Mental Health Awareness Day

What is the point of an awareness day especially Mental Health Awareness Day ? The reality of suffering mental health problems and being given such diagnoses is that the NHS is so stretched that in our experience (and we aren’t alone) patients are sent home from hospital still under the effects of anaesthetic or the trauma of surgery. The mental health team (MHT)  is brought in after a long time on meds (usually antidepressants) prescribed by the GP but because they too are so stretched the MHT discharge folk who can cope ie go to the shops, have a ‘carer’, are not suicidal nor a danger to themselves or others. 

Private psychiatry, in our experience, won’t take on a case while their colleagues in the NHS MHT have the patient on their books. Many work in and out of private/NHS consultancy on a routine basis anyway.

Mental health awareness. I can make the reading public aware. It’s about very poor provision indeed. And it’s not the fault of the psychiatric doctors, nurses and social workers. We know that funding is dreadful. But it’s not my fault, ie the ‘carer’, either.

And why make everyone aware of mental health issues if the treatment, support and funding are inadequate? I understand ‘Mind’ and local groups are helping by getting patients out for walks and activities. I applaud  that. But the problem resides in the home. As I implied above I am now deemed a ‘carer’. Thanks for nothing! 

My husband did the driving, shopping and cooking while I worked full time. Now I’m retired I’m doing the shopping, cleaning, cooking, dealing with his meds and numerous medical appointments. I didn’t ask for this. It’s not a job I applied for. But I’m stuck with it.

And I’m not qualified. Yes, I can shop, clean and cook. But do I really want to? If I’d chosen to become pregnant, in my twenties, I’d have known what it meant to juggle child care, look after the house and garden and work full time. But my husband’s mental health issues were not planned and our whole way of life seems altered because of his needs and the lack of support. 

And add the stress of the pandemic ... It’s a perfect storm. 

These aren’t a few of my favourite things

Thirty years ago I had an accident which damaged my left knee. We were on a school trip to Exmouth, camping under lashed-down tarpaulins, military style. Thankfully - as staff - we had one tent each. By the time we went on this school excursion I’d already had an injury to my back and was cautious in my movements.

One sunny morning we lined up, again military-style, to collect our packed sandwiches and orange juice cartons. It was only day one of the week’s field trip and we were going out on a boat. We had half of year nine with us, plenty of staff and the weather looked good. However, whoever ran those boating excursions has, thirty years later, caused me to have an arthritic knee.

That day the incompetent crew allowed our boat to go out when the waters were shallow, ie the tide was out. In order to stop us running aground they slowed the boat to a halt and each one of us had to jump over 8 feet from the deck on to the sand below. That’s ok if you don’t have a bad back nor a fear of heights. I had both. I angled myself such that I wouldn’t land on my back and took the plunge. I landed on my left knee.

For the next few hours that injury caused me great stiffness but I could walk. That night told a different story. The knee, as they say, blew up like a balloon. I lay on a rickety camp bed under billowing tarpaulin for days. I could barely reach the shower block. I had no painkillers and no doctor was sent for. 

Last year - the day of Trump’s visit to the UK - I knelt down to pick something up from the carpet. Aaargh! I couldn’t move. The pain in that same knee was acute. I managed to pull myself up on to my stronger leg and fell on to a chair. The pain was so bad I couldn’t even raise my weaker leg on to a stool. Nor could I get upstairs to get my anti-inflammatories.

What to do? We had guests coming and Richard was having routine surgery and needed support when he got home. I put on the tv - remote controls save struggling to get up and switch the box on - Trump had landed.

Eventually the pain subsided enough for me to heat a wheat bag to soothe the ailing joint and get upstairs for my painkillers. I limped around with a long-handled umbrella as support. And made a tray of tea for when our guests and Richard arrived.

I have, after all these years, just had an x-ray for the knee problem. It got worse again during early lockdown when a friend was doing some tree surgery for us. The weight of the chopped wood, when I shifted it off the lawn, must have upset my damaged knee. Not my favourite thing. An arthritic knee.

                                       *

Today I was up at 6 am, in very early dawn light, to put out waste food for the recycling trucks. It was raining last night and I truly resent Wednesday evenings. I hate sifting card, metal, glass, plastics and food waste into inadequate containers and dragging them out on to the pavement. They burst open encouraging wildlife to pick over the entrails. But most of all I find the notion of putting out peelings and more unmentionable food into a separate bin even more revolting. Until very recently we had an active composting bin in the garden. But the local badgers have got into it and strewn the contents over our veggie plots so many times now we’re not currently making much home-grown compost. We need a new badger-proof bin. The drum kind with a sturdy frame and proper locking device. 

I feel especially aggrieved that the recycling team often leave washed, carefully-sorted plastics behind. I don’t know why but my guess is that printed labels won’t recycle. Some polypropylenes have to go in the main bin. Thus far cellophane and plain plastics have been accepted for recycling. Plastics with labels have had to go in the general rubbish. What is the point of that? I thought we were trying to cut down plastics waste. Not my favourite thing. Recycling never gets easier.

                                       *

Now that summer is behind us, winter is, meteorologically-speaking, fifty days away, it’s time to put the garden to bed. But the lack of dry days for hanging out washing is a nuisance. Yes, we have a heated airer, yes, we have a tumble drier, but I like sheets drying in the wind. Less so rushing out in the rain, in the semi-darkness, to save the dried washing from the constant showers we are having.

I’m doing so much more around the house, partly as we are eating out far less and partly because Richard is still unwell. As a result I rely on the dishwasher, our fabulous new Shark upright vacuum cleaner, the microwave and the washer-drier. I cannot imagine for one moment what it must have been like, a hundred years ago, doing endless domestic chores. My great aunt washed using a dolly. Their bedding had to be hung around to dry on airers in front of a coal fire, which itself caused ash that had to be cleaned out every morning. Each evening the fire would be relaid with scrunched-up newspaper and kindling, to be topped with sooty coal. Every plate, cup, saucer ( there were few mugs), saucepan, bowl, knife, fork, spoon, server had to be washed and dried... three times a day... there were no dishwashers. A carpet sweeper just about got up debris from the carpets but great aunty Louie had to thwack rugs on a washing line to get the dust out. There were few vacuum cleaners. And everything was cooked on the stove - or on the range in older houses - there were no microwaves. 

I got tired yesterday and had a rare nap around 6pm. Richard cooked. But the weariness that overcame me was after I’d made plentiful use of the dishwasher, the microwave, the Shark vacuum cleaner, the dishwasher and had had someone in to trim a hedge in our front garden. I couldn’t possibly contemplate the domestic labour great aunty Louie had endured. I was ready for my bed after a relatively straightforward day of chores. But the recycling always gets my goat. It will be written on my gravestone

‘Here lieth Kathryn Nina MacPherson 

Wednesday’s recycling finally got the better of her’

Domestic chores are not among my most favourite things. Our cleaning ladies are on furlough. Should I get replacements? Or is it a risk too great? I don’t know whether having someone in the house - touching surfaces - going from one home to another then another and another - is a good thing. These times of coronavirus are testing us in ways that couldn’t be foreseen. 

And I need to stop complaining. I have my health. I can cook, clean, do the garden, hang out the washing and do the dishes. Unlike some poor souls. For them lockdown must bring life’s difficulties into sharp relief. 

You may well ask

Imagine, if you will, a blithe September afternoon.The Rudbekia are at their orange finest and the sunchokes wave like their larger cousins, shiny yellow sunflowers, in the gentle breeze. 

That’s if you happen to be in the right part of the garden, however. If you were unlucky enough to be a sunchoke and have been planted near the shed and in manured soil with the sun on your face, you’re in for it.

Because of that manure your roots have thrived, multiplied and spread into the lawn. And gardening is all about control and Victorian neatness. Cutting your roots out of the lawn last spring means drastic measures will take place this autumn. 

First up is the wife who gets the man to help her stick a fork right through your tangle of roots and wrench them out until they are torn from the clods of earth you called home. But she’s one of the better fat controllers. She’s brought along buckets of water into which your torn roots are placed so that your shiny yellow faces don’t wither and fold.

And all along the flower bed she goes; digging, tearing, separating and lifting. Your mates join you and they are squashed into your tub of water with alarming cruelty. But it’s back-breaking for her.Your roots are tough.

Then what on earth is he getting up to? You may well ask!

When you are all removed from your flower bed the fun really starts. He digs out enough soil to provide himself with a graveyard plot and he scatters it on the beds where your mates continue to glow, undisturbed, in the snatched September sunshine. And she provides more tubs which he sinks into the big grave-like hole. Then you are transferred into these tubs and, with your feet in water, you are buried. 

What? 

A whole bed of sunchokes has been dug up simply to be placed in plastic tubs, full of water and compost, back into the soil where you’d grown happily for the last five years.

Ah! I get it. She doesn’t like your roots spreading into her lawn. So you’ve got to be grown in containers. And now you feel sick and weak. The uprooting has made you wilt. They’re going to put a bean stick up your back side, throttle you with string and force you to stand erect, even though you’d rather flop all over the soil. It’s all been such a shock, being uprooted like that. And simply because you were successful. You were growing well. So you had to be put into containers, like mint, so you can’t spread.

It took him five hours on that sunny September afternoon. Why couldn’t he just put his feet up and watch the racing on the tele, if he’s so interested in the turf. 

Farce

When the kitchen ceiling came down last week there was the inevitable clearing away of debris. This I achieved surprisingly quickly. And I was relieved we weren’t having heavy showers at the time. I stored the damp and slithery broken plaster board and roof insulation in bags on the patio. Then the farce started.

Friends came to help me in the garden last Friday but it isn’t a pretty sight seeing someone digging in soil getting as muddy as a rugby player on a wet November Saturday afternoon. Nor is it fun sitting next to a pile of wet roof insulation and broken bits of grimy grey plasterboard trying to serve tea to my helpful, weary garden workers. 

Dragging long whips of rambling rose to the garden waste bins was even more farcical. They kept getting caught on garden furniture as I wrestled them to their bye-bye bins. At one point so much growth had been hacked back by my ufl* friend I could only pile it up by our front door. Imagine how our co-op delivery boys felt! Trying to get to the front door knocker was as impenetrable for them as POWs tackling the jungle in the film ‘The Bridge Over the River Kwai’, (needless to say without the cruelty, starvation and forced labour). We must have looked like a mad house. The patio resembled something from The Somme. It rained hard and the mud kept flowing. But my friends persisted shovelling soil, cutting back rambling roses and moving raised beds, even though they were getting soaked.I ran out of rainproof jackets for them.

But I rewarded them with a fish n chip supper and Aperol spritzers. 

This week I managed to get our breakfast and lunch ready - on trays - in our upstairs snug. It’s a small study-bedroom with tv, sofa bed, bureau, teaching materials, books and papers related to my writings. In there I plugged in the mini fridge so that we didn’t have to endure tea flavoured with milk that had gone off. The mini kettle was a boon as was our supplementary tv. In that way we could leave the builders to enjoy ripping out the rest of the plasterboard and roof insulation. And they could get on with replacing it all with bales of new insulating material and plasterboard without us annoying them by getting under their feet making cheese sandwiches and boiling kettles.

But when they’d finished plastering the new ceiling the dust layers were thick enough to grow autumn sowings of overwintering lettuce! Despite putting dust sheets everywhere the carpet - to be replaced if our house insurance coughs up - was daubed with flesh-coloured plaster and had a sheen of cough-inducing dust. 

The night the builders finished I considered whether to leave our redirected baskets of kitchen implements and ingredients in our over-full living room. But we’d had enough of eating off our laps in the snug. We needed to be able to see our dining table. So, before our builder paints the new plaster, some time next week,I, possibly foolishly, put our measuring jugs, pyrex dishes, baking trays, herbs, spices, baking powder, food processor and other electrical wizardry back into the newly-ceilinged kitchen. 

Next day my gardening friend reclaimed dust sheets from the shed. When the plaster has dried and it’s ready for a coat of paint I’ll somehow drape the shelves of pyrex dishes with the dust sheets so that I don’t have to move everything out into the living room yet again. 

On a positive note the kitchen units and skirting boards cleaned up very well and I painted the skirting boards, despite being very tired. But it’s looking cared-for. 

Of course, next day, it had to start raining which meant any washing had to be tumble-dried. Piles of washing in limited floor space is beyond annoying. 

And the newly refurbished kitchen space became a bottle-neck. There was simply too much going on in a small space. The carpet, after two days of restoration, needed to be shampooed. Richard wanted the electric airer down as we had so much laundry to dry. We were tripping over each other trying to carry the carpet shampooer and airer downstairs while temporarily using the stairs as storage. It was madness. And our gardening friend needed an extension lead to be plugged in so he could finish jobs in the garden for me. Nevertheless, even though both men were being truly helpful, I banned him and Richard for an afternoon and shampooed the plaster-laden carpet with death threats if either of them walked over it while the carpet dried. 

My old Henry vacuum cleaner had managed to get up clods of plaster but my month-old Shark coped less well. I thought I’d damaged it with too much plaster-sucking. But yesterday I took the brushes and rollers out from my really efficient Shark stick cleaner. It wasn’t plaster that had clogged the vacuum head but a twig that had got caught behind a roller. A twig?? No wonder the suction was so poor. But all cleaned up well and I have my new Shark back in suction heaven. Thank goodness for small mercies. 

But what of the bloody garden hose? I was desperate to flush away patio debris from the mammoth rose-hacking of a week ago. And the remnants of the piles of plaster board. But yesterday was another farce. Our builder messaged me to say the contract waste removal team was trying to get to our patio to shift the ex-ceiling debris. But I was at the far end of the garden when the message pinged its way to me. And my knee was so painful, after days of shifting kitchen ware, hefty garden cuttings and ceiling debris. By the time I limped to our patio to unlock the gate for the contractors they had got in and were busily shifting the rubbish. Had Richard let them in? No. He was asleep. ( His meds still seem to knock him out until about 11am). No the clever contractor showed me how he’d looped our padlock over the gate and gained access. (Note to self - care with security for our front gate or else we become a burglars’ paradise.)

I still needed to wash away the rose clippings, dust and debris on the patio but the bloody hose wouldn’t work. An annoying connector valve - according to our Neighbourhood Nextdoor community faqs - has to be fiddled with in order to allow water from the outside tap to fill the hose and run through it freely. A whole morning and several You Tube ‘how to’ videos later showed my up-to-his-knees-in-mud friend and I how to adjust the annoying valve. Finally the Hozelock worked and I could actually hose the patio down. By which time it was almost unnecessary as we’d such heavy downpours it’s a wonder the garden furniture wasn’t washed away. And, having successfully shampooed the previously plaster-caked carpet, it was in danger of becoming a magnet for mud. I was running out of rugs and mats. Will the rain ever stop? 

My last but one garden project to undertake before I drop with exhaustion is to dig up late summer-flowering sunchokes. They spread too rapidly for my liking. They have a sunny yellow flower and really make the garden shine as we move from the August heat into more moody September weather. But their roots have to be contained - rather like mint plants. My back and knee usually complain if I do too much digging but my knees-in-mud friend managed to get the fork and spade into the congested root system when I feared injuring my knee and aggravating my back problem. 

However I successfully pushed the plants straight into huge tubs of water so they didn’t wilt. Was I succeeding? Just about.

The next task is to reposition a waterbutt, guttering and its downpipe. But, for now, I’m going to enjoy the weekend, watching a Marple and reading The Guardian. One day we must return to semi-normality. Enough farce already. 

*ufl - up from London

Is the war over yet?

Do you remember, back in 2005, when former Japanese soldiers Yoshio Yamakawa and Tsuzuki Nakauchi emerged from the jungle on the island of Mindanao, 600 miles from Manila? You may not remember their names but they’d been hiding in the mountains since US troops devastated their division in 1945. They were unaware that world war 2 had ended 60 years before, and were afraid that they would be court-martialled for desertion. So they’d hidden in the trees. 

In May 2005, as old men, they emerged from their hiding place in the Philippines, asking to go home.

Another Japanese soldier, Hiroo Onoda, secreted himself in the jungle on Lubang Island near Luzon, in the Philippines, until 1974, because he didn’t believe that the war had ended. It was only after his elderly former commanding officer was flown in to see him that he surrendered.

Speaking of emerging, for a variety of reasons we’ve hardly emerged from our house over the last month. But 30-odd days is not the same as 60 years. And our comfortable home isn’t a cave in the woods or mountains of a foreign land. 

Last week I was explaining to a visitor that our cleaning ladies hadn’t resumed their duties since lockdown. They felt it was too covid-risky to be travelling and working from house to house. And I agreed with them.

‘What? After five months? And they still haven’t gone back to work?’ he exclaimed. 

He felt, rightly or wrongly, that they should be going out to work. 

But I have some sympathy for their plight. I am very risk-averse and only now am I considering doing anything as brave as having my hair cut. When I do go out to the shops or travel on a train - in the next couple of weeks - I’m sure it will feel like I’m emerging from my own jungle hideout. But emerge I must before I start growing roots! How must those veterans have felt in hiding for all those decades? We are struggling after just five months locked-away. 

The last time I walked into Bath it was a blazing hot day in late July. About a month ago. It isn’t simply covid-19 that has isolated me for the last four weeks and kept me at home. After a mammoth gardening session, lasting a week from late July to early August, my trapped nerve and old knee injury were so aggravated that I couldn’t walk. August, for me, has been a bit of a write-off. But there’s so much to do at home, it seems. 

Over the last two days I’ve carried huge whips of brambles and climbing roses, thankfully a friend initially used the secateurs. And I’ve dug soil, transported soil, tipped soil, you-name-it I’ve done it with soil. And I’m waiting for my knee and trapped nerve to hurt in response to all this hefty gardening. I’ve hardly had time to poke my head above the parapet and ask ‘Is the war over yet?’

Aargh! Our ceiling’s just collapsed!

My plan for today was simple: take my Observer voucher to our little shop, exchange it for the paper, buy bacon, make breakfast and settle down to read the news. Thence to write about how lucky we are to live in a quiet part of a lovely city and happy to have plans to go away once schools are finally back. That’s if schools do go back and teachers are able to take up their posts safely. I’d want lots of assurances that I could wear a see-through mask and have a perspex screen from which to conduct lessons if I were contemplating teaching in my old classroom once more. Currently I feel very uncertain that teachers and pupils will be safe from covid. However I see plans for less movement around school buildings and shorter days are in place in some institutions. I see little detail about sanitising and mask-wearing, though.

With few thoughts other than a leisurely Sunday to look forward to I listened to BH with one of my favourite broadcasters and went downstairs to make tea, feed the cat and get Richard’s meds ready.

As I entered our breakfast room it looked as if our cat, Nelson, had torn apart two cushions and left the inards on the floor. I got closer and called him. The table cloth I’d put down was covered in grit and once inside the room the full horror of a fallen ceiling met my eyes. It wasn’t the cat’s fault. Some dodgy plasterboard, which had needed replacing for years rather than months, had collapsed. The carpet was covered in grey slabs which broke up even more as I handled them. 

I’d planned to get to our shop soon after 10:00 am before Maya ran out of Observers but by 10:20 am I was still clearing, hoovering, trying to feed the cat in a clear area of 30cm square and making a pot of tea.

By 10:30 am I’d tidied enough such that the worst of the plaster board and insulation was in a huge plastic bag on the patio. I’d rung our builder who advised wearing a mask just in case fibres got to me. And the carpet was slightly damp. A leak! Water must have forced the flimsy plasterboard south. 

This isn’t the first collapsed ceiling that I’ve dealt with. I’m reminded of a similar state of affairs,  that equally took me by surprise, but that was almost forty years ago. 

When Richard and I moved into our first house, about three weeks before we married, he was still teaching full time. And, although we’d moved house on the Friday he went back into school that evening to act as Judge Hathorne in the school production of ‘The Crucible’. I’d moved house, essentially, with friends. One loaded her very large estate car with much of our belongings. A van from Somerset arrived with my mother-in-law’s furniture, ( she was moving into a care home), lots of men friends helped me carry boxes and ‘white goods’ into the appropriate rooms and by the evening I felt settled. 

Lo and behold, just as I felt a good day’s work had been had by all, I went into the bathroom and witnessed the ceiling light fall to the floor, as if in slow motion, followed by tons of insulation. We’d known the ceiling was dodgy and already had quotes from builders to get the work done. In time. Not the night of moving in.

Weeks before I’d rehearsed Richard’s lines with him, in our rented flat, surrounded by packing crates. I couldn’t wait to move to our own house with our own garden and kitchen. I didn’t bank on having a bathroom we couldn’t use...

And again, this morning, the same sight faced me. Plasterboard all over the show, albeit only a fraction of the total ceiling area. 

We have our builder coming tomorrow. But, as I relax, finally, 12 hours after discovering the collapsed ceiling, I’ve put my feet up and am ready to peruse The Observer. It’s not been a relaxing day. After lunch I discovered even more plasterboard behind a glass-fronted cabinet and a drip, drip, drip from somewhere rather too close to electric sockets. This afternoon was spent emptying the cabinet, moving it, clearing up even more debris and cobbling together a meagre meal of roast duck. That was around 5:00pm. 

My family thinks it’s best to get the work done rather than rely on house insurance pay outs, which can take an age to process. That will be a decision for tomorrow, by which time I will wake up and plan my day as if it’s a Sunday all over again. I feel I’ve lost a day today. As I draw the bedroom curtains and shut the windows I remember the optimism I felt when I opened them. I did not then know the state of our breakfast room floor, nor the work that lay ahead. And yet I still feel lucky. 

News from India, Belarus, The Yemen, Beirut, Syria, our own unemployed and those fearing eviction is so much worse. Falling plasterboard is unlikely to be the worst thing endured by those people at this time. Our television, internet, lights, cooker, electricity, warm running water and safe, cold drinking water are still at hand. I count my blessings. Falling plasterboard is a set back, not a way of life, and it hasn’t, as yet, affected anything else in the house. 

On Wednesday the weather looks fair. I shall enjoy it. And make up for today. 

As you were...

But it’s just not British!

We are to be beset with these ‘tropical days’ ( BBC Weather’s words, not mine) until Tuesday it seems. 

For the third night in a row I have changed beds at 4 am and 5 am respectively. After a time the marital bed gets simply too hot and I transfer, first, to the sofa bed. 

Last night (and the night before that) even the sofa bed was in a room that felt as though the doors from three heat-blasting ovens had been left open. My sojourn there didn’t last long. 

Yesterday, downstairs at 5 am, I opened the back door and all the kitchen windows. I wanted a through draft in the coolest room of the house. Our living room does stay at a survivable temperature while the rest of our home is finding it hard to breathe.

My bed, on the six foot, four-seater sofa, yields a comfortable sleep. And yesterday  it was already made up with sheets and pillows. Indeed we have had guests who chose to sleep on the long sofa rather than bother with a fold-up bed. It suits me. My gammy knee prevents me from wrestling with furniture, however light-weight and foldable it may be.

The forecast for hereonin is thunder and one or two heavy showers every twenty four hours until Tuesday and this is only Thursday. Nights continue to be ‘tropical’. Hardly British! 

Yesterday I didn’t even attempt to sit outside. There was something menacing, powerful even, about the heat on our patio. I pity anyone who had to work in temperatures of 30 degrees plus (86 F). Apparently the humidity factor made it feel even hotter than that. And we just aren’t set up for domestic air conditioning in the UK. If we survive the 2020 plague having air con installed might be a good investment. Our summers are getting hotter.

Apart from sleep deprivation my moonlight flits from room to room necessitate remembering a kit bag that I transport with me: my water bottle, wheat bag, co codamol and eye mask. As it gets lighter outside my eyes need the mask. My gammy knee requires a supply of strong painkiller and the joint-soothing wheat bag that I heat up in the microwave, although that act seems like masochism when one is already so hot. And I always have water nearby. At dawn, yesterday, I had the early flickerings of a migraine. A sure sign of overheating, tiredness and dehydration.

Looking back Lockdown, for us, hasn’t been too tricky. We have a large enough home and garden to spread ourselves out in. So much so I hadn’t seen our cat much over the last 24 hours. He would have been sheltering in a dark knell under the cool, leafy shrubs in the garden or in the woods opposite. But he was very hungry when he did return from his away day. No sooner had he fed, at 5 am, than he was out again. It’s simply too hot for him indoors. And as soon as he hears my movements on the stairs he waits for me to feed him. Only then can I resume sleep.

However, Lockdown, my husband’s illness, a painful knee and tropical nights require coping strategies on my part. And a lot of patience and adaptability. But I keep my life simple and, at the moment, I don’t expect too much. But I do need my sleep. 

I read that the modern concept of sleeping for eight hours at a stretch is in contrast with the medieval way of life. Apparently it was quite usual, then, to sleep for four hours, to wake and eat, then to resume a long, deep sleep until morning. I appear to be medieval in my habits. At least while we have this heat wave. 

Next week I promise myself that, providing my knee allows me to walk any distance, I will resume a healthy sleep, eating and exercising regime. But the temperatures have got to drop down from tropical for me to return to a life of discipline and good habits. Just walking upstairs brings me out in a sweat and my knee injury prevents me from tackling steps, either up or down. 

When temperatures are less tropical we will meet friends in our gardens, again. And sitting outside in drizzle is much more British. The challenge will come in November when the air is dank, patio tubs are devoid of colour and it just isn’t pleasant to sit outside for long. And it will be dark by 5 pm. 

Let’s hope for a vaccine against covid-19 sometime during the winter months of 2020-2021 so that we may resume enjoying life as it used to be, indoors - and out. 

(Then we can tackle climate change.)