Corona - Boris & Cummings - "Power tends to corrupt & absolute power corrupts absolutely".

Quote from - John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton, 13th, Marquess of Groppoli. MP for Bridgnorth in the 1860's. A man & a place, (Groppoli), I'd never heard of.

I've watched both Boris & his seemingly indispensible, Svengali sidekick, Dominic Cummings & listened to what they had to say. What strikes me is that Boris is so afraid of loosing a "spin doctor" it makes me question whether he is as intelligent as they say. Spouting Latin isn't necessarily the sort of intelligence you need to run a country in a crisis.

I'm not at all convinced by their TV Q&A sessions. My outstanding questions are:-

• Did Cummings wife Mary actually have Covid 19? She doesn't seem to have had the 2 main symptoms. If not what was actually wrong with her? Was it serious enough to warrant what he did?
• Was it reasonable not to have made any contingency childcare plans, given their high profile jobs & the liklihood they would contract the disease? Didn't they have any family, friends or work contacts in London who could step in & arrange childcare? Are they too elite to know about Social Services?
• Was driving 250 miles both ways an acceptable risk? If he really thought Mary, the child, or possibly he himself had Covid 19, what would have happened if they had had an accident or the car broke down, or they needed  to go to the loo? How many people might they have put in harms way?
• Did he actually have Covid 19?
• What possible justification is there for him driving to a hospital when he "could barely stand up" the night before. Or doing a test drive to see if he could drive safely "after (he had) started to recover" & his "eyesight had been affected by his illness". So he did a 30 mile trip! Really? Do you get in a car, with your wife & child & drive if you haven't been able to see or stand  properly?
• Why was his ability to drive even an issue? Can't his wife drive?
• Why were his circumstances any more "exceptional" than anyone else's who has tried to follow the rules? There have been thousands of people in "exceptional" circumstances much more serious than this.
• What does Dominic Cummings handling of this situation say about his ability to make sensible judgements about the highly sensitive issues, which are brought to the fore in this Pandemic? For a "spin doctor" his behaviour & attitude has been appalling & counter productive.
• What does Boris' handling of the whole sorry affair say about his ability to run the country in this pandemic?
• How can we listen to or trust either of them? Blaming the Media, who they routinely use & manipulate, is ironic in the extreme.

However self justifying & unrepentant Dominic Cummings is to himself & the Prime Minister, the basic fact is that even if he can say he didn't break the law, he did fail to respect the spirit of the law & the public he is trying to convince.

Corona - "Friends Family & Countrymen - Lend me your ears"

With apologies to Shakespeare.

I am so grateful for so many things during this pandemic.

A daughter who shops weekly for me, despite the huge pressures of adjusting to & producing an online curriculum for the children she teaches. Only those in a similar position will know how stressful & time consuming that has been. (Plus helping my grandsons with their online schoolwork). She also visits regularly & we stand 2 m apart, me in the doorway her in the middle of the road. Real face to face interaction is so much better than any alternative. I wish we could hug too.

Then there are my many, mostly married, friends, A, A, C, C, D, D, J, J, K, P & S who make the effort to visit, phone, email or text me regularly. They know who they are. They also know how bad I am at phoning them, which makes it doubly wonderful. I'm much better at texting or emailing. Then there are my Zoom swimming friends who I have a coffee morning with every fortnight.

These human interractions are a lifeline to the outside world. There is so much laughter, but also information about life outside, which I can't experience. I haven't shopped or travelled anywhere for 9 weeks. (Apart from one visit to A&E).

Obviously I do keep up with the news at home & abroad. I also have regular webinars or Zoom conferences with 4 of the Charities I support who are planning for the future after Covid 19. Especially the Ecological charities who see the benefit of the lockdown conditions & change in public habits.

The point of this is that my experience of Covid 19 is full of positives & the positives are the people I am in contact with. People who are themselves behaving well & complying with the "Rules" despite all the difficulties. Good people who not only think of others but do something to help them.

I wish I could say the same about everyone, but we are all different & the people who think rules don't apply to them are very much in the minority.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/24/dominic-cummings-crisis-18-unanswered-questions/

Corona - Hour by Hour Day by Day

I don't tend to look back. I don't tend to look forward with anticipation or excitement either. My past is history, I can't do anything about it except possibly learn the lessons. The future may never happen. So I just try to be. I've learned that I can live with most things.

At the moment my life is far more sedentary & solitary than normal. Goodness knows what that, plus the lack of exercise, will do to my weight & socialbility. I really miss swimming.

Currently I am digitizing hundreds of photo slides taken by my husband & transferring them to my computer. He seems to have been very good at taking bad photos, but fortunately the software lets me improve them. The slides seem to begin in 1976. He wasn't very good at annotating them with place & date or keeping them in order, so there had to be a radical re-ordering & cull before I started digitizing.

It is literally the first time some of these slides have seen the light of day since they were taken. It is very odd to be transported back to a different time & place. To see my daughter grow up again before my eyes. To see how slim & attractive, (sorry if that sounds boastful), I was & compare that to the image in my mirror every day.

There are probably other things I should be doing with this time which has been gifted to me. Reading some of the non fiction on my shelves, drawing, painting, working with textiles & being creative. But I'm strangely hooked on re-visiting the photographic past.

I think one of the reasons is that I think it's important for my daughter & she would never look at slides. There are a few, taken by her grandparents, of her father as a child. Although I do believe we should live minute by minute, savouring each moment of life, I also think that we should be able to catch a glimpse of our personal history.

History is both macro & micro. Where we come from is important & the trivia of daily life, which we are all experiencing even more now, makes us what we are.

Corona - Postal Swab Test

I've been doing the C19 symptoms App daily for some time now. It's run by Kings College & only takes seconds to do - https://covid.joinzoe.com

Last week I felt as if I had a cold coming on Wednesday - sneezing & catarrh. On Thursday I had a low grade headache all day. On Friday I felt really tired. On Saturday I got an email saying they were sending me a postal swab test. It came on Monday. Delivered by Amazon - (why not Royal Mail, who do pay their taxes)?

 

There are 9 separate elements in the pack. 12 pages of A4 Instructions printed on very expensive paper! 5 complex steps in total. Just getting to grips with the instructions needed several readings & a highlighter. You need to be very computer savvy. 

The first thing is to book your free courier collection on line. The special weblink didn't work - it was the ordinary Royal Mail site. So I had to phone the help line - which was fine & they booked the courier. Then you have to register your test online before you do the swab. You get a text message confirmation with a link to complete the process. All of this is fine if you have the necessary tech & skills. It took me a while.

You have to do the swab between 9pm & 7am the night before the collection. I found the throat swab impossible to do. You need a mirror & have to swab your tonsils right at the back of the throat without touching your tongue, teeth or gums. I simply couldn't stop gagging & touching my tongue. The nasal swab was fine. 

Then you have to put the swab in a vial, label it & put it in the first plastic bag with a cushion. That all goes into a Biohazard bag which you seal & label with another barcode. The lot goes into a cardboard container which you seal & label.

The courier comes between 8am & 4pm & is supposed to follow protocols, mine didn't. I'm supposed to get the results within 2 -3 days. I really don't think I've got Covid.

It is a complex & fairly unpleasant process. I can't imagine how very young or very old people will cope with it. I wonder why you can't simply spit into a vial instead of doing the throat swab which is the worst part. I hope I don't have to do it again.