No Boris!

 I’d missed something. I wasn’t surprised because it had felt like a tough day, between getting up at 4am, still being late for work, my computer being a pain, six year olds who can’t sit still and men on ladders in the ladies toilet at lunchtime, it was inevitable that I hadn’t noticed that there was to be a virus briefing.

“Oh God! We’ve got a Boris at 5,” I mentioned to a friend.

She asked me what I thought he was going to say and I wasn’t sure. I thought it couldn’t be good because we are at the daily death figure we were when we went into lockdown  (although it hasn’t been a sudden rise to that) and all I could think was that he was going to say something that Matt Lucas would deliver more clearly. The last thing they want is a second lockdown because that would properly destroy the economy. 

I sat down to watch and Boris gave a clear speech. There were no conflicting messages, no references to Ancient Greece, no clever alliterations that made no sense, no metaphors about talking graphs, no hidden anagrams. It was almost like he knew what he was talking about.

“He didn’t write that speech,” I shouted at the telly. 

My daughter, in the other room laughed, although that might have been entirely coincidental and have been about a complaint about a photo of a dead rat in the local paper that she works on that had put someone off their breakfast. 

I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the conversation that would have had to happen to stop him saying what he liked.

“No Boris! You can’t write the speech. You don’t know the rules. Every time you open your mouth you confuse people further. It has to stop.”

“But I’m a writer. I’m good with words. It’s what I do!”

“Don’t sulk! It’s too late. We need to communicate properly and effectively. People think it’s all made up. We need to show them the statistics regularly and tell them clearly what they can do.”

“Oh goody. Regularly. I could write a speech a week. I’ve got a good one about the vicissidudinous virus virulently victimising us with vituperation.”

“No Boris! Jack is going to write the speech. He can write clearly and there will be no confusion. You just have to read it.”

“What? But I’ve written for the Telegraph and the Spectator. What has Jack ever done?”

“Well, he wrote the how to leaflet that goes with every toaster. It’s clear and only a few people have died because they misused a toaster and I don’t think they were thinking about reading the leaflet when they put that bit of their body in it.”

“Oh, but I am good at writing. Please say I’m good at writing.”

“Yes Boris, you are good at writing.”

“Can I write the next one?”

“We’ll see.”

The trouble is, it was clear but people have stopped watching. There won’t be much reporting on it because it’s not very interesting. I mean, if we are honest, we all know that cases are rising again, not as fast as before. We know that means we should limit our contacts, not travel too much , wash our hands frequently, stay at home if we are sick and keep a good distance from people. We know that the actual specific rules vary from region to region because the government are trying to keep from shutting everything down and at least they told us to check the website frequently.

Also, we don’t want to do these things. If we are at work, facing 30 coughing children we don’t want them to be the only contacts we are allowed to have. We have always worked so that we can have a life and the idea that it’s either or just doesn’t sit comfortably. 

Bake Off

 We are in the middle of a world pandemic, the computers are going senile, Brexit is looming, Kent is going to be a lorry park, students are locked up in halls like uncommon criminals, the weather has turned cold, a well ventilated room feels like a pre-cursor to pneumonia, climate change threatens floods and gales but at least there’s Bake Off.

When I was teaching, yesterday evening, loads of my pupils told me how they were ‘done with it all now’ or how they ‘just miss hugs’ or their parents think that we should just go back to normal because ‘even if we didn’t have a government it couldn’t have been any worse.’

I went into the evening humming, “I predict a riot,” but as I made my Bake Off ready biscuits I felt calmer. Baking in your own kitchen (not in a tent) is a therapeutic experience. I particularly like biscuits because they are even though people think they’re hard and you can squish the dough and imagine it’s anyone who annoyed you. Also, if you have the right cutters you can make biscuits with faces.

I learnt yesterday that the only place you can get a biscuit with a face now is my kitchen because whoever made Happy Faces stopped a while ago and now they don’t even put them in a Family Circle tin now.

Watching Bake Off is a proper family activity. We sit with our cake and shout at the telly. We are missing Sandi’s hugs but Matt Lucas is great. Pru has a good line in innuendo, almost up to Sue’s standard. It feels like normality. 

The Hollywood Handshake is still allowed to happen, although we do think they should stop joking about never washing that hand again.

This year’s contestants are just as brilliant and entertaining as before. I’m not sure it was right that Lorien left in the first week and Mak definitely shouldn’t have gone this week but Rowan is very entertaining and worth keeping on. Linda will go early because she’s got grey hair and there’s a bias against nanny bakers. I like them all but I’m rooting for Hermine. 

It felt like the whole of Britain came together for one hour last night. We might not agree on much but we love our biscuits.

I worry about the internet

 I have a theory about this virus.  You are probably going to think this is a little whacky but bear with me.

Apart from the symptoms that we know about; breathing difficulties, cough, fever, loss of smell, sticky blood, it seems to be subtly in the air and affecting other things too.

It seems to have sapped human ambition. You see shops that are only open between 10 and 3, empty shelves and bank staff just not bothering to come to the till if there’s a queue. It’s almost like there’s a collective feeling of, “what’s the point?” Maybe it’s the fault of lockdown. We had a glimpse of a smaller, quieter life and we liked it. I get that. I’m a huge fan of noticing the small things. It makes me happy. Look at this poppy seed head for example.

 It might also be a product of our brains being full of conflicting, messages of danger and so the amount of adrenaline running round when there is no actual tiger to fight leaves us incapable of putting as much effort in as we did before. All of this is understandable but what about what it has done to the internet?

I’m fairly certain that the World Wide Web suffering. The coronavirus has got in and somehow started a process of dementia. At first, I thought it was human error. Numbers jumped around and refused to be effectively entered. The government’s coronavirus (COVID-19) website had numbers that just refused to behave. On the 16th of August it said that the total number of tests processed (throughout the whole crisis) was 20 521 243, having gradually risen 17 619 897 the week before but then on the18th the total tests figure dropped to 17 995 470 and only yesterday got back to 20 304 308. I thought it was just that the government realised they had been lying about the data and tried to correct it without anyone noticing but I’m now beginning to wonder. I know big numbers can be confusing and apparently they are one of the first things to go with dementia. It’s why you see so many confused and ranting old people in the bank.

The other early warning sign is when your mapping skills go. People with early dementia get lost and struggle to find their way home in familiar streets. This might explain why, when people are trying to book tests for coronavirus they are sent halfway around the country. Yesterday, I logged into the ABRSM site, that I responsible for music assessments. Obviously, my two usual local test centres weren’t running exams this time because, well, what’s the point? Instead, I asked for the most local test and it tried to book me into Halifax. You see? The internet is losing its marbles. We need to be on the lookout for other early warning signs. If it gets words confused or seems to have mood swings then it will definitely be time to worry.

I know. I’m sorry. You had enough to process already, what with a virus, a confused government, Brexit stuff, a passport to get into Kent and Michael Gove’s Spitting Image puppet but I really think we need to keep an eye on the internet.

Most Excellent

The Long Suffering Husband took me out to the cinema yesterday. We watched the Bill and Ted movie and ate popcorn all the way through. I used to hate the idea of eating when watching a film because both a film and food deserve your full attention but a mask would make a film harder to concentrate on. Covid has broken all my rules. 

It’s cold and miserable, we are living through times that will be ‘interesting’ historically, the storm season has started, government is dictating, shops have empty shelves, test and trace app drains your phone battery, teaching is even more exhausting than normal and no one is really quite sure what they are meant to do. I’m reading the Midnight Library and it’s suicidal theme and preachy message are not really working for me in terms of an uplifting book. The LSH decided that I needed to get out.

The movie is so bad I won’t even mention the plot holes or how irritating it is when they can’t even be bothered to teach actors how to hold an instrument properly, never mind make it look like they are actually playing it, but it was lovely to go out and do something that felt normal. Yes, the cinema had hardly anyone in (we don’t mind that) but once the film started, you could completely stop thinking for an hour an a half. You sit in a dark room with your popcorn, transported to another world. It was also a good choice of film. It was fun and lighthearted and a reminder that singing and making music together can save the world.

It was just what I needed and followed by a whole night’s sleep I’m ready to take on the world. Are you ready San Dimas? Party on Dudes. It’s going to be most excellent.

How to Annoy a Generation

 Matt Hancock was asked, weeks ago, if a mass migration of 18-22 year olds during the Covid-19 pandemic was wise. He thought they should all go to University, it would be fine, they’d develop a plan. No one has any idea what that plan is but cases are rising. In some areas the R is up to 1.5. Young people were blamed when it went up a little bit. The government told them to go out and spend money. They did and suddenly it’s all their fault for having fun. Now they’ve been told to go to University and the rhetoric is that the virus is spreading because they are having parties. Honestly, a virus doesn’t care whether you are enjoying yourself or are thoroughly miserable. Stick several people, who’ve never met in pokey accommodation, sharing a bathroom and a kitchen and you can guarantee the bugs will jump around, whether alcohol is consumed or they are teetotal. The new noses and respiratory systems of unhappy people will be just as attractive as those who are having fun. 

I’m confused by why the government thinks it’s a good idea to annoy a whole generation but they have.

With all this talk of blaming students it has made me reminisce about my time at University (or Polytechnic, as it was then). It is easy to fall into the tropes that surround student life: All students drink too much, take drugs, sleep around, don’t get on with the people in their accommodation. However, I’m not sure that’s fair. Either that or I was a very boring student.

I made friends on my first day that I would have been happy to live with forever and met others that I that I found more challenging from day one. I didn’t take drugs or sleep around. I did drink a lot but not more than I could handle (except on my 21st Birthday, when a couple of bottles of champagne disagreed with the jacket potato and chilli I’d had in the Wicked Woman of Wheathampstead pub). I went home at weekends to see my boyfriend. (My life could have been very different if that hadn’t been allowed)

I’ve been trying to remember everyone that I lived with in that first year and whether we would have survived a lockdown. Colin, Clare, Angie, Jenny, Graeme, Duncan, Mark, Mick and Keith. There were twenty people on our corridor and I can only remember nine names. There was a boy who wore fake leather trousers who played The Smiths until we were all suicidal. A girl who did engineering and seemed very unhappy. My old headteacher’s daughter, whose room always smelled of joss sticks (I was very naive). Two Polish boys (one might have been called Piotrik) with the best vodka. I think there was also a boy that we laughed at because he burnt Smash. That means there are four people that I can’t recall at all. The twenty people shared two kitchens. The corridor opposite also had twenty people and our showers and toilets were in the middle of the two. I and two other girls became friends with four people from the opposite corridor and we went on to live together in the other years. My room was big enough for a single bed, desk with shelves above, wardrobe and bedside cabinet. The halls were essentially a demountable. In between the two corridors was the security guard’s office. Ours was a lovely man called Bill and he had prostate cancer. I don’t know how many other corridors there were but I think there were quite a few. 

I remember the days fondly and think I would have been fine in a lockdown situation. It might even have been a bonding experience. This is what I hope for the current students. Days filled with friendship, drinking wine, watching TV, going to the supermarket, studying, playing music too loud and talking about (but never quite getting round to) joining the gym.

A little bit better

 Some days don’t start well.

“You know that music person who was a little bit better than you? What happened to them?”

“Who do you mean?”

“The one that was a little bit better than you. My half sister told me about her.”

“But I taught your half sister. It must have been me when I was a little bit better and now I’m just a little bit worse.”

“Oh”

The day got a little bit worse because of computers and trying to keep children who were excited to show their compositions to their friends in their seats, facing the front, trying to be creative without sharing.

The weather has turned and well ventilated rooms suddenly feel like a bad idea.

Knowing that this is all going to last for another six months is very depressing.

At the end of the day, the press were reporting the inevitable outbreak in a university in Scotland. The thought of a whole load of sick students being stuck in a house of 15 people they don’t know, not able to leave broke my heart a little bit. Then the BBC asked Hancock if students might be forced to stay at Uni for Christmas. The stupid idiot said that he’d learnt never to rule anything out. That made things a little bit worse for anyone who is about to go or send someone to University.  I know it won’t happen. Students might be asked to stay but if you are able to travel then no one can stop them. They are reluctant to do a second lockdown and there is no way they will make it stricter. My tip, that I learnt from noticing drug dealers, while I was walking during the first lockdown: buy your Uni starters a nurses uniform to guarantee they can travel home unchallenged. I’m not advocating breaking the law but some things are worse than Covid-19.

When I got home I downloaded the NHS test and trace app and checked my area. 

I swore. “WTAF! A medium risk area! That’s something that male cows have!” (Probably not just male cows but I always think the swear is worse if you think of bullocks bollocks)

I clicked on the definition of risk. It said medium risk is where cases are rising. 

“That’s odd,” shouted the data nerd. “We have a change of rate of -1 to -10 cases per 100,000 of the population. A minus number is a fall. They are lying to us. If we can live in an area where only 3 people have died of something and cases are falling, how is that not low risk?”

You’re right. I’m the data nerd and I was ranting wildly to myself. The thing is the app has decided that there are no low risk areas in the UK. The app says, “Be afraid, very afraid. Remember, your life is over!”

That makes life a little bit worse.

I’m beginning to agree with that little boy who greeted me yesterday morning. Where has that music person gone that was a little bit better than me? Where has the world gone that was a little bit better than it is now?

Looking for meaning

 It is true, I need more sleep. My apparent need to only require 4 or 5 hours a night means that my brain is more active than it should be. This, in turn, leads it to try to make connections that aren’t there.

Yesterday, in the wee small hours my brain was trying to make sense of Boris’ speech and Bake Off (I’m sure it was Val Stone that said to listen to the cake, not John Whaites). When I gave up on sleep I wrote about the speech. As I was writing, I noticed that the phrase, ‘a stitch in time saves nine,’ had the word incentive in it. Aha! It’s a clue! My tired brain went into overdrive. Maybe it’s not a call to embroidery but a secret message. I told my brain to behave and went to work.

My first class of the day, who are obsessed with the music room (now repurposed as the Covid Response Activity Place), kept asking about when they could go in. I told them that I was hoping it would be soon but now I wasn’t sure.

The children made suggestions.

One month? Or six? Maybe? Christmas? Or not? One month or ten months? Cockroach!

It was like being transported to a Boris speech. I wondered if cockroach was a clue and spent the rest of the day humming La Cucaracha and looking for the ice cream van. 

By lunchtime, my brain was convinced there was a secret hidden message in the unusual phrase, ‘a stitch in time saves nine’. I played with some anagrams while I ate my lunch. 

THIS IS MEANT AS INCENTIVE

I had it. Oh, Boris. Sticks and carrots to you too. 

I was quite proud of myself and thought that maybe I should join GCHQ. My code breaking skills are worthy of Alan Turing. 

By the time I got home I decided to give the other weird phrase as go. If a well worn outdated cliche, from a writer who should know better could be a clue then a nonsensical phrase about graphs speaking surely was important.

I started to play with Iron laws of geometrical progression. 

I, FOOL GREW POINTLESS CORONA GAMES

LOWLIFE IMPOSTER ARRANGES NO CORGIS

I suddenly realised that long sentences can probably always be rearranged.

I had another go at a stitch in time saves nine and this time I got, AHEM, INSTINCTIVE NASTIES.

The question is, should I offer myself up for GCHQ or try to get more sleep?

Take up Embroidery

I listened to the Prime Minister address the commons at lunchtime.

“That’s not too bad,” I thought. Those things make sense. Closing pubs at 10pm stops the 2am drunken pub clubs. Reiterating the importance of social distancing, reminding people of the rule of six and asking people to work at home if they can all make sense. It might not be enough or it might be too much but it’s worth a shot. Boris Johnson seemed almost lucid. He said a few weird things but he sounded like he was talking to grown ups.

I discussed it with my family. We agreed that it would depend on how he communicated it with the general public, who had already started to panic buy toilet roll.

Unless the public is given clear instructions they can’t be blamed for doing the wrong thing. The government can’t just stop communicating, take a holiday and hope we have noticed one word changes in already published documents. Oh, if you didn’t know, from the 9th of September, you are allowed to be non socially distant with an established partner you don’t live with. That’s one of the things they snuck in. Even I missed it and I think I’m a careful and obsessive reader. So, whilst I would have just preferred to spend the evening watching people make cake busts I was hoping that this announcement would bring some much needed clarity.

The clash with Bake Off was concerning until Channel Four confirmed it would delay the start.

Boris Johnson flashed on the screen and he started to speak.

“Humanity will win.

We can suck seeds because we’ve sucked before.

We followed the guidelines to the letter.

Whilst most people have complied with the rules there have been too many breaches.

Iron laws of geometrical progression are shouting at us from their graphs.

Night and day. Day and night. Common sense, we are the one.

A tougher package.

Robust but proportionate.

Lock up old people. They still get sick.

I say these risks are not our own. Your mild cough maybe someone else’s death knell.

I’m deeply spiritually reluctant.

A stitch in time saves nine.

That is our strategy.

One day soon mass testing. That’s the hope. That’s the dream. We must rely on our willingness to look out for each other.

We will get through this winter together. There are great days ahead but now is the time for the spirit of togetherness.”

We looked at each other.

“That was clear,” I said, sarcastically.

“What was the point of that?” my daughter asked.

“Can I go to the cinema tomorrow or do I need to buy toilet roll?” the Long Suffering Husband wanted to know.

I decided that it’s a call to embroidery. Does anyone want to join my Essex version of the profanity embroidery group? We could all stitch elaborate number nines around a raft of useful swear words.

While we were all still reeling from the complete lack of information given Matt Lucas did a Johnson impression at the beginning of Bake Off that actually had more clarity. I know that I said yesterday that laughter will get us through but I would prefer it if our Prime Minister would make the comedians look less sane than him, not more.

Bake Off was the tonic the nation needed. So, we should stay in, to embroider and eat cake, then it won’t matter that in the Commons, the Prime Minister did actually threaten the use of the military to enforce the  rules if we don’t obey them.

It’s all quite depressing but funny

 I was wrong.

Yesterday, I got myself excited at a briefing by the unholy trinity but when I switched it on it just turned out to be the undynamic duo. Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance (pronounced like the bed sheet and not Holly’s dad) we’re looking very somber. They had been given their shot, without the interference of politics.

For those of us following the data, there was nothing new. It was the same data, in pretty graphs. I expect that people who weren’t following the data wouldn’t have gained any clarity. The deaths are rising but still low, even in France and Spain, that they rolled out for horrific comparison. The terrifying numbers they showed were made up. They were the ‘if we do nothing and the wind is blowing from the west then these are the people that could die,’ school of statistics. They only showed the parts of the graphs they wanted to and said things like, “We know that most of the population are still susceptible,” which really isn’t true. Susceptibility is more than just the people who don’t have antibodies.

After, I felt rather depressed. 

“What difference is that going to make?” I asked the dog. He opened one eye, farted and left the room.

I was wrong about that too.

I thought that putting it on at 11am was pointless. No one would watch. However, it started a general feeling of anxiety. If that was the intention then they’ve done a brilliant job. Even 11year olds, that I taught yesterday were talking about it. Actually, they weren’t talking about the briefing but they were talking about the inconsistencies and a looming lockdown, where they would still have to go to school. They also talked about that man who went to visit his family that live in a castle. If he can break the rules, it made no sense why they had to stay away from their friend at drama club when they were at school with  them all day.

So, the plan seems to have been to put the scary scientists on TV to say, “You are all going to die. Hands, face, space,” while the politicians argue about how to deal with it and announce that there will be an announcement soon. 

This strategy is great for panic and rumour.

I don’t feel very hopeful. I just don’t think the public are going to be prepared to do what they are asked. The government can’t risk closing the economy down again, so they will, in effect, be asking people to only live to work. They probably don’t realise how little most people actually like their jobs. They do them so they can do the things humans are designed for: social connection. 

If they had continued to communicate with us the whole time then we might be prepared to listen. Just as we would if we had been given clear consistent instructions. 

When this virus first started we didn’t know much about it but we do now. We know who is most susceptible. We know it’s a disease of poverty (like most diseases) and a disease of sticky blood.  Nothing has worked in Leicester. Local lockdowns, but still insisting the immigrant workforce (I say immigrant but they’ve probably been here 20 years) continue to work in the sweatshop clothing and overly chilled meat packing factories, hasn’t worked. We need our cheap food and clothes. Allowing their bosses to not pay them if they are sick and not explaining the situation in the languages they speak at home are the things that have allowed this disease to remain rampant in those populations.

I’m wondering if it’s time to stop asking everyone to alter their behaviour and throw the money at looking after those who are most vulnerable. Oh, come on, who am I kidding? That’s never going to happen. It’s totally against every belief of those in charge.

So, here we are, waiting for a public announcement this evening at 8pm (Going up against Bake Off) by the Prime Minister. Only the third in six months. The lightbulb has been changed again and we are back to level 4, which before we came out of lockdown, meant we would stay in lockdown. They have definitely decided to close the pubs at 10pm (which I think is a good idea despite the fact people will be asking if the virus can tell the time). 

My feeling of depression started to lift when I looked at Twitter. People tell me that this is unusual. Twitter is meant to be a toxic place but on my feed it’s all animals, gardens, cakes (did I mention that Bake Off is back tonight?) and jokes. People were discussing a national bedtime as a solution, posting pictures of cats coming down the stairs on their head. Those who had got overwhelmed just posted pictures of their garden or bird table and the jokes came thick and fast. Maybe one of the difficulties England has is that we like to laugh at ourselves too much. How can we take this virus seriously if we are always looking for the joke? But it is the humour that will get you through.

You have to read it in the pools voice (do they still have the pools?)

You Just Threw Away Your Shot

 I can barely contain my excitement. At 11am today the unholy trinity are back on the television with their charts and graphs. Comedy gold awaits. The best news is that I’m not at school this morning, so I can watch it live. 

All of us data nerds know the truth. We came out of lockdown too early. There were still too many cases around and our test and trace system wasn’t working properly. 

However, this is a politically toxic thing to admit publicly. Just as admitting that you flew to Italy in a private jet to have your son baptised and get your best Russian pal to be godfather wouldn’t be a good look, even if there really isn’t anything wrong with that (Italy is in the travel corridor list, so no quarantine required. I know, it’s hard to keep up but I checked.)

Therefore, I’m looking forward to the charts and graphs that prove there are lots of cases and the rhetoric that will follow to imply that it has actually come here again, brought by wayward young people having holidays abroad and not following the rules, which were only guidance but will become rules in an attempt to deflect blame away from the government.

I’m going to watch whatever they say with a feeling of hopelessness. As I keep singing (Hamilton fans will understand), “You just threw away your shot!” 

There is so much interesting body language in this photo that I like to think of as, ‘The room where it happened. Chris Whitty shouts, “You just threw away our shot!”’

The public understood the need to shut everything down to study a new virus, to get strategies in place to treat it, to get cases low enough so they could be traced. This all made sense. They understood the command to eat out to help out. It was time to get back to normal and they have done that. I’m not sure they will understand the next instructions. I’m assuming they will be one thing like, “It’s all your fault. You voted for us. Yes, we are incompetent. But if you don’t do as we say and snitch on your neighbour then we can make life really hard for you.” Chris Whitty’s ears will go pink. Everyone will ignore Sir Patrick Valance and Boris will say something alliterative, funny and quotable that makes no sense.

The frustration in the room where it happens will be palpable because they all know that they had one shot and they blew it.

New Beginnings

 My yoga workout this morning, specially chosen for me by the YouTube algorithm, was new beginning.

It was a serendipitous choice because I was feeling a little sad that today I was planning to break the law. It is the day my son moves back for his final year of University. Due to COVID-19 and the lockdown, we’ve had him home long enough to know that we will miss him when he goes back. My lawbreaking will arise because we are going to help him move and and then go for lunch together. He will be living in a house of six and although I will definitely keep a good distance from them, there will be some polite mingling. 

The yoga reminded me that this is not an end but a new beginning.

I will miss him though, my eye rolling partner. Dinner times won’t be the same. It is only dinner times where he will be missed because that is the only time we see him, even then he’s usually quiet. His lifelong curse of being the second child when the first hardly pauses for breath in a stream of conscious talking has made him a taciturn young man, with a good range of eye rolls. We sit round the table discussing the world. There has been a lot to discuss. When things get a bit fraught, as they sometimes do when people have strong opinions, we sometimes share an eye roll. I expect when I’m the one going off on one he shares the expression with the Long Suffering Husband. 

Being a person of few words, when he does speak he often seems to make us laugh. The other day at dinner he sat down, still flicking through his phone and said, “Well, they’re cheaper than I expected,”

This isn’t a phrase you can ignore.

“What are?” we all asked at the same time.

“Wings.”

You see, he is a man of few words and so we tried to draw out of him what he was actually talking about. He showed his sister the picture on the phone. I was still thinking chicken wings but the LSH was more on his superhero wavelength. 

“You see they’re nice,” he said, “And I’d thought they’d be more expensive, as they’re from a specialist shop.”

“A specialist wing shop?” his sister asked with incredulity in her voice.

We all laughed.

We laughed for a very long time. We still laugh two days later if someone says, “specialist wing shop.”

It doesn’t seem so funny, written down but it is those moments I will miss. Still, at least he’ll probably have a nice, cheap set of wings to fly home and see us if he misses the dinner time banter as much as I’ll miss the eye rolling.

Carping On

 Jacob Rees Mogg lounged about in Parliament, readjusted his top hat, twiddled his monocle and pronounced that us oiks needed to stop ‘carping on’ about how difficult the government was making our lives with the botched test and trace system and be grateful for everything they’ve done for us. It was a moment of jaw-dropping incredulity. Parents are waiting hours in queues, miles from home, with coughing children to get them tested, so they can send them back to school and go back to work. They are not asking for something they want. It’s a government requirement.

He might as well have said, “Let them eat cake,” or got out his fiddle to watch Rome burn. 

This kind of attitude, from our government worries me more than anything. They want to blame us rather than admit to their own mistakes. Their job is to try to make our lives easier and at the moment everything they do seems to make it harder.

Oh, but hindsight is a wonderful thing, you say. That’s no defence in a situation where there was hindsight (from other countries who were ahead of us) and we chose to ignore it. Actually, that’s not fair. It wasn’t ignorance it was incompetence. I don’t know what the right way to handle it would have been but they really should have taken one path and been clear on it.

Unfortunately, numbers of people in hospital and on a ventilator are again on the rise. The proportion of people testing positive is going up, so it looks they the second spikers have got their wish. The government can’t now tell people that it can be ignored because they spent too long terrifying us in the first spike. 

Anyway, I had no intention of going on a rant about the government I was just going to talk about how important ‘carping on’ is an activity. 

In my view, it’s a sport, in a similar vein to a grouse shoot and therefore should be exempt from the rule of six. The health of the nation would improve considerably if groups of thirty people could get together to participate in a spot of carping on. If the government likes, we could invite a, what my daughter always used to refer to as a ‘fish-boy’ to stand in the middle, holding a proper carp.

There are Celebrity fish-boys too

Humans need social interaction. It is more important for our physical and mental health than we realise. The people who have worked, where they meet humans face to face, the whole time, have no idea how devastating that lack of connection can be. Obviously, this is mostly the young, who are now being blamed for killing the old folk, while the old folk, are actually rapidly declining because their opportunities for carping on have been lost.

Churches, choirs and bereavement groups that aren’t charities have all been forced to close (if they ever managed to open in the first place). The AA group that meets in my local green space has been forced to ask a member to leave, which I’m sure is fine. I mean they can always stay at home and have a drink on their own, right?

I worry about how this country’s all cause mortality is going to look and so I would like to propose that carping on becomes a national sport. We would win Olympic medals at it, the fish-boys of Essex would become famous and our government’s current management style has given us plenty of material to work with.

Murdery Sick Day

 A while ago now, we noticed that the dog couldn’t bear to be in the same room as me. As soon as I walked in and sat down, he would stir, even if he was in the deepest sleep, make a grumbling sound, reluctantly get up and walk out.

It always looked something like that. 

Then I noticed that he stayed in the room and often settled down for a nap if I was doing yoga. We speculated that he liked the soothing voice of Adrienne. He used to stay for the Archers but when it got weird with the monologues, like the rest of the nation, he stropped out. 

Yesterday, I had an enforced sick day. I’m not very good at being off. My work ethic and a love for my job makes me hate taking time off, even if I’m sick but in these coronavirus days that is no longer wise behaviour. I asked my daughter for a serial killer documentary, to keep me stuck to the sofa. In the end I settled for a podcast. I went for Serial.

The dog loved it. He stayed in the room for the full ten hours. Who knew that I just needed to listen to murdery podcasts to earn his love? It’s a shame that I’m feeling better and all murdered out because we could be friends again. 

Absolutely Mingling

 I had an absolutely mingling day yesterday. 

This is going to be my new phrase for when every small thing seems to go wrong. You know the days? The ones where you find the keys in the fridge, open the cupboard for the sugar to fall out and the dog lick it up faster than you can sweep, leave the house in your slippers, slam your finger in the car door, realise you’ve left something behind that you need but have no time to get it, call your colleague that you’ve known for ten years Elsie when their name is Elizabeth, come home to find dog sick in your shoes. Those days from hereon in will be known as absolutely mingling days.

The day hadn’t started well. I was feeling poorly. Nothing serious. Just a cold but I was being an attention seeking wuss about it. I hadn’t slept. I tried to do yoga but putting your head below your knees when you are full of snot isn’t wise and I was a bit wobbly. My whole spatial awareness had gone to pieces and I managed to whack my elbow into my knee. I sat down to have my breakfast and Priti Patel was on the radio. I have nicknamed her Absolutely Priti for a while because it seems to be her favourite word. At school, I had a Geography teacher that I called Basically Vine and had a tally on the back page of my exercise book for every time she said ‘basically’. I expect we all have a word but some people’s are more visible than others. 

Absolutely Priti was on the radio being absolutely vile. Luckily, it was the radio, so you couldn’t see the smirk that accompanied her justifying her evilness with a few absolutelys. She was encouraging the nation to report on people in groups of more than six if they didn’t have guns to shoot grouse. She ‘absolutely would’ report her neighbours. The reporter was trying to drill down into what the word ‘mingling’, which we are now banned from doing, actually means.  I did wonder about this myself. I’m not really a very sociable person and don’t like to get too close to people and had always thought that mingling was the kind of socialising you do when forced. Where you keep your distance from everyone, skirt the edges of the room, refuse to be drawn into any conversation by saying, “I’ve got to go, I’m just mingling.”  In my mind these kind of social interactions would be ok. They are preferably 2m apart and definitely last less than 15 minutes. 

While I was listening I sat on the sofa nursing my lemon and ginger tea and watching the birds mingling at the bird table. Apart from the stallings who squabble and peck each other on the head most birds watch from a distance and swoop in and out quickly for their daily fix of suet cake or sunflower seeds.

The reporter asked her if two families of four, meeting on the way to the park would be mingling. Obviously, the answer is that if they are more than 2meters apart and interact for less than 15 minutes and are outside then there is little opportunity for the virus to spread, so people should be careful to keep to these conditions.  However, if they arrange to meet at the park, spend all afternoon in very close contact with the other family and share a picnic then that is the kind of behaviour that will encourage transmission of the virus and should be avoided. She didn’t say any of this. The government’s messaging approach is to keep it simple. They don’t trust us to understand nuance and I expect government ministers are briefed to stick to the words in the message. So, she thought about it for a while and smirked (I was wrong, you can hear a smirk on the radio) and said, “Yes, I would say it is absolutely mingling.”

I found this phrase so funny that I snorted hot lemon and ginger tea all down my front.

I tried to listen to more but the bird table was heaving. A goldfinch was sitting on the sunflower patiently waiting for his chance, two robins balance on the washing line singing, “Good suet cake here! Fresh sunflower seeds!” A magpie clicked from the top of the neighbour’s roof. Blue tits flitted in and out believing that they were small enough and quick enough not to wait their turn. Then a lesser spotted woodpecker landed on the fence. I rushed forward with my camera to try to get proof and banged my head on the patio door. “This really is one of those days,” I thought to myself, “It’s an absolutely mingling day,” which made me laugh and inhale the throat sweet I was sucking. 

It was a beautiful day, so after a weary walk with the dog (in a space I knew I’d see no one) and scratching my arm on a blackthorn bush I thought I’d sit in the sunshine with a book. I’d just settled down when a drunk wasp flew in a wobbly line towards me. I don’t panic about wasps and so just watched it, wondering how many fermenting apples it had munched on that morning. It landed on my bare leg exhausted and confused. I sat still, thinking it would get it’s bearings soon and take off but no, it was an absolutely mingling day and it had to be one of those (if you read the Sun) drunk aggressive German wasps that have invaded our shores and sting people for no reason. 

I’m hoping today will be less absolutely mingling, as I start on my fourth toilet roll and stay inside, having a proper sick day (important when you work across bubbles) and watching murder documentaries. 

Set up for the perfect sick day

Bugs, Kit Kats and Sunsets

I couldn’t write anything for the last two days. I wasn’t sure why. The words just tumbled round my head and never went anywhere. Now that it’s  3am and I’m awake and full of cold there’s no excuse, so here goes. Rambling stream of snot-filled consciousness here we come.

Kit Malthouse did the morning media rounds yesterday and said that we should shop our neighbours if they had more than six people round. This is not the world I want to live in. 

‘Kit Malthouse?’ you say, ‘Never heard of him. Why should we listen to him? He sounds like a chocolate bar.”

He is the Minister of State for Crime and Policing, so I suppose this is government policy now. Be a good citizen, count the number of people in and out of your neighbour’s houses, dial 666 and policemen standing on their heads will answer and say, ‘Rule of Six hotline, which of your neighbours do you hate today?’

This is what happens when you turn a virus into a war. 

It really worries me that we are blaming the young. The old people I know aren’t exactly following the rules either. They might not be putting it on Instagram but they are still having their dinner parties. I know that the implication of the young must be based on some facts from test and trace but to bring in these laws and ask us to report on each other the week students return seems very worrying. A student household of six strangers means that not one of them can have a friend round without breaking the law. Will students be leaving university with a whopping debt and a criminal record?

As I’m full of a back to school cold I’ve been thinking about bugs. Where exactly do they come from? We’ve spent nearly six months, not seeing anyone and washing our hands. The second we are back to school, every single child is full of snot: Sneezing, hacking and coughing all over the place. There’s no reason for this. They are handwashing and using the dreaded sanitiser often enough for their hands to need to join AA. None of them were sick when they came back but just the act of being around people they hadn’t been with caused the bugs that live without bothering their host a chance for new noses to tickle. Because I’ve been teaching for 101 years these back to school bugs don’t normally affect me very much. My immune system is used to mixing and so I just usually lose my voice. This time, it’s gone into complete overdrive. Hence the 3am ramble about snot.

There are lots of unusual bugs around at the moment. At the weekend I spent some time with my camera at the prom, trying to get the perfect sunset picture and was attacked by tiny little flying beetles. It’s probably the weather, climate change or the plague of locusts we were warned about in the Bible.

There are some amazing sunsets at the moment. Let’s hope it’s not because the sky is actually burning.

While I’m writing this ramble of rubbish I haven’t been able to stop thinking about Kit Malthouse. Well, not him exactly but the picture my mind makes of him. He has a huge malteser for a head, smaller ones for hands and feet and the rest of his body is made from Kit Kats. In Japan, you can get Kit Kats in all sorts of flavours and so I imagine this despicable man is made from Wasabi or soya bean paste flavour, rather than the delicious salted caramel ones that have just appeared on our shelves.

Feed a cold, starve a fever.

The Best Christmas Ever: a message for children (and introverts)

 The Prime Minister mentioned the C word. We all know that’s not allowed before the October half term and especially when you’ve still got tomatoes trying to ripen in the garden but he was a very naughty boy and he said it anyway. He talked about Christmas and said it would be cancelled or it wouldn’t be cancelled or that everything would be normal by Christmas or it wouldn’t. To be honest, it’s sometimes difficult to know what the Prime Minister says because he changes his mind more often than he washes his hands and we know how much hand-washing is going on at the moment. Newspapers wrote about what he said and made the headline, “Christmas is Cancelled,” because no writer passes up the chance to use alliteration. 

If, like me, you love Christmas, then you might have been worried.

Some of the events in the lead up to Christmas will be cancelled but the 25th of December will still happen. Father Christmas will still come to your house in the middle of the night and bring presents. I know this because I know that he is magic. He can’t get Coronavirus. I mean, in the thousands of years that he’s been delivering presents has he ever had a day off sick? No. Of course not. Even in 1665, when Samuel Pepys wrote about not being able to go to the Frost Fair because of the plague, Santa still slid down the chimneys and filled those stockings. Santa lives in the North Pole where guard penguins keep him safe from all germs. 

This is, actually, going to be the best Christmas ever. 

With any luck we will even get a bit of snow. It will be like the beginning of lockdown. You’ll get to spend guilt free time with your immediate family. The Christmas tree will go up. You can decorate your garden with twinkly lights, go for long walks and bring back holly and ivy to deck the halls. You can snuggle up and watch Christmas films (which are the best films ever). You can drink hot chocolate and work your way through a whole tub of Christmas chocolates. Mince pies and little satsumas are back on the snack menu, along with all kinds of nuts, including those you have to crack yourself. You might do a jigsaw or some colouring. At school, on the last few days, there will still be all the excitement: the countdowns, the singing and Christmas dinner in your well ventilated bubble room, and, most importantly, the activity book. You can still have a Christmas dinner and argue about sprouts. The grown ups will drink all the sticky sweet drinks from the back of the cupboard and be relaxed and happy.

The things you won’t be able to do are those we can do without.

No woman (or man) will have to cook dinner for more than six people. There won’t be any standing in the cold in a large crowd, waiting for the switch on of the town lightbulb. No one will drag you round a Christmas market, being jostled by all the crowds, saying things like, “Isn’t this fun?” You won’t have to see relatives that you only see once a year and be kissed by the aunt who tells you how much you’ve grown, while gripping your arm so you don’t run away and mortally injuring you with her long fingernails. Your music teacher friends won’t crash into the holidays in an exhausted heap from the concerts that people only seem to want once a year (we won’t talk about their income, though). 

I’m looking forward to it already. Is it too early for a mince pie?

Smell that switch

Smell is a sense that can easily evoke a memory. For me, a scent can trigger a visual memory. If I smell it, I see it.  I’ve always known I was odd. Not in any terrible way but from and early age I was aware that I noticed things that other people didn’t. 

The moment that my mum pointed out that other people can’t see headaches was a shock. 

“What do you mean, you can’t see my headache? I can see yours it’s over that eye, which is strange because it’s normally the other side. Anyway, can’t you smell it?”

I learnt quite quickly that these odd noticings weren’t something you talk about but sometimes they just hit you between the eyes and you forget. This is particularly true of smells. I probably smell more than you do.

Actually, I’m certain I smell terrible because the dog still leaves the room whenever I sit down (except when I’m doing yoga). I know that my skin always has a faint whiff of chlorine but the dog even left the room in lockdown while the pools were closed.

Although my super sensitive nose is a weird thing I don’t think it’s a particular problem. Okay, it was a little tricky when I was pregnant and became a factor when I went bonkers but I’m not hallucinating smells and it’s not just horrible smells, although M&S in town has a whiff that shouldn’t be associated with a food shop.

I can tell when someone near me has a wood burner going. I can smell when they harvest the wheat. Some days I can smell fish on the wind and then the sky fills with gulls. 

Because this has happened since I was very little (probably birth) I’ve not had them all named. I remember the shock I felt when I smelt a bottle of Mitsuko perfume because that’s how I thought lipstick smelled.

I’m not someone that likes unperfumed soap because then you can smell the fat. The days of hand sanitiser are causing me a few problems because the visual images they trigger are of hospitals and things I’d rather not remember.

I’ve just confessed to all this and realise that I sound totally mad. Normal people don’t do this, surely? But it’s not all bad. 

For the last week the telecoms company have been in school putting in better cables. When the government could close the school at any moment, having a working internet system is important. You see the men on ladders or scrunched up in a corner, with their meters, testing the switch. 

“Oh, wow! Smell that!” I said as I walked past one.

He looked at me quizzically, as I was transported back to my youth. My Dad had just arrived home and was taking off his motorcycle jacket. He beamed and told me about his day.

The engineer coughed.

“Oh, the smell? Well, it smells like telephone exchanges.”

I took another breath in and was transported to Blackmore telephone exchange and long summer holidays filled with freedom and learning the resistor colour code (BBROYGBVGW).

“I used to think it was electricity. It’s similar to what you get if you stick your nose in the plug socket but less fishy and more like hay. Not the hay you get from rabbits cages but the hay that is round the strawberries.”

I should have stopped at telephone exchanges. The engineer was looking at me with a face that said, “They let these people teach our children.”

“I only teach music,” I blurted out and scuttled on past, leaving him staring at me, open mouthed.

The Rule of Six

Chris Whitty is back in the TV. It’s serious. Boris starts to speak: Hands, Knees and boompsie-daisy. Face, make space, don’t kill your gran. Get a test. Don’t get a test. Moonshot testing. Reach for the moon with your testing ambition because at least when you fall on your arse you are looking at stars. Go to University. Don’t socialise in groups of more than six. Christmas is cancelled. Back to normal by Christmas. Dancing in the Streets. Christmas. Spring.I’ll make it simple. Just remember the rule of six. Don’t want to blame people. Breaks my heart to do so. Backs two horses. Flat out. 

Chris Whitty rolls his eyes and talks about ‘if’ we ever have the technology to test in that way. He thinks Christmas is cancelled. Spring might be OK.

It’s all very depressing.

Once I heard Boris mention the rule of six I couldn’t concentrate. I thought it was something I’d vaguely read about once. Was it to do with writing? I didn’t think so; that was the rule of three. Three things are better than two (which is why we have Patrick with Chris and Boris - no one listens to him but he is there to make the others more interesting). I thought it was something to do with screenwriting, so I had to look it up.  It’s a video editors rule book. If you’ve ever watched a film then the experience will have been made better by the rule of six.

The Rule of Six is Walter March’s list of priorities for editing film.  “If you have to give something up, don’t ever give up emotion before story. Don’t give up story before rhythm, don’t give up rhythm before eye-trace, don’t give up eye-trace before planarity, and don’t give up planarity before spatial continuity.” 

This quote probably makes no sense unless you are an editor, bothered by the intricacies of which bits to cut out but I wondered if Johnson was using it in an attempt to edit the history of this pandemic. There are bits he would love to leave on the cutting room floor.

The trouble is that the rule of six tells is not to cut the emotion before the story and the overriding emotion for most of us now is confusion. Murch, knows how difficult these editing decisions are and so has a whole chapter of his book called: “Don’t Worry, It’s Only A Movie.”

Unfortunately, it’s not a movie and the bits the Prime Minister doesn’t like can’t be made to go away in the blink of an eye or the click of a mouse in an editing software package.  

Very Limited and Specific Lawbreaking

 You’d forgotten about Brexit hadn’t you? What with all this pandemic malarkey, leaving the EU didn’t seem to be anything to worry about and the government had promised us that they had a half-baked deal anyway. Coronavirus cases are on the rise, it is illegal to meet more than six people socially from Monday and it’s probably only a matter of time before we have to stop doing everything except work. None of this is being taken too seriously though because they talked about Brexit in parliament.

It turns out that the microwave meal isn’t good enough (they never are in my experience) and they are going to change it. Obviously, they can’t do that because it’s breaking international law but they are going to anyway. 

When Northern Ireland secretary, Brandon Lewis was asked about it, he said that it does break the law but in a “very limited and specific way.”

Everyone in prison has broken the law in a limited and specific way.

“Oh no,guv, I didn’t just murder him. I broke every law it was possible to break. The murder was quite limited and specific, though, I admit. It was only one person and I only stabbed him. Poisoning and strangling seemed a bit pointless.”

This means that if we are asked to stop the freedoms they have given us and we don’t want to, we will be prepared to break the laws in a limited and specific way or take a drive to a castle to test our eyesight. I can’t see new restrictions being very effective, especially as we weren’t meant to be seeing more than six people not in our household anyway, unless they were two households. This is all about lack of clarity of message. Wash Cover Make Kill Granny is confusing. People aren’t following the guidance because they can’t see the point of it. It’s not logical for it to be safe to cram onto the tube to go to work but not have drinks with 15 mates in your garden. I met an old lady yesterday, who had just come off the bus. Her glasses had steamed up from the mask and she wanted to tell me her whole life story. “I hate this bloody virus,” she said, “It’s worse than the war. At least then we knew what to expect.” I’m sure hindsight has something to do with how she feels but it’s not a great testament to the government’s communication strategy.

In this era of the world going crazy, I have noticed that many things seem to be breaking the rules in limited and specific way. Last night we spent half an hour chasing a wasp out of our bedroom, only for it to come back in four times. Normally, they are thrilled to have their freedom.

My body decided to break the rules in a very limited and specific way too when I swam last night. I had hiccoughs. This is not something I’ve had when swimming before. I hic’d every three to four strokes. It even happened when I was under water. At one point a bad front crawler splashed an armful of water up my nose and that didn’t even cure it. 

Let’s hope this trend of breaking the law in unusual but limited and specific ways doesn’t continue. Who knows what will be next. I could get flowers on my strawberry plants.

The Evil Blame Game

Public Health Officials and governments are worried. The rise in cases does appear to be significant and not just a recording error. This wasn’t meant to happen. What went wrong? It has to be someone’s fault!

I hate this kind of thinking. I’m against blaming even governments and actual decision makers  because  I believe that they are trying their best. They might be stupid or misguided but no one does something intentionally that they know will make things worse. Okay! I know you are shouting ‘serial killers’ at me now and I’m being overly kind to evil people but I honestly think their motivation is always to make things better for themselves. Sometimes it hard for people (and governments) to see the bigger picture.

The current rise in cases is being blamed on ‘young people’. The local director of public health was interviewed by our local newspaper yesterday. 

https://www.facebook.com/essexlivenews/videos/1317546381962382/

Dr Mike Gogarty - interviewed by Essex Live

He was very good: clear, calm and mostly kind. He was certain that the virus was going to take hold again and kill lots of people. He said that the reason the hospitalisation and death rates aren’t rising is because the cases are in young people. He blamed the ‘hospitality industry’. He said that the first lot of cases we had were from schools, where people came back from skiing holidays, then he says there was a spike where it travelled around care homes. He didn’t appear to agree with the government that schools were safe but did concede that here was a reluctance to close schools because education is so important. He answered questions I thought he wouldn’t. He suggested that if young people were going to live their lives normally (and why shouldn’t they?) they might like to think about not visiting their elderly grandparents (which seems sensible). He appeared just as confused as the rest of us on the guidelines for having another household in your home. I, and the journalist, thought you still had to socially distance, but he seemed to think that wasn’t necessary.

At the beginning of the interview he said that clear messaging that was going to keep us safe. His message was to get a test if you feel unwell and self isolate, so you don’t infect anyone else. That seems simple enough, right?

Except that many people are asymptomatic. Is feeling a ‘bit off’, which he said a third of a symptomatic people said after they tested positive, enough to warrant a test? I ask because, like most people, I feel a ‘bit off’ most mornings.

The government insist that they are handling this pandemic well. They are ‘world beating’! Therefore, when things go wrong it is our fault for not following the guidelines properly.

I noticed that on an article about a school that had to close because five teachers tested positive someone had commented that it will have been because the teachers weren’t following the guidelines in their personal life and would therefore face disciplinary action. I found this horrifying. So, if a teacher tests positive and has left the house for any reason other than to go to work they can be disciplined? That is no way to live.

By the evening the government had latched onto the idea that it was all the fault of young people and had come up with a new zippy slogan (their version of clear messaging). 

DON’T KILL GRANNY!

Now, this is just evil. This is just what we need. A generation of young people blaming themselves for the death of their elderly grandparents! Sorry. I mean grandmothers because you can kill as many grandfathers as you like.

The truth is that none of us know how we catch bugs and when we do it’s not our fault. If we all try our best to socially distance, wash our hands and stay at home if we are ill then this thing might not kill our elderly people but if it does then it’s not our fault. 

Data Nerd

 So, the schools have been back less than a week, people are mixing again and the number of people testing positive for Covid is rising again. The doom merchants are thrilled by this. “We told you,” they say gleefully. Matt Hancock appeared surprised. He talked about a worrying spike caused by young people but reiterated that young people should continue to go to school because the young don’t pose a significant risk. 

Personally, I’m on the fence about the whole thing. It doesn’t surprise me that cases will rise with more mixing but I have noticed that with that rise there don’t seem to be more hospital admissions. The people who are catching it aren’t getting too sick. If we can’t stop or prevent a disease (and we can’t prevent all viruses affecting us) then what we want is for it to be non life threatening. It might be too early to say but I’m watching the data. 

The fact that I’m watching the data also makes me less inclined to panic about this rise. Whoever puts these figures on the government website is awful at their job.  I am a data nerd. If they are going to use figures to frighten us then I want to be able to see that data and check its accuracy. Yesterday, the number that were reported as having tested positive has nearly doubled. This is the exponential growth (R greater than 1) that we all fear: the second spike. I wanted to check the number of tests carried out to see if the proportion of positive tests was greater but whoever updates the government website can’t be bothered to put in accurate daily figures and so it looks like the exact same number are tested daily for a whole week. (175687 every day for the last 4 days, 186500 daily tests for the 7 days before that). 

I was hoping to see these rises in more detail but that part of the website hadn’t been updated. 

I haven’t been that worried by increases in positive tests, although a doubling is troubling. (I feel a song coming on). I keep thinking that if the government really do want us to go out and spend our money then they need to calm, rather than scare us.  To calm myself, it’s the hospital admissions, number of people on ventilation and deaths that I look at. These were all steadily falling. Hospital admissions had a little rise at the beginning of September but are falling again. I’d like to see how many people are admitted each day to hospital but the same person who puts the testing figures in must be on that job. I do not believe that exactly 124 people were admitted to hospital with Coronavirus every day for the last four days.

The real reason I’m not panicking about yesterday’s rise in positive cases yet is because I got a little anxious on the 28th of August, looking at the people on mechanical ventilation. The numbers had been falling by one or two a day and were down to 64. Then on the 28th they suddenly leapt to 71 but were back to 60 the next day. 

I know the government are stressed but I would really appreciate it if they could publish accurate data and get someone to check the work of the data entry clerks. It worries me that they could be using inaccurate data to make decisions that affect people’s lives.

Listening to The Archers in bed

 I’m having a lie in this morning. I still woke up at 5am but there’s a BBC radio 4 researcher asleep in my living room and it would be a bit rude if I woke her up to do my morning yoga. When adult journalist daughters come back to live with you and coronavirus restrictions ease you start to meet their friends.

“Hello, nice to meet you,” I said when she arrived. 

I confused myself for a second because I knew we hadn’t just met and I thought she had visited more recently.

“Mum! It’s only been eight years!” My daughter rolled her eyes, meaning the length of time we had known her, not when I last saw her, which was only last month. She was the first outsider to stay in our house after the pandemic, so my greeting was suspiciously formal.

I think it was a reaction to having been at work for a couple of days. The Telegraph has an article today, that isn’t worth reading, that says if there’s another lockdown teachers mustn’t be allowed binge watch Netflix. Clearly, it’s Netflix’s fault for the collective tiredness of teachers and has nothing to do with trying to ram facts into the heads of 30 small people while getting them to wash their hands one hundred and eleven times a day!

I’m rambling. Sorry. I was going to tell you about Sunday morning lie-ins.

When I realised that a lie-in was on the cards it reminded me of my old life, where I could sit still and binge-watch Netflix. I thought it would be fun. I thought I might read a book, think, blog from bed and maybe even stay here so long I could listen to the Archers. 

This thought made me feel suddenly depressed and I remembered how I’d ranted at the researcher about the state of The Archers the previous evening. 

I was initially supportive of the new format’. I didn’t mind listening to the inner thoughts of the characters, although we all knew David’s inner monologue would be incredibly dull.   I could forgive the dullness because things were odd. I was just grateful that they could continue recording from their bedrooms. I was surprised that they couldn’t talk to each other because it didn’t make sense for radio if they weren’t in the same room. People didn’t stop talking during the pandemic. There was the phone and zoom and people on dog walks talked more than normal in real life. However, I forgave BBC radio 4, particularly because More or Less was the voice of pandemic reason. 

Now, though, I’ve had enough. I do not want Lynda Snell’s inner thoughts on her sex life. A whole episode on why Robert has little blue pills in his pocket was just the weirdest thing to listen to. Alice’s alcoholism spiralling out of control would be bad enough but listening to her inner thoughts as she blames everyone and justifies her own behaviour makes her unlikeable and completely changes the dynamic of her character. I want the old Archers back. 

And I hate the folky theme tune!

   

Clear, consistent rules

I had a lovely day yesterday. The children were back in school and it was fantastic. Anyone who was worried that children would struggle with the new Coronavirus rules needn’t have. At school, they have to follow a whole set of new rules anyway. It doesn’t make sense to them that they have to walk in a line to get to another room. They have no idea that they have to put their hand up to speak, they don’t know that there is a separate bin for tissues or that there are zones in the classroom (the building things stay in the building zone). A good teacher will have communicated all of these rules, clearly and consistently, so that by the end of the first morning 28 out of 30 children know exactly what is expected of them. By the end of the year, the teacher will aim to have all 30 obeying the rules but the truth is they will all be clear on what the rules are but one or two won’t think they apply to them. Maybe we should nickname these kids the Dominics.

It was an absolute privilege for me to watch an amazing teacher at work, while I hung around with the four year olds. Teaching is all about brilliant, calm and kind communication with no mixed messages. 

I was thinking that the government could learn a lot about communication from watching a brilliant teacher with a class of four year olds. 

When I got home the news confirmed my thoughts.

Children back to school. The government says that they aren’t at risk of Coronavirus. Parents given a new list of COVID-19 symptoms in children.which include diarrhoea and vomiting, headache, being a bit listless or off their food. If they are sick phone up to get a test. People who have done that have been sent over 100miles . The government has said that is wrong and they should only have to go 75miles. (They really haven’t understood the idea of keeping a virus in place have they?). Go back to work. Don’t go back to work. Eat Pret. Laugh at adverts on the underground if you aren’t lucky enough to like the people you work with. Buy disinfectant but don’t use too much because picking up the odd bug is good for your immune system, just make sure it’s not COVID-19.

What we wouldn’t give for clear consistent messaging being delivered in the happy, kind, sing-song voice of a reception teacher.

You know you’re obsessed when....

 I’m working with a group to transcribe the court records for our local Moot Hall. I’m currently working on 1898 and the writing is terrible. I feel as though I’m making half of it up. I’m so embedded in the time period that I walk along the main road to town and I can see the ditch and fear falling into it just in case I get covered in leeches. I walk along the old railway tracks, spot a deer in the distance and look round for Young Woskett, with his gun, greyhound and extra deep pockets.

I think I’m slow and should work faster but the proper historians in the group say this is thorough.

There is one case that I have been obsessed with. I think I mentioned it before. Ebenezer and Thirza Finch took the headmaster of the National School, Mr Charles S Barker, to court because he had thrashed their son, also Ebenezer. The headteacher, obviously, got away with it and it didn’t do much damage to his reputation. I became a little obsessed with the boy. I wanted to know everything that happened in his life after that.  I walked past the house where he lived and tried to imagine what it was like. I became fond of him. I don’t think he was a bad lad and wonder if this injustice affected him for the rest of his life. 

However, I have been trying to put it behind me and continue with the tussles of lads who fight over a pail of whelks for 3/6, the drunk and disorderly cases and the man who refused to show his paperwork when moving his pigs.

Yesterday, however, I was in school and I came out of the toilet and tripped over a box. Literally. At the top of the box was this picture.

“My boy is in here somewhere,” I thought. The date in pencil on the back confirmed the possibility. The headteacher certainly was there. The evil looking man in the moustache caused the hairs on the back of my neck to bristle. “That’s him,” Ebby whispered in my ear. “Next to poor Jim, with the shiner and look at  Alfred with his hand on his head. It was Alfred’s testimony that let Basher get away with it, you know.”

I was telling the rest of the group about my find on a zoom call (don’t mention the wet cat) and said, “I’m so obsessed that you can’t believe how happy I was to trip over that box.”

“You didn’t trip. It jumped out in front of you. That’s what happens d with historical research.”

You know you’re obsessed when inanimate objects leap into your path.

Oh yes, that’s how you know you are obsessed. It’s not when you have conversations in your head with someone who died the year you were born or when you get up at 3.30 to do a bit more research on Mr Basher, I mean Barker.

No news is good news

 

When I woke up this morning, I thought I had nothing to write about. Then I remembered that no news is good news.

Breaking news is still happening on my dining room table. My daughter managed to keep her new job in the latest round of local news redundancies but they don’t have an office to go back to, no matter what Boris says about the Pret economy. However,  I’m back at school so it’s not so ‘in my face’

It doesn’t stop me reading it, though and yesterday I was very happy for Extinction Rebellion, as a routine fire alarm allowed their protest to be reported.

https://www.essexlive.news/news/essex-news/live-updates-chelmsford-county-hall-4473670

The sudden evacuation of County Hall turned out to be a non-story just as a small protest always is but two non stories can get into the press.

People often complain that the press never writes good news but any writer will tell you that stories without conflict are boring. 

This is why I thought I had nothing to write. I went into school. It was fine. There are few differences but it was fine. I tidied my room, took down an old display, thought about the upcoming academic year. 

Small things like tidy pencil pots make me happy

After school I met a friend and we walked to town for a cup of tea and shared a scone and family news. We laughed at the table next to us trying to wrestle a wasp into one of those little jam pots. “Just call me Carol Baskin,”she said’ “I’m not giving up until this stripy thing is in here!”

Then I walked home, walked the dog, went for a swim, made tea, read some of my book and went to bed. 

I’ve got nothing to write. It was just a good day.

I was thinking about parents who are anxious about their kids going back to or starting school. The best thing that can happen is that they pick them up at the end of the day, hoping for a blow by blow account, only to be met with a shrug and to be told nothing happened.