Getting out while we may

Bronte and Byron told to 'Stay!'

Seizing the fine weather and my right to walk, I exercised the dogs by walking round the fields. Border Collies are built to run all day and need exercise,  Most of us in Hundon are still following the instructions of the Stasi to avoid travel, but there were a good number of cyclists enjoying the day, plus other walkers and one on horseback. To stay in on such a fine day would be too cruel; the whole of nature is waiting to show off her finery, with the trees in bursting leaf and the hedgerows thick with blossom. Certainly, this time is drawing us closer, and everyone I pass shouts a cheery "hello", from their safe distance across the road, or retreating into a leafy layby off the path till we pass.

We all try to stay in touch in different ways. In Telford, son Ben and grandson Luke too are out enjoying time together. Living in separate households they cannot physically draw close, but very sensibly both happen to walk at the same time, meeting by coincidence in the same place, but keeping a legal distance apart. Last night, many of the family joined together for a quiz on the HouseParty ap. They are planning another for next week, which we hope to join. This clever ap allows everyone to be seen simultaneously in their own little corner of the screen. Very clever.

The Burial of the Free

A previous post (Set me free!) bemoaned our loss of freedom and the ready compliance with which we are following constraining, draconian instructions without protest. That piece quoted a poem by Browning, but a number of people have suggested The Burial of the Dead from Eliot's The Waste Land:

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

Mixing memory of freedoms lost with desire to be out again in the spring weather is surely apposite. An article in the Telegraph today reiterated these views. As usual, the pliant press kowtow to the government line, constantly repeating their refrain and transmitting the daily propaganda campaign on all channels, unedited and without criticism. We are told the government are curtailing our freedom in arbitrary ways, while dissenting scientific views from other epidemiologists or medical specialists in other European countries are dismissed and ignored.

No, we don't want to overwhelm the Health Service, but now we have gone too far and many beds lie empty and idle. Freedom is the right to choose, and people should be allowed to choose their own risk level. I am at high risk and would not wish to mix in crowds, but I should like to go for isolated country walks or simple drives to alleviate the tedium. Other people should be restricted if they are infected, and their contacts limited in their movement. But the majority of young, healthy people should be allowed to choose if they wish to meet their families, go to work, or open the shops on which their livelihood depends. Toby has opened a new website, Lockdown Sceptics, where people can share their views on this. Unlike many proponents of modern woke who blindly "no platform" anyone they disagree with, his site is not a blind rant and welcomes reasoned discussion from both sides.

Oh no!

splash
went my phone in the loo
I closed my eyes
and gave out a big sigh -
it was a doubly sad sight to see
for I had, just minutes before,
unfortunately had a huge wee.

Annie Elliott

On another note, I think Ann must have taken my plea to turn away from our reliance on China, because this morning she threw her iPhone in the toilet. Well, to be strictly honest, it was an accident. The phone was in the side pocket of her cardigan and fell out when she stood and turned round. The poor woman had to fish it out and wash it in the sink as thoroughly as if it had contacted the dreaded CV, but happily it seems to work again OK now.

Hares behind Hundon

Hares behind Hundon

Farmers used to burn off the stubble at the end of harvest, until the fire in one field grew out of hand and spread to some nearby woods. In another case, dense smoke from a field billowed across a main road like a thick black fog causing some accidents, and after that parliament banned the practice. Thereafter, they generally buried the stubble with deep ploughing, but even that seems to have gone out of fashion now. In the fields round us, farmers merely seem to flatten the stubble with the harrow, then plant the seed through it. Now the new crop is pushing up in neat green rows between the rotting remains of last year's crop. This must be more efficient, and leaves the fields a deep russet but dirty ochre, rather than the heavy brown loam of the bare soil. This is much better for we walkers too, for they often ploughed their deep furrows right into the footpaths, making it hard to walk even round the edges of their fields. Now the land is quite flat and hard after the long dry spell, and the walking is pleasant and easy.

Walking the dogs in the fields behind us, two hares were chasing each other in the spring sunshine enjoying last year's stubble. They were the other side of the field before I could point my camera, so could only be taken on the highest magnification, blurred and shaky, yet still worth capturing to remember a moment of nature's freedom. Seeing the speed of their race, I can well understand the saying, "run like a hare!" Country people used to set dogs coursing after hares, but it must have taken a fast breed of dog. Perhaps that's what the whippet and greyhound were bred for; they still chase a hare on the dog tracks. These dogs are called sighthounds, for they rely on visual pursuit rather than chasing a scent like foxhounds. Our Bronte is a scent dog. Whenever M-A has visited, Bronte picks up her scent, sniffing the path and following hoping to see her again. But it will be some months before that happens.

This afternoon, I asked my granddaughter to draw me a rainbow to celebrate the NHS. This evening, true to her word, she posted it through our letterbox, complete with clapping hands! Thank you so much - we love it, and it is going to get pride of place in our front window.

Rainbow over Hundon

SET ME FREE!

I do not want to die this month. April is a month for the return of warm days and flowering hope, not for dying alone in some forsaken hospital ward or nursing home. Amongst the fragrant flowers and cherry blossoms it is hard to remember how confined we are. But other countries are faring even worse, and perhaps Robert Browning would still plead his desire for home from his confinement in northern Italy.

Home-Thoughts From Abroad

Oh, to be in England
Now that April's there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England - now!

As the lockdown continues, the economic cost of the devastation grows ever more huge. Thousands of shops and businesses may never reopen; many hundreds of thousands of people may be permanently unemployed; airlines are going under and even some universities may be forced to close through loss of fees. Surely it is time to reopen some shops and factories with shoppers and workers isolated by distance as they are now in supermarkets, rather than break ourselves completely on this catastrophic economic iceberg?

We are all being watched now…

ssh
ssh,
curtains
curtains twitching,
watch and tell
someone's not isolating
at least not very well,
phone
phone
the police
someone's cheating
in our very street.
Someone laughed-
I distinctly heard-
call the paper
spread the word
better still,
social media needs to know
shame your evil neighbour
to Facebook friend and foe.

Annie Elliott

I do not wish to die, and Ann and I would remain self-isolating as would most sensitive, vulnerable people, yet I yearn to leave home. People sitting alone in parks or walking the lonely moors should be granted that freedom. Surely it could do no harm to allow limited travel? To drive in the car to a remote place, for a quiet sandwich or flask of coffee with a change of view? To buy fuel from a self-service automated filling station? It is frightening how rapidly the English have become subservient, obeying arbitrary rules without question. Even worse, it is scary how we are being encouraged to become narks, spying on each other, reporting our neighbours to the thought police who are only too eager to attack basic liberties. How easily the Gestapo must have found it to impose control; how the Stasi would rejoice at the way we roll over at the slightest intimidation of a fine. No need for torture or reprisals here; at this hour, I think even Robert Browning might have second thoughts about returning to England, ex-land of the free.

Seeking companionship in memories and literature

Our April garden

It is spring, and all around the blossoms have burst forth and the trees are rich in their fresh green smocks. Son Edwin planted the flowering trees a few years ago, and are a reminder of him now we are kept apart. Walking in the silent fields, the skylark sounded so close and loud, yet too high for me to see him. This beauty in isolation is a small consolation for losing contact with friends and family, with the children and grandchildren we each miss, and the lack of fellowship in our homes or pubs. Ann and I are fortunate to have each other; but many older people living alone must feel totally isolated.

Books are an invaluable companion during lockdown. For a little while, we enter a world apart, carried to a realm we can only imagine by characters drawn from the mind of the writer, yet who seem so real we feel they are neighbours or relatives we have known all their lives. We follow their lives within the pages avidly, eager to know what happens next, or if they will succeed in whatever task the author has set them, or how they will escape some impossible situation. We admire them or hate them, or fall a little in love with them, or wonder how they could be so blind and silly doing something that will clearly bring them harm, and think either "I would never fall for that," or "I wish I could meet such a person!" At the end, if it is a great book, one wishes it could go on, to see how they progress through life, and feels the sudden absence of the protagonist as a death and sadness.

My current book, The Little Paris Bookshop, is such a one. The bookshop in question is a floating barge on the Seine. The bookseller, known initially just by his surname, Perdu - a name that means 'lost' or 'wasted' - likens books to an apothecary's medicines, prescribing them to his customers according to the sickness they carry within; but for himself, he has found no such balm. Yet one book gives him solace, written some years ago by an anonymous writer about whom he has often wondered, until a chance change in circumstance leads him to travel across France to trace this mysterious writer. Each page leads the story forward, and one wonders what will happen next and eager to learn. It is simple escapism in a forest of new characters and friends.

Kind comments and Chinese trash

One pens these thoughts and presses "Publish", only for them to vanish into the aether. I don't get many comments or feedback, and never know who is reading them, but a generous comment came from Hijaz Shaikh today: "This is my first time visit to your blog and I am very interested in the articles that you serve. Thank you for sharing and don't forget, keep sharing useful info." Thank you for this! It's nice to know it is being read somewhere in the world.

On a sadder subject, how many of you have bought "bargain" items on the internet, only for them to prove useless? For a long time, China has been renowned for forging counterfeit goods such as clothing or other goods. This obviously was harmful to the luxury goods market, but was generally harmless to the customer, who was happy to buy something marked Prada or Ralph Lauren, at a cheap price. But now, the Chinese are copying Western technology to produce inferior articles that simply don't work.

Some time ago, we had a good quality printer, needing expensive replacement cartridges. We bought them from a supermarket, but they wouldn't work. On examination, the little copper pads that connect to the printer controller didn't have any printed-circuit wires to them, and the cartridges had no chip inside. They were marked as made in China by HP, but we do wonder about the quality control.

Amazon is particularly careless in checking what it sells. Recently we bought a Crock-Pot and used it for a slow-simmered vegetarian dish. The old one had worked perfectly for a long time. We could leave it on all day gently simmering, and it never burnt the food, but not only does the thermostat not work on this new one, the non-stick pot is more like a glue pot. It wouldn't stop boiling even on the low heat, and the food burnt so completely round the edges I had to scrub it repeatedly to try and get it clean. I can only conclude that this too is a poor Chinese copy, masquerading as the real McCoy.

Ann was once recommended by her hair stylist to buy a set of hair straighteners made by ghd (good hair day), a reputable brand. She bought them on Amazon, but they were shoddy and the thermostat didn't work properly. If she'd tried to use them, her hair would have been singed beyond recovery, never mind straight! We had to throw them out and she then went onto the company website to buy them directly from ghd. These were perfect - so the others must have been Chinese fakes.

The old Trade Marks used to boast: "Made in England" or "Made in Germany", and one knew that meant good quality. They say, "Buyer beware", but it is hard to beware when we don't always know the true country of origin. President Trump has a good point when he says, "Make America great again". We should strive to make Europe great again, and stop being so dependent on shoddy Chinese manufacturing, or downright counterfeiting. It is time to stop giving China our technology, just for them to rip it off and sell it back to us. Far better to have fewer things, but better quality that lasts.

Projected CV deaths in UK to 12 April

Projected and actual deaths in UK to 12 April 2020

Continuing the graph of projected and actual deaths in the UK, the predicted death rate has fallen from the early projections, and hopefully reflects a continuing trend. The total number of deaths has continued to track the predicted (red) curve, but should begin to dip below the projection in the coming days as the hard lockdown continues to bite into the infection rates. These statistics only record people who died in hospital with confirmed CV infection. Many more, perhaps twice this number, die unrecorded at home or in care homes.

Today, 12 April, would have been my mother's birthday. I can't remember this happening before, but checking the calendar I find the last time this happened in her lifetime was 1936, when she was 29, so that is not surprising. Edwin was only 1 year old when she died, so cannot remember her, but the other children remember her fondly. Both she and my father ended their days in a care home for the blind. They, and countless millions like them, gave so much, not just to us but to their country, building the wealth we inherit, or caring for others as my mother did as nurse and midwife. Yet their deaths would have been unrecorded in the statistics of this chart, unnoticed and under-appreciated. It is time we recognised and saluted these other thousands of people who die alone, unacknowledged by the governement.

Boris has come out of hospital for recuperation at Chequers, raising everyone's hopes over this early summer that we may turn a corner and begin to return to some semblance of normality. This will probably not include me or Ann visiting the outside world for some time though, as we remain firmly in the "at risk" category.

Walking the dogs this week, I saw a horse being trained in a paddock. The girl handling it held the horse on a long rope so it could canter in circles round her. To keep it moving, she had a small dog running at its heels, yapping loudly and continually. Every now and then she yelled an order and the dog moved to face the horse, forcing it to turn round and run the other way, providing exercise for both animals with minimal trouble to herself. Today I walked past with Ann and our dogs, but everything was as still as the church yard graves we walked through. Not a car nor person was stirring, and we didn't hear a single dog. It was as though the plague had already swept through the whole village and every beast and person had died.