What makes a happy neighbourhood?

 This morning I half heard a radio discussion about happy neighbourhoods. One interviewee found it hard to move off his concern about defining the term ‘happy’ but I quickly tuned into ‘features of a happy neighbourhood’ being put forward by another.

These features included:

• The area has lots of trees. 
• You can move around in it without a car.
• You can find essentials nearby. 
• It is a safe area ie the crime rate is low or non-existent.
• It offers easy access to medical care. 
• It offers a variety of housing types. 
• It looks appealing.

As he rattled off the list I pricked up my ears. It sounded like our neighbourhood. ‘We’ ticked all the boxes. Smug? Moi?

During the early weeks of lockdown we came to appreciate the friendliness and helpfulness of our neighbours, big time. Suddenly our small corner shop closed. I panicked (well maybe panic is far too active a verb in my case). I really did get concerned about our daily milk, though. I always have enough strong flour and yeast for bread baking. But fresh milk is a basic necessity. With our supermarkets unable to deliver to us more than once a month fresh produce like milk needed to be bought more frequently than that. Neither my husband or I are drivers at the moment. Our nearest mini market and farmers’ market is down a hill. That’s not the issue. It’s the image of pushing the loaded trolley back uphill with vats of milk that became troublesome to me. Something had to be done. The prospect of black tea was more than just an added lockdown inconvenience. It was adaptive behaviour taken far too far.

I remember so clearly that a couple of days after lockdown was posited by our PM a local WhatsApp group was set up for people to request and offer support. I dived in. 

By March 20th I had two neighbours shopping for me. One was an unknown until I contacted the WhatsApp support group and the other were neighbours who asked if I wanted anything from the supermarket when I was chatting to them in the road. The first night my WhatsApp shopper delivered my groceries she was wearing a long Barbour mac and stood under a man-sized black umbrella about 4 metres away from our front door. It was evening, dark and wet. We hadn’t yet changed our clocks to summer time. 

That first night of relying on others seems an age ago but as I write we are still in lockdown, we still need grocery deliveries, we are still not using our car and the country has the worst death rate from coronavirus per million population by a very long chalk. Yet we live in a very supportive neighbourhood. And I came to appreciate that support even more as that first black, wet March night turned into long, hot April afternoons. Especially when our new WhatsApp friend brought us homemade ice cream and lots of lovely goodies. Another neighbour left a cream tea on our doorstep and others brought veg, milk... yes milk, and meats.

The permitted hourly walks people took past our front garden meant there was always someone to chat to, provided I stood behind my plague-resist gate. When I did go for walks the roads were quiet, the sky sizzled in the heat and it felt like being on an Easter holiday in Cyprus.

Then we came to May. Neighbourliness got even more interesting when I put out plants and books, on our front wall, with the necessary hand sanitisers, for charity sales. I got glowing feedback, made significant amounts of money for worthy causes, and I felt I’d given something back to the community of which I truly felt part. I enjoyed doing it and all the time I stayed behind my plague-resist gate.

But I was getting tired. Every night I had to cover the items I was selling and every morning ensure everything was sanitised. I washed the money that was dropped into the honesty box, some coins lost forever down the plughole! and I was collecting tomato plants from other neighbours whom I’d never met and transporting them to neighbours who were in strict lockdown through medical necessity. It was busy, busy,busy. I was also hardening off my French beans, my courgette plants and watering and feeding the veggie plot at the far end of our long garden.  But it was a productive life and a friend helped me by getting in garden gravel, compost in bags and huge amounts of bark. He also put my raised beds on legs so that I didn’t have to bend to weed and water them. 

Once all my vegetables were established outside and the charity sales came to their natural end I began to relax. Supermarket deliveries became more frequent. A close neighbour automatically added my fresh produce needs to her shopping list and the immediate issues from the start of lockdown dissipated. I took to reading The New Yorker while lounging around on my mother’s old but well-preserved deckchair in the middle of our lawn. Life seemed sweet indeed.

I certainly felt we were very lucky to live in such a lovely area, with long gardens and plenty of space. And the weather was fantastic. We surely met the criteria for a happy neighbourhood!

Another list of features of a good neighbourhood, from Bonava, a residential building company in Northern Europe, a development of the Swedish construction company NCC AB, includes:

• Has common places where you can enjoy spending time (eg a pub, a park, a cafe with outdoor seating during lockdown). 
• You are close to friends and family.(Neighbours become good friends.)

• Provides easy access to culture and other leisure activities ( in our case a walk down a hill to reach the culture)
• The area and its buildings has an attractive appearance and architecture (That’s certainly true of the city of Bath)
• Facilitates a healthy lifestyle, with easy access to sports and excercise activities ( plenty of lovely walks near our house) 
• It supports an environmentally sustainable lifestyle ( new allotments have just been created with great concern taken over local inhabitants-human, animal and plant)
• It has a good reputation. (Erm. Ask the estate agents.)
• Neighbours and other people in the area have good relationships. (See above!)
• Is conveniently located to health care and other public service ( a library and community hall are available outside lockdown )
• Has good accessibility to own parking.Tick - at least by our houses.
• Is close to parks and green areas.Tick
• It has a good vibe and atmosphere.Yes.I think so 
• Is pedestrian and bike-friendly.Tick. 
• Is close to public transport ( yes - if we wear masks - we have a really good, safe bus service)
• It feels safe to be in for you and your close ones.Tick.

Again our neighbourhood ticked all the boxes. We truly were collectively happy.

But by June the temperatures dropped. Fewer people were walking past. The rains came. The covers went on. And we retreated indoors. I was still busy but my time was spent on Zoom pub quizzes and book group discussions. I was cooking hearty meals from scratch. And I needed slug prevention aids. But I still couldn’t get to the garden centres...And I was meeting friends in our garden - at a safe distance - but the change in weather meant I got a cold from too much sitting about in cool, near-drizzle conditions. And, of course, the grass grew.

And then my spirits lifted. Early in July warm, dry days were interspersed with showery cooler ones. Some showers were very heavy. I rarely used the garden hose but my vegetables and patio plants grew loud and long. But ... best of all...our little corner shop reopened. They provided hand sanitisers, a screen between themselves at the till, and us, the customers, and never again did I have to worry about running out of fresh milk. We truly did fit all the criteria for a happy neighbourhood with ...

‘Is conveniently located nearby grocery stores’

However I’d put on 4 pounds during lockdown so I neglected the garden for over a fortnight, stopped baking bread and cakes and for almost three weeks I went out for an hour’s walk a day. And it worked. My bathroom scales showed a better result. 

But to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. The garden just went mad. Both rose arches weighed down their cast iron supports, wretched bindweed grew everywhere and engulfed everything. The grass was so long it looked as if we’d been out of the country for six weeks. Operation garden reconstruct began. 

With a friend’s help we now have two respectable rose arches, a trim forsythia shrub, a lopped, slender laburnum tree, the stump of a dead weedy, unwanted dog rose, a trimmed cherry tree and a very neat laurel hedge. And because we live in a happy neighbourhood, no-one complained about the bonfire we had in order to shift the garden waste. And my lovely neighbour lent us her green garden waste bin for the surplus twigs, leaves, branches and clippings. 

We began August with a much neater, pruned, light garden. Tomorrow I will be back on the deck chair with The Observer or The New Yorker. That is, if, now I’ve injured myself with too much ‘slash & burn’ gardening, I can actually get up the garden steps to lounge around on the lawn. 

Today has been hot. The garden is splendid. But I could barely walk and another kindly neighbour brought me round a packet of his co codamol as my knee was causing me some grief. 

Thankfully Richard was well enough to get to the pharmacy on foot and the chemist finally got my script right. I’d waited a week for the co codamol that I need on prescription for a trapped nerve. For some reason my knee has been extremely painful for the past three days and it’s no fun when you can’t actually walk well enough to get to the pharmacy to pick up the much-needed painkillers. 

Having got over the rationing of milk at the start of lockdown, in late March when the nights were long and wet, I’m now rationing my painkillers. The nights are short, the weather warm, the garden’s looking good and we have had improvements to the house made by chaps who wore masks and were socially distant. But I can barely walk! Having spent all these months acting as a carer and cook-housekeeper-gardener I can barely get up the stairs to use the loo or go for a lie down!!

Thank goodness we live in a happy neighbourhood where people help when you just can’t manage. As the writer Fay Weldon once said to me, regarding a character in my fledgling short story she was critiquing for me, ‘Everyone needs help at some time. Put that in the dialogue, Nina.’ 

(With heartfelt thanks to the Social Raglan WhatsApp group who have proved we live in a happy neighbourhood.)

Mrs America and the ERA

‘Mrs America’ is a great ride. It is produced by FX in the USA. The acting is engrossing and persuasive. The script is taut and witty. The politics detailed. And it more or less looks like the 1970s. It concerns the progress of the Equal Rights Amendment in the USA at the time of active names such as Gloria Steinem (for) and Phyllis Schlafly (against).

But, I asked my husband, note the irony, what makes some women fight against the rights of (all) women? What makes one happily married conservative woman tread all over the advancements other women are making for the betterment of all adult females? 

He wasn’t sure. But, when watching Mrs America, the twin set and pearls brigade have really got the bit between their teeth. Why don’t they want equal rights with men? 

One of the arguments is that they don’t agree with abortion. And some ERA ( Equal Rights Amendment) lobbyists wanted safe abortion and a woman’s right to choose to be part of the ERA package. 

Baptists and other religious groups wouldn’t agree to abortion and they saw ERA as a link with casual sex ie an immoral act in their view. Some antifeminists have argued that feminism has resulted in changes to society's previous norms relating to sexuality, which they see as detrimental to traditional values.

Others felt that the man should be head of the household. Equal rights for women didn’t seem like equality to them but a search for power over men. Others believed their daughters would be drafted into the armed forces if they were recognised as equal to men.

Some antifeminists believed the ERA showed a denial of the differences between men and women and this change in people went against their biology. 

Antifeminists also frequently argued that feminism ignores rights issues unique to men. 

I haven’t yet read, anywhere, that antifeminists actively believe men to be superior to women. But the above women felt lesbians, gays, trans and other groups we now call LGBT were perverts and openly used that derogatory term to define LGBT.

It seems that to be antifeminist you believe the ideal happy family unit of father as head of the household and mother keeping house with children in tow would be endangered if women had equal rights alongside men.

Hence the battle for the Equal Rights Amendment Act. 

My mother, born 1924, supported my father financially through his university years. Yes. She went to work so that he could study. She said to me, more than once, ‘be independent of marriage, if needs be.’ Mum wasn’t against marriage but believed women should be able to earn enough ‘to be independent of marriage’. If needs be. She was an early feminist. 

In 1977 in the USA the ERA was on its way to being ratified until conservative, wealthy mother of six, Phyllis Schlafly, (brilliantly played by Cate Blanchett in ‘Mrs America’ ) protested with her conservative women followers in opposition to the ERA. These women argued that the ERA would 

1 disadvantage housewives 

2 cause women to be drafted into the armed forces 

and 

3 lose protections such as post-divorce financial settlements for the woman and eliminate the tendency for mothers to obtain custody over their children in divorce cases.

But the ERA sought to end the legal distinctions between men and women in matters of employment, property and divorce. 

In the late 1970s five state legislatures (Idaho, Kentucky, Nebraska, Tennessee, and South Dakota) voted to revoke their ERA ratifications. Supporters of the ERA point to the lack of a specific guarantee in the Constitution for equal rights protections on the basis of sex. Amazingly the amendment has been reintroduced in every session of Congress since 1982.

As of January 2020, over 40 years since Schlafly argued against ERA, the bill had 224 co-sponsors.The House passed H.J. Res. 79 (Removing the deadline for the ratification of the equal rights amendment. 116th Congress [2019-2020] Committees: House - Judiciary) on February 13, 2020. So the ERA is still being fought.

On January 15, 2020, Virginia became the latest state to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), a proposed amendment to the Constitution that guarantees equal rights for women. The required 38 states have now agreed to the ERA. A technical question over whether the required number agreed within an acceptable time frame is holding up the progress of the ERA. Republicans in the Senate are in no rush to ratify the ERA, it seems. And since the five above-mentioned states acted to rescind their prior approval the ERA is enjoying a revival - along with the much newer ‘Times Up’ #me too movements - but it is still not LAW in the USA.

And it’s not all fun and games for women in the UK. The Equal Pay Act of 1970 should have led to parity for women here. Iceland is ranked as the nation closest to achieving gender parity, having closed 88% of its gender gap, followed by Norway (84.2%), Finland (83.2%) and Sweden (82%). 

The World Economic Forum (WEF) said Albania, Canada, Costa Rica, Latvia, Switzerland, South Africa and Spain had all overtaken the UK in closing the gender gap in politics, economics, health and education since the 2018 audit. The WEF said the UK performed poorly because women were sparsely represented in politics – and on average men were still paid more than women.

I quote from the WEF’s findings on the global gender gap (as reported in Rupert Neate’s piece in The Guardian at the end of 2019):

“At the slow speed experienced over the period 2006–2020, it will take 257 years to close this gap.”

Order groceries-check.Paint shed-check.Exercise-erm....

When lockdown began and friends said they were staying in for three months - which seemed like oceans of time - I made a mental list of all the things I could do in that twelve week block. And, of course, some on my list have been achieved. Alas, others haven’t even seen daylight. 

I remember one gorgeous, hot morning in early April. All three neighbouring houses were living their lives in their gardens. Johnson had already succumbed to coronavirus and my neighbours and I were discussing, over the garden fence, whether it would change his opinion of the NHS, which was saving his life, and turn support for it into reality. I was cynical.I doubted it. And I happily went about painting our shed in a smart shade of teal.

Over the next few days I managed to get new fence panels and a bench similarly painted. Richard dug up surplus plants which I sold from our garden gate - with hand sanitiser available - for charity. I had lots of energy at the start of lockdown. I saw other neighbours were giving away tomato plants, which I couldn’t easily get hold of, for a variety of reasons. So I collected them without hesitation and shared them. Walking up and down the middle of empty roads with my shopping trolley in the baking heat. Trading plants for other goods. This felt like being in another country. A different age.

And then the hard work started: I had sown dwarf French beans and courgettes. I also wanted to plant seed potatoes and broad beans. The ground, if you recall, was getting drier and drier. Thankfully we have a 120 foot hose. But digging in the heat on rock hard soil with my age-old back issue was challenging. 

Richard helped carry heavy pots on to the patio for me and I weeded our front garden too. But I had a fear. The fear of how we were going to feed ourselves since our local supermarket had failed to give us delivery slots despite the fact we were ‘priority’ customers. Much of my time in April was spent finding local suppliers who would deliver dairy ( Fine Cheese Company) beans and pulses ( Scoops) and flour, yeast, my favourite yogurt and ice cream ( Farm shops) and the dreaded disinfectant. I was lucky that our local WhatsApp group was truly supportive. They suggested other farm shops that delivered bulk items and they added my requirements to their own shopping lists. Our corner shop couldn’t cope with the rules of social distancing and its doors closed. It truly was hard trying to plan for simple things like getting in milk, butter and eggs. It had become second nature to pop to our little corner shop for such items. And trying to get the weekend Guardian or Observer was a fretful affair.

Also on my list of things to get done during lockdown was to 

a) learn how to make decent gravy instead of the hit-and-miss concoctions I was serving 

b) to get my writing out to competitions 

c) to encourage Richard to get painting again and

d) to sort boxes and boxes in our study bedroom and guest bedroom and sell some books.

It has taken me until the last fortnight to get my writing and culinary sauces honed to perfection. But I can safely tick them off my list. I even managed to get my w/e newspaper delivery sorted. Again, with great thanks to neighbours.

Throughout April and early May I was possibly over-concerned about our food requirements. And I had too much time for bright ideas. For instance I recall getting very tired taking books to sell to our front gate every morning. It was on top of hardening off dwarf French beans, tomatoes and courgettes. By 29th May I had put on 4 lb in weight but at least all my plants were in their growing positions and the garden was looking truly cared for. And I’d sold surplus books and plants and made money for charity.

Another friend was supplying me with heavy bags of bark, compost and gravel and he created legs for my raised beds so that I didn’t have to bend to weed them. But I needed to go for walks! The beauty of true summer afternoons is that you can sit in a deck chair, book and glass in hand, and simply enjoy the bees buzzing in the laburnum tree overhead. I’d achieved a lot by early June but I wasn’t keeping fit nor taking my permitted walks. I liked sitting under the tree too much. 

By late May my supermarket finally offered me regular delivery slots and the strain of not knowing what space to keep in the freezer nor of knowing which foods to reorder via neighbours was beginning to evaporate. And then the rains came. I managed to get a cold from hosting friends in our garden in the threatening drizzle. I think temperatures had dropped by 15 degrees or more over a couple of nights. But I was getting grocery deliveries! And I was doing zoom pub quizzes, zoom book group and online arty submissions. 

But I never did get around to doing a lot of sorting of boxes in our study and guest bedroom. Even in the wet weather I chose to do my exercises and sort recipes which would help me lose weight rather than go through paperwork. And because I’d got tired running the house and garden as well as being my husband’s carer and cook I took up my neighbours’ offer - they run a take away fish shop - to deliver to me on Fridays. Friends and I gathered at a distance in my garden for fish & chips,  or pizza instead, to help support the local pub. Take aways released me from cooking. And safe socialising outdoors was the way forward. 

At the end of June the speak-your-weight machine at our surgery told me that Richard was a lot healthier. His weight and blood pressure were excellent. But in feeding him up I’d overfed myself. Since my own terrible results told me I was too heavy I’ve lost weight again and have taken up a stricter exercise regime. My BMI is healthier too. But it’s all too easy to take your eye off the ball.

You would think that earthing up potatoes and doing gardening jobs, cleaning, cooking, walking to the chemist and taking Richard’s morning meals up two flights of stairs to him would take off the weight. I believe it would if I didn’t succumb to eating my homemade bread, apple crumble and carrot cake. I still have to learn the hard way, it seems.

From the beginning of July grocery shopping has been an altogether more relaxed activity. And local farm shop and meat deliveries have helped enormously. And from last week our corner shop reopened. That means I have choices and don’t now have to order goods to last a month. At one point I had a spread sheet showing all the groceries in our freezer, fridges and kitchen cupboards and how many freezer drawers were full or free. There are only two of us. It was like the planning  required when feeding an army.

I can be excused, then, from not ticking off everything on my ‘to do’ list. As lockdown eases, albeit temporarily, and my garden plants flower ( against the odds) and the home-grown veg is ready for picking one is apt to forget the efforts required to get to this point. At one time I thought my borders and patio were to be devoid of colour for most of 2020. But I was wrong. I thought I’d run out of milk. I was wrong. I thought we wouldn’t see friends again for a drink. I was wrong. I thought I wouldn’t manage running our house, home and garden. I was wrong. I thought I couldn’t make gravy. I was wrong.

Lockdown has given me the time to concentrate. I’ve managed to read for bookgroup, do my writing, submit some of my own art work even, and keep a roof over our heads. We haven’t gone without.

And this time of quiet and calm has made me appreciate my neighbours and neighbourhood. What kindly, supportive folk they are.

I am already missing the empty, traffic-free roads. I miss the Thursday evening clapathon. I miss ice cream left on my front step and bags of veg and cream teas from neighbours. And I miss sitting on my deckchair under my tree in the heat. But I don’t miss the uncertainty. Never again do I want to worry where my next litre of milk is coming from.

Next on my ‘to do’ list (still): sort those bloody boxes in our spare rooms...

Happy 80th Ringo

It’s 7:00 a.m. as I write. I have been watching Ringo Starr’s 80th birthday ‘Peace & Love’ bash on You Tube. Why so early? The cat woke me up and the link to the lockdown concert was in my inbox. Good on yer Ringo. And he’s looking pretty good.

Which makes me think that of all the Beatles he’s not the one I’d have thought would still be making headlines when I was first aware of them as a little girl. He was, as a drummer, at the back! John was the front man and up to all sorts. Paul was co-anchor and he’s still going strong. But my favourite was always George. ‘While my guitar gently weeps’ and ‘Something’ are beautiful songs. When Concert for Bangladesh and ‘My Sweet Lord’ were released I was on the cusp of my teenage years. And it’s a magical feeling listening to these pieces from 1971. The songs are joyful and I was youthful. Those feelings can’t be bettered.

Watching the BBC’s Wimbledon Rewind - especially the Billy Jean King v Ann Jones match when Jones won the championship - was electric. Less so Virginia Wade’s win over Betty Stover. A much less exciting final. There was an incredible lack of energy which King and Jones had in bucket loads. And I remember willing Ann Jones on. She was a girl from the Midlands like me. At the time Billy Jean was, like Serena Williams now, winning everything. But on that day in 1969 it was a fantastic watch. And a championship win for Ann Jones was invigorating.

This week I saw the famous Nadal v Federer final on TV. This I’d heard such a lot about but, thank you BBC, the first time I’d seen it. Wimbledon Rewind has been great for missed matches. That brings me to pondering on what I was doing when these finals were being played.

For King v Jones I was still at school.

For Wade v Stover I was glad my final exams for my first degree were all over.

And it was the Queen’s jubilee in the week of my practical exams in the botany labs. Thank goodness all that’s a long time past. In my stubbornness I’d chosen science A levels and a science degree when I should have studied A level English meaning I would have truly shone at university.  I got a grade A in English. Yep. Odd decision. The heart of a scientist, the soul of an artist.

But for the 2008 Nadal v Federer final I was too busy to watch. I worked full time, paid the mortgage - and still enjoying what I thought was a very important job - raising children’s literacy levels - and there was little time for anything much besides during term time. No wonder I put on weight.

Irritatingly the build up to Borg v McEnroe  in the 1980 men’s finals is depicted in a sombre film of the same name released in 2017. I love seeing Borg - and Stefan Edberg - in the Wimbledon crowd. I don’t need to be told he was a misfit and I never finished watching that biopic. But I still have the the rewind match to watch. My, wasn’t McEnroe a New York brat? But a bloody good player. And these days so cheeky when he does the Wimbledon match commentary. He’s an interesting chap but was then under a lot of pressure to be no.1. The rock n roll at sixty biopic was a much more interesting portrayal of John McEnroe. I enjoy his narration and his tv presence much more now. And what was I doing in 1980? I’d just started teaching and not yet worn out by government interference. Itching to run a faculty of my own. And I do remember willing Borg on. A great match then and now.

Billy Jean King was another interesting subject for a biopic in ‘The Battle of the Sexes.’ This was a sympathetic depiction. And she fought on and off the tennis court. Dare I say ‘fair play’ to her?

At the time I wanted her to lose. She seemed too powerful. Yet without her energy and determination women would be paid far less for winning at Wimbledon.

In the 1960s and 1970s, the tournament winnings for women tennis players were much lower than the men’s winnings. In 1971, Billie Jean became the first woman athlete to earn over $100,000 in prize money.

From the Los Angeles Times, 2019:-

(She) has been fighting for equal rights and equal pay for women since she started her tennis career as a 16-year-old out of Long Beach. When King won the U.S. Open in 1972, she received $10,000. The men’s champion that year, Ilie Nastase, was paid $25,000. King said she would not play the following year unless the prize money was equal, and in 1973 the U.S. Open became the first major tournament to award equal prize money for male and female champions. Wimbledon was the last Grand Slam event to follow suit in 2007, making tennis one of the few sports to pay men and women equally.

So it takes guts, power and terrific ability to be Billy Jean. No wonder she won so many matches. I admire both she and McEnroe although they dominated play back then. I’m sure I’ll change towards Serena Williams in the future when she too has stopped dominating centre court. Oddly I want Federer to carry on winning for ever more. I don’t mind his domination of tennis. That’s just an emotional response to personality, I guess.

And hasn’t it been lovely to listen to Dan Maskell’s commentary for the greatest of the Wimbledon finals? We were in a safe pair of hands back then. But can you imagine an umpire today shouting at the crowd ‘Can someone tell those people to be quiet.’ An arrogance of the All England Club. Little Britain. Little Elitism.

Nostalgia isn’t all good. And Happy 80th Ringo! Some folks have longevity and earn  great affection over the years. Ringo is one such.

The New Yorker and why I’m staying in splendid isolation.

A fascinating article in The New Yorker from May 2020 showed the issues and hurdles with pre-testing covid-19 drugs. Like the UK money ( lots of it) has been wasted in buying or testing with kits which give false positives. Even distilled water gave a positive reading for covid-19 with one such kit!

The decision to drop the usual pre-testing safety checks with potential covid-19 kits is risky. Carry on the usual safety checks and trials and it can take months before a preparation is deemed fit for use. Hurry the process too fast and labs end up with a test kit that just isn’t reliable. It’s worse to be told you don’t have the virus when you do - false negative - but false positives lead to unnecessary stress and possible hospitalisation and bed obstruction.

Our own world-beating testing system announced with Johnson’s usual bon homie and chronic lack of caution is where, exactly? 

The US and the UK have the worst figures for death rates from covid-19. I wonder why. ( I know why and I think it shows how deep our class divides are as well as chaotic laboratory utilisation and lack of urgency.) Merkle’s a scientist and they have the labs and they reacted VERY quickly to covid-19 in Germany. The results and comparisons between the UK and Germany are clear to see.

I won’t be going to the pub on 4th July - tomorrow. In England we are no closer to having a workable test and trace system. Until we know who on the bus, in the queue behind us, or sitting next to us in a hostelry has the virus and is infectious we’re taking huge risks. A friend of the family has waited weeks to see his wife who was in intensive care and only able to blink after ICU interventions. Yes she caught covid-19 from someone coughing over her in a bus queue. Since then she’s been in rehab. She can walk but can barely use her arms. And she’s a good ten years younger than us. After months apart she went home yesterday and was impaired physically and very weary.

If patients survive the virus sedative drugs used while on ventilators can turn recovery into a state of confusion and distress. Survivors can suffer PTSD, anxiety and depression. This is exactly what my husband is suffering from now- completely non covid-19 related. He had three diagnoses requiring surgery over a two month period last year. The surgery was minor but the after effects caused psychosis.

Do I really want to risk his catching covid-19 and risking another bout of mental illness as well as the very real physical damage the virus can create? Of course not!

I’m not neurotic. During my first degree studying plant biology a whole lab where we did our pracs had to be shut down. A Ph.D student had left a petri dish lid slightly off the culture he was growing. Next morning every other experimental culture was killed by the fungus or bacterium he’d let loose, inadvertently. The labs were in lockdown. Viruses, likewise, need a host and they spread fast looking for a victim in which to replicate. They are not landing on me.

I shall continue to keep my social distance and protect my already-suffering husband until we have a test and trace system or a vaccine. Whichever is the sooner. Sitting outside seems fine. But what if - at a pub - a glass has been touched after washing? And I put that glass to my lips? I think the risks are too high.

Who remembers Val Guest?

We have been here before. In literature or in film at least. Who remembers Guest’s ‘The Day the Earth Caught Fire’? or Shute’s ‘On the Beach’? 

These stories do not consider the impact on earth of a pandemic or the plague, in old money, but the devastation of unwise political decisions on our planet ie the bomb.

It’s not just nuclear destruction that causes ruin for the earth. My current  read is ‘Wilding’ by Isabella Tree. I have reached the chapter where she relates that the stag in Scotland, known for its grandeur, is clearly much less heavy than its Norwegian counterpart. Why? Simply that the cause of the Monarch of the Glen’s low weight is the destruction of shrubs and diverse plants which has led to thin feed for wild animals in Scotland. Norway doesn’t have it quite right, according to Tree, however, as the most diverse landscapes are less forested than Norway but also less empty than Scotland.

In the film ‘The Day the Earth Caught Fire’ the planet is warming dangerously quickly. Universal weather patterns shift and there are floods in some areas of the globe, terrific gales in others and heavy snow falls where snow is rare. In the film water is scarce in the UK and, here’s the contemporary link, after chaos and panic, young people go mad in the street. They are tired of fear and being told what to do. However they don’t rush to the beach. Following doom-laden newspaper headlines youths spill out on to the streets, creating water fights, turning over parked cars and terrorising people trying to take a bath. Water in some areas has become bad, carrying disease like cholera or typhoid.

The film, in which Val Guest was the screenwriter, is not a disaster movie with a pandemic-lockdown theme but the behaviour of people in the streets is similar to those rushing to Bournemouth on the hottest day of the year. The message in the film and in reality is that lockdown and behaving cautiously will be tolerated for only so long. 

In ‘On the Beach’ the threat of nuclear annihilation drives Australians to spend their last few healthy weeks playing and relaxing on stretches of sand and swimming in the sea. Nuclear sickness has spread across the world and Australia is the last major country to be affected.

In February and March this year we knew coronavirus was heading our way. I recall knocking elbows, instead of kissing, with friends in town in the week before lockdown. We smiled. We still thought it funny. My optician was less humoured. He said he was dreading the pandemic reaching our shores.  

‘On the Beach’ is set in that pre-crisis time. The population knew death and sickness were coming. The film is a study of how the well folk cope, and prepare for almost certain death, in the weeks before doom. 

We may not have visited a pandemic in the above narratives but the dread and ‘last trips to the beach’ before it reached us in March are experiences familiar to us. I was in Devon, at a beach, in the week before lockdown. 

Letting off steam ie the lemming-like rushing to Bournemouth last week is a human response to feeling trapped. 

There are many novels written about the plague, as an historical record. And there are, of course, dystopian novels set five minutes into our future. We don’t, in the 2020 pandemic, have to suffer the scavenging and cannibalism of ‘The Road’  in the search for food, thank goodness. But in the novel we see the after-effects of a cataclysm and how mere humans react to a catastrophic present and a very uncertain future. This much we share. In our quest for an escape from lockdown reading about disaster may not be the answer. But death, disease, destruction are part of the human experience.

In literature and film we have been here before. 

Lockdown brain

When (younger) friends of mine have a baby they are happy, blithe and, naturally, new-child-focused. And when they forget the £25 they owe me - several times - they blame their forgetfulness on ‘baby brain’. Highly convenient. (You can tell I haven’t ever given birth nor brought up children.)

I’ve been casting around for a suitable event when I could also refer to my shortcomings as a feature of my foggy brain. I refuse to be old and will not use the phrase ‘senior moment’ but lockdown gave me my escape route. How about lockdown brain?

It is certainly true that, after several weeks of staying in, taking short walks and visiting about one shop in all that time I have lost some of my vocabulary. I can tell that chatting over the garden gate has not made up for the usual bouts of discussion and discourse with mates over a drink in the pub. When I’ve been to the chemist to collect a prescription I have managed to forget the one item I also went in for. Lockdown brain.

When I’ve ordered groceries over the phone I can’t remember to have my bank card ready to pay. Did I think it would all be free? And when I’ve opened up the gate or shed or garage padlocks I become obsessed about where I’ve put the padlock keys. Why? When I want to close up the padlocks snap to. No key needed. Lockdown brain.

When I’ve got Henry Hoover out I manage to get the cord twisted around my feet. In tying up the rambling rose after the winds of a few days ago my ability to tie in stems and use a pair of scissors ended up in my being scratched to smithereens. Did I bother with gardening gloves? No. Even when dealing with huge whips of a rambling gallic rose? No. 

And this lunchtime I rushed around making a bean salad, tuna, lettuce and tomato relish and smeared most of it on my shorts.I stripped down to my knickers and put my shorts in the washing machine. But I noticed the cat wasn’t just playing with his cat-nip toy but a real mouse causing me to dash outside with the very scared creature. I forgot I was in my saggy pants as I held the mouse aloft on a dustpan at a half metre distance. Beat that for social distancing Boris Johnson. Then I panicked that I’d left my iphone in my shorts and turned the washer to drain. By that time the phone would have been ruined. Lunch certainly was. And the phone had been on a chair all along.

But worst of all is that I can’t remember friends’ names. It’s ok when emailing as I have time to think. But over the phone or at our gate my mind goes blank. People I’ve known for forty years become no-names. Lockdown brain.

I haven’t had time to binge-watch or get bored as I’ve been busy keeping house, cooking, gardening, cleaning and being a carer. I’ve never been so domesticated. And when I do go out it’s still very quiet on the lane. Although yesterday, towards the main road, there was certainly more traffic. But my general at-length art of conversation has become rusted. Friends of mine and I have been ringing each other every few days during lockdown. These are people I’ve known since 1970. And I forget their names. Lockdown brain.

Unlike many I don’t mind the peace and quiet that accompanies lockdown. I only felt bored on one day in the last 90 and that was because it rained continuously for over 24 hours. But I’m so concerned to wash everything down after a delivery that the little things, like where I’ve stored my deliveries, gets forgotten. I ordered four coin-batteries for my kitchen and bathroom scales. After the old ones finally failed the new ones were not in the usual cupboard, nor hanging on a hook, nor in a drawer or container in the bathroom or kitchen. Where had I put them? Goodness knows. Two deliveries and replacement batteries later I saw them in a tiny pot. Not in their plastic display sleeve but separate and lying in the bottom of a tiny ceramic ornament just waiting to be used. I can’t remember sanitising them nor cutting them out of their plastic packet or dropping them in a handy container. Lockdown brain.

One day, expecting 12 eggs in a delivery, I received 36. And a friend had just brought round another twelve. I had more in the fridge making a grand total of 54 eggs. I gave them away. Then didn’t have enough for the two of us. Lockdown brain.

When I’ve gone to our studio at the top of the house to follow an online arty challenge it’s been baking hot. And I’ve been certain that I’d opened the windows. But I hadn’t. So I’ve been forced to sit over my Bockingfords and watercolours sweating. Lockdown brain.

I could go on about the daft things I’ve done with gravel, bark, compost, cuprinol and other gardening mishaps. But I won’t. It’s not as though I’ve been disturbed or forced to rush to get things done before going out. But I am distracted. I’m not concentrating properly. Lockdown brain.

To ease things we’ve had friends round in the garden at an acceptable 2 metre distance. And conversation hasn’t been too ‘institutionalised’ ie I’ve not reverted to someone who had forgotten how to do small talk. But I suddenly find I can’t remember the word for... and it’s gone.

Lockdown brain. 

I’m surprised I’ve managed to write this without referring to a spell checker. But writing gives me time to think of the words required. Talking doesn’t. I need to get a grip if we’re able to go out for a socially-distanced drink at the pub from July 4th.

And for how long can I blame lockdown brain for my fogginess?