Month: June 2020

Feest Isolation Days – 8 June

In Bristol there were ten thousand protestors yesterday who managed to pull down the statue of Colston who was a slave trader. The man died in 1721.  They dumped his statue in the river.  Someone knelt on the neck of the statue like the American policeman who took George Floyds breath away by that action.  

Pulling down the statue was an impressive and meaningful gesture in 2020. Look how long this legacy has been around!   Let’s hope that the protests calling for racial equality all over the world amount to some sort of positive change.  I hope too that the protestors don’t spread the disease.  BAME people are apparently highly susceptible to Covid.  That’s the last thing that community need…more deaths! We didn’t join the protest. We are still being extremely careful.  I was with them in spirit. Shame there wasn’t a more effective way of protesting. On the other side of the world there are protests too and with over four hundred aborigines having died in police custody in Australia in recent years let’s hope that there is a meaningful outcome.

In New Zealand, life is returning to near normal and my friends make me feel envious. They have no virus and have unlocked internally. No one can get in or out of the country, but those lucky folks who live there are filling every hotel and B and B from the tip of the north to the bottom of the South Island.  And it’s winter there!

Yesterday we went for a walk to the Tyndale monument that sits atop the Cotswolds and is reached via magnificent woods. 

The Cotswolds are always a delight. The name Cotswold means “sheep enclosure in rolling hillsides”. We saw a few sheep but not too many on our walk.  We picnicked in the tall grasses and Terry made sling shots from the top of the grasses that we were sat upon and I hooted with laughter – small pleasures.  These pleasures were not to be enjoyed by William Tyndale for long.  Tyndale translated The Bible into English so that ordinary people could read it rather than relying on priests for an interpretation. His reward for his efforts was to be strangled and then burned at the stake in 1536. The world can indeed be a very strange place! 

Meantime, at the foot of the monument to this poor man, who was born nearby, a very special visitor landed on my hand and filled me with delight.

People largely seemed to be social distancing and there were many families enjoying the splendour of the day.  In the crazy world we live in these days, let’s hope that there is a more promising tomorrow in every way.

Stay safe.

With love, Kathy

Feest Isolation Days – 7 June

Singing Vivaldi’s Gloria at a stay and sing certainly helps to chase away the blues!  At the beginning of the week, we had hoped that we might soon receive  a visit from our son who lives in London.  He was having an antibody test to see whether he had the virus back in late March.  If he tested positive, we initially thought that we could take all the necessary precautions that arose from travelling to us and he could come and stay for a bit. It’s a big house! However, the rules really are pretty clear that this isn’t yet an option. The antibody test was negative so there was no need to agonise at all. There will be no visit.

We’re hoping that the kids who drive and live a bit nearer will be able to come and see us when the weather warms up again. We can all sit in the garden and practice social distancing. They can get home easily and that sort of visit is allowed in the new rules.  Those poor people who never got to say goodbye to their loved ones, or the people who are separated by accidents of timing when the lockdown began, tug on my heart strings. 

Funny how friends and zoom work pretty well together, but with the kids they sort of have to be here.  Can’t explain it but all I know is it isn’t happening yet so thank you Antonio Vivaldi and Hilary Campbell the Musical Director of Bristol Choral Society who organised the uplifting stay and sing. Let me know if you want to do join in on the 4^th of July and I’ll send you the info.  It’s uplifting for certain!

There are those who are very publicly moaning about the lockdown and saying they no longer intend to follow it. Alison Pearson writing in the Telegraph had a rant this week and ended by saying she wasn’t following the guidance anymore.  Shame on you Telegraph for publishing that.  While I’m no Tory, (and she is!) I think that sort of statement in these pandemic times is uncalled for, unhelpful and ill advised. It’s the sort of rant that reminds me why I don’t actually read the Torygraph. Not sure why they send me email links or how I got onto their system but I feel an unsubscribe coming on!

Another unhelpful group are the airlines.  The travel industry is up in arms with the UK legislation that will mean from the 15^th of June all travellers into the country must isolate for fourteen days or face fines of £1000.  The airlines say this will kill off air travel.  British Airways, RyanAir and EasyJet are considering taking the government to a judicial review.  If the passengers are killed off surely that isn’t a very sound business model either!

We had some more baby plants arrive this week and they were squished and packed in a way that meant they were never going to survive the journey.  They came from Thompson and Morgan. The firm unhelpfully has closed their phone lines and even worse, say they will respond to emails in ten to fourteen days.  Sounds a bit much to us.  Beware to all  those UK gardeners who are ordering plants on line.  We have had lovely plants from many other online sources, but not from them!

Beware the slugs as well.  The little buggers decimated the coriander and two of the new beautiful baby cosmos that arrived earlier in the week. Now that the cool weather and a bit of rain has returned so have the slugs.  Pellets to the fore! 

We mosey along and hope that the R continues to fall. Must go – I promised I’d order some face masks to send to London. They will be mandatory on public transport soon.  Thought we’d better get some too.  Just in case we have to visit the hospital, they’ll be mandatory there too for all staff and visitors.  What times we live in eh?

You can’t always get what you want…but hang onto your dreams!  Enjoy!

Stay safe.

With love,

Kathy

Feest Isolation Days – 6 June

What did we used to talk about before Covid 19?  Oh I remember Brexit! But it’s another B that hit the newspapers this week (besides Boris!) –  Bonking!  The Sun – that newspaper we all know and love SO much – says that Boris has banned bonking!  Members from one household are not permitted to visit members from another household and stay the night. Apparently, according to the Sun, that means bonking is banned.  I don’t know about you, but as far as I am aware sleeping over night in someone’s house doesn’t necessarily imply bonking. It made me laugh though and in these Covid times that can’t be a bad thing!

We spoke to dear friends who live in Australia over breakfast for us and early supper and drinks for them. We discovered that in Western Australia where they live, the State was divided into eleven regions in lockdown and people couldn’t go from one region to another without written proof of need.  There were police and barriers on the roads stopping movement.  No wonder they have had not many infections and so few deaths.  Here, another friend in the know tells us that a second wave is expected in September.  We shall see.  Meantime, life goes on.

After spending forty five minutes on my exercise bike every day and doing my mat work, it seemed time to spread my wings.  I miss my swimming, (I know I know I’ve complained about this before but I really do!).  Thinking through what I missed made it possible even in these days of confinement to find a solution. 

Running has been off the agenda for me for years. Swimming means forty-five minutes of crawl plus a warm up and cool down. My strokes are fast, my glide in between strokes powers me through the water.  My gym has an outdoor pool and when we are in New Zealand the outdoor pool there is always a short walk away from our home in Parnell.  Most weeks I average three swims. Or did.  Breaking it all down I figured out I needed to be able to move faster than merely walking, and I needed to be outdoors and free to move at pace. Being able to leave the house safely and just go was also high on the list of requirements.  No prizes for guessing the solution! 

Yes I am now the proud owner of a brand new bike – not a Boris Bike! This month there was a bicycle boom and sales doubled with cycle shops selling out of many models. Terry put the bike together for me and made it possible for me to become reacquainted with a saddle and pedals.  Nothing fancy, not electric, just an “English” bike. 

When I learned to ride a bike in America, the brakes weren’t on the handles but on the pedals.  An “English” bike was defined by where the brakes were.   

Bonking is also very English. No, not the act but the word!  So lots of B’s today!  Bikes!  Boom! Brakes!  Bonking!  I’ll let you know how the bike and I get on.  With fewer cars out there it feels safer than it did last time I was on the road nearly ten years ago.  As for bonking…

Meriam Webster helpfully gives us a sentence – which I quote verbatim – using the word so we can all now be clear what bonking means:

Bonking – 1 transitive informal : hit  “Johnson isn’t the only one who has noticed the glut of acorns this fall. Walkers are getting bonked on the head, and cars are getting pelted by the falling nuts.”

Interesting that Meriam Webster associated (Boris) Johnson with bonking don’t you think?!

With love,

Kathy x

Feest Isolation Days – 5 June

How many of you have sat on a tube train in London and read a Poem on the Underground as your train rattled along the noisy tracks? Some ideas take off and we are all beneficiaries.  Spreading poetry via tube train ad spaces was the brainchild of an American woman who moved to London and stayed. 

Judith Cherniak wrote to Tube bosses back in 1986 and outlined her plans.  She was inspired by a scene from Shakespeare’s “As You Like It” when lovesick Orlando pins his dreadful sonnets on trees.  Judith thought sharing poems that weren’t in the least bit dreadful might be inspiring to commuters.  Transport for London agreed, and after teaming up with the Arts Council, and the British Council, “Poems on the Underground” was born. There have been more than five hundred poems sitting alongside advertisements since the initiative began. Cities all over the world have set up similar schemes, a real tribute to the success of the programme!

One specific poem that I encountered en route to some meeting or other has always stayed with me.  It perfectly sums up, for me, the head of the British government today.

The poem is short and fits neatly onto an ad board, as do all Poems on the Underground.  My favourite was written by Roger McGough who writes poetry and more. He holds several degrees and was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Liverpool in 2006. He was Fellow of Poetry at Loughborough University and Honorary Professor at Thames Valley University. Roger was awarded a CBE in 2004.   His poem:

I wanna be the leader
I wanna be the leader
Can I be the leader?
Can I? I can?
Promise? Promise?
Yippee I’m the leader
I’m the leader

OK so what shall we do?

Remind you of anyone?  To be fair to the current PM, I have sat in many committee meetings with Chairs who equally had no idea how to lead.  But to give those guys (and gals) their due, they weren’t trying to lead an entire country!

If the little poem inspires you and you want another fix, you can purchase a Poems on the Underground book from all good bookstores (and Amazon).

I wanna be the leader….

…no I don’t!   I want a quiet un virus infected life and want someone to organise our way of life safely until that is possible. Boris?  Would you mind doing your job properly? You wanted it, now you’ve got it!

A first!  I never interpreted a cartoon before, but thought it might be useful on this occasion!  I only knew one of these….

–A sestina is a poem with six stanzas of six lines and a final triplet, all stanzas having the same six words at the line ends in six different sequences.

–The pantoum is a form of poetry similar to a villanelle in that there are repeating lines throughout the poem. It is composed of a series of quatrains; the second and fourth lines of each stanza are repeated as the first and third lines of the next stanza.

–Haiku is a Japanese poem of seventeen syllables, in three lines of five, seven, and five, traditionally evoking images of the natural world.

Love the idea of a poetry industrial park!

With love,

Kathy x

Feest Isolation Days – 4 June

The rain has finally arrived.  Took long enough! At the moment the skies are grey and dark so it might as well just chuck it down. The gardener is hoping for that almost as much as the little plants. 

Visiting friends in their gardens is much nicer when the sun is shining but with an umbrella ready for the rain and wearing a raincoat, a friend and I managed tea yesterday morning.  It’s quite extraordinary how much we all can find to say about Covid 19 and the implications to us all.

The other subject none of us can stop talking about at the moment, of course, is the protests in America and the response to those marching.  As ever, it would appear that the images we are seeing are not indicative of the many, many positive images that are springing up on the internet – if you look for them.

Police taking a knee in support….

Or a Washington D.C. man sheltering eighty people who were stuck on a street closed down by police officers who couldn’t find their knees…if  you haven’t seen this report, do have a look – it is inspiring and reminds us that good people still can accomplish good things. 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-us-canada-52896871/george-floyd-death-the-man-who-sheltered-80-us-protesters

Here, a Pilates zoom followed by a Book Group zoom followed by a dinner party zoom the next day and on we go.

Like most people, I prefer the sun, but it feels like we were on holiday and now we are back home.  Perhaps it is time to finally get those summer clothes sorted….

…… or maybe not

Whatever you are up to, stay socially distanced and keep safe. 

With love,

Kathy x

Feest Isolation Days – 3 June

The scenes on the local news last night were truly disgusting.  People were not social distancing, packing into beauty spots and leaving behind their mess and with no public toilets open they left their personal waste as well.  Do they think the pandemic is past?  Go Home!  That was the message they received from people who live in these small towns and villages that have been overrun.

Schools began again on Monday, but many children were still kept home by their worried parents. Presumably these are not the same people that were visiting all those beauty spots!

This stage of the virus – we are told by the scientists – is a worrying one.  In America the man masquerading as the President is creating havoc! Uneasy times!

As yesterday was the last day of summer for a bit as the highs over the country turn to lows, it was time to go on a little holiday.  At least from the news and the terrible images of the American mess.

It turned into a day for celebration.  We visited the garden of friends who have been shielding for all this time and raised a glass of champagne with them – our glasses, at a safe social distance.  A wonderful moment and a careful one too.  There is no point in going backwards so going forward slowly and easing into a few more nice things must be the plan. It is in our household anyway! There may not be hugs but there are big smiles and the air was filled with kisses …and smiles!  As we sat outside, a pilot drew a smiley face in the sky to cheer everyone up. It worked!

So a few more fun and or lovely things to view and enjoy while we are busy trying to process all the mess. 

Sport!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnibHJC-6uU (Rugby World Cup 2019)

Ingenuity!

Art! History! Italy! (A full hour of gorgeousness)

Hope something in all of that made you smile or helped you connect once more with a feel-good factor that you may have forgotten. 

The dunnocks graced us with their presence during our last outdoor breakfast for a bit.  Life isn’t all bad.  Promise.

With love

Kathy x

Feest Isolation Days –2 June

These numbers of lockdown days keep climbing! Let’s all hope that the R number doesn’t.  The weather has been so perfectly wonderful that some people have eased up just when we are at the most dangerous phase of this disease.

Socially distanced visits with friends is a plus that has meant we are taking tiny baby steps toward unlocking.  We still don’t go into shops, we won’t walk where there are lots of other people and continue to clean our own home.  Easing is not totally lifting, and we are not confident to do too much more yet.  More book groups, dinner parties, Pilates, Singing and drinks on Zoom then!

The local news last night shows hundreds of people out and about and not socially distancing.  It is as though they think the pandemic is all over!  Not only did they stray into each other but they left their mess behind as well.  This is not a pretty sight.

An airplane or two have crossed by us high up in the sky, but not an Easyjet flight from Bristol in sight, the flight trails we’ve seen are going somewhere much further away. Spain is opening up its tourism to some countries, but not the UK.  They are correct. Our rate of daily infection at eight or nine thousand means they don’t want us to visit and spike their reasonable rates.  Why is this?  I can’t understand who is getting the infection now. How come so many more people here are testing positive than elsewhere in Europe?  Have there already been too many people not following the rules?

I have avoided talking about the current American situation as it is so painful to watch. Rioting in over seventy-five cities, brutal confrontation by some of the police.  This is not history repeating itself, it is a continuation of what has gone on for decades, if not centuries.  America is at breaking point and still the Baby in Chief tweets aggressive and racist messages. A very good article in yesterday’s Guardian sums up what I think about the man and the current situation.  https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/01/george-floyd-donald-trump-black-lives-matter?CMP=share_btn_link

Back in Britain it seems time to think about sewing up a face mask or two. Yet this is not a skill I have. Sewing and I were never happy companions.  Running up a dress for a party is not a skill I ever possessed and even sewing a button on a shirt is problematic to me.  I blame Naomi Bieler. Miss Bieler was a small dark haired woman who wore her hair back in a bun.   She was my home economics teacher when I was in school.  We had several strands of home economics throughout the year and I excelled at the cooking and general home maintenance.  But sewing?  Nope!  It took me ages to figure out how to thread the sewing machine properly, but that was nothing to the time it took me to unpick an entire zipper that ran the length of the dress I was making.  Thankfully, we wore reasonably short skirts in the 1960’s with our little cotton puffy sleeves and A line simple dresses.  The fabric was a lovely heavy cotton and the material was a pretty shade of lemon yellow with a blue print.  To this day I remember that dress!  Miss Bieler told me I had put the zipper in and it wasn’t straight so I had to unpick it by hand and do it again.  It took forever.  Then I carefully pinned it up again and sewed the length of my dress once more.  Nope!  She said it was still not straight. Out it came along with my irritation and resolve to never, ever make anything out of material again. I eventually got the zipper in to her satisfaction and wore the dress once or twice.  Never did I make another garment. 

Any face masks that we wear will come from someone else’s machine.  Naomi Bieler, after all these years, I still recall your dour expression and unhelpful comments.  We could all learn a little something from that couldn’t we? 

With love,

Kathy x

Feest Isolation Days – 1 June

Monday.  1^st of June.  Kids (some of them, only in England) back at school.  We can see people in our gardens up to six at a time!  Wait.  Wait.  Wait.  That does seem to be the advice of several of the Scientific advisors.  The R is just under one.  And track and trace isn’t yet fully up and running.  Doesn’t that mean hold on a bit? Steady as she goes?  Perhaps we ought to stay as we are for another few weeks until the virus isn’t infecting up to nine thousand people a day and the R is really down. We are staying alert.  Alert to the science and at the very least some of the advisors who think it is all too early.  Who can trust Boris? 

Sir Patrick gave us clear advice on Thursday at the press briefing. I share it here in case you missed it.  It’s worth remembering.   He said, “We still have a significant burden of infection, we are still seeing new infections every day at quite a significant rate and the R is close to one. That means there is not a lot of room to do things and things need to be done cautiously, step-by-step and monitored and the Test and Trace system needs to be effective in order to manage that.”

He added: “The R remains below one everywhere, but it’s very close to one in some places and there may be, both in terms of nations and places within those nations, areas where the R is very close to one. That’s why we’ve got to be very cautious. This is not a time to say ‘Everything’s OK, we’re releasing measures, everything’s going to be rosy’. It’s a time to go very cautiously, with changes, as they take place, monitored very carefully. Being prepared that there will be local outbreaks, because there will be, and being prepared that recommendations may come to reimpose measures. I think that’s the world we’re in. The number of cases remains high.

We need to keep concentrating on R below one, that means making sure that the measures that are in place are adhered to and that we all stick to them to make sure that the right thing is done and that we end up in a position where we can get the numbers down and the R down a bit. But we are at a fragile state.”

This is the advice we got from the Chief Scientific officer.  Why do I think so many would have instead listened to Boris who said having a BBQ at home was fine from Monday with up to six people? Pass me my hot dog!  Lather on the mustard and yes I’ll have another glass of your wine.  Somehow this doesn’t seem quite the same  idea as that of the Scientists.

We shall begin to see friends carefully. No the kids aren’t coming to stay yet, and sorry my loo is off limits if you visit for socially distanced tea.  This isn’t over yet.  Listen to the Scientific advisors.  Carefully.  They are giving us the messages.  Some of us don’t want to hear them, and others of us remain cautious.

Be safe, be sensible and be kind.

With love,

Kathy x