There is a definite feeling of ‘letting go’ evident when we made our walk down to Bromsgrove this morning – in theory, some of the liberalisations of shops are to start on Monday next but, no doubt, some employees may be in shops installing the ‘social distance’ measures (if they have not already done so) in time for Monday morning. Also, today is the day when two single households can form a ‘bubble’ so it should be possible for a grandchild to see one grandparent – but not two grandparents, if I a have interpreted the rules correctly). Again, we did not encounter any of our typical friends this weekend but often people have a very different pattern of interaction on Saturdays so this is not a source of surprise. The numbers of children using scooters seem to be rising exponentially (I suppose it is so much easier in a park rather than on a pavement where I believe it is legal but the person riding the scooter has no rights of way. But try explaining that to a 6-year old!)

After lunch, I had set myself the task of checking my beet seeds for germination and ‘cleaning up’ the vegetable tubs in which they were sown. I should explain that in the area of Mog’s Den adjacent to the path, I imagined this to be an excellent place for some easily accessible vegetable sowings. In practice, though, the tubs had attracted a number of round holly seeds (whether dropped in or blown by the wind I cannot say). So I set myself the task of removing each of these holly seeds by hand and decided that I use a pair of what are called Long-Nosed Pliers ( sometimes, Snipe-Nosed Pliers) and these proved to be excellent at the task – but better than attempting to do it by hand with clumsy fingers and thumbs. I used the same pliers to thin out the germinated seeds to one every quarter of an inch or so but subsequent thinnings become so much easier. [Incidentally, I am never happy with the philosophical underpinnings of thinning out seedlings because you are, in effect, saying ‘You are a little weakling so you will have to be sacrificed to increase the chances of survival of your already much stronger sibling’) I call this the Fascist tendency in gardening and it does run counter to my general world view that it is not morally right to dispose of the weak to assist in the survival of the already strong! But I am pleased to report that my method of scarifying the seeds with sandpaper and then soaking overnight seems to have worked exceedingly well, so I must remember to utilise this technique in my regular fortnightly sowings.

After the Iceland delivery had been made and all the items put away, Meg and I watched an amazing and disturbing documentary broadcast in primetime on BBC2. It was presented by the historian David Olusoga and was entitled ‘The UnWanted: the Secret Windrush files‘  It showed good documentary evidence that successive British Governments had all contributed to the increasingly ‘hostile environment‘  experienced by members of the Windrush generation (the ‘Empire Windrush’ was the steamer that brought the first influx of Jamaican migrants to our shores in 1948. What follows is a review by Amelia Gentleman which is hard to summarise so I reproduce it in full below:

As the Empire Windrush made its way from the Caribbean to Britain in 1948, politicians in Westminster were frantically scheming about how they could prevent a ship carrying hundreds of black immigrants from docking in the UK. The Labour prime minister Clement Attlee described it as an “incursion”. A meeting of the government’s economic policy committee discussed whether it might be possible to divert the ship to East Africa, and make its passengers (a well-qualified group of electricians, mechanics, welders and carpenters) take work there, picking peanuts. Eleven Labour MPs delivered a letter to Attlee warning that “an influx of coloured people” would “impair the harmony, strength and cohesion of our public and social life and cause discord and unhappiness among all concerned”.

Anyone who thought that the introduction of the hostile environment was one of Theresa May’s few clear, tangible accomplishments will need to reconsider. It turns out that even this unpleasant creation is not something she can claim as her core legacy since it had already been 70 years in the making.

Although the postwar government estimated Britain needed 1.3 million extra workers to help rebuild a country shattered by five years of war, officials turned out to be more welcoming to ex-SS soldiers from Germany than British subjects from the Caribbean. In his powerful film, The Unwanted: the Secret Windrush Files (BBC Two), the historian David Olusoga manages to explain complex immigration law and decode dense documents from the government archives in an arresting way. He pulls out devastating passages from forgotten files to showcase the hostility of successive governments to non-white settlers.

Everything begins with the British Nationality Act of 1948, which confirmed the right of all British subjects to move freely and live anywhere they liked within the newly created Commonwealth. But the act, Olusoga argues, was intended to ensure frictionless travel for the large white populations of Canada and Australia. “No one imagined that black and brown people from Asia, Africa and the West Indies would use their rights under this act to come and settle in Britain.”

Incriminating archival material reveals the scale of official panic about immigration and the underhand measures taken to discourage residents of Britain’s colonies from settling. Crucially, politicians wanted to restrict access without actually appearing to be racist. The film exposes their shameful contortions as they scrabbled around to justify their prejudices.

We learn how ministers in the 1950s commissioned researchers to come up with reasons for concluding that non-white immigration was problematic, with senior civil servants instructing dole officers to conduct secret race surveys to see if there was any truth in the assumption that migrants were coming to live off the welfare state, and asking police chiefs around the country leading questions such as: “Is it true that they are generally idle?”, “Do they have low standards of living?”, and “Are they addicted to drug trafficking and other types of crime?” Winston Churchill was obsessed by the “considerable” number of “coloured workers” employed by the Post Office, and, by 1955, was suggesting to ministers that they should fight the next election on the slogan “Keep England White”.

This gradual tightening of immigration legislation exploded in the hands of Theresa May’s government last April, with the Windrush scandal – when thousands of Caribbean-born citizens, legally settled here since childhood, found that they had been silently transformed into illegal immigrants, and threatened with deportation, detained, sacked from their jobs or made homeless.

Olusoga shows how the roots of the scandal lie in a single line from the 1971 Immigration Act, which put the onus on individuals to prove that they are here legally – something so many people were unable to do, with devastating consequences. “Who keeps receipts from the 1970s?” Anthony Bryan asks, explaining how he was detained for five weeks and booked on a flight back to Jamaica. A letter from the Home Office to his lawyer demands more proof: “Your client has stated that he has been resident in the UK since 1965. As such, the evidence submitted must be continuous, and cover the entirety of the 51 years that your client has claimed to reside in the UK.”

The most moving parts of this film are the interviews with three Windrush victims (all of whom helped expose the scandal in the Guardian). “It was a country I was proud of, but now I don’t think I feel proud of it,” Sarah O’Connor says, after being wrongly classified as an illegal immigrant, despite her 51 years in the UK. “At times I got so low I wanted my life to end.” Sarah died before the film was finished. No one could feel proud of Britain after watching it.

Today was a much better day than yesterday although some rain was promised for later on in the day. In the park, we met our good friend, Julie, who we have not seen for several days now so it was particularly good to have a long chat for about half an hour and get up-to-date on each other’s comings and goings. Julie has been busy with her golf, we had been busy with our fence and tree activities. At lunchtime, we treated ourselves to some special smoked haddock fishcakes from Waitrose which were expensive but delicious. I am sure you can make them for yourselves but it’s a bit fiddly unless you make them in quantity (which I might be tempted to do in future). This afternoon, I had set myself the task of applying the second and final coat of light oak paint to the fence-cum-handrail but this time I was a bit better prepared. In my garage tidying up activities, I discovered that we had two decorators masks we had bought some time previously and one of these proved to be excellent. As it happened, the weather conditions proved to be absolutely ideal for the task in hand as it was reasonably warm and sunny but there was quite a strong swirling wind that kept all of the VOC’s (volatile organic compounds) at bay. Then in the late afternoon, we had a heavy but not very prolonged shower, so I was relieved to get my painting done on time. Readers of yesterday’s blog will recall I was waxing lyrical about a particularly specialised spade which I had recently purchased and utilised and it might well be that it makes a good father’s day present for other acquaintances of ours – we shall see.

We are getting into the pattern of ordering our ‘main’ shopping from Waitrose but this has the slight snag that although we have a sort of priority at Waitrose, we are not part of the government-sponsored priority scheme for those who are registered as shielders. Hence our orders are always for about eight days ahead and it is not very easy to work out what you will have run out in 8 + 7 days time. So, I have got into the habit of using Iceland which has a more limited range but with much shorter ‘slot’ times, generally a day or so ahead and a much lower limit to qualify for free home deliveries. So I was pleased to be able to book an Iceland slot for tomorrow night which will help to fill in the gap before my more major order is delivered from Waitrose in just over a week’s time.

it looks as though my Ceanothus (Californian Lilac) I used to obscure the view from my study of a blank brick wall has actually died. At first. I imagined that my neglect of water was to blame – but a few internet searches reveal that they have an average life expectancy of 10-15 years and this one had lived for 12.5 years! Tomorrow, I shall have to engage in the sad task of chopping down a 2-3 metre high tree and disposing of its carcase. It also seems that ceanothus has sold out of every nursery in the country so I may well have to wait for a few months until they are re-stocked again.

The authorities are worried that this weekend we may see demonstrations and counter-demonstrations from the BAME communities and the extreme right. The Home Secretary (Priti Patel) and the Justice Minister are revising plans to have emergency courts and immediate gaol sentences if we get into the situation in which violent clashes occur. There is a lot of pent up aggression on the streets of London and other large cities – and this may just be the start of a violent summer. I hope I am wrong but I have a foreboding that having let the demonstrators have their head last weekend, there will be quite a crackdown this weekend and the situation may rapidly escalate out of control. Let us hope I am completely wrong!

Today was a very cloudy and overcast day with the rain constantly threatening – so it was not a surprise that in our daily walk to the park we did not encounter any of our friends. We did pick up the newspapers, though, in what is becoming an established pattern. We were anticipating several deliveries today from quarters and none of them disappointed, The first of use was a very special spade made by Spear and Jackson that goes by the wonderful name of a ‘Tub Draining Tool’ – the ‘Tub’ is short for Tubular and the whole is manufactured of an extremely strong high strength carbon/manganese steel epoxy coated to reduce rust. What is special about these types of spade is that they are specially designed to make short work of digging fencing posts, moving deep-rooted shrubs or breaking up hard and stony soil. Whereas a normal spade is about 8* wide and 11″ long this is narrower (at 6″) but with a blade that is 50% longer (at 16″) Because of the weight and the design, these types of spade quickly cut through tree roots, submerged concrete, rubble and bricks (which we have a-plenty in our garden) The Amazon reviews included several from landscape gardeners who reckoned it was the most useful spade they had ever bought so at £25.00 (delivered) I thought this was quite a bargain and snapped it up. The next delivery along was the hornbeam tree (‘Carpinus Betulus‘) which I bought complete with a planting stake, tree tie and special root fungus. It arrived in superb condition at 2 metres in height in a special cardboard box and I resolved to try and get it planted this afternoon, which I did. However, the weather was exceptionally windy and not the best in which to try to plant a tall tree but planting was the least of my difficulties. I had already half prepared a planting hole but in making this deeper to receive the tree, I encountered a huge stone which must have been about 18″ x. 10″ at exactly the spot in which I had planned to plant the tree (Now you might appreciate why a specialised digging spade comes in useful) Having got this stone extracted successfully, I then proceeded to drive on the support stake only to be met with more resistance (this time, a Victorian brick in exactly the wrong spot) This seems like Sod’s Law x 2 – but all ended well with the tree well and truly planted, watered and in just the right position. It should grow at the rate of 1-2 ft per year which will help to screen us from the neighbour’s garden. Earlier in the afternoon, I had had a pre-arranged telephone consultation with my cancer surgeon, this being two years after my successful operation. He is going to get a blood test organised for me (but I have to go to a local hospital to get the blood sample taken) and a CT scan – all as part of routine monitoring to check all is well. Thank God for the NHS!

There seem to be three big political stories in town tonight. I didn’t see the Downing St. briefing this evening but apparently, Matt Hancock briefed with the news that 70%-80% of people who tested positive for the COVID-19 virus were not displaying any symptoms. If validated, one can only feel uneasy about this. The major story was the first stats from the test-and-trace regime in which one-third of the people referred to the system would not give (for whatever reason) details of their contacts. If you take the view (which I do) that those refusing details of contacts may have something to hide, then this hardly bodes well for a system that is meant to be our salvation out of lockdown. And finally, there is the real cat-fight between Priti Patel (the Home Secretary) and a group of BAME Labour MP’s who have written to her to say that the views she had expressed on racial abuse she had experienced in the past do not qualify her to make pronouncements on the types of abuse suffered by many of the BAME communities over the decades. Of course, Priti Patel is still responsible for clearing up the Windrush scandal but one wonders if she ever will- sometimes there is no love lost between the Asian and  other BAME communities who have shared such different life experiences.

Today was an intermediate day, weather-wise – we wondered if we were going to get a smattering of rain and indeed we did get a few drops later in the day. Today was a little unusual in that having collected our newspapers and had our usual supplies in the park, we didn’t encounter any of the ‘usual suspects’ for a chat on the way home. But before I forget, I must mention one of the best ‘mot-justes‘ that I have heard for a long time, and this coming from the lips of Meg. When we were discussing the fate of the statue of Edward Colston, the notorious slave owner which was dragged from its plinth and dumped unceremoniously into the harbour in Bristol recently, Meg made the remark ‘May he rust in peace‘ to which I added (‘or in pieces’) but, in truth, Meg’s comment was far more funny.

Just before lunch, I thought I would give my new fence/handrail its first coat of point – by sod’s law, it started smattering with rain within 10 seconds of my starting but soon stopped. The first coat took about 3/4 hour to complete and I think the results are going to be OK. Certainly, the timber doesn’t look as untreated and has a more mellow appearance. Meg likes the overall appearance of it but I am not absolutely sure. I think I will reserve judgement until the second coat is applied and then it has had a chance to ‘age’ for a bit. I still have the option of adding a bit of external varnish to it if I think that will improve it overall. The rest of the afternoon was taken up with tidying up various things within the garage, left rather strewn about when I was assembling various woodworking tools to secure the top handrail. I was eager to get finished by 5.00 pm so that I could see what Boris Jonson had to say for himself in the light of the latest revelations.  Tomorrow is going to be quite a busy day as I am expecting several deliveries from Amazon and also the delivery of a 2-metre hornbeam tree that has been on order for nearly a month now but ought to be with me by tomorrow. It will come complete with fixing stake and helpful root fungus so I will try and plant it immediately if it is not absolutely pouring down. Late on this evening, I took delivery of the latest Waitrose order which soon got put away. But the joys of internet shopping – I discovered that the two items of ‘Fishy Fish pie’ I had ordered turned out to be two tins of dog food! I shall try one out on Miggles the cat tomorrow and give the other away.

The astounding political news is the revelation that in the opinion of Prof. Neil Ferguson, one of the most influential of the modellers of the pandemic crisis that if the Johnson government had locked down a week or so earlier than one half i.e. 25,000 lives could have been saved. If I were the surviving relative of one these ‘unnecessary’ deaths, I really do not know how I would feel. It is too early to say whether this revelation has fed back properly into public opinion but it seems astounding that the Conservatives are still ahead – just – in the opinion polls. How is that possible, I ask myself, after having been responsible for so many deaths of the population? It now seems likely that as well as the politicians, several critical errors were made by the scientific community. According to the BBC Radio 4 statistics programme ‘More or Less‘ it seems that the modellers did not take fully into account the fact that the infected numbers seemed to be doubling every 2-3 days (not 4-5 as they thought) or take into account that much of the UK infection came from the rest of Europe and not directly from China. Also, it has emerged today that government advisers did not anticipate how high deaths would be in care homes as they were acting on the assumption that the residents would be shielded. Nor did they build into their model that many care-home workers were employed by agencies and would move from care home to care home thereby contributing to the spread of the virus.

According to the weather forecasts, today was meant to be a bright and sunny day but it certainly didn’t start that way being somewhat cloudy and what I might call ‘brooding’ – however, the sun burnt through the cloud later on and we had quite a warm and pleasant day. On our way to the park, we were delighted to see some friends we had not seen for a day or so, so it was lovely to gossip and exchange news with each other. The park seemed to have more than its normal share of groups of mothers entertaining their pre-school offspring, so it does look as though this is part of a trend. On our way up the hill, we stopped to admire several of the front gardens which are at their best at the moment – yesterday, we had liberated some poppy seed heads from a venue where they were growing wild and unrestrained. I need to go onto the web, which I will shortly, to get some up-to-date advice as the best way to store poppy heads and their seeds. In the afternoon, it had been my intention to empty a dustbin which we have in an outside corner to rearrange its contents (largely things like gardening gloves, twine, supports of various kinds) but I didn’t quite get round to it. Instead, I hunted around for a small bag of pea gravel which I still had in an odd corner. I then divided this into four and carefully introduced it around the base of each of the supporting posts of my new fence/handrail. That having been done, I then located my tin of used motor oil which had been emptied from the mower and was waiting for the next trip to the local authority tip to dispose of it safely. In this case, I allowed the oil to penetrate the pea gravel and then gave it a light tamping with a flat stone I had to hand. The theory behind all of this is that fence posts always rot at ground level due to the combined effect of soil-based microbes, oxygen and moisture. Anywaything that can be done to eliminate these conditions will assist the treated timber posts to survive even longer. Having got this task completed, I then opened the tin of light-oak external wood paint as recommended by our painters & decorators and painted a sample timber with it. The results were quite good i.e. the natural grain of the timber still comes through without the timber taking on an orange-y suntanned hue (sometimes seen on American presidents we know well). As this experiment has worked well, the full painting job can be done tomorrow – and the gloss paint when it arrives might just make a good job look even better but we will have to wait and see.

It looks as though the government has bowed to the inevitable and realises that it not possible to get all children back into school before the end of term. There is also talk of trying to get secondary pupils back into school in September, if possible. David Blunkett (ex-Labour education secretary) was suggesting that with a lot of national will (as displayed by building the Nightingale hospitals in exhibition centres) we could get schools working again. His solution was to use a combination of reducing social distancing from 2m to 1m only for school children, using every inch of space e.g. school halls and gyms, using a shift system (e.g. 7-1, 1-6) or similar. You would have to give teachers a great deal of local autonomy for this to work and giving autonomy to teachers to try innovative solutions is the last thing in the government’s mind!

According to Sky News ‘New figures show around half of primary schools in England reopened to more children last week, as the government scrapped plans for all pupils to return before the summer holidays. According to the Department of Education, around 659,000 children attended an education setting last Thursday, 6.9% of all pupils who normally attend.’

There are certain dates that stick in one’s memory and today’s date is one of them. It was the date, exactly two years ago, in which I had a bowel cancer operation  (technically a ‘low anterior resection‘) to remove a polyp that had turned cancerous. At the same time, I was given an ileostomy, subsequently reversed about four weeks later. Well, here I am to tell the tale – the survival rate over 5 years is about 80%. The one incident that sticks in my mind is as follows. My surgeon asked me, just before the operation ‘Now Mr. Hart – are there any questions you would like to ask me just before the operation?‘  I replied ‘Yes – I just have one question: when you are holding the diseased portion of my bowel in one hand and the rest of my body in the other, can you make sure you throw away the right bit!‘ To which, the surgeon replied,’I’m sorry, sir, but I don’t know what question you are asking me?‘ I replied saying that it was all meant to be a joke but it had backfired. But that is enough of that.

Today, the weather had brightened and Meg was particularly looking forward to her walk to the park as she had missed yesterday. I left Meg on the park bench whilst I went to collect the newspapers and noted, upon my return, that about a dozen young mothers with attendant 2-4 year olds had assembled in the open air or in the park’s bandstand and were organising the children into ball throwing games. (This seemed to involve throwing a ball into a large sheet which was then pulled taut so that the ball  was propelled into the air and children then had to chase after it) The whole affair had evidently been organised but whether it was spontaneous or part of a pre-school group, I couldn’t really tell.

This afternoon, after lunch and a rest, I decided that the lawns needed their weekly cut, although to be honest, they had hardly displayed any growth after the dry spell we would have had for the last few days. But things do look a little neater now. I had intended to start painting my newly erected fence/handrail into Mog’s Den but I was suddenly beset with doubts that the paint I had been recommended by our decorators could turn out to look awful. So as to not ruin it, I had decided that it might be better to paint a spare timber that I have to see how it looks and whether the natural grain of the wood is enhanced (which I want) or disguised (which I don’t want). But I never got round to this because we had a long chat with our next-door neighbour who is recovering from some angina pains and with whom we have not had a chance to catch up on his latest news for several days now.

One of the really big political stories is the toppling of the statue of Edward Colston in Bristol by ‘Black Lives Matter‘ protestors over the weekend. Although this was undoubtedly an illegal act, it is fascinating to see how our political leaders have responded to it. Instead of an ‘illegal but understandable’ tone, Boris Johnson and Priti Patel’s first instincts have been to condemn what they have termed ‘thuggery‘. But would the citizens of Bristol really want to see re-erected a statue of a man who was responsible for the transportation of 84,000 slaves of whom 19,000 died in transit? I turned to the web to see if there was any legal opinion as to whether or not you find a jury that would actually convict anybody in the climate of today. One wonders whether the government actually has thought of the embarrassment that would be caused by pursuing a conviction in the post  ‘Black Lives Matter‘ days. I did find the following legal opinion (which with I concur, actually) but it will be interesting to see what transpires. The leader of the Bristol City Council hit an interesting tone when he suggested that the statue might be fished out of the Bristol dock but the council had many other priorities at the moment! Here is the legal opinion:

Anyone prosecuted for causing damage to the Colston statue is likely to be tried in Bristol. Even if the case were to be transferred away from Bristol my view is that, whatever direction a trial judge might give, it would be extremely difficult to find a jury with at least 10 members willing to convict them for the destruction of a symbol of slavery.

The weather did not bode particularly well this morning as there was a smattering of rain. After the Andrew Marr show, I made my way on my own to pick up the Sunday newspapers as Meg was not feeling very well and decided to spend some extra time in bed this morning. Lunchtime included a good portion of spinach – some Dutch clinicians have discovered that a deficiency of vitamin K is often exhibited in those who succumb to the coronavirus so it is well to keep our consumption of broccoli, spinach and particularly kale on the menu from now on. After lunch, I set myself the task of cleaning up some plastic storage boxes that I use previously to grow veg in – this is all part of the rationalisation of my garden tools outfit. This sounds a deceptively simple task but the boxes I have seem to have hidden curves and ridges in them which means that no longer do you think you have one surface cleaned when other springs into view. The overall plan is to keep all gardening utensils neatly stored away so that the boxes themselves are not an eyesore and contribute to a feeling of clutter. Miggles the cat was my constant companion and whenever I had completed one box and lined it with cardboard (to keep it pristine) the cat would insist on occupying it and giving it her seal of approval.

Last night, we watched the Life of Pi on the TV (story of a young boy. shipwrecked alongside some zoo animals of which the most prominent is the tiger) We had both seen it before and enjoyed it the second time around – but if you go on the web, there is an amazing amount of philosophical explanation as to which of the two accounts to believe (as depicted on the film or a sanitised version, without the zoo animals, given to the Japanese investigators of the shipwreck) Unusual and enjoyable, all the same.

The Sunday newspapers are full of speculation that the government is desperately keen to end the lockdown as soon as possible because there is a prediction that 3 million jobs could soon be lost unless the lockdown is eased quickly. But the public mood is quite interesting because three times as many people feel that that the end to the lockdown may be preceding too rapidly as want a quick end to the lockdown. I suppose there is a feeling that having come this far, then why risk the rapid emergence of a second (and more brutal?) 0r  and/or third wave for the sake of a week or so? However, it is true to say that other European countries seem to be on a faster trajectory to end lockdowns than is the case in the UK – there does seem to be a long ‘tail’ to the statistical distribution and fears that the ‘R’ rate is already exactly 1.0 in the SouthWest but greater than 1.0 in the North West (which would mean that start of exponential growth in those regions) The consensus view is that the only sensible course to follow is to allow liberalisation only if there is an excellent ‘test and track’ regime in place to immediately pounce on any hotspots. However, we now know that the ‘test-and-trace’ service is woefully incomplete and will only be fully functional in September. This implies that too rapid an end to the lockdown is an incredibly risky venture – but then it was the same bunch of politicians who have progressed with Brexit which again is an enormously risky undertaking.

The other big political story this weekend is the continuing ‘Black Lives Matter‘ protests taking place in cities in the UK and, indeed, globally. I find it fascinating that it not just members of the BAME communities that are out on the streets but the protesters seem to be drawn from every section of society – it seems from the broadcast images that there are as many white as there are brown or black faces. Of course, the original spark that lit the flame was repulsive (a white police officer kneeling on the neck of a black person squeezing the life out of him for seven minutes whilst being filmed doing so).

Today was quite a lot colder with a high wind and not very pleasant ‘sitting in the park’ conditions. We were pleased to drink up our coffee quickly and to get on our way back home almost as soon as we could. The newspaper routine seems to be working quite well, I am pleased to say, and tomorrow will be a quite big day as we have to lift up all of the supplements to go with the Sunday newspapers. No doubt, we will watch the Andrew Marr show in the morning without a great deal of enlightenment, as per usual. After I had lunch today, I set myself the task of rationalising the various bits of gardening gear that we had in a series of buckets down a ‘private’ side of the house. Why this has developed over the years is because the soffits on this particular house are quite wide and this means that little hand tools and other gardening implements are generally kept quite dry whilst also being accessible. But, I have to admit, this has created a certain amount of clutter over the years so as I had moved it all away from the side of the house to assist the decorators (whose work has now finished), this was an ideal opportunity for an element of rationalisation and tidying up. This took most of the afternoon as I have a variety of aids to help me reach hard-to-reach spots when gardening, hedge trimming or car cleaning. One of these aids is one of the once popular plastic milk crates. These were very rigid and strong and typically were much used by GPO telephone engineers who tended to upload one from their van the minute they had to do some work on the telephone control panels you occasionally see along the main roads. I had acquired one from goodness knows where years ago and enhanced it somewhat with some rubber matting on the bottom (which now become the top) and a reinforcement of my own patent design inside. If you were to check on the web, you would see that these sell for £30.00 which is a tribute to their versatility and utility. Then, of course, there are the buckets and garden tubs of various sizes used in weeding and clearing, a variety of things in plastic containers such as ant control, compost heap accelerant before we actually come onto the handtools of which I have several favourites, primarily for weeding, as well as a variety of ties, clips, string, wire – the list seems endless (as did the clutter) Anyway, eventually order was restored, bucket and tubs were brushed clean, tools were neatly oiled with WD40 if necessary and then stored sensibly at last.

There seem to be two big breaking COVID-19 stories this evening. The first is the ‘about-face’ (forgive the pun) on the wearing of face coverings for all staff and visitors to NHS hospitals i.e. 800,000 staff at one week’s notice. It seems very improbable that adequate supplies will be on place and seems to be another example of the politicians assuming that by announcing that something will happen that this will actually take place. One is reminded that the ‘test and trace’ regime was meant to be ‘world-beating, but it now transpires that the fully-effective service that was promised will not come to pass until about mid-September! Secondly, there seems to be a realisation that bluster and political point-scoring à la Boris Johnson does not really help get effective policies implemented. Johnson is being urged this evening to cut the rhetoric and to prepare for the second wave of the pandemic that many experts believe is now inevitable and may well be on its way. The rather scary thing is that according to a model shown in ‘The Times‘, a second wave might be more vicious and more deadly than the first as only about 5% of the population may have acquired any level of immunity (leaving 95% with none, of course)

Every day has a slightly different flavour despite the lockdown and so it proved today. I had left Meg in the park to contemplate her surroundings whilst I went to pick up my daily ration of newspapers. After leaving Meg, I encountered an elderly lady I recognised as having attended our local church way back in the past. She seemed to be coping reasonably well with the lockdown but was feeling a little isolated e.g. some days she had no conversation with anybody at all. So I pointed out Meg to her on a distant park bench so they could meet up and have a good natter, which they undoubtedly did whilst I went on my way and joined them later. It might well be that another member of the congregation who often sits and chats with us may well come along tomorrow so we form a little gaggle (or is it a ‘conspiracy’?) of Catholics together.  We had to endure a shower and at one stage took shelter underneath a nearby willow tree and later on the park’s bandstand (which is open on all sides but at least keeps the rain off you) As we were walking back, the sun burst forth and we chatted with one of our friends on the journey back up the hill. Today was a day in which I decided I would make a curry which  I accordingly did (a tradition from our student days) and our domestic help was more than happy to help us demolish it (as were we to devour her rhubarb and ginger cake which was absolutely superb)

After lunch, I decided to see how easy it would be to install the capping timber on my newly installed handrail. This involved chopping off a triangular section from the top of each of the supporting posts so that they all pointed down the diagonal slope. What I thought was going to be tremendously difficult turned out to be relatively easy although I was obliged to make a whole series of little adjustments to make everything line up properly. Now for the screwing down process which I suspected might be tricky as my screws had to be quite long ones (2.75″ or 7 cm in length) and therefore quite deep guide holes were required. But all went quite well, overcoming the’normal’ crop of misfortunes that might befall one who is not a regular driller or user of woodworking tools e.g. a broken drill on one occasion or the drill leaving the chuck and getting stuck in the hole on another. However, I used the trick that I often used on similar occasions which is to use a somewhat shorter and thinner screw to make the guide hole and then finish off with the longer and wider screw for the final job. However, everything was nice and stable when I had finished and it looked good as well. I took the advice of our painters and decorators just before they completed their own work and got their recommendation as to which make and shade of wood preservative to apply and then I duly ordered the same from the web (Sandolin Classic Light Oak which I  was assured would let the natural grain of the wood shine through) I finally finished things off with a wooden ornamental owl that I just happened to have bought as a folly some months ago but as it happens a perfect emblem to affix to the start of the handrail. Tomorrow, I resolve to go through the collection of garden tools I have got into the habit of storing in buckets under the eaves and rationalising the contents of them so that the outside of the house looks a little less cluttered. Some of them can always be located down into ‘Mog’s Den‘ and some of them relocated into less evident locations.

The shocking COVID-19 statistics for today are (i) total cases now to exceed 40,000 but this figure does not take into the ‘more than expected’ deaths figures so the actual amount of deaths caused both, directly and indirectly, may well exceed 60,000. Also (ii) the death totals yesterday in the UK at 359 exceeded the death toll of 330 from all 27 European nation-states.

Today we enjoyed a slight variation on the theme of our daily routine. Meg and I went to our little newspaper shop to collect The Times and The Guardian aa per usual. Then, as we had an earlier start in the day, we decided to brave a little venture into the weird and wonderful world of Waitrose. At the door, we were informed that only one of us would be allowed to enter the store but when we were recognised by the staff inside, the previous instruction was overwritten and we were both allowed in. Then we treated ourselves to some dark chocolate Digestive biscuits and some of our favourite oatmeal crackers before escaping the store as fast as we could. Then we sat by the lake in the park and drank our coffee. On our way up the hill, we encountered both of our sets of friends and exchanged some gossip as a six-some – quite legal as we were in the open air and keeping our distance from each other.  After lunch, I had determined to do a mini tidy-up of some tools and similar ‘useful things’ whilst at the same time looking for some things that might be useful for some woodworking activities. The bad news is that when I opened a large wooden chest that was filled with spanners and other bits of ironmongery ‘that might come in useful at some time’ I was dismayed to find that we had been visited by our little furry friends who had evidently been on the search for nesting materials – hence what used to be jiffy bags I used for storage had been reduced to a mass of chewed up paper clippings not to mention mouse droppings. I wondered how on earth they could have got into a closed box (which had been housing for a radiogram popular in the 1960s) until I  realised that various holes were cut in the back panel to allow for the ingress of cables and leads so the little blighters had just walked in. So there had to be a lot of washing down with a strong bleach solution, throwing away of some items rendered useless and a general sorting out which took most of the afternoon. However, there was a slight bonus to all of this because I discovered three things that I think that I will need in the next day or so when I affix a capping rail to my newly installed handrail, namely a wood chisel, a type of rasping tool which acts as a plain and a chuck for muy little Bosch hand-held drill so I had a certain amount of fortune to offset the misfortune.

Tonight was the end of the Thursday night ‘Clap for our Carers‘ routine. I went outside ready to join in with whatever clapping might take place but there was just silence in the gloomy and rain-filled evening air. The official website had stated that last week’s was to be the final one but as the lockdown was being eased perhaps the movement had run its course. It was good whilst it lasted but had perhaps outlived its purpose. Out of interest, I clicked on a map showing the hotspots of Coronavirus throughout the country (i.e. at least 100 deaths per 100,000 of the population) and there seemed to be a smattering across the South, the Midlands and the North with no evident pattern staring you in the face and Bromsgrove remained one of the hotspots. I did wonder whether the hotspots could have been made ‘hot ‘ by having more than the average share of the population in residential homes in each area and this constitutes a reservoir of infection back into the local community as we know that the sector as a whole is under-tested and not well supplied with PPE. This might have to await further analysis but perhaps is too difficult to tease out statistically. Just to keep things in perspective, about 0.5% of the population in the UK have experienced the virus whereas smallpox afflicted 1 in 6 of the population in early Georgian England (the latter rate being about 30 times more than the former)