As predicted by the weather forecasters, today was a beautiful fine day – and not before time as we have to endure so much rainy weather over most of the month of May. So we collected our newspapers and then made our way to the park where we enjoyed the sunshine. We were joined by one of our park ‘regulars’ in the seat which has a commanding view of the parkland and chatted over matters political, cultural and cosmological (as is our wont) Then we progressed gently home, not meeting any more of our regulars on the way home. We made ourselves a meal which finished off the chicken which we have enjoyed over the past few days.

There is quite a big political story, following the attacks by Dominic Cummings on the Health Secretary in yesterday’s committee hearings. We know that a year ago last March when the first wave of the virus was really hitting our society, the hospital authorities were desperate to clear beds – so any elderly resident of a hospital bed who could be was immediately discharged back to the care home from whence they came in order to release the bed. The nub of the political argument is this – apparently, Matt Hancock had promised the PM that anybody discharged from a hospital to a residential home would be tested for the virus before discharge – but did this actually happen? There were lots of anecdotal  stories at the time that actually hospital patients were being discharged but without being tested as Hancock promised the PM they would be. But when questioned in the House of Commons today and, even more so, at the Downing Street press conference held at 5.0pm onwards, journalist after journalist quizzed Hancock as to whether hospital patients had actually been tested before discharge. No clear answer to a very clear and specific question was at all forthcoming and indeed, to quote Sky News:  ‘In his responses he suggested testing could only be introduced for people being discharged to care homes once testing capacity had been built. He said his “recollection” was that he had committed to building up testing so it could be in place in the future, but avoided an explicit denial of Mr Cumming’s accusation, saying ‘there’ll be a time we can go through all of this in greater detail’….One of the key claims made by Mr Cummings was that Mr Hancock lied about COVID-testing people before they returned to care homes from hospitals in the early part of the pandemic.   Mr Cummings told MPs on Wednesday that the Prime Minister was furious to discover in April 2020 that untested hospital patients had been discharged to care homes, adding Mr Hancock had told the PM a month earlier they would be tested.

The importance of all of this is hard to overestimate as it does look as though the elderly residents discharged back to  residential homes might have been a massive source of infection which spread like wildfire through the residential homes sector. One estimate of this tangled statistical story by the Nuffield Trust indicates that perhaps as many as 35,000 excess deaths may have been due to COVID-19. So the results of a panicked government response, desperate to clear hospital beds but in effect transferring the problem to an under-resourced residential home sector led to deaths in the tens of thousands. In the face of all of this, one can see why the politicians are being evasive the whole of the time – imagine Matt Hancock saying ‘Yes we made a massive mistake as a result of which over 30,000 deaths have occurred’ One can only hope that some journalists will not let this one rest but will pursue the politicians relentlessly – I think that Newsnight on BBC2 might be quite incisive in tonight’s edition but we shall have to wait and see.

If we are going to have a spell of fine weather, then I really do not have excuse not to get out into the garden and do some tidying up which is badly needed. Of course, when we had so much rain recently, there was plenty of excuse not to get out out and about but now after a lot of rain followed by bursts of sunshine, the weeds might be going mad in various areas. I have an area of the garden which I call ‘Mog’s Den‘ down into which one has to descend via some steps where the land slopes away sharply at the end of our plot of land. I have some fruit trees in this area and on the slopes under the trees I am trying to grow the kind of shade loving plants like Skimmia and periwinkle. These plans have generally worked out but there are some areas that badly need an hour or so of hard gardening to get things back into shape. I know from hard experience that if a garden ‘gets away’ from you in May, then you have a struggle for the rest of the year – and vice versa. 

So another Wednesday rolls by and, as usual, I had to update my Waitrose order ready for delivery tomorrow. Fortunately, I remembered to book my slot for about three weeks time which I did whilst waiting for a few minutes after midnight on Tuesday at which time they tend to release new time slots for the weeks ahead. So after all of this was done we walked down to town, picked up our newspapers and then popped into Waitrose where we picked up some milk and a birthday card for our next door neighbour for next Sunday. Whilst we were there, we bumped into one of our ex-Waitrose friends that we used to see quite regularly in the park during the wintertime when she was involved in undertaking long walks around Bromsgrove. But we haven’t seen her for some time because she is quite busy off playing golf – she has a good and supportive circle of good friends in the golfing community (which is great, as she lost her husband just before the pandemic really got underway). Whilst we were in Waitrose, we noticed a sign to say that the cafe – the hub of many social activities – was due to reopen again on Wednesday, June 17th which is some three weeks away. We reminded the staff to reward their first few customers with a free bottle of champagne when we walk through the doors in three weeks time and the staff promised to send the message onto the manager. On our way down to the park this morning, we were delighted to have a few words with our Irish friends who live down the road. They were looking after their grand-daughter for the day (which they do for a day or so in the middle of the week) and were delighted to be going off to spend a few days in Llandudno next week now that the restrictions are being lifted and the weather is set as a high pressure system sets in for the next few days.

Today was the day when Dominic Cummings (ex principal adviser to the Prime Minister) gave evidence to a Parliamentary select committee. The word used most often by the media today is ‘excoriating’ and one has to say, that at least superficially, his evidence seems compelling in the extreme. Cummings has argued that Boris Johnson is completely unfit for office and that Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, should have been sacked for lying on multiple occasions. A picture is painted of a complete lack of preparedness at the start of the pandemic, a reluctance to lockdown (initially and on subsequent occasions) and a dysfunctional, ‘rabbits in the headlamps‘ approach to  government (i.e. paralysed into inactivity) Cummings himself is apologetic for not having pressed the ‘panic’ button and added new information to ‘explain’ his flight to Barnard Castle at the height of the pandemic.  What I think is often forgotten is that a long way before Boris become leader of the Tory Party and therefore before Brexit, there was a large group often Tory MP’s who were arguing for a ‘Anybody but Boris‘  candidate. I think it was well anticipated that Boris Johnson might have great skills with his rhetorical or journalistic flourish but as a practical decision maker he would prove to be a disaster. Privately, many of the current crop of Tory MPs would agree but they do not really care so long as Boris Johnson managed to secure 80 strong majorities for the Tory party. As I blog, Channel 4 news is attempting to interview a Tory MP (Tobias Ellwood) and asked who he would believe when Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings completely contradict each other. Of course, no answer was forthcoming, despite repeated questioning  and all we got was the the typical politician’s evasiveness. The particular question to which everyone would like an answer is that Dominic Cummings says he heard Boris Johnson say he would rather ‘let the bodies pile high‘ than hit the economy again with a third lockdown and this is the oft-repeated quote which Boris Johnson denied in the House of Commons (was he lying to the House of Commons?) and which Dominic Cummings claims he overheard (was he lying as well?)

Apart from the raw politics involved, what has been fascinating about today’s proceedings has been the spotlight that has been thrown onto the machinery of government. It is well known that ‘scientists advise, politicians decide‘ but even so it sobering to realise that our whole machinery of government were not very good – and the South East Asian economies of Taiwan, Vietnam, Thailand, South Korea and so on dealt with COVID-19 so very much better than we did. Also, the Prime Minister comes out as a person who does not seek advice or even consult with cabinet colleagues (e.g. Michael Gove seems to be almost completely lacking from today’s accounts). As the days roll by, we can expect to hear rebuttals of what Cummings has to say, not least from Matt Hancock who Cummings felt should have been sacked for multiple transgressions.

Today was one of those days when you seem constantly be running to catch up with one’s self – as they used to say ‘Like a dog chasing its own tail‘  We knew that we would have keep a careful watch upon our timings because of a couple of appointments in the middle of the day. Nonetheless, I dropped Meg on her normal park bench where she met with our University of Birmingham friend  who is busy teaching himself some Spanish. Naturally, Meg and I were happy to step in with our little bits and it is always interesting to note that the books tend to teach you one thing whereas ‘colloquial Spanish’ (what you hear people speak on the street) is quite another. We were taught an important lesson when our son spent a year in Mexico and had to teach himself Spanish in as short a time as possible.  His tip was a good one – never bother to learn the future tense of a verb in Spanish (although it is useful to know of it when you are reading a more formal report in a newspaper, for example) So instead of saying (in Spanish) ‘I will catch a train’ we can use the much more colloquial (and sloppier way of saying something) such as ‘I’m going to catch a train’ where all you have to remember is the ‘I ‘m going’ to bit and then the infinitive of the verb ‘to catch’ and hence ‘Voy a coger un tren‘ rather than ‘Cogeré un tren‘ which is more formally correct (but perhaps harder to remember). Anyway, I left Meg and my friend exchanging little bits of colloquial Spanish which our friend assiduously wrote down in his little notebook whilst I went to collect the newspapers. Then we had to race home and I had to quickly fill in an on-line COVID assessment form before I raced down to the physiotherapy clinic to have my knackered shoulder looked at (in the same building where my Pilates class was die to start 35 minutes later). I was 2 minutes late for this appointment but then we ran over a bit and I was five minutes late for my Pilates class – but it was that kind of day. At the very end of the class, one of my Pilates classmates of several year’s standing let something slip about a widow’s pension. It was only then that I was told that her husband had died last November of a massive heart attack. With the COVID-19 restrictions in place, their daughter could not come back from Australia to attend the funeral and the funeral itself was the by now all too familiar Covid-19 restricted affair. I felt particularly sad on their behalf because I do not know how much of a happy retirement they had managed to spend together.

By the time we had a delayed lunch (typical on Pilates days) I carried on with some newspaper tidying before we suddenly realised it was time for our weekly chat with our ex-Waitrose friends which we generally do using FaceTime. With the lockdown gradually easing, our friends had managed to make more sustained contact with members of their family which was a great source of pleasure to them. It looks as though the weather will change for the better in the next day or so and then we might have a series of fine days – if so, we might be able to go to Webbs (the nearby large garden centre) where we may be able to share a socially distanced coffee and cake in the next few days ahead.  We are particularly pleased about the weather because our immediate neighbours are planning an outdoors 70th birthday party on Sunday next – although contingency plans are no doubt in place, it will be so much easier to mingle and chat if the weather is fine.

The government is evidently in a dilemma and in some disarray this evening. It is evident that the Indian variant of the virus is taking quite a hold in various areas of the country (all starting with a ‘B” – Bolton, Blackburn, Bedford,Burnley) as well as Kirklees, Leicester, Hounslow and North Tyneside. In order to counteract this, the Government quietly introduced a policy of ‘de facto‘ lockdown in which travel into and out of the area was to be severely discouraged (to put it mildly) The trouble is that nobody bothered to tell the relevant local authorities what was meant to be happening in their own areas. After the most tremendous row (behind the scenes) between local and central government, the advice on the Government website was withdrawn – sorry, ‘updated’ in government speak. This little episode can be interpreted in one of two ways. Either one can argue that central government have an autocratic disregard for the wishes of the local populace and did not see fit to inform them.Or else, it was a massive communications ‘cockup’ which only displays the government’s lack of grip on the levers of government.

Today was a day when our normal routines went by the board as we were engaged in some different appointments today. Practically first thing in the morning, my son and I drove to Redditch so that my son’s car could receive a software upgrade – this procedure takes most of the day, apparently. So we needed to drive in convoy so that having dropped his car off, I could transport him back home again. Then I proceeded on to Droitwich as I needed to pop into a cafe/restaurant that Meg and I had frequented last week and we saw a piece of artwork that we particularly liked. Having checked with our next door neighbour that his wife would appreciate the piece of artwork we had seen for her forthcoming 70th birthday, I was more than pleased to secure the same i.e. it had not been sold in the meantime. I did have to go and get cash out in order to complete my purchase as this is handed over straight to the artist without going through the books of the cafe but that’s OK. I then go round a local hardware store (Wilko, popular in the Midlands) and purchased one or two little things whilst I could. I had also seen a copy of Bill Brysons ‘The Short History of Nearly Everything‘ which I had noticed on display outside one of the charity shops in Droitwich. I intended to buy a copy of this (for about £1) so that I could put it in the hands of my local park friends but of course Sod’s law was in operation and the book had evidently been sold. However, I have managed to locate a (cheap enough) second hand version  on eBay so this should be with me by Friday. When I eventually got home, we were in the middle of a hail storm and we could, in theory, have waited for the rain clouds to pass over and then walk down to the park. So Meg and I decided to give our walk a miss this morning as the weather seemed so variable – the occasional shower is one thing, but at this time of year it is quite possible to be subject to an instant cloudburst and get absolutely soaked to the skin.

We had purchased as part of our Waitrose shopping a Waitrose chicken, complete with herbs etc and in its own metal tray and cook-in-the-oven plastic bag. I evidently had not bought a chicken like this – the technique I used to use was to flour the inside of a ‘roaster bag’ and then put the chicken inside and roast this way. Anyway, I followed the Waitrose instructions – after the cooking was about two thirds done, you cut a large window in the top of the bag to allow for a more complete roast. I have got to say this turned out to be one of the most enjoyable and tastiest meals of chicken I have had in years! We tend not to eat a lot of chicken here in the UK and when we do we tend to buy only chicken thighs, complete with bone and cook them in their entirety before removing the (too fatty) skin and leg bone at the point of serving. When we are in Spain, we are not averse to eating chicken but I suspect they are more ‘free range’ and more flavoursome than would be their counterpart on the UK.

On my IBM ThinkPad, I have installed a copy of OEClassic as an email client and this works OK on the additional identities I have installed (for web-based emails) – however, the Outlook bit seems to be a bit ‘iffy’ for a reason which is a bit beyond me. I suspect that my original account was with Hotmail and this was migrated over to Outlook and then somehow stitched (by Microsoft) into their Office365 suite so I am not surprised if there seem to be occasional glitches. However, I have installed a copy of the super secure email system called Protonmail and paid them a subscription for the full version. However, they do allow you to install a ‘free’ version of the program which is essentially the same and with some limited functionality (which you would expect in a free version anyway) but with an mailbox that will only store 500MB (i.e. 0.5GB) of emails. On consulting the number of emails on my main system and looking at how much memory they consume, I think that 500MB should give me approx. 4,000 emails before I run out of space – as this will only be for occasional use (e.g. when you have to supply an email address to access some shopping-type websites) then I am sure this will more than suffice for at least a couple of years. 

Meg and I have just watched the classic episode of ‘Fawlty Towers‘ in which a guest died (not that Basil noticed when he served him his breakfast) and the staff had to make frantic efforts to hide the body. Incidentally, when I worked in a 375-bedded 4-star hotel In Harrogate in the 1950’s about once or twice a year a guest would die in bed. How to dispose of the body? Answer – wrapped in a roll of carpet and transported downstairs in the lift (and the guests suspected nothing!)

Another Sunday dawns and as we have come to anticipate, we awake to another gloomy and cloud-filled day. I get up and collect my newspapers early which is part of my normal Sunday routine and I didn’t even pass my usual quota of joggers and/or dog-walkers which is more typical of an early Sunday morning. Then as usual, we listen to the Andrew Marr Show before we get ourselves turned around and walk down to the park as usual. We meet with our University of Birmingham friend plus ‘Park Regular No. 2’ and we start our early morning discussions by wondering about the results of last night’s Eurovision song contest in which the UK excelled itself by scoring a total of 0 points from the specialised panels and also a total of 0 from the popular vote taken across Europe giving a grand total of zero or ‘nul points’. The UK has received this rare distinction once before – but at least both Austria and Norway have received this dubious honour on four occasions. At last, when the UK result of 0 was announced, there was a sympathetic cheer (not, I think, ironically meant) across the auditorium. The Dutch, by the way, had done an incredible job in staging the Eurovision Song Contest in the most challenging of COVID-19 circumstances. We discussed a lot more than last night’s TV, as you might imagine, and as usual our conversations seem to swirl around cosmological questions such as ‘Is the universe infinite? Is it spherical?‘ And to be really mind-blowing a Google search term such as ‘What is the Geometry of the Universe‘ will keep you lost/amused/amazed for hours if you can follow the logic of all the arguments here. By the time we had amused ourselves with all of this, the weather started to get a bit cool so Meg and I made tracks for home. On our way back through the park, we were recognised and stopped by a lady who recognised us from our Saturday evening church attendance. We chatted a little about church activities and resumed our journey home. As we were now so late, we had to abandon our normal plans for Sunday lunch and, instead, rustle up a quick rice-based lunch. We then spent a pleasant and restful Sunday afternoon digesting the Sunday newspapers which needless to say are full of the recent BBC fracas- I, for one, cannot wait for the object of media interest to move on.

 Although we do not have much in prospect this week, Wednesday may prove to be quite an explosive day – or a damp squib. It is the day when Dominic Cummings, the ex-advisor to Boris Johnson, is due to give evidence in Parliament. The day’s highest-profile event will probably be the appearance of the former chief adviser to the Prime Minister, Dominic Cummings, before the joint inquiry into lessons learned from the pandemic, by the Health and Social Care and the Science and Technology committees, to talk about the government’s decision-making. The interesting question to be determined is this: does Cummings have evidence that Boris Johnson initially followed a policy of ‘herd immunity’ (protect the elderly and let everything get and then recover from the virus)? On the other hand, Cummings evidence might be regarded as totally suspect and Johnson loyalists on the two committees may try to cast doubt on the whole of his evidence (which he may not be able to give, in any case, as it breaks the ‘Official Secrets Act‘) As with so many things in politics, we shall just have to wait and see.

Tomorrow might be quite an interesting day. In the early morning, I am due to take accompany my son as he takes his car in for a service – then having dropped the car at the garage for what might be a full-day job, I will bring him home and then progress onto Droitwich (just down the road) where there are one or two two items I particularly want to get my hands on. All will be revealed if I am successful in that which I am looking for but we shall see. 

Some interesting virus-related news has emerged over the weekend as research evidence slowly accumulates. It seems that both the Pfizer and the AstraZeneca vaccines are equally effective (at a rate in the 80% range) against the Indian as well as the earlier so-called Kent variant of the virus. However, both of the the vaccines may only be about 33% effective some three weeks after the initial vaccination. If these findings are confirmed by much more detailed studies,  then this would point to the importance of getting the second jab into people’s arms, after a suitable interval, and still to exercise caution until the second jab has been received. It also reinforces the government’s intention to put a full -release from the lockdown into effect from June 21st onwards, although I suspect that there might still be a recommendation to wear face masks as a precaution and other recommended restrictions even after that date.

We are still in the phase of a whole succession of rainy days – in fact as last month (April) was the driest for 60 years then I think I have heard recently that this May is proving to be on the wettest on record. Today was a glowering kind of day with quite a lot of oppressive low hanging cloud but nonetheless, we decided to risk it and walk down for our newspapers and our park run. Meg and I went straight to the park this morning and it wasn’t too long before we got joined by our University of Birmingham friend. He is busy teaching himself some Spanish and I think he is doing an online course – in any event, he is more than happy to try out some phrases and short sentences with us. Needless to say, Meg and I are happy accomplices in this venture. I raided our bookshelves for some ‘Teach yourself Spanish‘ books of which we have accumulated quite a multitude over the years. After we had explained sone Spanish constructions we were joined by another park friend who, I think, is quite interested in mathematics and cosmology. I am not sure how we got onto the topic several days ago but I mentioned a short-cut way of  multiplying by 25 (multiply by 100 and then divide by 4 or half and half again) In the course of our conversations, I mentioned the ‘Trachtenberg System of Speed Mathematics‘ or something similar. When I was a young civil servant in London and living in a civil service hostel (way back in 1964  i.e. 57 years go), I came across a battered old book (the Trachtenberg book mentioned before) and already I only read the first few chapters I remember being quite captivated by it. Our other park friend had also heard of the book or even come across it and the back story is quite interesting.The author who was Jewish was interned in a Nazi concentration camp and the book was devised in his mind as a way of passing the time and/or keeping hold of reality. I went onto Amazon and was amazed to discover that I could buy a recently re-issued version of the book for about £8.00 so I indulged myself and bought it. As soon as we have a moment, we are going to read the book and pass it around ourselves (the three of us) but we all have slightly different priorities at the moment. What I think is amazing is that I can remember the author and approximate title of a book I first came across 57 years ago. Whilst on the subject of mathematics, I remembered that the number 104348/33215 is an incredibly good approximation for ‘pi’. In practice, if you were to use this to help you in calculations for the circumference of the earth (24,900 miles) then with an error rate of 3 parts in 10 billion, an estimate of the circumference of the earth would only out by about ½” (not many people know that – or even care)

The weather forecast for tomorrow is pretty dire so I decided to push myself on and get our front and back lawns cut. Fortunately, we had some pale sunshine during the afternoon and the clouds seem to have rolled away.I must say that although it was six days ago that the lawns were last cut, the rapidly growing dandelions and dandelion-heads had made all the lawns look very tatty. So, I was very pleased fir the lawns to get cut and then bathed in some late afternoon sunshine before we had to leave to go to church in the early evening. On our way as we parking the car, we bumped into our next door neighbour who is deep into quite elaborate preparations for his wife’s 70th birthday celebrations a week on Sunday. I was delighted to see our neighbour because I happened to see a certain ‘something’ when we were in Droitwich last Thursday. I checked out that this would be acceptable (which it certainly would be) as a birthday present so I am going to make a lightning visit into Droitwich next Monday morning to grab this particular item before it goes – at the same time, I can pop into my favourite hardware store (Wilko) where I am sure I will find lots of things that I really need to stock up on.

It looks as though the fallout from the Martin Bashir interview which is trashing the reputation of the BBC is continuing. To my mind, this situation is getting a little Kafka-esque – after all, Prince Charles and Princess Diana had both admitted adultery which must rank as being a lot more serious than an interview gained under false pretences, (although compounded by management failure to properly investigate) What is happening at the moment is that those on the right who absolute hate the BBC (i.e. many members of the present government) are now coming out of the woodwork and muttering all kinds of hard threats about how the BBC should be reformed (read emasculated, made into a pale imitation of a Russian/Chinese propaganda regime if the right had their way)

Today I heard a weather forecaster say ‘Well today, it has seemed rather autumnal’ and so it has been all day. It was certainly drizzling most of the morning and when it came to be time for our daily walk, we have to make a judgement call whether we are going to brave a walk or ‘chicken out’ and go and use the car. The weather, although cloudy, looked as though it might settle and so we decided to brave it and undertake our normal walk down. By the time we reached the park, however, the drizzle had turned into a drip-drip – nonetheless, we met up with our University of Birmingham friend who was fortunately equipped with a large golfing umbrella under which we all huddled. I was explaining to our friend, having worked in a Business School for so many years, that in the Business Studies family, you got a range of subjects ranging from the more mathematical/numeric (Economics, Econometrics, Statistics, Accounting, Operational Sciences) through subjects like Law and finishing off at the ‘softer’ end of the spectrum in subjects like Psychology and Sociology which fed into subjects like Personnel Management. But it was true to say that in some of the subjects with ‘Management’ in the title (I exclude Management Science though) there was plenty of room for what might be pejoratively called ‘bullshitting’ in which all kinds of anecdotal knowledge were passed off as though it were an academically respectable subject. I was explaining to our friend that whereas most of us academic staff  by definition were good at one or two things (which is why we got good degrees in the subject and eventually came to lecture in the subject) our Business Studies graduates were like the grammar school boys who were good in a whole range of subjects without excelling in any one of them. We often used to speculate in our staffroom how well we would have coped in a degree regime which ranged from Statistics, Law, Accounting on the one hand to Psychology and Sociology on the other) We never quite arrived at an answer to this question. Eventually, the rain started to come down in earnest and so we trudged home feeling somewhat wet and soggy. It was a case of ‘coats off and into the garage to dry out’ time.

After lunch, we were settling down for a good read when we got a telephone call from our friend in Oxfordshire. As part of his online business, he was running a webinar on the subject of business ethics so I used as a pilot to help him test out some of his material.  In a range of some ten little scenarios, the respondent was asked to identify in a couple of sentences the nature of the crucial ethical issues involved. What will be fascinating to see when the webinar is actually run is the degree of consensus (or lack of it) in the range of replies. Of course it is quite possible that as a ‘guinea pig’ I might have missed some of the crucial issues that I ought to have identified – and it could be that I have thought of some issues that hadn’t occurred to anyone else. Time will tell when my academic colleague and I have a debrief.

In the early evening, I FaceTimed one of my erstwhile colleague from the University of Winchester. We generally have quite a good old natter about things in the news that have taken our fancy and go down memory lane a little to recall amusing incidents in our academic careers. I felt rather mortified that I had remembered my friends birthday a few days late but nonetheless a belated birthday card is winging its way down to Hampshire.

It looks as though the Government and the authorities at Heathrow are finally tumbling to a solution to a problem that has been staring us all in the face. Travelling destinations have been categorised as red zone (strict quarantine upon one’s return to the UK, amber zones (some quarantine at home) and green zone (no restrictions to speak of). Passengers from all of these destinations may well intermingle at pressure points such as check-in areas, communal shopping, security and so on. The solution to be adopted is as follows. All red zone passengers will be allowed only through Terminal 4, just as soon as this can be operational organised. This leaves the amber and green passengers free to intermingle but at least insulated from the probably highly infective nature of the red zone passengers. This all sounds eminently sensible at this point of time but the question arises why the policy not thought out before the delineation into different zones. And after the loosening of the lockdown restrictions, it looks as though the infection is starting to creep up again and the June 21st date (for a complete end to restrictions) is starting to look more and more problematic.

We knew from the weather forecasts that today was going to be a rainy and a blustery day all day so we made our plans accordingly.  Earlier in the morning, I had telephoned one of our favourite restaurants in Droitwich, just down the road, in order to make a booking for lunch. This was accepted with alacrity – I imagined that this popular  cafe and restaurant might be bursting at the seams but it is difficult to tell in these immediate post-lockdown days. We went by car to collect our newspapers and then made our way to Droitwich where we managed to park in our usual spot. We had intended to make a little shopping trip around Boots and also Wilko (a popular hardware store in the Midlands) but as we walked up through the town we were diverted  into one of the charity shops that has now reopened. I treated myself to a box set of National Trust coasters (can one ever have too many?) and Meg espied a high-quality skirt,lined and made with a brocade fabric which seemed to be just about the right size.  Once we got to the cafe, just about at our allotted booked time, the cafe was almost deserted. I suppose the weather might not have helped. Meg and I had a delicious meal of home-made salmon fishcakes which we consumed with salad and some baked potatoes (which we ask to be substituted for the chips that were on offer) So we had an enjoyable meal and then slowly sauntered back to our car, popping into the local Waitrose to buy one or two things that I knew we were short of and had missed the update of the order which I did yesterday. We knew that when we got home, our Waitrose order would be delivered in the next hour after we had got home. Fortunately, we coincided for a few minutes with our domestic help (and style guru) who admired Meg’s recently purchased skirt and suggested some colours and styles of tops to go with it. The dress was an absolute perfect fit, by the way, which is a bonus when you don’t have any fitting rooms. As it was so windy this afternoon, one of the plants pots on my tall display stand outside my study window had blown over but nothing was damaged. So I availed myself of quite a heavy brick which, when placed in a strategic position, may forestall any more plant pot adventures.

Late on this afternoon, I went down to the end of our access drive to rescue my ‘green bin’ which has to be placed near to the main road for the convenience of the refuse men. After being emptied, the bins are left by the side of the road so I rescued ours and the one belonging to my neighbour who I bumped into as the bin was being delivered. My neighbour told me the good news that he had recently had a medical procedure which had helped alleviate the blood vessels near his heart and this had improved his health considerably. So that was good news for us to share. He also told us that he was planning quite a large birthday party for his wife’s 70th and this would involve marquees and the like in the garden and all of us were invited. Naturally, I offered to help with anything that might be needed e.g,. spare outdoor chairs but we are both hoping that the weather might be fine for us on that particular day.

On the national front, I am actually getting interested in the fact that Boris Johnson wants to give the Australians a zero-tariff trade deal but apparently the cabinet is split down the middle on the issue. If the Australian deal goes ahead as Boris would like then both the Scottish and the Welsh beef and lamb trade would be massively impacted. There is no way we can compete on cost with the Australians for whom land (and pasture) is plentiful and whose welfare standards do not match our own. The cabinet dilemma is this. If the ‘free market’ solution is adopted, then this would be at the expense of our domestic industries that would be decimated. If, on the other hand, we protect our own markets somewhat, then the rest of the world will not find trade deals with the UK so attractive if the UK industries are going to get a measure of protection. So the Brexit slogan of ‘take back control’ means that we lose control of our businesses which cannot compete, or do we keep control of our own industries to the detriment of any prospective trade deals? Is this what is called a ‘wicked problem’? and can the circle be squared? The ardent Brexitreers in the cabinet are conscious that the rest of the world is watching this deal with the Australians and ‘where the ball lands’ may well provide the pattern for trade deals (or the absence of them) with the rest of the world. 

After the traumas of getting myself registered with the NHS IT systems (detailed in last night’s blog), this morning I tried the ‘old-fashioned’ way of talking to a human by hanging onto the end of a telephone. The upshot of all of this was that I can expect a telephone call from one of the senior partners (who I know and respect, as he gave me some ‘hands-on’ treatment after one of my returns from hospital some three years ago now). The phone call is due some time this afternoon so we are having to abandon some of our plans to visit Droitwich today as we need to be near the end of a telephone to receive the telephone call from the doctor some time this afternoon. Whilst on this subject, the doctor did phone through at about4.0pm and whilst I am being referred on as a result of some anomalies in my latest CT scan, it appears (as I suspected) that the radiographers trying to interpret the scan have no idea as to what is really going wrong. Anyway, it looks towards the trivial rather than the serious end of the spectrum so I shall to wait for an appointment and see what another group of medics has to say. But I did get the opportunity to get a referral done for my somewhat knackered shoulder (you will appreciate I am using specialised medical terminology at this point). After a late telephone call this afternoon, i have even got it organised for a session immediately before my Pilates session next Tuesday which could scarcely be better.

Today being quite a fine day, Meg and I followed our normal routine of picking up our newspapers and then making  for the park. Fairly unusually, we did not bump into any of our normal ‘park friends’ this morning but the park seemed to be very quiet, for a change. Nonetheless, it was a beautiful spring day and we enjoyed the ambience.In fact, when we got home we threw together a kind of salad from bits and bobs – bit was still quite a full meal and quite satisfying, nonetheless. In the late afternoon, we had a flurry of excitement as we thought that we saw a fox gambolling in the sunshine at the distant end of our communal green area. Although we all thought we saw a fox, when a striped tail was waved in the air, we realised that is was rather a large ginger cat (not one of our regulars) and at a distance it was quite easy to mis-identify it. As we had rather a ‘chewy’ afternoon, we thought we would see if we get to Droitwich and have a meal out in on of favourite cafes/restaurants overlooking the town square. Tomorrow morning, I need to make a telephone call to make a booking (if that is possible these days)

In the COVID news today, the government have announced the first clinical trials for booster jabs (tweaked to be effective against all of the by now well-known variants?) to take place next month with the hope that a wave of using booster jabs may start in the autumn. Meanwhile, the number of Indian variant cases in the country as a whole has just hit 3,000 and has increased by 28% since Monday. Professor Van-Tam is saying that in the virus hotspots, then people should ‘think carefully’ about exercising their new freedoms – in other words, they should think very carefully about the freedoms that they have, weigh up the risks and be very cautious. This is tantamount to saying that whatever the end of the lockdown in the rest of the country, those in badly affected areas should act as though the lockdown was still in full force.

We are just starting to get some first analyses of the way in the whole COVID crisis has acted as a searchlight into the structural weaknesses of UK society. Broadly speaking, those communities that were already disadvantaged before the onset of the virus have been affected much more severely than the rest of the country. Next week, Dominic Cummings, the one-time influential special adviser to Boris Johnson and the current government is said to have a document which demonstrates conclusively some of the poor decision making over the implementations of the lockdowns. This is all going to be revealed next Wednesday to a House of Commons committee and the ‘trailers’ for this event are saying that these revelations might be explosive. However, one has to say that the highest death rate in Europe and an abundance of incidents of sleaze (contracts at the height of the emergency being handed out to friends with no routine tendering) the government is still far ahead in the opinion polls. It seems that the normal rules of politics have been reversed – whenever inadequacies are exposed in both the timing and the content of the government decision-making, the electorate seem not to be perturbed and allow Boris Johnson the benefit of whatever doubt exists.

We are today the day ‘after’ the relaxation of some of the more stringent COVID-19 lockdown regulations and it is now permitted to attend indoor sports classes and the like. So today was the day in which my Pilates classes were due to resume after a gap of several months. To be fair, the gap was for me but some of my fellow class members had kept going with ‘Zoom‘ so apart from the pleasure of being in a room together, my fellow class members had kept themselves going. As it was, there were only three of us in the class today, the fourth member being on holiday (or visiting relatives) in the West Country somewhere. I must say that after an absence of several months, I did not find the exercises too taxing and nor did I feel too tired immediately after the class had finished. But having come home and had a delayed lunch (and a doze) I am starting to feel a little ‘achy’ at the moment, but this is only to be expected. Earlier in the day, I had received a latter from my colo-rectal consultant advising me of the results of a recent CT scan  and informing me to make an appointment with my doctor to be referred on to a pulmonary consultant to discuss some changes observed in one of my lungs (about which I refuse to be panicked) This is where the nightmare started! I got onto my local surgery but could not remember my username (this is because it was actually my email address which I had forgotten could be used as a proxy for a username). So the website suggested I register directly with the NHS. This required an email address (OK), a password (OK) and then a verification sent to the phone (also OK) Then the nightmare started. The website stated that they needed to know who I was so could I upload a scan of my driving license. This I did but the system told me that it was too fuzzy to be read so I could I do it all over again. This I did and then the system said it was going to scan my face – but the app froze. So I started all over again and at this point, the website could not make a match between its own scan and my driving licence. So I started all over again and this time uploaded my passport – the system ignored a scan of my face and said it was going to make a video of me repeating four numbers. But then I was told by the system that my Apple Mac could not take a video – I should contact the NHS directly so that they could explain to me that my technology would not work that I needed to make an appointment with the doctor – so basically after two hours of trying and retrying the system, I got nowhere. Is it any wonder that patients are not being treated for cancer and other conditions? However, some good came of all of this. My son suggested to me ‘Why not use the NHS App?‘ which I downloaded and everything seemed to work OK. Apart from the fact that I could not book an appointment (because there is nobody manning the system until 8.00am in the morning!), I nonetheless managed to get confirmation of the fact that I have received two doses of the vaccine and I have the QR code to prove it! Tomorrow morning, I shall download the app for Meg and get her into the system so that we have both of our statuses recorded on our iPhones. Moaning apart, how many elderly/confused/non-IT people get no access to the system because now everything (like our banking, groceries, shopping and every other kind of household bill) is now done on the net?

The COVID scene is proving to be entertaining. In Blackburn, Lancs. where the rate of Indian variant is very high, the health authorities on the ground are stretching the rules so that anyone over the age of 18 can receive the vaccine if they can show that they are a carer (who is not?) or have an underlying health condition (who has not?) This is interesting because the ‘official line’ is to vaccinate people in strict age order – but where the rate of infection seems incredibly close, they just want to get vaccine into as many people’s arms as they can! The Health Secretary Matt Hancock said most of the 19 people admitted to hospital with the Indian variant in the hotspot of Bolton were eligible for a COVID-19 vaccine but had not had it. So this raises the interesting conundrum whether the anti-vexers (if we can call them that) are now starting to feel the consequences of their own action/inaction. It seems to me that those who are refusing the vaccine are saying ‘My right not to have the vaccine overrides your right not to be infected by (unvaccinated) people like me!‘ Years and years ago, one had to provide proof  of having had a TB immunisation before one was allowed near patients – the principle is practically the same.