer I should come in and support her.”

It turned out that the woman had come from a care home and he was her key worker.  

The security guards backed off and he was allowed in. 

Then, the most horrific thing ever happened. An hysterical couple arrived at reception. They had rung 999 and been told that the situation was extremely urgent but there were no ambulances available and as they lived 2 minutes away to drive themselves. A limp, dead looking baby was draped over the mother’s arms. The hysterical couple explained that the baby had had his vaccinations that day and had been fitting. No. No fever.  The receptionist told the mother to go through to the children’s department and without batting an eyelid, told the father that he would have to wait in the car park. The security guard took a step forward. 

I know that people working in these situations have to develop a thick skin to cope but there has to be a better way than this.

Obviously, by the time I got to see a doctor the ophthalmologists had gone home and the lovely, partially deaf doctor, who asked me if I minded removing the mask so she could lip read and laughed when I told her that I knew some sign language but none of it was appropriate, was very apologetic that I would have to been seen the next day but to come straight back if I suddenly went blind. 

The Long Suffering Husband had been in the car park the whole time, surprised by the number of drug deals that take place in a hospital car park.

The next day, he is back in the car park and I’m in another waiting room. This time I realise that I have officially become an old lady because everyone else in the waiting room is over 80. I’ve had my eyes tested and drops squirted in that make my eyes sting, my pupils widen to Bush baby levels and the world appear blurred and fuzzy. 

“Mrs Corvette. Mrs Corvette............. MRS CORVETTE..”

A short woman with a walking frame shuffles past me. She has died red hair.

“Woo Hoo oooh,” I sing.

She looks at me and I am glad to realise that you can still be blind, 80, with a walking frame and still love Prince and have a sense of humour.

The ophthalmologist looks in my eyes.

“Yes, I can see your fish,” she says, “It does look like a fish!”

After an hour an a half of poking around in my eye she concluded that it hadn’t torn the retina, so I wouldn’t need an operation but it would never go away, although (the brain being as amazing as it is) I would learn to ignore it, after 6 - 24 months. 

I was telling a friend about it later.

“You’ll have to name it, if it’s going to be with you for a while.”

Dory was my first thought but it’s not as endearing as Dory and also looks completely wrong.

“It’s a humbug fish,” I said.

“Scrooge, then?” she suggested.

That would be very appropriate for Christmas 2020 but I think I’m going to go with Boris and hope that he disappears soon.

I hope I’m wrong again

 Most people are thrilled when they are proved right. A smugness settles over them and they think, “Told you so.”  There’s even a German word for it Schadenfreude that has crept into the English language. I’m not aware of an opposite word for the joy you can feel about being wrong. It might be more relief than happiness. If there was a German word it might be Falscherleichterung. Perhaps I can see why it won’t catch on.

However I did have just as good a feeling when I was proved wrong about Essex Council’s motivation for going to tier 2 at what seems to be a premature time. I hated the idea of corruption but I couldn’t get it out of my head. Watching the interview Essex Live did with  Dr Mike Gogarty and Cllr John Spence, I realised that they just think that they are making a decision that they think will save the county and I sort of admire them for that. I think it is very risky to go against the national plan because if it goes wrong then you have no one to blame but yourself. In politics it would be better for your long term viability if you could blame Matt Hancock. In fact, in life, it is always better if you can blame Matt Hancock. They were also clearly upset at the suggestion that they would take these measures for financial gain.

I was surprised that the government were happy to agree to it, as it completely undermines their strategy. If Essex needs to go to tier 2 then so does the whole country and I am completely amazed by a government that is prepared to hand over the ammunition to anyone who wants to accuse them of negligence, quite so easily.

One thing I do know, is that these are not easy decisions for anyone and so I am prepared to cut everyone a bit of slack (except maybe Dido Harding). 

I am hoping that I get the feeling of Falscherleichterung again very soon, though because I think that local lockdowns in the way they are being managed are partly what is driving this virus transmission. To contain a virus, you need to keep people where they are. You have to sacrifice a small population to save the whole. That sounds cruel but that is what has happened historically. (Read about the Derbyshire town of Eyam https://www.eyamvillage.org.uk/plague) These lockdowns are different. They are not keeping people in their own social circles but actually appear to encourage a wider mixing.

When we came out of national lockdown and it became obvious that it was far too soon they tried to remedy the problem by containing it. They locked down Leicester but our country doesn’t work like that and it just meant that everyone from Leicester went to other places to eat, drink, have their hair cut or buy a suit and the virus spread. You can guarantee that the farm shop/tea room in Market Harborough, as nice as it is, won’t be donating any of its extra profits to the nice cafe in St Martins Square.

The same will probably happen with the Essex tier 2 restrictions but in reverse. We don’t have that many cases at the moment but if we can’t see our friends in our safe home town then we might travel to more virulent places. Essex has two unitary authorities so you can still meet your 5 friends at Lakeside or in a Southend pub and bring home a nice cough that you wouldn’t have got in your home town.

Not that I’m recommending it but the places in blue are where you can meet 5 friends indoors in Essex.

I just don’t think it’s going to work and I don’t think they have the backing of enough of the public either. Oh, I really hope I’m wrong.

Dory the Nursery Rhyme Explorer

 My brain is a bit holey at the moment. Things don’t seem to want to stay in it and I have become the living human version of Dory, the fish from finding Nemo. This is something that seems to happen to me when I have a lot to think about. It’s like my head can’t hold everything in and so I forget random things that it thinks aren’t important. This is a normal human thing and I very much suspect that I’m not the only one this is happening to because there is a lot to think about. 

I should take this moment to say that I was wrong when I suggested that Essex Council’s incentive for wanting to go into tier 2 was financial. It was because they are scared of it running out of control. The director of public health wants to be the guy that takes action early; the hero in the disaster movie. He has seen hospital admissions in the area go from 0 - 60 in two weeks and cases rise quickly. He has crunched the numbers and decided that we are doomed. It is true that we are beginning to get back to a level where we know people who have it. I understand the fear but am equally aware of the terror that people have of being asked to go against human nature and stop being sociable. I mull over the mixed messages and confusions constantly. It stops me sleeping (most things do) and causes things like children’s names to fall out of my head. I wonder how we can get control of the virus by not seeing our friends but continuing to have our eyebrows done by strangers. It puzzles me that there is an idea of a COVID secure restaurant. It terrifies me that people who get sick are blamed, as though it’s somehow their fault that they didn’t see an invisible virus coming. It concerns me that when it comes to coronavirus there’s suddenly no such thing as medical confidentiality and rumour and gossip are encouraged anytime someone is sick. 

These are the reasons I think I’ve been a bit Dory, now that I’ve got up and thought about it properly. Yesterday, however, I was convinced that it was all because my swimming goggles were too tight. 

I was working with the reception class on Nursery Rhymes. They were telling me their favourites and I was trying to sing them. This is usually quite easy because Nursery Rhymes have fallen out of fashion. Most years we are lucky if we get much more that Twinkle Twinkle and the Wheels on the Bus. This year, however, lockdown has caused the return of the nursery rhyme. Kids stuck in the house with their parents have sung everything from Humpty Dumpty to Little Miss Muffet to Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush. If the research about nursery rhymes and reading is to be believed then lockdown will have improved the literacy skills of this generation of kids. 

“There’s a second verse to that,” I said, confidently, “The cows are in the meadow, eating buttercups.....”

I’d forgotten the rest.

“Aishoo?” my colleague prompted, “You are being a bit Dory today.”

The phrase, “I’m Dory the Nursery Rhyme Explorer,” popped into my head but I knew not to say it. Instead I said, “I know, I think it’s because my swimming goggles are too tight. My brain has been squished.”

I didn’t make myself sound anymore sane. It’s normal to forget things because you have a lot on your mind. I don’t need to make up excuses about my swimming goggles, although I really must sort them out because they have made my left eye quite sore.

Call me a cynic

 Weirdly, living in a part of the country with the lowest cases of COVID-19, our county council has asked the government if we can be put into tier 2. I’ll be honest, even I’ve lost the plot of exactly what this might mean but I know it includes restrictions on what we can do and fines if we don’t follow these incredibly clear rules (that’s sarcasm, if you hadn’t guessed). I know it means no social mixing indoors. If you are living with your partner, have a happy home life and won’t lose work through these measures then I expect you are wondering what all the fuss is about. Let’s just crack on. Lockdown and stop this virus before it gets out of control.

That is what the director of public health in Essex is thinking. He’s produced a video, with slides to say as much, showing that cases are doubling, so we should act now, while we can.

He might have a point. Except Maldon and Harlow show cases falling in the last week. It also makes a mockery of the government’s national strategy.  I’m not inclined to trust this man’s judgement too much either, as he was the person, who when interviewed by the local press insisted that the six people you were allowed to have inside your house at any one time didn’t need to be socially distant. 

Even our MP has backed the plan. John Whittingdale, known for voting for anything his government asks him to, no matter how bonkers is prepared to undermine his party on this. The Prime Minister does not want to devastate the economy or restrict personal freedoms unless absolutely necessary and our MP is prepared to go against him. 

It made me wonder if there was something I was missing. Maybe it’s because we are a big county with only four Public hospitals. If our hospitals were struggling then there might be a reason. However, the data for the East of England is still only seeing tiny numbers of people admitted to hospital.

“It must be money,” I said to my daughter, cynically. “Do local authorities get money if they go into tier 2?”

We checked. They do. £1 for every person. I make that a windfall of £1489189. Not bad for a day's meeting. It makes complete financial sense, especially in an area where most people are compliant. It’s not as if Essex will have to spend much of that money to get people to follow the rules because we are pretty good anyway, which is why we have such low numbers in the first place. 

I hate to be a cynic but if I can see through their cunning plan, I’m fairly certain Dishy Rishi will keep a tight hold of those purse strings and not agree to it. 

My Guilty Pleasure

 I’ve always wondered what people meant when they talked about a guilty pleasure. I’ve never understood what’s wrong with having two slices of cake, eating a whole packet of biscuits, buying yourself flowers, listening to Dolly Parton on repeat, binge watching Disney films, staying in your pyjamas all day or taking the little soaps from hotels. What’s wrong with a bit of self care? However, I’ve found mine.

All weekend I’ve been weirdly excited. I wasn’t quite sure why. The Sunday papers had been briefed with everything that was going to be said. We thought that the three tier system sounded complicated but were already resigned to it. It still didn’t seem fair that the economy of the ‘North’ was being hung out to dry. It didn’t seem as though local lockdowns work (Leicester - 106 days. Cases still rising). I knew what would be said but I was looking forward to the press conference. 

I didn’t think it would bring any more clarity but as the time drew closer I said to one of my older flute pupils, “We’ve got a Boris in a moment.”

She looked at me oddly.

“I know, I’ll have to watch it on catch up but I just love a Boris, don’t you love a Boris?”

She was suddenly squinting at me as though I had grown an extra head. “Errm. Nope. No one watches those. You seem very happy about it.”

“I am. They’re funny. Really? No one watches them? No one at all?”

She thought that maybe some people did. Old grannies and the like but no one enjoyed them.

So, Boris is my guilty pleasure. Watching those press conferences is brilliant for metaphor collecting. 

Yesterday he described the situation. “These figures are flashing at us like dashboard warnings in a passenger jet.”  

Chris Whitty explained the figures. We now have as many people in hospital as we did at the beginning of lockdown with a doubling every seven days. In some areas the doubling is as fast as it was at the beginning of lockdown. Boris doesn’t feel comfortable in curtailing people’s freedom and Dishy Rishi was there to say how uncomfortable he was at spending all the money required to help us abide by the ‘common sense’ that even ministers and government advisers don’t have.

It was Chris Whitty’s face that made me realise that the reason they have taken such strong action on Liverpool and not Nottingham had to be to do with hospitals. I can’t remember exactly what Boris said but Chris winced as though he was trying not to break all social distancing rules and stamp on Boris’ foot. 

Luckily, local news journalism is on hand to explain the problem. 

 https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/liverpools-coronavirus-hospital-admissions-third-19090498?utm_source=linkCopy&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=sharebar

In Liverpool the Covid admissions make up 15% of all hospitalisation. If a hospital gets to a point where 20% of all patients admitted are coronavirus patients then the hospital ceases to be able to run normal services. This is, and always has been, the problem. It’s not that COVID-19 is the worst disease ever, it’s just that it takes up a lot of hospital space and our already struggling hospitals can’t cope. 

Overall, Chris Whitty was quite clear that it wouldn’t be enough. Boris wanted to promise a normal Christmas but couldn’t quite manage it. As Beth Rigby, from Sky news, said, “this is, yet again, rhetoric over action.” If the messages are confused and there is no clear direction then you can’t possibly hope to get people to follow the guidance. Unless you explain to people why it is safe in a restaurant but not in a gym or why my colleague couldn’t stay with her daughter in Nottingham but her daughter could stay with her then you will never get control.

In an attempt to explain things to people whose guilty pleasure isn’t watching Boris fluff and flaff his way through a press conference with metaphors about crashing jumbo jets, the BBC have tried to use the nation's most quoted guilty pleasure: cake.  It’s very simplistic but at least it’s clear. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/health-54511965

I expect, however, most people will just watch Bake Off and actually eat cake. This week is chocolate week and I have already started my chocolate coconut cake for later. Who doesn’t love a bounty flavoured cake?

My cake only has two tiers, which is probably fine, as I live in a pretty cliquey town that people tend to stay in. It has six drama groups because social mixing has never been popular here.

If You Go Down To The Woods Today

 Weekends are for long walks. When I know I’ve got on everyone’s nerves it’s time to get my boots on and get into the woods, singing the teddy bear’s picnic song. 

The teddy bear’s picnic was the first record I owned. My parents had acquired a little junior Dansette record player from someone Dad worked with, whose children had grown up. It was a cream and pale blue box with a handle on it. It looked like the kind of suitcase that was popular at the time for overnight stays. However, when you opened it up it had a turntable, two chunky knobs, stabilising arm and the tone arm, complete with stylus. The wicker pattern on the side of the case was, in fact, the speaker. The lid was covered in a soft felt and there was an oval label that I’m sure said GPO. My first two records were Puff the Magic Dragon and the Teddy Bear’s Picnic and I played them on repeat, so that those lyrics have become part of my DNA. Now dragons live forever but not so little boys for every bear that ever there was, was gathered there for certain because.

Anyway, I was in need of some fresh air. 

“I’m going for a tramp in the woods.....I hope he gets away,” I laughed to myself, thinking of Edward de Bono’s lateral thinking book that was very popular in our house when I was a teenager. 

Before I left home to go to college, I would often get out on my bike and cycle through the ford to the stately home about four miles away, when I was in this kind of mood. Then, I literally would go for a tramp. There was a man (called Peter, I think) who lived under the railway bridge. He was friendly enough but very sad. His family had been killed in a house fire and he thought it was his fault. That’s what he told me, anyway. I expect he told different stories to other people because my English teacher used to tell us that he was Lord Lucan. 

I’ve got distracted. I was telling you about my walk in the woods.

I love this time of year. Who am I kidding. I love every time of year but right now the world is russet. The leaves are turning, berries are dark red and orange, conkers and acorns are smooth and brown and nutty. Rose hips remind me of the baby clinic and bring back a smell of formula and baby sick. (Whatever happened to rose hip syrup? It used to be an essential cold prevention.) There’s a damp musty smell and it’s the perfect time for mushroom spotting. I’m hopeless at identification and so would never attempt to eat any but there’s something hopeful about fungi in that they spend most of the year hiding underground and just pop out for a little look once a year (sometimes not even that often).

With the news being full of doom and gloom; leaks to the press about three tier lockdowns and a dread of heading into winter without being able to see anyone it was good to see that the mushrooms had coped.

 I walked on. My quiet spaces have become quiet again and the lockdown walkers have stopped. It was just me and the dog. We stopped concentrating on where we were walking but looked at the sky. There were dramatic clouds building on the horizon and the possibility of a good soaking was getting stronger by the second. I told the dog not to worry. You always get less wet in the woods.

We sang, “If you go down to the woods today, you’re sure of a big surprise.” Suddenly, the was furious flapping at my feet and a big brown spotted bird flew up and away over the field.

“That was a red kite,” I told the dog, who had thought about chasing it for a millisecond.  “I can’t believe I nearly stepped on a red kite!”

“Let’s go fly a kite,” we sang as we headed home, sidestepping the raindrops that were the size of dinner plates. 

If you go down to the woods today, you might not get as big a surprise as I did but I’m certain it will make you feel better about every annoying thing that is happening in the world (and there are lots of those at the moment).

Why Creatives are Cross

 It has always been this way in this country. Creative industries or persuits are treated as a dirty little secret. Never confess that they contribute to the economy. Never encourage.

It is a bizarre approach and one that doesn’t really make sense. When I was 14 I passed grade 8 flute. I enjoyed playing, it made me happy. It made people who listened happy. It might have made sense to encourage that line of career development. This didn’t happen. I was told that I was too clever to waste my time on music. I was told that it was a nice little hobby to have but that I’d never make a living from it. I asked my flute teacher if you were a failure if you taught. He said, “Those that can do and those that want to eat teach. It can be the same thing.” I didn’t really understand. Although I took the careers advice seriously it is quite something that I have made most of my living through music.

When I was at school you couldn’t get a grant for continuing study in Art, Music, Drama or Dance. If you wanted to study these things then you had to self fund. The cutting of grants and making students take out loans has, weirdly, improved the situation for creatives.

Because the arts are treated as a dirty secret there are no secure jobs, pay structures or career development paths for creative people. Therefore, people who go into them find other ways to eat. Sometimes that’s teaching but it might be cleaning, working in a shop, waitressing or care work.  This is how people in these industries survive in normal times.

Now that there’s a virus that thrives on fun these industries have suddenly become not only a dirty secret but also dangerous. Never mind that everyone got through lockdown by making Art with Grayson Perry, watching David Tennent and Michael Sheen’s Staged, playing Somewhere Over the Rainbow while the neighbours clapped and banged wooden spoons on pans. 

It just feels really unfair to people, who have always been forgotten about, to be told that they will have to find their own way through this when government decisions are not allowing them to work. A government who is not prepared to save these industries when they have done nothing wrong  but are more than happy to save banks when they committed fraud and award themselves a £3000 a year pay rise is unjust.

Luckily, the government dropped a careers questionnaire online to help people decided what they could do if their current line of work became unviable. This has caused much amusement. The interesting thing is that it told me I should be a classical musician, although, weirdly, it didn’t ask me if I could play an instrument or even if I knew what a Bach Motet was.

I love the way that it implies there is a pay scale. It might work if they labelled the ends ‘lucky’ and ‘unlucky’. I wonder where Lang Lang might sit on that scale. I’m also not too sure about the working hours. Are they including practice time?

Appy Baaaafday

 When you work in a school in Essex and it's your birthday, you will hear, “Appy Baaafday!” at least a million times in the day. If you are lucky a small child might even say, “Watcha babe,” as they pass you in a corridor. These are not unusual things. It’s just because of the way people in Essex speak. The teacher in you always wants to correct. “Hah-py Birthday”, “Hello Miss!” but sometimes all you can do is let it wash over you.

I wasn’t looking forward to my birthday. The pressure to be happy, being looked at and making decisions (what do you want to do/eat for your birthday? ) were all beginning to get to me. If I had to be happy, I wasn’t even sure I knew how to do that.

The smallest children in school are working on this at the moment. “What makes you happy?” they were asked. They drew pictures, told teachers and wrote the words with backwards letters and peculiar spelling.

There were the usual answers like Mummy and Daddy, pets but also some food related answers. I’m surprised there weren’t more. Cake, chocolate, biscuits and pizza are the kinds of food that makes me happy. One child said that farts make them happy, which I can also relate to. Not enough people are honest about this.

By the end of the day I had heard Appy Baaarfday so many times that I decided that it was a clear message. It is true, a bath does make me happy. And you have to have your yearly bath on your birthday. People have so many baths these days that we’ve forgotten the simple pleasure of a soak in the tub.

My soak in the bath, with the birthday hippo bath bomb, complete with popping candy was just what I needed.

The evening was spent eating pizza, quizzing, watching Spitting Image (and falling down a Lady Lucan rabbit hole) and unwrapping presents. My family are just the best gift givers.

I’m so happy and full of pizza, I could fart.

Deep Meaningfuls

I wrote about feeling blue yesterday then I went into school and worked with the smallest children with songs about feelings. They had already matched feelings to colours, so I asked them, in song, what colour they were feeling today. Luckily, most were yellow (happy) or green (calm) and some of that rubbed off onto me. It doesn’t always work like that, though. Sometimes you just need someone to share your misery. Occasionally, you need someone who is more grumpy than you, so that you can feel superior.

I often wonder what possesses me to be such an over-sharer in my blog. No one really needs to know that grief is still there burbling away in the background. Writing about it can make it look like a bigger deal than it is. I think that maybe I should stop and then someone will send a message and say that it has helped them. They will tell me that it’s good to know that it’s normal. People who I see on a regular basis are somehow comforted by the dual aspect of seeing inside my troubled mind and then witnessing a fully functioning, capable, happy human.

It was during one of these message conversations about fresh grief and cake that I remembered the phrase ‘deep meaningfuls’. (Fresh grief is anything less than a year, in case you are wondering, before you’ve experienced all the first anniversaries. Cake is the delicious combination of eggs, butter, sugar and flour that makes everything better). We were talking about how grief is such a huge part of human experience that no one really talks about. It’s not normalised and so people who have lost someone only a few months before feel as though they should be ‘over it’. Yes. That’s right. Laugh. Over it. Ha ha. 

We talked about how everyone is processing the bad bits of their life all the time and how if you get stuck you might need a counsellor, rather than having “deep meaningful conversations with friends all the time.”

The phrase struck a memory tucked away in the back of my head. I could hear someone saying, “Let’s have one of our deep meaningfuls.”

At first, I thought that it was a phrase from a sitcom. You could imagine that but google didn’t provide any answers.

Then I heard my mum say, “She popped round for one of her, as she calls them,  deep meaningfuls, with your dad. A vision of my mum in our kitchen, with its shiny dark blue Formica doors, standing at the counter top, rubbing fat into flour, floated up. 

“I’m making Cornish Pasties.”

Cornish pasties were Dad’s favourite things. Mum’s cold hand were perfect for making the best pastry and he spent most of his life complaining that she didn’t make them often enough.  If she was making them then he must have been doing something that made her proud.

Grief discussions were common in our house. Dad was really good at talking about death and difficult things without ever seeming morbid. People always left feeling happier, unburdened and, usually, a little bit drunk. 

If I’m remembering correctly, it was one of my cousins, who was having a tough time, all grown up and working in a wine bar near us, who coined the phrase. I’m grateful for that memory. 

Deep meaningfuls are all very well but some of the best things in life come from the frivolous meaninglesses. The things that make you smile, like a child placing a cup (cup rhythms are very fashionable this year) on the horn of their unicorn headband and telling you that that it makes a perfect horn protector, is the perfect balance of frivolous meaningless to balance the deep meaningfuls.

A happy life is all about balance.

I’ve got the you-don’t-know-the-half-of-it-dearie blues

I’ve got the you don’t know the half of it dearie blues. (Gershwin knew how to write a song!)

 I went out for coffee with a friend. I didn’t want to go. I’ve been a proper grump. I’m not sure if she noticed but it probably did me good to go out and pretend to be normal. After, I went for a long walk and gave myself a bit of a talking to. It didn’t work. 

I feel the future will be blue and stormy (Truly Gershwin was a genius)

I wanted to find a little hole to crawl in, maybe lined with a duvet so that I’d be nice and comfy. I didn’t, though because you’ve got to keep trying, right? Even when there really seems no point and you’re properly fed up of all this malarkey. So, I plastered on a fake smile and taught my evening pupils.

“I haven’t done any practice because I was too busy with birthday stuff.”

“Okay. Happy Birthday. All the best people are born in October,” I said, not really feeling it this year.

“How long have you been playing the piano?” 

They always want to know this. I feel I should qualify my answer with a confession that I don’t practice because that many years and still being pretty terrible at something is very depressing.

“At least forty years,” I tell them.

“What? No way! That means you’re like 45 or something?”

“Or something,” I confess. You might remember that I stopped counting at 42 because I’m terrible at remembering but I know I’ve been 42 for a lot longer than three years. “I’ll be even older soon.”

The realisation that I wouldn’t be teaching them (and therefore not in their bubble) on my birthday seemed to cause a lot of disappointment. 

Maybe I’ve got the you-don’t-know-the-half-of-it birthday blues?

I’ve realised that when your parents are dead your own birthday feels like less of a celebration.

This might be a good thing for me because I always found the pressure of a birthday to be quite wearing. 

I have a very vivid memory of being upset at my third birthday party. Someone had been mean to me and (I think) spilled something on my dress. I was in my bedroom with my Nan. I told her I was going to get into the wardrobe and stay there. I was crying. My Nan scooped me up in her enormous bosom and said, “You mustn’t cry on your birthday or you’ll cry all year round.”

I told her that I didn’t care. I didn’t like birthdays and I was just going to stay in the wardrobe until it was all over. I was feeling sad that year anyway. We had a sad house. My brother had died at a few hours old and even though I didn’t know it I was picking up the grief. Griefs like that weren’t acknowledged in those days. My mother didn’t even get to see her baby after he was born or even after he died. Everyone was just told to suck it up, carry on and try for the next. This approach works. It’s what we all did but it didn’t stop us feeling sad.  

My Nan played the trump card.

 “You can’t be sad today. It’s your birthday. Let your poor mum and dad have this happy day.” 

And there it is. The reason I’m a grump. I have a birthday coming up and no reason to suck it up and carry on. My heart isn’t broken but it has a bruise (Gershwin - total brain). Grief is weird. It’s a little gift that keeps catching you when you are least expecting it. 

Gosh, that’s a depressing blog. Sorry. Here’s a picture of something small and blue to cheer us up.

Something Else

 “Let’s talk about something else,” we all agreed. “No covid, no politics, nothing miserable.”

We sat in silence, desperately trying to think about something to talk about. We started to talk about a film we’d seen on Netflix: Bombshell. It brought us back to politics, Trump and coronavirus.

“That didn’t work. Let’s try again.”

The silence became awkward. 

“Everyone says the David Attenborough documentary is a must watch.”

“I don’t think I can. It’s too depressing, what with everything else that’s going on.”

And we were back again.

My daughter started to talk about the queue for the doctor’s surgery, the Long Suffering Husband talked about the piece he’d seen on Breakfast TV about a sweet couple, married for sixty years who had never spent a day apart. We relaxed a bit. That was a nice thing. Except that since the pandemic they hadn’t been able to see each other because she was in a care home. He was upset that the care staff had been able to go home to their families, go shopping, even have parties if they wanted but he saw no one.

We took a breath.

“This is impossible. How can you stay positive when it’s all you can think about?”

This morning’s yoga workout, chosen for me by the YouTube algorithm, was one to combat stress. When she said, “When the thoughts come up, and they will, just acknowledge them and go back to the breath,” I suddenly realised that that’s all we can ever do.

As tempting as it is to try to find something else to think about, or talk about, our thoughts will always return to whatever is stressing us. It’s our brain’s job to try to make sense of things. Right now, that’s an impossible task. We are living through interesting times and so breathing is the only option.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Inspire. Expire.

Oh no. We’re thinking about it again.

When I was in a stressful situation before I decided that breathing wasn’t enough and that’s when I took up walking and looking at small things. It helped. One foot in front of the other, breathe, notice things that aren’t the big stuff. Have Pockets full of conkers. I love conkers. They are so smooth and brown and shiny. You can put them in your pocket and give them a rub when you feel stressed. When you take it out of your pocket and think, “Oh, it looks like Donald Trump,” then you just pop it back and breathe.

I’m not sure why I’m giving this advice. The stress still got on top of me. An elephant still landed on my head and turned me into Lady Macbeth. Also, you might be better at ‘other things’ than me. You might be able to have conversations about other things without ending back where you started but if you can’t then let’s breathe together and hope we don’t start a Tsunami