Just thought I’d showcase my European credentials and vestigial schoolboy French. Also thought I’d avoid the use of English as I know a number of the words I’d like to use are, whilst accurate, likely to cause offence.
We have moved from a stance of splendid imperturbability to one of headless chicken panic. It took 24 hours. Even news programmes are using words like “drastic escalation” and “dramatic step change”. As of the weekend we will be expected to stop mixing with people and if you are over 70 you have to stay at home for the next three months.
Pelargoniums
If you were to do a bit of minor theft or low level drug dealing you probably wouldn’t get sentenced to three months. Seems that septuagenarians are currently less socially desirable than petty criminals.
It’s not really going to make a lot of difference to me as I am not noted for visiting pubs, theatres and sporting events. I see a few people in the shop but that is it, and as much of our work consists of packing parcels we can’t do it from home.
It’s actually possible, as Julia has signed us up to a neighbourhood help network, that I’ll be seeing more people than I normally do. I have protested that I’m too old to start being nice to people but, as usual, I have been over-ruled.
On a lighter note, the blackthorn is now in flower, which is always my indicator that Spring has sprung. There is a lot of gorse out around Nottingham now, though that isn’t such a good indicator as there is always some gorse in bloom somewhere.
When gorse is out of flower, kissing is out of fashion, as the saying goes.
Rudebekia
My camera card is playing up so the photographs are from my spare card. They are bright and cheery even if they aren’t taken today.
Stay well, Quercus, and help if you can! I’m working from home and not doing much else except the occasional walk, lots of phone calls and emails. This is a one day at a time kind of situation, I think.
Yes, the government is managing from one panic to the next so one day at a time seems reasonable.
You have my sympathy. This is going to be a testing time for a professional grouch with nobody to complain too. On a brighter note, I feel that as Boris contemplates the average age of the Tory voter, septuagenarians are going slowly to creep back into favour. I did like the suggestion in my paper that if we are to be confined indoors, there should be at least one day a week when everyone else has to stay inside and we should be let out to frolic undisturbed.
Fair points – I’ll happily let you have a day of undisturbed frolicking every week. I am aware that the years between me and seventy are melting away quickly and I am happy to benefit from your pioneering work on creeping back into favour.
Creeping is the mot juste
Way past time to take this pandemic seriously, but wonder of wonders, our president finally is. I think he sees the writing on the wall for his career, and it’s not a message he likes. But enough about that grotesque man. Your Julia is quite the gem, and reading about her really cheered me up.
I’m not sure any modern politician is up to the job. Too much politics, too little brain and backbone.
Today I am going to initiate a neighbourhood help service of two households – we could well be considered more undesirable than our next door neighbours – and I am the oldest of the lot of us.
My father had a friend who was well known for being helpful. In his late 80s he was still a churchwarden and still driving round the parish “to look after the old folk”, as he put it.
🙂
Good to hear spring is in progress there. Yes, much has been cancelled or postponed here. Julia is a good woman to sign you both up for neighborhood help.
She’s a good woman, it is true. And she bullies me terribly…