Well, I always knew that today might be quite a full day and so it proved. Knowing that I had an Iceland delivery slot for groceries sometime between 6.00-8.00 am,  I actually got up and going at 5.00 to be in plenty of time for the delivery – the order actually arrived at about 6.40 and everything was as it should be so that was quickly unpacked and then put away. I then walked down into Bromsgrove and actuated my new ‘newspaper buying’ slot which I started on Monday. I make sure that nobody is inside the shop and today I got in, selected my newspapers and got out again all within 30 seconds. I then thought I would hunt for potatoes which I had tried, unsuccessfully to add to my Iceland order yesterday but the little veg store I thought might be open was closed and the local Iceland store did not open until 9.00 am. So I decided to try my old haunt of Waitrose – I might state, at this point, that I have a particular relationship with the staff in Waitrose as I was actually the second customer through the doors when it opened on my birthday more than two years ago. The staff greeted me like the prodigal son which I suppose I was, in a way, and we had to give each virtual hugs from a distance of two metres away. Anyway, I got my bag of potatoes and shot off, but not before ascertaining that as they opened at 8.00 each morning, then after a little early morning rush their quietest time was about 9.00 am so if I run out of anything, I can make a quick dash into the store in future, not least to get my supplies replenished of unicorn hoof oil essence which I know (!) they stock.

Today, was the day when our incredibly ‘handy man‘ who I shall call Len (not his real name, I might add) were going to erect a handrail down the precipitate slope down into Mog’s Den. I had got this job planned out in my mind as I had acquired some half-round fencing poles (round poles, split in half longitudinally and hence one curved surface and one flat surface) I had also acquired a couple of years earlier a fence boring auger which is like a huge gimlet or corkscrew and I know this would be excellent for boring some quite deep holes of just the right diameter. Then, if all works well, all you need to do is to insert the fencing pole (with a spike put on the end with a saw) and then hammer into the ground with a hefty sledge-hammer. When processing the first of our holes, all seemed to be going well until we encountered some sort of obstacle and the auger would not progress any further – on further investigation, Len felt into the hole and we discovered that at the exact spot upon which we were sinking the first hole, we would have to encounter a lump of metal which turned out to be a scaffolding shackle. The rest of the job proceeded satisfactorily and we were both pleased with the overall result which has a sort of naturalistic feel to it as befits the descent into a woodland garden. However, as it was raining (smattering) most of the morning, I was starting to feel the effects of standing around on a cold rainy day. There are some timbers left over so I may use them to provide a type of capping rail as a whole – hence, I was hunting around in the garage of drills, drill bits, chucks, chargers and the like.

There are warnings tonight that we need to prepare for a second and possibly a third more subsequent waves of the coronavirus to which most of the population has not actually been exposed and to which we are certainly not immune. Also, at 50,000 deaths the UK has the highest death rate in Europe. We await the result of the official enquiry in what has undoubtedly gone wrong in the UK, although the main lines of explanation are already clear (e.g. critical failure to respond with alacrity in the first few weeks of the pandemic as even starting the lockdown a week earlier might have saved about 8,000 lives)

Today, we were going to alter our routine just a little to see how it goes. But first, of course, we have to make sure that the decorators are settled and well supplied with coffee before their work starts. I think that all of us (and particularly the decorators) will welcome the slighter cooler air that is promised for us and the possibility of a refreshing shower tomorrow at some time. We occupied our normal park bench and then I left Meg to contemplate the pond (and chat with other young mothers and their children) whilst I made haste to get our daily ration of newspapers and back to the park bench which round trip took me all of 10 minutes. As we have a plethora of plastic bags left behind from several grocery deliveries, I think I will transport the newspapers home in one of them and immediately discard it once I get it home. Then I had a slightly frustrating experience traying to amend my Iceland order, due for delivery tomorrow between 6.00-8.00pm. I realised that we had just run out of potatoes but the Iceland website would amend my order and then come up with a problem when I tried to pay for the extra. A customer services number was of no use because the recorded message said they were so overwhelmed with queries that they could not cope. Eventually, I texted my domestic help pleading that she brings some spuds with her when next we see her.

This afternoon was the first date upon which I could actually get some vegetable seed sown. Last year, when I laid down the slate path on ‘Mog’s Den‘ I had purchased several of what are technically window planters and they form a line alongside the path so that I can sow and harvest the veg more easily. Luckily, I had some beet seed in stock which was not out-of-date so I used an old gardener’s trick which was to scarify (i.e. scrub the seed with sandpaper) to remove some of the hard husks and then soaked it in water overnight. I sieved some compost and laid down about a two-inch layer in the planters which I then made flat and even using a half-brick (a longitudinal half brick which I had discovered in the garden) which is excellent for tamping. Then using a piece of bamboo cane, I made a couple of pencil-like indentations before planting the seed at 1-inch intervals. Finally. I finished off with sieving (yes, an actual old metal kitchen sieve I had in my vegetable garden tools section) of compost to provide the lightest of layers over the seed before it had a final tamping and watering. If all of my efforts are successful, I would hope to see some germination within 3-4 days and then I must remember to sow at fortnightly intervals.  If all goes to plan, I can use the young beet leaves as a salad, pull young small beetroots and bottle them in vinegar and let the more mature plants grow on to their full size. We shall see!

It seems as though the government is eventually being caught out. I read somewhere that less than 50% of the population actually believe the guff which passes for information at the daily Downing Street briefings and the general public prefer to believe the scientists (when they are allowed to speak) and not the politicians. I quote from an ITV news report below:

Health Secretary Matt Hancock has been rebuked by the UK’s statistics watchdog over coronavirus testing figures which are “still far from complete and comprehensible”. UK Statistics Authority chairman Sir David Norgrove said “it is not surprising that given their inadequacy data on testing are so widely criticised and often mistrusted”.

He criticised the way the figures are presented at the daily Downing Street briefings, with the headline total including both tests carried out and those which have been posted to recipients but not yet conducted.

We made a fairly early start to the day this morning because our decorator had come to undertake the external painting of the house – we like to have it done every 5-6 years. Naturally, we had to have a walk around to ascertain that access for ladders was maintained in all of the relevant places and, of course, we have to ensure that relevant supplies of tea and/or coffee are made available from the word go. Well, the day has arrived on what might be billed as the start of the unlock-down and one wonders what social changes might be evident. On the ground, there was not much apparent here in Bromsgrove although the TV channels report that the Birmingham IKEA has experienced a huge queue as the lockdown appears to be easing. It is reported that some people starting queuing at 5.45 in time for the store opening at 10.00. I must admit, I didn’t think that IKEA was judged to be an essential store like a supermarket or a pharmacy but apparently the government has ‘tweaked’ the definition of essential retail shops so that furniture and hardware shops are now to be allowed to open. I had thought that shops could only open in a fortnight’s time of June 15th but apparently, hardware and homeware stores are now regarded as essential – subject, of course, to rigid social distancing rules. Actually, today for the first time in about 11 weeks, Meg and I decided to buy our newspapers directly instead of relying upon our son and/or daughter-in-law to do it for us. As it turned out, the process was ridiculously easy as we choose a little newspaper shop in a not particularly busy street in the town. Having ascertained there was no one else in the store it took all of half a minute to enter, choose the newspapers, hand over my vouchers and then leave. This will be our routine form now on – although I had taken the precaution of having a face mask and disposable gloves with me, this no longer proved to be necessary. The park was delightful today, as it was certainly not too busy and there was a slight  breeze to make the day feel really pleasant. On the way home, one of our ‘friends-who-garden’ had consulted their RHS book to ascertain what plant (portion of a plant) some other friends had donated to us. It turns out that it is ‘Lychnis coronaria Abrosanguinea Gp‘ which a quick Google search reveals has the popular name of a rose campion and our little plant is now flowering beautifully.

This afternoon turned out to be a pretty hot afternoon and the early morning breeze had abated, I had started what I call ‘routine’ edging/gully clearing from the edge of our communal grassed area and managed to get about two-thirds done of what I had hoped. These days, I find that having low expectations of what you set yourself to do is the way to happiness – otherwise, you are only dissatisfied with what have you have got done rather than satisfied with what you have achieved. I particularly wanted to get my tasks finished by 5.00 pm so that I could watch the Downing Street briefing but why I bother, I really do not know as it only sends my blood pressure sky high. Today, the Health Secretary was asked the perfectly reasonable question of ‘how much use has been made of the Coronavirus test-and-trace’ regime since its inception. Every kind of evasion was being deployed although Hancock claimed that the system was ‘up and running’ and was ‘successful’. However, there are several reports from the front line that many of the 25,000 testers recruited to do the job (all employed by private-sector agencies’) were sitting around all day twiddling their thumbs and perhaps only 25% of the 8,000 or so new cases each day are getting caught up in the system. When pressed for some statistics, the Health Secretary eventually admitted that the figures would be ‘forthcoming’ in a few days’ time – the truth probably being that the whole thing has been botched from beginning to end with ill-trained contact tracers manning call centres, a promised app that has not seen the light of day and the experienced local authority workers who do have experience of dealing with communicable diseases sidelined. You couldn’t really make it up!

We speculate how busy our local park is going to be in view of the weather and the release of the lockdown sentiment in the country – as it turned out, it was the most pleasant of days with a gentle breeze keeping the temperature a little cooler than in recent days and the numbers of people in the park being quite tolerable, A few days we watched whilst some of the local authority workers dredged the pond which only has about 8″ of water in it but acquires a certain amount of dead branches and other debris falling into the water. The park caretakers had carefully arranged for the detritus to dry out when no doubt it would easier to dispose of. Our enjoyment of the pond was marred somewhat by the sight of a couple of teenagers, evidently quite bored, who hunted some of the biggest sticks that could find and threw them back into the pond. In circumstances like this, does one intervene with a reprimand? Whilst contemplating what to do, the youths got bored and ran away. In the early afternoon, we got a text from our domestic help with the red-hot news that Asda was selling off 70-litre bags of forest bark at 3 for £10.00. Actually, this was very good news to us as we had engaged one of our neighbours in conversation who was giving his garden a makeover and had unsuccessfully toured some of the local supermarkets (who typically have supplies of forest bark with their gardening requisites outside the store) Accordingly my daughter-in-law and I went down to Asda where they had a well-developed system – whilst I loaded up my trolley with the forest bark, my daughter-in-law went inside and paid for it with crisp £10.00 notes (which the staff preferred not to handle even though virus does not survive for about 11 weeks on crisp new notes) Nonetheless, this was a very welcome little venture as we had contemplated doing it a day or so ago but it all depends upon the local supply situation.

The afternoon was quite a busy one. The principal task was to plant the lilac tree that had been bought for me as a birthday present and I had a green 75-litre pot which certainly ought to be a sufficient size for a young tree. Fortunately, during my make-over of Mog’s Den I discovered that I already had a bag of topsoil as well as one of compost and already had some ‘normal’ soil put by ready for a large planting. As I am always running out of both bonemeal and Blood, Fish and Bone, I had recently bought from Amazon some 10kg bags of both so it was quite easy to make a nutritious mixture (bonemeal at the base, blood fish and bone as a general fertiliser) and planting was thus incredibly easy, I have decided to locate it against a wall of the house in the back garden so that all members of the family can see it from the kitchen window. To make space for it, I relocated the (pot-grown) Corylus avellana which is a hazel bush/tree. My final job of the afternoon was to relocate all of the dustbins, gardening impedimenta away from the sides of the hose so that our painter and decorator has a free run of the outside of the house when he starts off at 8.30 in the morning.

I might point out that in my various activities, throughout the day I have been assisted and supervised at times by Miggles the cat, who has variously supervised my hanging out of the washing, planting of the lilac tree, relocating the hazel tree and preparing for the decorator. At one stage when I had just planted the lilac the cat investigated the pot by standing on her hind legs and then jumped in to roll in the soil (a trait she has exhibited many times before!)

We thought that today the park was going to be exceptionally busy as people were anticipating the end of the lockdown. But, in truth, although it was a little busier than normal, the park was busy but not teeming. We decided to vary our route on the way back through the park and encountered one of our ‘old lady’ friends that we had not seen for several days and hoped she was OK. The husband of this particular acquaintance had worked for the Parks Department and, upon his demise, the family had donated a bench to the borough council and upon this bench, we often sit. The old lady in question can see this bench from the vantage point of her own home as she lives adjacent to the park – and she is always delighted to see that the bench is in use. We had not seen her as she had varied her routine and got into the habit of going around  the park very early in the morning to avoid the heat and the crowds. She was having a few problems with her health but at least she had some hospital appointments lined up in the forthcoming week, although the logistics were getting to be a bit of a nightmare as under the Coronavirus rules one couldn’t be accompanied into the hospital. Still, we were pleased to see her. On our way up the hill, we exchanged news with one of our oldest friends and then bumped into an acquaintance who was visiting his parents and who we often see at the weekend. As it happened, he was engaged in the most humdrum of tasks (sieving through a bucket full of slate chippings to remove the bits of leaves and twigs) What was so coincidental about this is that I had detailed myself to do exactly the same task myself in the afternoon. Last year, I had taken the pains to lay down a whole new path along half of the length of ‘Mog’s Den‘ and, to keep a naturalistic look, I had laid down some weed control fabric and then had a ton of slate chippings delivered in the customary large plastic/hessian builder’s bag in our driveway. I had then made the journey down with loaded buckets of slate chippings to lay the path. This is generally quite maintenance-free but although the weed control fabric prevents the problems of annual weeds growing from below, one still has the problem of dried leaves accumulating on the top. This maintenance job didn’t turn out to be particularly arduous and I finished off the whole job with a Bosch blower that I use just to disperse dried leaves and the like. This now completes the makeover of ‘Mog’s Den‘ and whilst there will also be ‘pottering about’ little jobs to be done, at least it is now looking fairly shipshape and should be easy to maintain for the rest of the season. All it needs now is a good downpour of rain, but we will have to wait a little longer for that.

The political news this weekend looks interesting. It seems that the ‘love-in’ between the scientists/health chiefs on the one hand and the politicians on the other has finally broken down, particularly with the added irritant of the Dominic Cummings affair. In particular, they feel that trust has been badly damaged by Cumming’s failure to stand down and the prime minister’s refusal to dismiss him. In addition, they feel that the failure to set up an effective test, trace and isolate regime means that the safety and well-being of the general public are now certainly at risk. Today was a day when I missed the Downing Street briefing but for the first time, one of the senior scientists has made his feelings known. The government’s deputy chief medical officer Prof Jonathan Van-Tam, with Dominic Cummings in mind, laid his criticisms on the line thus : “In my opinion the rules are clear and have always been clear. In my opinion, they are for the benefit of all and they apply to all.” And so say all of us (or over 80% in an opinion poll published over the weekend).

The end of another hot week – and more hot weather to come. We were particularly pleased to see our domestic help arrive to assist us in the burden of housework and we always seem to have a lot of news to catch up on. We do try to be careful to not be in the same room at the same time so there is a certain amount of calling to each other from doorways! We had a chat with one of our regular friends on the way down the hill and wondered if the park was going to be teeming today. However, despite the proliferation of picnic blankets, the park was only moderately busy and we enjoyed watching various antics with dogs and balls. By the way, by consulting Google, I have just discovered that the official name for the device that throws a ball further than one could unaided is called a ball-launcher – you live and learn.

After lunch, I cut the communal lawns and our own lawn with the trust petrol mower, but in truth, it had hardly grown at all but I succeeded in removing the wispy bits of dandelions. The two ‘weeds’ that I liberated from the roadside verges (an ox-eye daisy and the dandelion-like cat’s ear) seem to have taken in their planted plots and the trees I recently transplanted are just about surviving the heat (I think) Halfway through the afternoon, we took delivery of the lilac bush/tree that was a birthday present from the rest of the family. I also took delivery of a dozen half-round fencing posts with which I intend to construct a hand-rail to assist in reaching ‘Mog’s Den’ in the lower recesses of the garden. Although I have all the materials in place (posts, screws. cement, hole-boring implement) I think this job might be a bit more than a one-man job so I have sent off a text message to a useful contact of ours to see if we could do the job together sometime in the next few weeks (time is not of the essence)

Life next week will start to see some of the ‘turning of the analogue dial’ as the country as a whole is entering the first stages of release from the lockdown. As a family, we will face some changes – our daughter-in-law is in charge of the complicated logistics of getting the primary school in which she teaches ready to receive Year 1 and Year 6 pupils. I am going to enter a regime in which I go and collect my own newspapers which entails going to a small newspaper shop in town. I will go masked-up and will not enter the shop unless it is clear of other customers for a start. I have acquired a collection of face masks which will now come into their own. In addition, we are having the outside of the house receive a routine painting which is another small return to normality. As the government attempts to gradually end the various furlough schemes, the grim reality of how many businesses will be able to survive will become all too apparent. My own feeling is that this stage of the unlock down is going to be incredibly difficult. I suspect that as people have got used to new patterns of doing things (e.g. using online grocery shopping), then the old ways of doing things may never return.

Our local newspaper is reporting that Bromsgroveis in the top 20 of COVID-19 hotspots in the country. Of 329 local authorities, Bromsgrove has the 15th highest coronavirus death rate with a standardised rate of 106.4 per 100,000 (Birmingham was 89.7 per 100,000 and Worcestershire 50 per 100,000) A local consultant neurologist has pointed to the high death rate in residential homes (38 of the 105 deaths reported in Bromsgrove) and has argued that it is the neglect of care homes by the government that has led them to become pockets of infection where it is easy for the disease to spread and to re-spread. A sobering thought!

This morning was fairly uneventful for Meg and I although we did have the opportunity for a brief chat with our Italian friend who lives down the road and then for a longer chat with two of our friends from church. One of their relatives had had an operation yesterday morning and we were all relieved that it seemed to have gone well so far. Another hot day which called out for a salad but we managed to rustle up quite a tasty collection of salad-type things even though we didn’t have what you might call any salad greens.

In the late morning, we got the news about Durham police’s view of the Dominic Cummings escapade. The whole wording seemed a little bizarre to us and designed to help the government get off the hook. For a start, the Durham police said that it was a minor breach (well a breach is either a breach or it isn’t a breach- the argument that it is minor because no social distancing was involved seems curious as surely if there had been a social distance issue this would have been two offences of leaving the house and breaking social distance rules). A lawyer has commented on the case as follows:

Raj Chada, head of the criminal defence department and a partner at firm Hodge Jones & Allen, told the PA news agency: “I interpret this statement as them saying that there is enough evidence to say that he breached the rules (but ultimately for a court to decide) but that it is not in the public interest to prosecute for the reasons that they say.”

The fact that the initial journey from London to Durham was adjudged not to have broken regulations presumably drives a coach and horses through the advice? legal requirement? to ‘stay at home‘ and one wonders what will happen if some of those who have already been fined decide to appeal against their convictions.  Finally, one has to say that a wording which says a ‘minor breach’ which ‘may’ have occurred seems to be bending over backwards not to offend Downing Street.

I had a frustrating session this afternoon. Part of ‘Mog’s Den‘ is an area in which I throw stones, bits of brick and other stuff retrieved whenever I go and dig in the garden. To tidy this up a little bit I thought I would put a bit of fencing (Poundland Special) and as I was doing this, I thought I would remove a protruding bit of stone from the route of the fence. Half an hour later and I was still struggling because as I excavated more and more of the ‘stone’ it became apparent that it must have been some kind of lintel, burried by the builders, as it was over 30″ long and about 6″ wide and 6″ deep. Having struggled to free this monster all without success, I reasoned to myself that even if I did free it would be too heavy to move anywhere and I would probably injure my back in making the effort. So I covered it all up again and made the best of a bad job.

Emily Maitless, the lead presenter on BBC Newsnight programme decided she would not appear the following evening after she had intimated that it was evident that Cummings had broken the law but the Government would not admit it. The BBC did not ‘discipline’  Maitless but felt they had to reissue guidance on political partiality but said they were not going to take any further action of a disciplinary nature. It should be very interesting to see what Newsnight says tonight, given that Cummings may have committed a breach of the regulations (subject to a court deciding the case – which of course it never will) The extremely partisan Attorney General has tweeted on Saturday in full support of Dominic Cummings and in which she quoted the full text of the No 10 statement on Boris Johnson’s chief aide in which the prime minister said he had behaved “responsibly and legally”. So the Attorney General’s role is compromised even before the Durham police statement earlier on today…

Today was the day that we decided to ‘liberate’ some of the wildflowers we have seen growing on a central verge. But first, we had our customary walk to the park which really did seem a lot busier than usual. For the first time in weeks, I did feel a little unsafe on occasions. Those of a certain age (65+) make every effort to avoid you, providing an almost ritualised arc-shape as you walk past each other. But we did notice that as we were sitting on our park bench, young couples with a 3-4-year-old on tow (or a little bike) made no effort at all to avoid you as we were sitting on the park bench, walking, in my estimation, within about a metre of you. not to mention two metres . The same was equally true of some of the residents of residential homes whom I presume were being pushed in a wheelchair by their carers who trundled along the path making no effort to avoid anyone. Given that residential homes may be the lurking-place for virus (more deaths were recorded in residential homes yesterday than in the whole of the hospital sector) then perhaps the trepidation that I felt had a degree of substance to it.

On our way home, I took out a sharp knife I had brought with me and liberated some small clumps of ox-eye daisies, cat’s-ear (similar to but not to be confused with dandelions) and a common poppy. These are, in effect, weeds but I wondered if I get them going in a few small plant pots and use them to brighten up a dark corner. I may not have much success in this particular venture as the specimens I obtained all seemed to have exceptionally shallow root systems but at least it was only about 10 minutes after lifting them before I got them into pots and watered.

After lunch, I busied myself with tidying up the steps that lead down into Mog’s Den but in truth, I didn’t spend a lot of time doing this as, apart from being assisted by the cat, I knew that Boris Johnson was due to appear before the Select Committee chairmen at 4.00 and I particularly wanted to evaluate his performance. A few little things stood out (i) despite referring to evident ‘falsehoods’ in the press treatment of Dominic Cummings, he couldn’t name any (ii) although he indicated that he did check on the evidence supplied by Dominic Cummings he was not going to refer any of it to the Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Civil Service as he was ‘already far too busy to be troubled with things like that’ (iii) he hadn’t read any of the scientific papers but only relied on summaries of them provided for him (iv) he seemed not to know at all that there were thousands of migrants to the UK who because of their ambiguous citizenship status had no recourse to any public funds (and could be destitute for all he knew or cared) (v) he must have mentioned 5-6 times that it was time to ‘move on’ because that was the great British public wanted(!)

After reflecting upon the day’s events and some of the comments on late night TV, I suspect that three factors will stand out. The first of these is that the rebellion of 40+ Tory MP’s is showing some signs of fizzling out which means that Cummings may survive and hang on. However, Cummings may well be a ‘busted flush’ and will have lost whatever authority/respect he used to muster. But the second thing to emerge is that in the lockdown, the great British public invested a lot of trust in the government and helped to prevent the direst of tragedies (whilst still having the highest number of deaths/related deaths in the world) but this has largely evaporated and government messages may not be heeded (as there is ‘one law for the powerful and another law for the rest of us‘)  Thirdly, and this point follows from the second, the ‘Test and Trace‘ system (due to be announced on Monday, 1st June but brought forward two working days in an attempt to ‘move the agenda on’) may well be fatally flawed as it is by no means certain that when contacted by a ‘tracer’ and told to isolate for 14 days the request will be followed as no sanctions are to be deployed in the short term. It is also evident that the fabled  tracing app is not ready, that turn-around of test results is far too slow, and that we have failed to learn how to do things properly (as in South Korea, Germany for example)

As you might expect, this was a much quieter day after the Bank Holiday yesterday – quite unusually, we saw none of our usual friends to chat with on the way to the park but we were graced by the sight of our resident (club-footed) heron. The ducks seemed unusually prolific this morning but we suspect that they had been fed some chunks of bread, which is not good for them as it fills them up without giving them many of the nutrients that they might need. A few nights ago, our garden was graced by a hedgehog (observed in the middle of the night when one of our PIR lights was activated) and we know that there are masses of corners full of dead leaves and the like, which they will enjoy. The more the merrier, I say, if they constantly feed on the slugs that play havoc with several of our plants.

Our local authority, for reasons best known to itself, has started a policy of only mowing the central grassy strip that runs along the length of Kidderminster Road to a width of one metre (something to do with the fact that only one man can mow at a time but it sounds a fishy story to me) There is a bonus in that the un-mown areas are starting to sprout some wild meadow flowers. There seems to be an invasion of what at first sight might look a dandelion but is actually a dandelion-type wildflower known as ‘Cat’s ears‘ Tomorrow, I will gather a specimen and see if I can more definitively identify it but comparing it with images on the web. There is also a proliferation of poppies at the moment and I am keeping my eye on a whole series of poppy heads in a vacant house so that I can liberate them for future supplies of poppy seed.

More gardening this afternoon whilst the weather was fine. As opposed to construction work, this was just ‘routine’ gardening which involved clearing away about a year’s worth of fallen holly leaves from Mog’s Den. I decide to enlist the help of a huge plastic shovel which I purchased some time ago to shift snow (but actually looks like one of those huge things that you see stable workers muck out horses with – it might even be called a stable shovel). But in truth, I was just waiting to see what the latest briefing from Downing St. had to make of the Cumming’s affair.

Throughout the day, more and more Tory MP’s were withdrawing support from Cummings and one Scottish junior minister has resigned. Matt Hancock took the press briefing which was almost farcical as it was cut from 60 minutes to 30 and half of this time were the ritual presentations of graphs and statistics. Practically every question was on the Comming’s affair and Hancock allowed no supplementary questions. He half promised the first questionner (a vicar from Brighton) that he and his Treasury colleagues would examine the case for rescinding the fines of all of those who could plead a ‘special case’ à la Cummings – but having made up policy on the hoof, as it were, Downing Street went on to deny that there was going to be a change in policy. This really is like watching a car crash in slow motion but the interesting question remains that half of the cabinet have lined up to support Cummings whilst the other half wants to see him sacked!  Michael Gove even suggested that he himself had driven to test his own eye-sight! If the situation persists, whereby every briefing from Downing Street is asked no questions about the pandemic but concentrates on Cummings with more and more influential Tories withdrawing their support, then Cummings looks doomed (and perhaps Boris Johnson doesn’t come out of it at all well either)

Well, today doesn’t exactly feel like a Bank Holiday when most days feel alike. However, we must say that the park was a lot busier than normal and we had to hunt for a park bench upon which to munch our comestibles. Being what used to be called ‘Whitsun’ or ‘Whitsuntide’ put me in mind of the Whit walks that used to take place in Manchester and other Lancashire mill towns in times gone by. I thought the tradition had died out some time ago but apparently, they are still lingering on, according to Google, with a march of 1800 people as recently as 2018. The Catholics used to walk on one weekend around Whitsuntide (perhaps on Whit Friday) and the Anglicans and Non-conformists a week later. What was always so colourful was that as well as the scouts, guides, nurses, trade unions, brass bands etc. it was a good excuse for various ethnic groups (particularly, as I remember, the Poles and the Ukrainians who were strongly Catholic) to process in their national dress. As I write this blog and look upwards, I have a print of L. S. Lowry’s ‘A Procession in Pendlebury’ (showing a Whit Walk procession) on my study wall. I am told that L.S. Lowry who was a curmudgeonly old soul, used to take a taxi to the moors above Oldham and then set up his easel and paint.. pictures of Manchester mill towns!

As I write this, I am listening to ClassicFM and as a special guest they have Prince Charles on his own personal selection of classical music (Only Wagner and Strauss so far, but I have only been listening for 15 minutes) I think that as well as being a guest today, he may actually be presenting a show of his own in the next day or so. Interesting, really (well, it is for me)

Today, after lunch, I spent some time in Mog’s Den putting some finishing touches to the various supports I have put in place but in truth, I was just killing time because we had heard that Dominic Cummings was to have his own press conference later on in the day. I guessed it would be about 4.00 but it actually got going at about 4.30, eventually. Whatever, your view of Dominic Cummings (hero or villain depending on whether you are a Brexit or a Remainer or a supporter), it was an unprecedented type of event and an extraordinary piece of political theatre. Some of the revelations were incredible – e.g. going a 30-minute round-trip to ‘test one’s eye-sight’ before returning to London by car) In view of this self-confessed break of the regulations (which none of the journalists actually pinned him to the ground on) is surely grounds for a prosection or a £1000 fine (like the rest of us) I bet the Durham police pull their punches though. More of this later – I am fascinated to see Sky TV’s ‘Review of the Press’ make of it all. I will report later when I’ve had a chance to view it!

It seems now that it is quite legitimate to ‘use your best instincts as a father’ to exempt yourself from the lockdown rules you had helped to create. Some aspects of the Cummings account stretch our credulity to the limit e.g. you go on a 60 mile round trip to test your eyesight (incidentally putting the health and safety of your wife and child at risk) – an alternative explanation is that it is your wife’s birthday and you go a pleasure trip before you return to work in London the following day! What is fascinating is that politicians, the clergy, the police, scientists, lawyers, medics and the rest of the media have all universally expressed their disbelief and astonishment at the Cummings account. To read this for yourself, the article is entitled  ‘Dominic Cummings draws condemnation from across UK society’
dominic-cummings-draws-condemnation-from-across-uk-society

As we suspected the Daily Mail is not at all convinced (and neither are the rest of us!)