Thoughts of a carer

  I sent a text yesterday, to Jacqui, our hairdresser: Hi Jacqui Hope you are well and coping with the madness Viv and I were booked for haircuts on Monday but we think you aren't supposed to be working? We will call you to fix up another date when Boris makes up his mind that it's safe ... so probably in 2024! Well hopefully sooner! That 2024 reference was meant as a joke, but when I read it back to Viv it didn't really seem like one: the way things are now: we haven't even got a visit from the hairdresser to look forward to, let alone holidays or trips to see family - which are noticable by their absence from our planner calendar. When lockdown struck in March last year we had four holidays planned and booked - two weeks in Germany in April, a week by the Essex coast in July, a week in Devon in September and one in the Isle of Wight at Christmas. We did manage Essex and Devon, not at the dates we had planned, but cancelled Germany and the Isle of Wight.  Like many we ...

It's January 2021 . We've been in lockdown, on and off, for twelve months.  The government seems to believe that there is a great consensus among the public that lockdown is a good idea; Viv and I disagree both that it is, and that there is a consensus. Casual conversations we have had over the last few months lead us to believe that a fair proportion of the population is 'sceptic', but are scared to voice their opinions openly.  The problem is that the government gets its message across, and media - both national and social - fall over themselves to enthuse about it. Dissent is not allowed; 'lockdown sceptics' are derided as granny-killers and covid-deniers; the 'experts' view is right, we are told. Yet progress has always depended on challenging the orthodox viewpoint. Luther, Galileo, Newton, Stephenson and Einstein are not the only people in history who insisted on looking at things differently from the 'experts' of their time, and history ha...