Another prick

 The last time I wrote about covid was shortly after I'd had the first of two vaccine injections back in April. Subsequently, on 30th June, I had a second one. That was that, I was led to believe, no more covid worries, herd immunity, get on with your life and all that gumph. Well here we are in December and I'm waiting for a booster. It's booked for 7th January and I'm not feeling great about it.

When they were first talked about, it was my understanding that booster vaccines were for the elderly and the vulnerable but the government are now pushing a huge roll out to everybody. There've even been glimmers of discussion around mandatory vaccination which has already begun in other countries and which fills me with horror. The horror does not come from the vaccination itself, after all I've had two willingly and I'm signed up for a third, but from the possibility of the state mandating what I put in my own body. It infuriates me that the law tells me what I'm not allowed to put in my body but to be considering a situation where people are being forced to have a vaccination, sometimes against their will, is abhorrent to me.

The booster 'push' has been expedited because of a relatively new variant of the virus which started in southern Africa, called Omicron. This variant is potentially transmitted more easily that others, including the Delta variant, and that appears to be the driving force. Not being a virologist I thought I'd read a bit about this new variant to understand why there's so much fuss about it, so I Googled it and went to the World Health Organization's website. 

This is what I read: Transmissibility: It is not yet clear whether Omicron is more transmissible (e.g., more easily spread from person to person) compared to other variants, including Delta. The number of people testing positive has risen in areas of South Africa affected by this variant, but epidemiologic studies are underway to understand if it is because of Omicron or other factors.

Followed by: Severity of disease: It is not yet clear whether infection with Omicron causes more severe disease compared to infections with other variants, including Delta.  Preliminary data suggests that there are increasing rates of hospitalization in South Africa, but this may be due to increasing overall numbers of people becoming infected, rather than a result of specific infection with Omicron.  There is currently no information to suggest that symptoms associated with Omicron are different from those from other variants.

And then: Effectiveness of vaccines: WHO is working with technical partners to understand the potential impact of this variant on our existing countermeasures, including vaccines. Vaccines remain critical to reducing severe disease and death, including against the dominant circulating variant, Delta. Current vaccines remain effective against severe disease and death.

Current vaccines remain effective against severe disease and death. 

So why, I ask myself, are we being told by the government that we should work from home again, and use a vaccine passport when going to a club, under what they are calling Plan B? And why are they drawing up Plan C to track people going to pubs and such? It makes no sense to me. Especially as it's unknown how severe this variant is. 

I've been vaccinated, practically everybody I know has been, and those that haven't have chosen that risk. Deaths of people with coronavirus — and I make a point of saying they are deaths of people with coronavirus, not from it — are down by 90% from the peak last winter (almost a year ago) and hospitalisation from the virus is rare amongst vaccinated people. So why the restrictions on liberties? And how many more times is this going to happen? 

The vaccination was the key to our freedoms and yet, despite the immense success of the programme, our freedoms are still being limited. Frustratingly they're being limited by a government that is repeatedly proving itself to be untrustworthy and lacking in integrity as bit by bit revelations of rule breaking and mid-lockdown parties leak out.

I had the job of cancelling our work Christmas party last week and it was a sorry affair because as I was doing that, thousands of others were doing the same thing around the country. I could almost hear the hospitality industry groaning in despair. These new restrictions and the fear that's being instilled in people will put companies out of business and people out of work, and yet I read time and again that the new variant is mild or, at worst, an unknown quantity. There are a lot of 'just in case' actions being taken and I don't like it. It smacks of politics. The government can't be seen to be the people that let folk die of covid (understandable) yet the longer term affects of missed diagnoses, delayed treatments by a health service prioritising covid boosters over many other appointments, or the surge in deaths from alcohol for example will, I suspect, be far further reaching.

* * *

Since I started writing this blog a couple of days ago the PM has announced a major push in booster vaccines. One million jabs a day to get everyone fixed by the new year. Now we see on the news people queuing for hours on end (two, three, four hours at a time), the NHS working at full tilt to accommodate it and lateral flow tests, which people are offered free of charge, have run out. This coincides with the first studies, coming out of South Africa, which conclude the risk of hospitalisation with the Omicron variant is significantly lower than with the Wuhan strain or the Delta strain.

It feels to me like the government has overreacted and caused panic; I've decided not to bring my booster vaccination date forward.

Of course, these could be the last words of an idiot. I might catch the new variant and be the second person to die of it. The country might crumble under the economic and social strains brought about by Omicron and this could quite simply be the beginning of the end. Let's hope not, eh?

Then there's the media commotion. These two articles are both on the home page of the Telegraph today. So what are we to believe — serious peril or no worse than flu? It also feels like there's a lot of contradiction which is confusing. No wonder the panic.  

 

It's all just so miserable, after nearly two years of this it feels like the end is continually being kicked down the road and that people have settled with this new state of affairs. Maybe that's why I'm finding it so difficult to accept the new restrictions and why it feels like another lockdown by stealth. I appear to be in the minority.

Bitter Orange Tart

Three weeks into the new year and 2021 is already weird. Coronavirus continues its rampage around the world, the UK is in another national lockdown and has essentially closed its borders to the whole of South America, Portugal and South Africa because of new strains of the virus. Not that there are many people flying at the moment anyway. 

At the same time the amazing news is that we are now working with three vaccines in the UK and more than four million people have had their first injection. Vaccination centres are popping up everywhere and at the speedy rate we’re going it looks like everyone will have been inoculated much sooner than predicted. Mid-July keeps being bandied about as a possible date, though there is also talk of people having to be vaccinated again in the autumn. I wonder if it might become an annual thing like the flu vaccine – time will no doubt tell.

Alongside these headlines are those of the number of deaths happening every day which reporters bark at us, albeit with a sympathetic tone, every time the news comes on the television. Something that I’d like to look at though is how many people died of covid rather than with covid. Given that hospitals fill up in the winter anyway, and the headlines every year include stories of bed shortages and the struggling NHS, I wonder why the difference in winter deaths this year compared to previous years isn’t being highlighted. That to me would be a better indication of what Covid is doing. But then the headline: 1,600 people die with a Covid diagnosis in the worst day yet of the pandemic, doesn’t have quite the ring to it as: 300 more people died this year to last.

I’ve been tracking Covid 19 rates in the ten boroughs of Greater Manchester since the beginning of October and this second wave, as it stands, hasn’t reached the levels of November, and what's more, rates are dropping again now. The increase could be attributed to mixing at Christmas, though I think the majority of people followed the guidelines closely, and the downward turn of the graph could be attributed to the national lockdown. It’s difficult to say, especially when you consider that the November restrictions were heralded as a success in Greater Manchester despite the fact that rates were already decreasing when they were imposed. 

What I have noted however is that Greater Manchester rates, whilst following national trends, have been significantly below London rates and also well below England rates. Make of that what you will.

So whilst all this rumbles on, as it has for almost a year now, we look across the pond to the United States where today – 20th January 2021 – Joe Biden will be inaugurated as the 46th President and Donald Trump will leave Washington. This wouldn’t usually be of much concern to me, I’m not especially interested in American politics, but this is going to go down in history as a notable transition of power. Firstly because (of course) Covid 19 is having an impact and the crowds of hundreds of thousands that normally attend the event are being asked to attend virtually instead. Deaths from the virus in the United States have surpassed 400,000 as of today so it’s simply not safe to have people gather in large numbers. A field of flags will represent the people that would usually be there and this will be one of many changes to the ceremony.

In addition to the crowds another notable absentee will be the outgoing President. Trump has said he will not be attending in a snub to Biden and a continuation of his belief that the election was fixed and he should have won. The Vice President, Pence, will be there in his own capacity and not a representative of Trump.

There are concerns over safety in Washington DC today so security has been massively boosted, beyond, it seems, the levels normally seen at an inauguration. This in the most part is a reaction to the events of 6th January when, in scenes you’d expect from a developing democracy, a tyranny or a totalitarian system, the American Capitol building was stormed by protesters. Congress were gathered to confirm the electoral college vote and confirm, once and for all, Biden’s success when, egged on by Trump at a rally, hundreds of people forced their way into the building in an attempt to disrupt the process.

It was truly shocking to see politicians and staff fleeing to escape, and rioters marauding through the building. Tear gas was fired by the police as they tried to regain control and workers barricaded themselves into offices to avoid the protestors. Five people died including one police officer who was hit over the head with a fire extinguisher.

I won’t labour the story as news of it was reported around the globe, however I will say that it revealed the passion, disillusionment and dare I say it, hatred felt by one side of what is essentially a split country.

So back to the UK and Nigella Lawson has chosen today to tweet her recipe for Bitter Orange Tart as recipe of the day. Coincidence? Who knows but if you fancy giving it a go here it is: https://www.nigella.com/recipes/bitter-orange-tart 

Gas Giants, Brexit, Mutant Viruses and Christmas 2020

It’s the day after Boxing Day. The month since I last wrote has whizzed by and the world again seems to have been tipped on its head. I suppose that’s one thing you can say for sure about 2020 – there’s never been a slow news day.

At the end of the last lockdown the tier system of restrictions was restructured and strengthened. In Manchester, which remained in tier 3, pubs and restaurants didn’t reopen but some shops did. Rules about Christmas gatherings were announced and as expected they were to keep it low key. It was all a bit gloomy.

Then followed the news that the MHRA had approved a Covid 19 vaccine for use in the UK which was a massive breakthrough. Within a matter of days the first person in the world received that vaccine in Coventry, on 8th December, and to date around 800,000 people have been inoculated. I suspect that because of my age and good health I’ll be quite low down the list and may get my chance in late summer.

As we’ve come to expect from 2020, with the good news comes the bad. Reports of a significant mutation in the virus were hot on the heels of the vaccine. It appears to have originated in Kent and infection numbers in the SouthEast began rocketing. The new variant which was identified in September and sequenced in October, transmits faster and is more infectious than its predecessor. The increasing numbers prompted the Government to put London and a chunk of the SouthEast into a new Tier 4 with almost immediate effect. Christmas plans were scuppered for millions and the capital essentially shut down, but not before thousands of residents, keen to get to their families for Christmas, rammed train stations and a mini exodus out of town took place on cramped trains.

Countries around Europe, fearful that the new strain might land there, immediately banned flights and ships from the UK. Most noticeably France, simply because so many cross border goods go through Dover and Calais. The channel tunnel was closed and Dover port became a car park with hundreds of drivers stranded there over Christmas. I read reports of locals lowering food packages down to them from motorway bridges and skirmishes with police as drivers who wanted to be home for Christmas became increasingly frustrated. I suppose the travel restrictions were to be expected but I suspect the mutant virus (as the papers refer to it) is already on the continent given that it was seen so many weeks ago and it’s been recognised in Brazil too. On top of that, a third strain has been noted in South Africa leading to further flights being grounded from that country.

There have been other UK restriction changes in different parts of the country as of Boxing day, though Manchester remains frozen in suspended animation as it has been for months. Infection rates across all ten boroughs have begun to creep up again, but not at the same rate as they have in the SouthEast. In fact rates seem to be on the increase across Europe generally as well as in parts of Asia and it feels like there’s a race between Covid and the vaccine. A second vaccine, developed at Oxford University and with AstraZeneca is due for approval imminently and as it’s easier to handle and transport than the Pfizer vaccine it’s hoped that the programme will speed up.

In the meantime Christmas has come and gone. For many it’s understandably been a quieter, pared back affair, though the Government did authorise mixing of households for those not in Tier 4. We had Chris’s folks round, as we have done many times before, so it didn’t feel all that different. 

Outside of the pandemic – for there is still a world out there – and just in time, a Brexit deal has finally been agreed. Boris Johnson addressed the UK on Christmas Eve to tell us that trade deals have been agreed alongside fishing rights, a move away from the European Court of Justice, agreements on data security, policing and travel. Naturally there is still a split between those who voted to remain in the EU saying we’re in a worse position than we were before and those who voted to leave saying we now have the freedom to chart our own course. Time will tell who is right though I reckon it will more than likely be a mix of the two. I for one am optimistic about the future – let’s see what happens eh?

And in celestial news, on 21st December, the winter solstice, Jupiter and Saturn, two of the solar system’s gas giants, were in alignment with the earth in what is known as the Great Conjunction. Their positions, so close to each other in our skies, made them look like one bright body and while this happens about every twenty years it seems they were closer than they have been for some for eight centuries. Typically it was cloudy in Manchester so we didn’t see a damn thing.

Covid comes home to roost - Tier 3 for Manchester, a positive test and a national survey.

Back in August I started writing about the situation surrounding Covid 19 and never finished. I wrote: 

The country has been creaking to life for over a month now but is still far from normal. Here in Manchester we've had new restrictions in place for a couple of weeks meaning two households aren't allowed to come together either at home or in a public building. Some venues are only just opening – theatres for example – but are doing so with all manner of precautions and restrictions in place.

We ate at a restaurant for the first time the week before last – Croma our regular haunt – which was nice but again a weird experience. The staff, many of which we know, were all in masks; we weren't supposed to be with someone who wasn't in our household so we said that our guest was a lodger; and tables had been removed. We'd been to a pub a couple of weeks before that.

And that's where I stopped. Interrupted and never to return. Until today... 

I'd have hoped that by now, in the second half of October, things would have improved but sadly not. We seem to have gone the other way.

A week ago the Government introduced a tier system for areas and regions in the UK whereby restrictions designed to slow the infection rate of the virus would be imposed dependent on its severity in that area. I've never heard the words 'Tier three' so many times before in my life since then.

This is a screenshot of today's (21 Oct) Manchester Evening News website with every mention of Tier three circled. See what I mean?

It's understandable, I suppose, when you appreciate that local representatives in Manchester have been negotiating (or fighting, depending on your viewpoint) with central government for a package to support the people that will be affected by the regulations when they are imposed and we move from our current position in tier two.

The new restrictions will mean that pubs cannot serve people drinks unless they are having a meal, this coupled with the ten o'clock curfew which has been in place across the country for a month (21 Sep), and the table service rules feels like another nail in the coffin for the industry in this area. There will inevitably be a knock on effect beyond the pubs and bars that simply have to close – taxis, cleaners and takeaways spring to mind, not to mention the supply chain. Additionally households are still not allowed to meet indoors and now in some outdoor settings too. Travel restrictions are also in place – though I don't think they are actual bans, more recommendations. 

It's become quite confusing for a lot of people, what they can and cannot do, and I can see how it's affecting people's state of mind too. With a full lockdown then three months of restrictions behind them, and now being told it's about to get worse for the foreseeable future, people are getting lockdown fatigue and stress levels are rising.

The way I see it is that the rise in infections has correlated with the return to the city of students, the opening up of schools, and the inevitable mixing that they have been doing. I understand the evidence of infections happening in pubs to be weak at best. 

I've been in a number of pubs over the last few weeks and in each you're expected to register yourself either with the government tracing app, or write down your information for them to hang on to in case there's an outbreak and they need to contact you. You must wear a mask when you're not sitting down – even to go to the loo. Ordering, on the whole is done via your mobile phone on apps and through websites. There are one way systems where feasible and there's sanitiser and warnings everywhere. 

Each and every place I've been to has been managed well and to the regulations. I struggle to see how closing these places down will make a significant difference to infection rates. If anything, the curfew has been more counterproductive as town and city centres across the nation are suddenly flooded with pissed people just before the clock strikes ten.

The wrangle between Manchester's Mayor, the Town Hall, and the leaders of the ten boroughs, and Central Government has been big news and my position on it has changed a number of times since it began. 

I'm not a fan of Andy Burnham, nor was I in favour of introducing city mayors when that happened a few years ago, that being said I was generally supportive of his response to Government saying that the city needs robust financial support to help the people that will be adversely affected by the new restrictions and who will only be entitled to two thirds of their salary, as opposed to eighty percent under the furlough scheme. I was in agreement more so when he suggested a scheme of protecting the vulnerable and allowing others to carry on in the current manner – something I would like to see across the country.

There have been moments when he's appeared to be showboating, he's also been accused of political grandstanding and using the situation for his own interests. I think his intentions are genuine but I can also see a grain of truth in these suggestions. Regardless, he is being hailed as a hero by many and we are now in a different place.

Yesterday the Government took the decision to end negotiations and impose the Tier three restrictions with a fraction of the financial support Burnham et al had requested. There has been a public backlash against this already and in an city not know for its favourable view of the Conservatives, I suspect this decision will ring in people's ears for a generation, much like decisions made by the Conservative government of the eighties did across the north. But time will tell.

Manchester is not the first area to have these restrictions in place, Liverpool was the first, then Lancashire and it now looks like Sheffield and South Yorkshire are doing the same with West Yorkshire and parts of the North East in line next. New Tier two restrictions have been introduced in London, Birmingham and parts of Essex.

To be clear though, whilst rates of infections have increased, deaths involving covid 19 are nowhere near the levels they were earlier in the year. This is down to a number of things including increased knowledge, improved treatment, more testing, and I dare say, the ages of people that are picking it up is currently lower and younger people are less likely to suffer badly from it.

That brings me onto a more personal note. My dad, who is seventy and currently in hospital, has been diagnosed with Covid 19. 

He fell at home on 5th October and after using his magic necklace to alert the emergency folk was taken to Blackpool Victoria hospital where he stayed till last Thursday. When he fell he fractured the very top of his arm, near his shoulder. The recovery situation is complicated by the fact that he uses a frame and with the fracture he can't grip it properly so can't walk. On Thursday he was moved to a place called The Arc which is a hospital where they work on getting him back to a state where he can leave and live independently. Apparently this could take five or six weeks.

At some point between Victoria and the Arc he's picked up a dose of the coronavirus. Currently he's asymptomatic and we're hopeful he'll stay that way but it's a bit scary. On the other hand, he doesn't seem at all bothered by it. He's being isolated for eight days which, as he's already in a room on his own, isn't much of a difference. He's probably seeing more people there than he did at home. So we'll keep phoning him – after all we're not allowed to visit – and see what happens.

Another new turn of events that's been brought on by the pandemic is Chris's work. He's taken on a temporary job which involves delivering and collecting covid tests and surveying people about their recent activities. It's part of a survey for the Office of National Statistics and whilst it's not the most challenging thing he's ever done it keeps the wolves from the door and him out of mischief for a few months.

So the world as we once knew it is still massively disrupted. I'd go as far to say that it feels more disrupted than during the full lockdown but, that being said, we still have friends, and work, and family and things to keep us entertained till the dust settles and we can all get back to some semblance of normality, which I expect will now be in the spring.

The country opens to the sounds of wailing and gnashing of teeth

    This weekend saw lots of places reopening for the first time after the lockdown. Pubs were, of course, top of the list for many people. 

I'll be honest, I'm really missing a pint of overpriced, cold, fizzy lager, poured by someone with a bad attitude and the social skills of a badger, but that being said, I chose not to venture to the pubs just yet, opting instead to wait and see how it went for others.

I know a few people that did go out on Saturday and it seems, on the whole, to have been a positive experience. My boss went to a place in Chester with some friends and said it was a bit clinical and a strange set up but he's glad he did it. He told me there was a one way system in the pub, which judging by the shops that are open was to be expected, but rather unexpected was the fact there were so very few tables and their nearest one was apparently more than ten metres away. Drinks had to be ordered via an app, then brought to the table by someone wearing a visor. Even going to the loo was monitored by a member of staff with only one person at a time allowed to use them.

Other friends were on Canal Street in central Manchester and reported that it was a nice atmosphere. They sat outside, under parasols, again being served by staff at their tables - staff who were pleased to be back at work no doubt. One even reported the journey home being civilised with people observing social distancing rules, a far cry from the usual last train to Stockport

There have been reports of people flouting the rules and overcrowding streets but people have flouted the rules throughout in one way or another and the papers have got to get their story. Judging by the media it seems the worst area for this was Soho in London but what did anyone expect? It's arguably the busiest night time area in the West End of the biggest city in Europe. Besides, it's not like the people there don't know what's been going on for the last three months - surely it's time to let them choose their own level of risk now the general risk is so low. It seems the venues are mostly doing the right thing, of all the venues in Manchester only two were closed down on Saturday for not adhering to guidelines.

Few and far between were the stories about how great it was to support the hospitality industry as it tried to pull itself back up from on its knees after a crippling three months brought about by a global health crisis.

    After much wailing and gnashing of teeth on social media, the Prime Minister has announced a large funding package for the arts in excess of £1.5 billion. This comes at the end of the week where the Royal Exchange Theatre announced that up to 65% of their roles were to be made redundant, a flurry of images appeared across Facebook of people working in the arts to remind everyone of its importance, and the actor Paul Clayton referred to the PM in an astonishingly shrill tweet as a 'fucksplat'.

I get that the arts in the UK is an almost entirely politically left-wing affair, but the vitriol I've heard from those that work within the industry, directed towards the Government and particularly Mr Johnson of late has been astounding. One might presume from listening to it that he is single handedly responsible for the collapse of the theatres, festivals, live music and the death of all its darlings. I have visions of Ken Loach and Maxine Peake fearing for their very lives as Boris Johnson stalks them down the South Bank of the Thames with a blunderbuss in one hand and a Union flag in the other. 

    Hairdressers, barbers and beauty parlours have also opened their doors again and people are being restored to their pre-lockdown appearances in their droves. The wild man of Borneo look is gradually being replaced with the less unruly, short back and sides; appointments are gleefully being announced as we say goodbye to three inch stripes down the partings of people I always assumed were natural blondes; and we bid adieu to laughter lines, furrowed brows and thin, spiteful lips as the botox & fillers clinics fling open their expressionless doors once more.

    Sadly dentists are not yet fully operational. I called mine this morning to ask about having my temporary crown replaced with the permanent one which they've been holding to ransom since early March, only to be told that they're waiting for PPE, an acronym few people understood in February but that is now part of the lexicon. They can't even give me an idea when they'll be open again so for now the only thing they're doing is pulling folks' teeth out in a dental emergency.

    While all this goes on, or doesn't as the case may be, there's a constant, squawking murmur in the background. As persistent as it is irritating, a whinging chorus of voices claiming to be confused as to what they should do at every turn. Is it two metres or one? Can I go to work or not? The Government should do this, the Secretary should say that. How will I possibly live my life if I'm not instructed precisely how to undertake every single task that involves human interaction or leaving the house?

Swathes of society seem to have relinquished the ability to think for themselves and use common sense. The pedants are out in force - he said, she said, that means, etc - and are desperate to make the most minor things more complicated than we could ever have imagined. Often this is done on behalf of others who they neatly categorised as 'the vulnerable.' Call my a cynic but I suspect they are in fact looking for problems in order to criticise the powers that be. It's really tiresome and my snooze button has been out in force on Facebook again.

The vulnerable people I know haven't once complained that the information is confusing. My housebound dad and Chris's elderly parents have trooped on as usual, taking onboard the precautions they're advised to take and using their nouse to decide when something is right or wrong for them.

    So as the country begins to creak back to life I'm looking forward to going out for a nice meal in a local restaurant some time this week. Croma, our usual pizza place, isn't opening up again for the time being so I think we'll pop down to Saray instead for some Turkish tucker and show our support for the family that own it. Hopefully there'll be a local pub open too, somewhere I can sit in a booth and drink over priced, cold, fizzy lager poured by someone with a bad attitude and the social skills of a badger.

Statistics and Death - the miserable post.

Statistics are funny buggers aren't they? I learned this many years ago when I worked for MORI, the polling and market research agency. I distinctly remember how careful you had to be when presenting your project findings because clients were apt to claim all manner of wild and wonderful things to make interviewee responses suit their product or business plan.

You'll have seen the TV adverts that claim '98% of people said this product made them more beautiful / gave them an IQ of 200 / elongated their whatever...' and then underneath, almost apologetically, in brackets, and tiny letters, you'll see (of eleven people surveyed), there was lots of that at MORI.

You'll forgive me then, I hope, for taking the cavalcade of Coronavirus critics, strutting their stats on social media, with a pinch of salt.

Opinions are like arseholes: everybody's got one, most of them stink, and I'd really rather you didn't push it in my face if it's all the same. For that reason I'm not going to go into where I stand on the plethora of stats coming from every media outlet in the world, suffice it to say I think it's too early to discuss who did what well and who didn't with regard to the pandemic.

The one source I look at regularly, is the Worldometer website's Coronavirus updates. It gives me a way to look at what's happening in each country, compare them and rank them by a number of different factors including number of cases and deaths per million. Still I'm not sure if these are correct figures, I've just read that deaths in the UK have surpassed 40,000 today and yet this website tells me it's less than 35,000. I can't possibly know but by using one source (which I assume is unbiased) it at least gives some continuity.

It's easy to look at these numbers and forget that every integer is a person. The Top of the Pops of which is the worst country this week suddenly becomes rather grim when you take that onboard.

But how else are we supposed to deal with what's happening if we let ourselves get tied up in the reality of every individual case. We'd surely go mad.

When faced with large scale death we must employ coping mechanisms, otherwise how would someone be able to continue living after a war or genocide? How could someone work at an abattoir or be a grave digger?

Statistics become a defence strategy. We can't grieve for everyone.


Yesterday my youngest brother sent me a message to say that our dad had fallen. When you get to his age you don't just fall over, you have a fall. Fall is no longer a verb it becomes a noun. Having a fall is an event when you hit three score years and ten.

I got as much information from him as possible - the who what where when and why protocol - assessed the situation and let my uncle know. I took the decision not to call my dad last night and instead phoned him this morning.  I assumed he'd be fed up of telling the story again, he'd be sore and crotchety, and maybe even a bit embarrassed.

When I called him this morning he seemed in reasonable spirits. His voice sounded feeble but then it always does now. I asked him how it had happened and he told me that the biddies, the elderly woman he pays to clean for him and her ancient mother, had put a square of carpet down to cover a worn patch on the floor, he'd not known it was there, tripped on it and fallen, cracking his knee on the bedside table.

Thankfully my cousin was only a few minutes away as she'd been round to run some errands for him. She waited with him, and got a carer to come to attend who determined there was no need for a hospital visit.

Since then social services have agreed to come in twice a day instead of once, giving my cousin some respite and possibly alleviating the biddies from some of their duties.

My mum died when I was in my mid twenties, and despite having been treated for cancer for the best part of a year, it was a shock. It felt like it happened very quickly. It feels to me now like my dad has given up and is just waiting for his turn. There's no fight or frustration, just acceptance, which I struggle to understand. We've had the conversation about his funeral and whenever I speak to him there's nothing to say. He's stopped reading, he doesn't go out (though I suspect if he wanted to he could) and despite a polite interest in what I'm doing, the conversation has all but stopped.

The speed that my mum went - four days after the final incident - was difficult to deal with but likewise this drawn out affair is tough. I just hope it doesn't happen before the country opens up again, I feel like I should see him again.

Spying through the garden fence

I was sitting at the table in our garden yesterday, resting after having lunch in the sunshine, my mind wandering, when I noticed a pair of beady eyes watching me through a gap in the fence. In the split second that our eyes made contact they were gone again.

"Chris," I called, "I just caught Mary spying on me."

"It's not the first time. See those holes?" he pointed to where there had been gaps left by knots in the wood, lower down the fence, "I plugged them last week."

He immediately got to work finding something we could cover the gap with.

Mary is our 87 year old neighbour, we share a drive with her. According to her daughter in law she has Parkinson's and a touch of dementia. Chris says we could have worse neighbours, noisy kids or yobbos, so he puts up with her. 

She has a tendency to be nosy and loves nothing more than gossiping about people to the neighbours. When I recently cut Chris's hair in the garden she'd obviously seen me doing it and asked him if I was a hairdresser. Chris lied and told her I was and now the neighbourhood has been informed that I have my own salon.

Shortly after catching her peeking Mary called over the fence. "Chris, Chris! Lockdown ends on Monday!"   

She seems to have been oblivious to the rules of the lockdown since the beginning, trotting out to the shops two or three times a day with a scarf wrapped around her face, her crimson bobble hat pulled down tight over her head and her wrap-around mirrored sunglasses finishing the look. She's been sent home at least three times from the hospital for turning up unannounced and her family appear to have absolved themselves of all responsibility.

Mary and I don't see eye to eye and I won't take any of her shit but I'm conscious of her age and condition and despite what people think, I am compassionate given her situation. I was the one that turned the hob off and alerted her when I smelled gas billowing out of her back door, and when she fell in the bath and was covered in bruises I offered our services if she needed anything from the shops. We're not mates, and she torments me, but I'm not a monster.

Mary is clearly aware of the lockdown but I think it's safe to say she doesn't completely grasp it. What little she reveals to us is, I suspect, taken from headlines in The Sun. Our warnings to her have been ignored or forgotten and her family are nowhere to be seen. It must be lonely for her in the house on her own but I suppose this is nothing new for her as she's lived alone for years.

I think her sons should be doing more, but maybe they're on the phone to her every day and I shouldn't speculate. It's hypocritical of me to judge them anyway, after all I've not seen my dad since Christmas day and I only speak to him once or twice a fortnight. He too lives alone, though he is less mobile than Mary, and less inclined to tell the neighbours that I'm a hairdresser.

Part of the reason I haven't seen my dad is because he doesn't live down the road and we don't have a car. I planned to go over for his 70th in March but travel restrictions kiboshed that. His life has shrunk noticeably in recent years but the lockdown has affected him in different ways. He's been unable to get Tesco deliveries because of increased demand so now my cousin goes to see him every day and takes him a hot meal. She's been a superstar and arguably the lockdown has worked out better for him because of her efforts.

Chris's parents are royally fucked off with staying at home. They're in their eighties, and very mobile, so not at all happy with being told to stay at home. They did as was advised and expected for a long time but recently they've decided to loosen the self imposed reins a little.

They appear to have the same weird fascination with supermarkets that Chris has, so they've been doing the rounds. Sainsbury's, Aldi, Waitrose, M&S Food and Tesco have all been visited in the last week. God knows why they need to go to the supermarket so often. Maureen recently revealed to me that they currently have 63 toilet rolls at home, tins of beans and salmon coming out of their ears, fridges and freezers filled to bursting with ready meals, bleach like it's going out of fashion and more cereal than can be made from the wheat fields of East Anglia. On top of that they have a milkman delivering fresh dairy a couple of times a week. 

This isn't unusual lockdown hoarding, it's always been like this. They had no concerns when the supermarkets were being stripped bare a few weeks ago, they were sitting on a pile of groceries that could've filled Marks and Spencer twice over. None of it ever wasted and all of it accumulated on a rolling basis over a number of months.

I can appreciate how frustrating it must be for them having to stay at home. I have the benefit of continued work and the Government advises that I can leave the house every day - and I'm bored shitless. They are being told to 'shield' themselves by not going anywhere till June.

Maureen especially needs more human contact than WhatsApp and the telly can offer because she's looking after Brian who suffers from Alzheimer's. He still retains much of his character, he's charming and funny, but the difference over recent years is noticeable.  He's always checking his pockets for his car keys, he's very forgetful and often repeats the same comment or question over and over, a favourite being 'How's life in general?' He has a habit of drifting off.

He wouldn't be able to look after himself any more and so Maureen has taken on many of the things Brian would once have done. For the time being at least he can still drive short distances with Maureen as a passenger but I think this is likely to come to an end sooner rather than later. I've not spoken to them about what happens then; they live on a small housing estate with not much within walking distance and Maureen doesn't drive.

The obvious response would be to give or sell the car to Chris and we can spend more time helping them out but I don't think it's as easy as that. The car is a symbol of a much bigger thing and giving it up, as they will inevitably have to do, will mean giving up their independence. The longer they can keep using the car, even for the little things, the longer they remain self reliant.

I've not had a car for four years and you find work-arounds but I live somewhere well serviced by public transport, with lots of amenities within walking distance, and I'm not 84 years old.

So back to the lockdown - is it worse for the elderly? In many cases yes, just look at what's happened in nursing homes and care homes around the world. I have a friend whose mum is in a home where four people have died from Covid 19 and who is battling it herself right now. I can't begin to imagine what that's like either for mother or daughter.

Under normal circumstances my dad would probably be better in a home but I'm glad he isn't right now. He has his emergency call button if he falls, my cousin sees him every day and he has some social care from the NHS. Right now I'm happy with that and thankful he isn't in a more vulnerable position.

The lockdown is obviously different for everyone. It would be wrong to assume those over a certain age are all in the same boat, yet the Government guidelines have done that to some extent. That being said I think it was inevitable given the timescales and level of knowledge about the coronavirus they had at the time the guidance was issued.

Many people are unhappy about the way the Government have dealt with the situation, and that's understandable. I wonder though how anyone would have done it and if a different Government would have managed it better. One thing's for certain, we'll never know that.

This Government and its response will be judged in the fullness of time, probably in comparison to other countries, and then eventually, many decades from now, it won't matter to anyone who was in charge, it will have become a piece of history about our country, to be learnt from or otherwise.

Right now though, before this pandemic becomes historical fact, and before it goes through the rigmarole of politics, it's about the people that are living it and that's why, when I caught Mary spying on me, I let it slide.

San Francisco on my mind

Chris and I spent Saturday afternoon painting the walls at the back of our house. The old red brick now brightened up with the Alpine Blue masonry paint which took five weeks to travel from Darwen to Altrincham and finally to us. We're getting lots of jobs done during the lockdown, jobs which might have still been ideas if we weren't restricted to internet shopping and staying at home. I've never seen the cutlery drawers so neat before.

One of the lovely treats of being at home all weekend is when friends visit unannounced, usually on their daily day-release walk round the neighbourhood. I was putting some plates in the dishwasher after lunch when I heard David and Dino calling from the street to the garden and saw Chris wander down the drive to greet them. We had a ten minute chat and catch up, them on the street and us at the front door naturally. You really appreciate proper, face to face contact with people when you go so long without it.

Dino, who teaches fine art at Liverpool John Moores, is still working and having to adapt to online tutoring. I'd have imagined it would be pretty tricky to do but he's modified the way he works, like many of us, and he even says there are definite benefits to it. Not least of which are reduced stress levels from not having to drive from Salford to Liverpool every day.

Earlier in the day Matthew had stopped by to drop off a book. I have no idea when I'd mentioned it but I'd said at some point that I hadn't read The Days of Anna Madrigal, the last in the Tales of the City series, he remembered and, kind soul that he is, lent me his copy. The logistics of giving someone a book when you're supposed to stay two metres apart from each other are surprisingly problematic, especially when I was lending him one of mine in return. How does one land a hardback book in a friend's open backpack from six feet away without lobbing it at the back of their head?

There was a bit of a debacle last week when I ordered two books from Waterstones, one for me and one for Alison, only for them both to be delivered to her, in Leeds, on consecutive days. I've been in touch with them, offering to send one back, post-lockdown, and suggesting they post me a copy to Manchester as they were supposed to. I received an automated response to say their customer service team are working through a backlog dating back a month and my query is in a queue. I can't say I'm surprised they have such a mountain of complaints when they struggle with something so simple as putting the correct address on a book, but never mind, everything is forgivable in the age of Coronavirus.

In the absence of my new book Matthew's unexpected delivery was a welcome surprise. Especially as without it I'd have been forced to carry on trawling through Dracula, which I ordered while drunk one night thinking it was about time I actually read it. It's alright I suppose, it's just so Victorian and verbose, and the writing so small, that a chapter can take what feels like weeks to read. I get a far bigger sense of achievement with larger fonts.

For years I've had a habit of buying books which I think I ought to read so my bookcase is filled with unread classics such as Anna Karenina, Moby Dick and The Dharma Bums which sit neatly next to John Irving, Stephen King and (for shame) Helen Fielding. I'm a terrible snob when it comes to books so both the Brigit Jones books - given not bought - are hiding behind a Christmas Cactus, and my Stephen King horrors, well thumbed and secretly loved, are stashed behind a pile of my granny's antique Charles Dickens novels. I've even been known, in the height of my snobbery, to put what I consider to be higher brow books on shelves at eye level and trashy ones lower down, out of immediate eye line. Thus Doris Lessing and James Joyce enjoy the heady heights of the top shelf, unread of course, while The Lovely Bones and Life of Pi languish at knee height.

For a very slow reader I think I'm reasonably well read. I've read Frankenstein, Wuthering Heights and The Go Between for example, and my favourite authors are Salman Rushdie and Gore Vidal who are both revered. However the fact that I turn my nose up at George Orwell and I stopped reading Brighton Rock at page 215 with only thirty two pages left to go leaves some of my friends aghast. And as far as I'm concerned Dickens can do one - they made me read that at school and it was dullsville in my opinion. I tried The Hobbit when I was a kid and I shan't be going back there either, Tolkien is banished in this house.

Anyway, I'm rambling, where was I? Armistead Maupin - certainly not high brow but a master storyteller and a favourite all the same.

Thankful to be able to ditch Jonathan Harker and his drearily lustful pal, Nosferatu, I started reading The Days of Anna Madrigal. I first came across Tales of the City at the age of eighteen when Channel 4 broadcast the mini-series based on the book. It was a revelation to me to see gay people on the telly and as I was, let's say, exploring my tendencies, I was initially hooked into it by that. Then of course the storytelling grabbed me and I was addicted.

I didn't know then that it was based on a book, assuming it to be just another TV series and it wasn't until I was twenty that I saw it in print after seeing a dogeared copy on a toilet cistern in Shrewsbury. Since then I've read the lot, aside from this weekend's delivery, and even seen the author at a book reading and interview in Salford last year.

Maupin has a talent for plonking the reader in San Francisco, in any given year, and making you feel like you know it intimately. I suppose that's what a good writer should be able to do and he has this skill in abundance.

In 1997 Chris and I took our first holiday together and at my insistence we went to California rather than Florida, somewhere he'd been time and again. My primary reason for this was that I didn't want to go to all the places he'd already been to with his awful ex. Another reason however was that I wanted to go to San Francisco and that desire was based exclusively on Tales of the City.

We originally decided that what we'd do is book our flights in and out of San Francisco, two weeks apart, and find accommodation when we were there, each day dependent on where we found ourselves driving to. While booking the flights and chatting to the travel agent, she revealed that her cousin Peter lived in California, in a place called La Jolla in San Diego. He was originally from Wythenshawe in south Manchester and had been in the merchant navy, settling in California, marrying and having a child. Since then Peter had been busy setting up a construction company, splitting from his wife and shacking up with an Asian boyfriend called Stan, many years his junior.

"You should go and stay with him!" she said, so she arranged it and we did.

With a couple of weeks to go before our holiday we thought it might be a good idea to at least ensure we had some accommodation when we landed in San Francisco so we got looking. The internet in 1997 was a cumbersome beast in comparison to what we have today, in many ways like a kid at a special school, small, slow and dim, so Chris asked around people he knew for recommendations of where we might call and book a night or two in advance.

Luckily someone from a record company he used to deal with knew somebody in San Francisco who knew somebody else that rented out a room. This was ten years before AirBNB was conceived but essentially that's what we were going to do. We were given instructions for how to find the friend when we landed, agreed a price of $40 a night, and that was that.

Landing at SFO via Chicago and after about nineteen hours travelling we bumbled out into the dazzling California sun. This was pre-mobile phone for us and all we knew was that we were to find the 'friend', a woman in a champagne coloured VW Beetle. Surprisingly she found us in minutes, packed our cases into the boot of the car and we sped off into town, her chattering away, a dime a dozen, and interrogating us about our journey.

We arrived at a typical wooden Victorian house in the Mission District. The 'friend' hoiked our bags out onto the pavement, then taking the steps at the front of the house two at a time, bounded to the front door and hammered on it. A young man came to the door and with wildly expressive arms flying around her head like a windmill, she explained who we were and introduced us then immediately went on her way with a parting "Good luck you guys!" I'm not sure if it was meant for us or our new landlords.

The couple, one Brazilian, the other French were strangely quiet and moody for hosts but welcoming and generous all the same. They had the middle apartment in the house with neighbours upstairs and down and, once cash had changed hands for the room, they gave us our own key and showed us around.

The place felt spacious and was filled with bohemian touches, a battered old ladder in the bathroom in place of a towel rail, wall hangings, plants everywhere with fairly lights twinkling away in them and a huge cactus bedecked with glow in the dark stars.

I was immediately jealous after all I'd grown up, in a small terraced house in the countryside in Oldham, and only ever lived in Chris's house in Sale, a small semi on an estate, since moving out. This place was wildly exciting to my unsophisticated, twenty one year old eyes.

We were shown to the guest bedroom, a large room with a bay window at the front of the house, and told that we could use the whole place as we saw fit, only their bedroom was off limits which was understandable. Delirious from jet lag and having been awake for the best part of twenty four hours did what any sensible travellers would do, we unpacked, had a half hour lie down, then headed out to find food. That night remains a blur in my mind simply because of exhaustion. I've never been very good without sleep you see, I've even been known to fall asleep in nightclubs and once behind someone's gran's sofa at an after-party in Moston.

The next day, wide awake at 4.00am but still refreshed and raring to explore, we helped ourselves to breakfast and headed out. San Francisco, it seemed, was small enough to walk around but big enough to completely knacker you out. We spent hours marching up and down its steep streets, being sure to take in as many sights as possible. The Golden Gate Bridge turned out to be way further away from anything than we expected but was definitely worth the hike.

Chris was especially interested in the crisis counselling phones which were dotted along it.

"Take a picture! Take a picture!" he insisted.

I obliged, only a little concerned that the last person to have used it may well have plummeted to a watery death beneath us. It was our holiday and we were going to do tourist shit. China Town was ticked off, the Financial District too for some reason, the cable cars were ridden and of course an obligatory trip to Russian Hill was made to look for the fictional Barbary Lane from Tales of the City.

Worn out and in need of a change of clothes after a day of hardcore sightseeing we headed back to the Mission. We took the Muni in the general direction of home and eventually disembarked. In 1997 Chris and I had only ever lived in Manchester, so we weren't accustomed to the system of street numbering and naming of junctions used in San Francisco. This led us to missing our stop and getting off one station too far. That one stop may as well have been twenty miles away.

Unaware of our mistake we wandered up into the daylight and stood there at the junction blinking into the sun, no doubt looking confused and startled, as we took in the sights around us. It was like a scene from a Romero film with scores of what appeared to be brain eating zombies staggering around the streets. As one tripped on a pavement another wandered in front of a moving car, oblivious to world around.

It took a minute or two to realise what we'd done, after all the junction looked very similar to the one we should have got off at. A quick plan was formed - we would walk back to where we should be, it couldn't be that far surely, and we knew which way we should go didn't we? At that moment I had never felt that I looked like a lost tourist so much in my entire life. Chinos and a polo shirt with a rucksack was not the fashion in these parts.

Spotting a police cruiser as it pulled up at the lights we nipped over and through the open window told the officer what we'd done and asked how best to get back to where we needed to be.

"That's quite a mistake." he pointed out in that slow, obvious manner some Americans are prone to, "What you guys need to do is take one block that way, turn right and go another five blocks."

Thank god! We finally knew how to get out of there, and we weren't going to have our brains eaten on the junction of Crack Cocaine and Mission.

"Thank you so much!" we said earnestly.

Just then the lights changed and as we stepped back, away from the police car, he called through the window to us, "Hey guys, be sure to hold tight to you bags!" He sped off leaving us to a certain death.

That evening, very much alive and kicking, we went for dinner and drinks in the Castro and reflected on the day's adventures. We sat in a colourful Mexican restaurant which had cute salt and pepper cruets, shaped like cacti, on the tables. I had chosen it because, despite this being California, or perhaps because this was America, I was surprised to see vegetarian food on a menu. My experience thus far was much like that in continental Europe, where anyone wanting to eat anything other than meat of fish had to settle for pizza and pasta.

I ordered the grilled cactus leaf with a sense of smug satisfaction. A sense that was soon wiped away when I bit into the weird tasting, gelatinous, lump on my plate fifteen minutes later.

After dinner we tried a few bars, all gay bars, some more successful than others. I should have known better with the first place as we got to the bottom of the stairs leading from the street to the basement to be presented with a heavy, black, leather curtain designed either to keep the world out or the clientele in. Thankfully it was early so we had a quick beer and moved on to a drag bar with a balcony that stretched around two sides of the building's first floor. Possibly influenced by the disgusting cactus leaf, I asked the bar man for a bottle of Sol.

"I didn't even know they still made that." he said before offering me a Budweiser and an apologetic shrug.

We left San Francisco after a couple of days to head south but as our flights were from there in the not too distant future the guys whose room we rented insisted we kept their house key and let ourselves back in for the final two days of our holiday.

When we did eventually land back in town we couldn't remember their address or indeed how to find the house, and not wanting to risk getting lost with a bunch of junkies again, we kept the key and booked ourselves into the worst hotel in the California, The Amsterdam on Taylor Street. It was so bad the cockroaches had moved out. I checked it out on Tripadvisor a couple of days ago after finding a scrap book of our trip to California, and it turns out nothing much has changed.

Our last two days were spent much as our first two were, being proper tourists. We went to Pier 39 to see the sea lions and took a trip to Alcatraz, we played mini golf (according to the photographs at least) and went to UnderWater World where we met a giant foam shark. Finally running out of things to do on our last day we spent a few hours at the cinema watching Jurassic Park 2. I don't remember the film but I do remember people booing at the screen when a Coca Cola advert came on. I think by that point I'd got the measure of San Francisco and I liked it. I promised myself that I'd go back one day.

Cut to twenty one years later.

It was September 2018 that we eventually returned. Someone once said, the more things change the more they stay the same, and that felt so true there.

We stayed in an AirBNB in Dolores Heights with two guys who rented a room out, only this time our trip from the airport was in an Uber and not in the back of a friend of a friend's champagne VW Beetle. The city felt bigger and noisier despite not having grown. Poverty was more noticeable and everything felt much more expensive than it had done.

The sea lions were still there but Pier 39 had become more of a tourist trap, if that was possible. The Golden Gate Bridge was still really far away but still worth going to see again and while the Castro felt way more gentrified than it had two decades earlier, it was still full of gay bars, outrageous characters and drag queens.

I'm glad we went when I was only 21 years old because returning when I was 42 made me realise that unless I get a better paying job, I can't really afford to go there again.

The city has become richer as I have become poorer which is a bummer but that's okay because I'll always have Armistead Maupin to take me back there.

Decorative Wooden Doum-Ladder

The house is a tip. I feel like I'm living in a haunted junk shop. From my vantage point, at the dining room, table I can see a ceramic hare, a USB microphone, a half empty bottle of Chambord, a pile of CDs, a pritt-stick, an empty ziplock bag, a Co-Op food magazine with some of the pictures cut out, a bottle of sunscreen, a cat toy, nine bottles of red wine and a pirate flag. Everything is covered in a generous layer of dust, made more evident by the fact that four large pieces of furniture are black and someone (could have been me) has wiped their hand across each of them, as if to check exactly how dusty they are, before saying to themselves, 'I must buy some Pledge.'

I don't know how we've got to this state, after all Chris isn't working and I've only left the house four times in the last month. There's plenty of time for cleaning and yet  our bedsheets haven't been changed in a fortnight and there are toothpaste splashes on the bathroom mirror which are certain to require a fair amount of elbow grease to remove them.

I can hear the front bedroom door banging in the wind upstairs. There's a hook on it to prevent it from properly slamming but it's not tight enough to stop it completely and it clatters away as long as the windows are open. Chris has a fixation of airing the house which is why the window in the spare bedroom, much like every other room upstairs, is open in the first place. It's only used as a guest room three or four times a year and the rest of the time it's either a laundry room or somewhere to deposit junk until we decide to either throw it away or officially add it to the hoard.

It's windy outside so the door is banging a couple of times a minute and it's driving me mad. I mean, how fresh does a room we barely use need to be anyway?

I took a little break from work earlier when my eye was caught by an advert on Instagram and I found myself poring over the website of a furniture and interior decor company. Years ago I worked for Habitat and over the six years of my employment I developed an interest in beautiful and impractical things for the home that I just couldn't afford. Back then it was fine because I had staff discount, I knew when the sales were on, and for a while at least, I worked at the company's clearance store so if I was happy to wait till an item was 'last season' then I could get some real bargains.

Most of our furniture is Habitat, with the noticeable exception of the dusty black pieces that are taunting me right now. I once bought a fuscia pink chair designed by Philip Treacy, I don't remember how the hell I got it home because it was huge. A round piece that barely made it through the door and which I had to ebay eventually because it was so ridiculously large. A woman in Belfast won the online auction and sent an HGV to collect it from our little village.

I came home with an oversized paper lantern one day, the sort of thing you'd see hanging from the ceiling in a student rental, only the one I bought was at least five feet in diameter and stood on the floor. It ended up in an attic room of the house we lived in Derbyshire because it just wouldn't fit anywhere else. It was in good company up there standing proudly next to three eight foot panels with a picture of the Queen by some German artist I forget now, which made up an old shop display, a two foot letter E which hung from the ceiling and a massive white plastic coffee table which looked like a ginormous aspirin.

Today's online window shopping found me staring at a decorative wooden doum-ladder wondering if I could justify €74, where I would put it in my house, and importantly what exactly 'doum' meant.

I shared this find with Alison and Nicola on our group chat, safe in the knowledge that they'd not find this out of the ordinary, Alison having recently ordered a portrait of the dog and this morning buying magnetic fake eyelashes.

I asked how they worked, whether you needed metal eyelids or some kind of cranial implant but apparently the reality is far more pedestrian. You need to use some special eyeliner with magnetic properties that attracts tiny little magnets on the lashes themselves. I suppose she'll be alright so long as she doesn't walk past a fridge door with them in. Next on her list is a carbon monoxide detector.

The tech company I work for took a hit today after being told by a large, international client they wouldn't be paying us tens of thousands of pounds worth of outstanding invoices for the foreseeable future. Their business is music and entertainment, and in the case of the work we do, music festivals, and it has all but closed till further notice. This has meant a number of our staff being furloughed and the small team shrinking drastically.

It was expected that future work would take a hit but we assumed the bills we'd already issued would be honoured, after all this is a multi billion dollar company. I didn't realise just how hard they'd been hit until I read today that their value had dropped by more than half in three weeks.

Much of the work we do, day to day, is for individual festivals but they ultimately fall under this one organisation so our cashflow has been clobbered. The Government's furlough scheme is being used to cover eighty percent of these colleagues' salaries while our company will pay the remaining twenty percent. Without the scheme a bunch of them would be wondering how they were going to pay the bills so it's going to be a valuable safety net.

It's all very sad but the light at the end of the tunnel is that eventually my workmates will be brought back and I'm confident that the invoices will eventually be settled. There's no bad blood, everyone accepts that these really are exceptional times.

My job, for the time being at least, is safe. A lot of what I do is administrative, I do some bookkeeping, some marketing and PR, social media and so on, none of which is directly affected by today's news.

While on social media duty today I had a quick check of LinkedIn. There was nothing much to report or note but as I was scrolling through I was reminded of my pet hate - business language. It's not formal business language per se that does my head in, but that type of things people write on social media instead of writing what they actually mean.

The main culprits are words like 'excited', 'thrilled' and 'proud.' Proud to be part of the team that landed a million pound contract to supply goats to Chester Zoo; Thrilled to be working with Team Goat in East Cheshire; and so on.

In more than twenty five years of employment I've never been thrilled, proud or excited about anything I've ever done at work! Maybe it's because I don't work with goats but I suspect people just feel uncomfortable saying what they really mean - Look at me! I just landed the biggest contract of my career and that makes me totally employable! Maybe I'm just too cynical...

Out Of Stock

Asda are scheduled to deliver our groceries this evening between 7.30 and 8.30. We usually use Tesco but delivery slots, across all supermarkets, are as rare as hen's teeth during the lockdown so, for the second time in three weeks, Asda it is. Earlier this week I spent a gruelling twenty one minutes queuing to access the Morrison's website only to be told, when I finally got through, there were no delivery slots available, and when I tried Sainsbury's they give me short shrift too. Apparently they are only accepting orders from vulnerable people, though quite how they know if I'm vulnerable or not just from my postcode I'll never know.

Perhaps there are no vulnerable folk in Chorlton, all too well fed on hummus and Bolivian organic quinoa to be struggling. The fact of the matter is that I'm not vulnerable but we've been using online grocery services for about three years now, ever since we got rid of the cars, and the thought of traipsing round a supermarket then trying to get a week's worth of shopping home without a vehicle, is depressing.

When we've done it in the past we've called an Uber but I'm slightly concerned at the moment about the prospect of being cooped up in what is essentially a mobile Coronavirus incubator. Still, after this week the likelihood of getting a delivery slot is slim so I think we're going to have to bite the bullet, strap on the face masks and wander down to Morrison's. In the meantime though, we have tonight's delivery which was booked over three weeks ago when the world was slightly less surreal.


I'm not sure who is in charge of making substitutions at Asda when they're out of stock but judging by what happened last time I suspect they don't take their role too seriously. One of the missing items on that drop off was a bottle of 'Premium Collection' Viognier which I was quite looking forward to. Upon discovering it absent from the shelves, however, the clown on picking duty thought it completely acceptable to substitute it with a bottle of that staple of the seventies dinner party, Black Tower. I was distraught, naturally, not that it stopped me from drinking it of course. Waste not want not and all that.

I've just had an email to tell me what's changed on today's order and while some of it is absolutely acceptable - Rigatoni instead of Penne, flat leaf parsley instead of curly leaf - I was agog when I read that the fancy vanilla ice cream I spent ages choosing last night is being swapped for strawberry, and (horror of horrors) the two bars of Galaxy chocolate are being replaced by Twirls! Somebody is having a laugh at my expense.

In addition to that the Maldon salt, which I threw in the basket at the last minute but didn't really need yet, is being replaced by rock salt, the sort you need a grinder for, a grinder which we don't have. I'll save it for winter and use it on the drive I think.

In addition we will not be getting either Chris's hair dye, a lockdown whim which he knew he could experiment with safe in the knowledge that nobody would see the results, or the broccoli quiche. Now I understand that substituting Light Ash for Frosted Beige is a dangerous game to play, particularly as they're not accepting returns at the moment, but broccoli quiche? Surely a nice cheese and onion, or a fresh summer vegetables could have been dug up from somewhere, Christ, I'd even accept a flan if push came to shove!

Ahead of tonights grocery drop off, Chris has popped out for some essentials we forgot to order, latex gloves and antibacterial gel to hand, and while he's there he's going to keep an eye out for the latest summer shade.

In other delivery news, we ordered a tin of masonry paint nearly two weeks ago which still hasn't been delivered. The other items in the order arrived, a few days late but at least we have them. When Chris queried the missing item Homebase told him that it has to come from the manufacturer, Crown Paints who I know are only some twenty five miles away in East Lancashire, to their shop in Altrincham to then be dispatched from there to us. I absolutely appreciate that the world is on its arse at the moment but I'm struggling to see how logistics have broken down to the extent that a tin of Alpine Blue takes nearly three weeks to travel across the North West. Maybe Homebase are helping prepare the new Nightingale hospital in the city centre, in which case I will absolutely forgive them, or perhaps their drivers are poorly, or the staff at Crown. Who knows? I tell you what though, when it arrives it's going to transform our terrace!

POST SCRIPTUM:
Chris has just arrived back from his shopping trip with all manner of goodies, like an April Father Christmas! He now has his hair dye and by this evening will be a bombshell of forties movie proportions, he also brought back a large bar of Galaxy chocolate which has made my day, and another addition for the Gnome Zone at the back of the garden!

In The Garden

I'm not sure what the Home Secretary has done but social media is awash with spite directed at her. Maybe she's murdered an orphan or abandoned a puppy. For the time being at least I won't bother investigating the source of the moral outrage, mostly because of where it's coming from. Instead I'll satisfy myself by snoozing people on Facebook, something I've been doing with glee for the last couple of years. Safe in the knowledge they will never know.

I just discovered to my delight that you can now mute people on Instagram too. Though because it's permanent this is a more severe punishment than Facebook's snooze which is revoked automatically after thirty days. Not quite as harsh as the hide option or indeed the social media capital punishment that is to unfriend someone but still, in terms of passive aggression, it scores extra points because you have to remember that you froze them out if you ever want to see them again. It leaves me wondering if I should make a list so I don't forget whose baby pictures I'm missing. A missing persons list for people that haven't gone anywhere.

It's Easter Sunday today, the holiest day in the Christian calendar, so as usual, in celebration, we're eating chocolate and doing some jobs around the house. Chris has cleared out his bedside drawer and I have emptied the dishwasher. Today, along with Christmas day, is traditionally a day when all the shops and restaurants are shut but as that's been the case for a few weeks now there's not much difference really.

The garden is looking good. It's still coming to life after a few months of winter so everything isn't quite where it should be yet but, bit by bit, Chris is resurrecting it. With all the free time forced upon him, he now spends hours out there, planting and weeding, fixing and painting, lighting up the trees and moving planters around. One of his favourite pastimes is pruning and there is a constant battle between us to stop him from chopping everything down, his argument being that 'It will all grow back.'

I don't see the point of decimating a perfectly good specimen in order for it to grow back again but I choose my battles and this year, already, we have lost the top fifteen feet of an acacia in the hope that he will leave the acers alone and spare the life of the beautiful, blue California lilac that grows over the terrace closest to the house. He's right, they do grow back, it's just that with vital limbs removed they tend take on the form of a twisted hunchback or a pair of tights frozen on a January washing line in a winter storm. Symmetry and grace fly out the window when Chris comes a hacking with his scimitar.

Sometimes I suspect it's a contest of wills between him and mother nature. He loves nothing more than to torment tubs of flowers and plants by turning their beaming faces away from the sun after they've spent weeks positioning themselves for the best access to it. Yesterday, while sitting out in the blazing sunshine on the decking, I suggested that he might want to invest in a bunch of lazy Susans to make the process simpler; it was greeted with a snarl of derision and, as if to prove a point, he immediately stood up and turned his two newest planters a hundred and eighty degrees so the purple blooms faced us and away from the sun.

One of the things I love about our garden is all the odd little ornaments and decorations dotted around it. Admittedly it may have gone a little overboard, what with the mantelpiece propped up against a fence with two Staffordshire dogs perched on it, and my grandpa's goat skull hiding down amongst the roses, but who wouldn't delight in the Gnome Zone at the end of the garden, a place where our seven or eight gnomes hide out amongst the shrubs?

I've probably said this before but the garden is a godsend while we're all being asked to stay at home. We have friends who live in flats who have no outside space to speak of. One friend told me that he likes nothing more than to sit in the carpark on the main road which his flat is on shouting at people passing by or yelling into his phone on video calls. The one hour day release is obviously a bonus to these folks but there's talk that even this might be curtailed to stop people from abusing the so-called privilege.

I'm a natural worrier so I try to be lighthearted about what's happening, otherwise I'd go mad with sleepless nights and fretting, but the stark reality is that nearly ten thousand people have died as of today, with over nine hundred of those in the last twenty four hours. Granted as a proportion of the UK's population, that's small, and undoubtedly some of those people that died while they have COVID 19 would have died anyway, but that doesn't take away the fact that these are real people with families and friends and lives to live. It's dangerous and it could easily be one of our friends or family if we're not all careful.

Our elderly neighbour Mary continues to be oblivious. Twice last week she jumped on a bus, first to go to the hospital with a sore wrist, and then shopping later in the week. She's happy to trot out to the shops twice a day then come knocking on our front door for help to close her garage or to comment on having some daffodils stolen from outside her house in 1998. There's a touch of dementia there according to her family and she's either forgetting the warnings or simply not comprehending what's happening.

Mary's daughter in law came round one day last week but did nothing more than yell at her from the street. She refused to go near her, reprimanded her, then shook her head and drove back to Urmston leaving a confused and irritated old lady standing in her front porch.

Mary continues to post stuff through our letterbox, more often than not TV Soap magazine which she gets free with a tabloid and which we have never shown any interest in, let alone asked for. She also has a tendency to poke ice cream cones through the fence for Chris while he's out in the garden. We appear to be unwittingly taking on the risk of transmission that her sons aren't prepared to take.

I wrote a letter to Mary explaining in quite strong terms why she needs to stop going out and also stop coming to our house. I didn't go as far as to call her a super spreader but I did tell her that two thousand, three hundred people had died. That was on the 2nd April, it's now ten days later, the letter is still in our hallway because we didn't want to scare an old lady, and five times that many people are dead.

So anyway, on Easter Sunday, when Christians traditionally remember Christ coming back from the dead, while simultaneously, on the television, all we hear is news about more death, I try to think about the other significance of this time of year. The one that's tied up with Spring and pagan beliefs of new life and new beginnings.

It won't go on forever; surely at some time in the coming weeks or months, this too shall pass, and we can look forward to new lives, and new ways of living. Living without the fear of going near friends, or helping a neighbour, taking public transport or going to work. Nina Simone once said that freedom is living with no fear, so maybe when this is all over, we'll feel free again.