A friend of mine is about to fly back from Germany, where she has been visiting her aged mother. She waited a long time to go and see her mother, enduring numerous cancelled flights and complicated rearrangements, but finally managed to get over there. Now she has to return successfully, we hope, to the UK. She posted this on social media this morning:
“Vaccination record - updated and downloaded. Negative covid test - done, incl. screenshot. Day 2 test - booked and paid for. Passenger Location Form - completed and downloaded. Do they seriously want to check all these in detail at the UK border? Plus scrutinise my residence status and the contents of my suit-case and hand luggage re Brexit? Sounds like we're going to have a lot of "fun"!”
Oh, boy! At some point soon we need to go and sort some things out in Spain. Also, we have a twice postponed visit to Sicily awaiting us - all the organisation on hold until such a time as the organisers and all the participants, not to mention the UK and Italy and their travel regulations, feel we can go ahead with our original plan. I really want to be able to travel freely again but all the hoops we will have to leap through and the tangled red tape are very off-putting. Between them Covid and Brexit have made life very complicated. I feel great nostalgia for simpler times.
Of course, the whole planet must be feeling that nostalgia. The Earth has been around for a long time but in a relatively short time in history-of-the-planet terms we have messed it up good and proper, probably since the start of the industrial revolution. Here’s a link to a First Dog on the Moon cartoon on the subject.
I’ve never been to America. Like many people, however, I feel I know America from films and books and songs. At least, I am assuming that a lot of other people feel that way and that it’s not just me. On the coast of California is a place called Mendocino, a place I only know from Kate and Anna McGarrigle’s gentle, sad ballad “Talk to me of Mendocino”, a song I have listened to many times, sung by the talented sisters or by Kate’s one-time husband Loudon Wainwright III. It’s odd to be made to feel nostalgic for a place you’ve never visited.
And now I read that Mendocino, described as “lush and moist”, a small village that “vanishes into a thick white fog that covers its seaside cliffs, redwood trees and quaint Victorian houses”, is suffering from a shortage of water. For the last hundred years the community has depended on shallow wells for its water supply and California’s drought is causing those wells to run dry. It’s one of those places that has about 1000 permanent residents but around 2,000 daily visitors. So it depends a lot on tourism and is now in danger of it’s source of revenue drying up like the water if they can’t solve the problem.
Another victim of climate change.
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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