On getting back to normal,

Having walked to Uppermill to go to the market, as I usually do on a Wednesday, I notice some people’s determined efforts to “return to normal”. These are mostly small cafes, it seems. The “Vintage Cupcake Kitchen” now has a sign declaring that they are open for business Friday to Sunday at limited times and for take-away only. I hope enough customers are desperate for vintage cupcake to make it worth their while. The small cafe that calls itself “The Secret Garden” was cleaning up, looking for all the world as though they were planning to open. Now, they have an external area with separate “pods”, kind of plastic bubble cabins, where presumably customers could socially distance themselves. And another cafe, one that used to belong to the Java chain but has now changed its name, was also busy sprucing up. Are they allowed to open now? Are they planning a busy weekend?

The shops and market stalls I wanted to go to were all still maintaining socially distanced queues - all good. I did overhear conversations between stall-holders about how much busier the roads have been already. In city centres public transport is reported to be getting relatively crowded again! I think I’ll stick to going to places I can reach by walking.

In the spirit of “getting back to normal”, here is some non-coronavirus related stuff. Pearl Lowe was the vocalist of the indie bands Powder and Lodger and part of the “Primrose Hill set”, alongside Kate Moss, Jude Law and Sadie Frost. I can’t say I’ve heard of her but I think that’s a generational thing. Anyway, she has also been a fashion designer. Here’s something she said:

“I’ve always been very much my own person. Everyone I knew in the 90s was so thin and I’m not. Skinny jeans don’t suit me because I’ve got hips and a bum. Attitudes to body image weren’t so accepting when I was younger but I love voluptuous girls. When I’m casting models for my range I’m like: ‘Hang on, I don’t want a size four – have you got any … 12s?’”

Since when has a size 12 been voluptuous? I hover between a size 10 and a size 12 and if I were as tall as most models, I would be pretty skinny.

Then there is Twiggy, who says: “I don’t think the high fashion industry will ever go completely away from slimness but I think other parts of the industry have started to use different shapes and sizes, and I think they should.” Her range for M&S, she points out, went from a size eight to a 22.

Okay, that’s the fashion bit. Now for some other stuff.

Here is a section of a report about Mike Pompeo:

 “The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, has arrived in Israel amid the coronavirus pandemic to discuss US-backed plans to annex large parts of the Palestinian territories. The single-stop visit – Pompeo’s first in nearly two months – will last just a few hours, with a small US team afforded exemptions from strict Israeli coronavirus restrictions that require any arrivals to self-isolate for two weeks. Pompeo stepped off the plane wearing a striped face mask in the colours of the US flag. He will travel to Jerusalem to speak with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Benny Gantz, the former head of the opposition who will soon join Netanyahu in a unity government.”

Some things don’t stop for Coronavirus. But how about this from the USA, where some Republican states are seeing a sudden increase in Coronavirus cases?

“The geographical spread of new hotspots suggest that the virus is advancing quickly outside major coastal towns and cities such as New York, Newark and Seattle where infection rates are now plateauing or dipping. Many of the new emerging hotspots, both rural and urban, are in states where governors refused to issue stay-at-home orders, or are following Trump’s advice to relax lockdown restrictions despite public health warnings about the dangers of doing so too soon.”

Mr Trump says the crisis in dying down in the States and yet he appears to be putting his fanbase at risk!!

We are getting more than a little anxious about our daughter, who is going through major anxiety herself, because of the decision that primary schools should reopen on June 1st. Teachers’ unions and a large number of head teachers have protested about this but our daughter’s head wants all his teachers back in school. Here are a couple of extracts from this rather disturbing report from the TES:

“Government guidance on reopening schools says that most staff will not need personal protective equipment (PPE), and admits that social distancing cannot be maintained with the youngest pupils who could return to school on 1 June.
"The majority of staff in education settings will not require PPE beyond what they would normally need for their work, even if they are not always able to maintain a distance of two metres from others," the guidance says.”

"We know that, unlike older children and adults, early years and primary age children cannot be expected to remain two metres apart from each other and staff. In deciding to bring more children back to early years and schools, we are taking this into account," the Department for Education document says.
Because of this lack of social distancing schools should "work through"  a "hierarchy of measures":

* Avoiding contact with anyone with symptoms.
* Frequent hand cleaning and good respiratory hygiene practices.
* Regular cleaning of settings.
* Minimising contact and mixing.

"It is still important to reduce contact between people as much as possible, and we can achieve that and reduce transmission risk by ensuring children, young people and staff, where possible, only mix in a small, consistent group and that small group stays away from other
Well, I can think of all sorts of ways that won’t work. You keep one small group away from another in school but how do you prevent them from mingling as they make their way to and from school, especially if they live, for example, in the same street? Even if they don’t mingle on the way to and from school, those children will go home to a household where maybe the parents have had to go to work, maybe bringing home another load of germs!!

We are hoping for a reversal of the decision to reopen schools.

 Mind you, today Mr Rees Mogg, in his wisdom, has said that MPs should prepare to get back to the Houses of Parliament in person. MPs should “lead by example”, he said. Remote voting on bills and the like will be extended until May 20th but by the beginning of June voting should revert to the old pattern. Doesn’t that involve MPs filing through doors on the different sides of the House. Well, that will need a bit of social distance policing! The madness continues!

Today I have had a request to put baked beans on the menu. That’s nice and easy.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Running habits. Photography. Travel in the time of coronavirus.

Running in the rain this morning. Well, running as the rain mainly stopped. It had been a lot heavier earlier. There are a number of people I have grown used to passing and greeting over the last few years as I run around the village on my regular circuit. One of them almost didn’t recognise me this morning because I had my proper waterproof on. I have a very lightweight supposedly-waterproof running jacket but it really is less than useless. It copes with a little bit of drizzle but faced with anything remotely approaching proper rain it sort of gives in and lets the water through. As I said, less than useless, so I wore my almost as light hiking waterproof, thus confusing my nodding acquaintance walking her dog.

As I run, if I come to a narrow bit of the path and see someone coming towards me I stop and wait. I have always done this to some extent but I am more assiduous now in this time of avoiding breathing in other people’s germs.

So this morning I came to the spot where the path narrows alongside the main millpond as I could see a gentleman about half way along. After a few more steps he stopped and was clearly getting his camera out. Aha! I thought, he’s spotted the heron. I had just disturbed the heron from his fishing spot on the smaller auxiliary pond and was fairly sure that the bird would have landed somewhere on the edge of the main pond. When the photographer eventually reached my safe crossing place we had a distant chat about photographing the heron. He had been trying for a shot with a reflection, he told me, but it is really too dull today and besides the heron was too far away on the other side of the pond. I quite understood and boasted about the shot I got the other day of the bird at the edge of the small pond. In another time, under safer circumstances, I might have shown off my pictures on my phone. No such activity today.

On the radio they have been discussing the difficulty of people actually getting to work. Is a carshare or a lift with a colleague acceptable? After all if people are working together, perhaps sharing an office, maybe they can also travel together. Is it more dangerous than travelling with a lot of strangers on the bus or train.

Buses seem to me to be much more difficult to manage than trams and trains. Back in the days when there was a bus conductor, he or she could have controlled the numbers getting on the bus and policed the social distancing. I don’t see them reinstating bus conductors. Tram stations in the Greater Manchester region often have transport police checking for fare-dodgers so maybe these could police entry and exit from trams. However, there is talk of mothballing the Metrolink service because of lack of revenue with reduced usage. We spoke to our son, who works for Transport for London, yesterday and he told us that the London Underground system has exactly the same problem and seriously need government financial assistance if it is to continue running.

And goodness only knows when all the old dears getting on our local bus to go to the big Tesco on the way into town will be able to resume their off-peak travel. Likewise those of us who hop on the tram to go to central Manchester to be ladies-who-lunch.

As regards travelling abroad, this is the latest I have found regarding going to Spain:-

“The Spanish government has ordered a two-week quarantine for all overseas travellers coming to the country from 15 May in a bid to curb the spreading of coronavirus in the country. The incoming travellers will have to remain indoors and will only be allowed to exit for grocery shopping, to visit health centres and in case of a “situation of need”, an official order published on Tuesday said.
The quarantine has been enforced for all travellers incoming to Spain until at least 24 May, when the state of emergency is due to end. The quarantine order can be extended jointly with possible state of emergency extensions.
Spain has so far extended its restrictions four times since mid-March.
The measures apply to all travellers, including Spanish citizens returning to the country. Only truck drivers, airplane and ship crews, cross-border workers and health staff who are entering Spain to work are exempt from the quarantine.”




So we have no idea when we can go there again - that’s assuming our government lets the 70+ year old go anywhere!

The news has just been announced that the government will extend the furlough scheme until the autumn, but asking employers to pick up some of the bill, rather than the government paying all of it. We’ll have to wait and see how that works.

Life is very much changed and changing. Today on he menu we have rice and prawns, a stir fry dish done in the wok. There will also be salad and fruit, of course.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Road maps. Relaxation confusion Europewide. Corona bubbles and coronawashing.

The start of another week, with some changes. And some muddle. The general consensus seems to be that Mr Johnson’s road map to relaxing lockdown is a very muddled roadmap. Here is one newspaper’s attempt to explain what it all means.

Basically I don’t think it changes much for the situation Phil and I find ourselves in. My habit of running in the morning and then going for a walk later, in other words exercising more than once a day, becomes legal. We seem, however, to have been going against the rules by chatting to our daughter and her children in the garden when they deliver food purchases to us. Clearly they should just drop the shopping and run. And the idea of meeting in the park and walking around together at a nice safe distance from each other is off the cards as well. So really it’s not doing much for helping families see each other.

A friend of mine emphasised the inequality of the whole thing. If you are middle class and can work from home, then all will be well. You can carry on as before, work-wise anyway even if you can’t go for an after-work drink. But if you are working class and have the kind of job where you cannot work from home, then you should return to work with all the possible contagion risks. And you might be obliged to use public transport if you don’t have a car or a bike. The only bit of equality is that they can’t go for a drink after work either.

Other countries are approaching it in other ways.

Belgium is exploring Coronavirus bubbles: “From Sunday, every household in Belgium can invite up to four guests to their home. Two sets of four people make a “corona bubble”, who can visit each other’s homes. No one else is allowed into the domestic social circle. The concept, also being discussed by the British government, opens up the biggest social minefield of the coronavirus lockdown.” That idea has been suggested before. How do you choose your selected social bubble people? Wow, that could lead to some arguments!

France is now letting people go outside without having to carry a document stating why they are doing so.

I read that in Spain, which has been under one of the strictest lockdowns in Europe, the government has said that groups of up to 10 people will be able to gather in private homes or outdoors from today, but only in areas of the country that have been given permission to move to the second phase of the lockdown de-escalation plan.

I don’t know what phase my Spanish sister’s Cadiz bit of Andalucía is in. Maybe she will now be able to get her Spanish family together and see her grandchildren. But she might not yet be able to get a haircut and I know she is desperate to do that.

I just heard on the radio that the Spanish can now travel within their provinces but not yet between provinces. How safe is their public transport though?

Here in Greater Manchester our city mayor, Andy Burnham, opposes the idea of rushing back to work yet as Manchester is still seeing a high rate of infection and death. It’s all very confusing!

I came across a new bit of terminology today: Coronawashing. “We have become used to sportswashing, greenwashing, pinkwashing and even wokewashing. We are now in the first wave of coronawashing, in which corporations trip over themselves to clap for key workers, before packaging the footage up into moving nuggets of shareable content and promoting them on several social media platforms. In the background, these same companies are asking for government bailouts and taking advantage of a crisis to push for favourable legislation and the slashing of regulations that are more necessary than ever.”

Personally I have noticed a lot of what seem at first sight to be public announcements about taking care, about people being there to support each other, and all that sort of thing. And then at the end you realise it’s a bank or an insurance company finding a new way of touting for business. Uber, for example, thanks people for not riding with them - in other words, “What a good, caring company are we?” CORONAWASHING!!

Today is marginally less windy than yesterday but it is quite a bit colder. We need to wrap up when we go for a walk later.

On the menu today we have a tortilla to finish off, with some vegetables , a bit of ham perhaps, and some salad. There is cake; I had all the necessary ingredients yesterday but that will be the last one for a while. My daughter’s partner found me some flour but now I need to source caster sugar.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Food deliveries. Education matters. Slogans. Easing lockdown.

Yesterday our daughter brought round a delivery of fruit and vegetables. We had decided that she would order a box of each and split it all three ways: her household, our household and her eldest daughter’s independent household. I didn’t check but I am hoping she kept a bigger share for her household which has more people that the other two combined. Granted two members of her household are only small but even so, she also has two teenagers there, one of whom seems to have hollow legs.

Anyway, she delivered the food parcel and we stood and socially distant chatted in the garden. One of the small people, our three and a half year old granddaughter, was very interested in my wild garden, currently full of yellow and orange poppies, bluebells, multi-coloured aquilegia and a scattering of dandelions. And then there was also the odd snail. So she had a good look at everything, told me about snails she has encountered recently, asked about buds and seed pods on the poppies and went to get a closer look at everything. I must say I was impressed at the level of interest, information and understanding. She’s a bright little thing and will no doubt be a delight to have in a class when she starts school. 

Every so often she would attempt to get close to show me something or tell me something special and her mother would remind her about keeping her distance as we don’t live in the same house. Hard lessons when you are not yet four years old! Then my daughter, a primary school teacher about to finish maternity leave, looked at me and said, “That’s why we need to think carefully about reopening schools. Small children can’t do social distancing!”

Quite so!

You can set up rules about walking in a certain fashion along the corridor, especially for older children, and space out the tables in the classrooms, and stagger playtime so that few children are on the playground at any one time. But how do you stop small children approaching each other? It’s their natural instinct! And yet today I read about a suggestion that children should stay longer in nursery school to make social distancing in primary schools easier. I fail to see the logic in that. It’s a puzzler and no mistake!

But presumably we’ll get some enlightenment from our PM later today as regards to what extent lockdown is being eased. There is much speculation about what we will be told. Government by slogan seems to be continuing, with a new one:

                 STAY ALERT 
                 CONTROL THE VIRUS 
                 SAVE LIVES 

Whatever that really means! 

Already spoof versions abound, such as this one: 

                  BE VAGUE 
                  COVER OUR BACKS 
                  SHIRK RESPONSIBILITY 

Oh dear! What we really want and need is a bit more clarity. 

Some of the headlines are curious. Here’s an example from yesterday: 
MINISTERS PLAN 14-DAY QUARANTINE FOR ARRIVALS AS GARDEN CENTRES SET TO REOPEN. 
The two facts are in no way related but somehow it reads as though the quarantine for arrivals is a consequence of the reopening of garden centres. 

If only life were so simple! 

Meanwhile Greece, which has only had 150 deaths from Coronavirus, is lifting lockdown, looking forward to reopening the country to tourists in July, and marvelling at the mess the UK is in.  

We have heard a lot about the benefits of the lockdown to the environment: cleaner air, more wildlife being spotted all over the place and so on. However, according to this article  in some places it is having a negative effect. The disappearance of ecotourism means that funding for some projects has also disappeared, while in some places people who have lost their jobs in the ecotourism industry are being driven to poaching endangered species for food. A crazy world! 

However here, in our bit of the world, things go on as usual. The weather has taken a windy turn but we still get to see the heron down by millpond and what seems to be a whole family of blackbirds in the back garden. 

I’ll be making a tortilla española today, so that’s on the menu with a variety of veggies. There might be cake if it turns out that I have all the necessary ingredients. 

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Europe Day. Quarantine. Vaccine. Infection rates. Inequality. Sunshine.

A friend has alerted me to the fact that today is Europe Day, introduced in 1985 by the European Communities. The date commemorates the Schuman Declaration of 9 May 1950, put forward by Robert Schuman, which proposed the pooling of French and West German coal and steel industries. It’s a pity I don’t have a EU flag and some blue and yellow bunting to put up outside my house. It’s supposed to be about celebrating “peace and unity in Europe”, which is rather sad at a time when all of the borders are pretty well closed. But at least we are included in the EU distribution of masks which is about to start. And let’s keep on teaching our children about Europe and encourage cooperation.

It has finally been decided that people coming into the UK will need to go into quarantine for a couple of weeks. Quite why it has taken so long to come to this decision is one of life’s mysteries. 

While just about every country is working hard to try to find a vaccine, Donald Trump has said coronavirus will “go away without a vaccine”. They expect to have 95,000 deaths, the unemployment rate has increased from 3.5% in February to 14.7% now, Mike Pence’s press secretary and one of Donald Trump’s personal valets have tested positive for the virus. But Mr Trump has some special knowledge that it will go away on its own. Well, that's all right then! Astounding!

According to the Manchester Evening News, Oldham, where we live, is one of the places with the highest rate of coronavirus infection. “The borough's rate - 376 cases per 100,000 people - means it now ranks among the 15 council areas in England with the highest infection rates per head of population, according to the latest government statistics.”

And it comes down to people living in overcrowded conditions and having to go out to work because they desperately need the money. Stay at home or have money to feed the family? “Government figures released last month revealed that 38 per cent of children in Oldham are living in poverty. In one part of the borough, near Greenacres, a shocking 80pc of children are estimated to be living in poverty. Local GP Dr Zahid Chauhan OBE said that poverty in the area is a 'crisis' - and that the borough are now seeing the effects as COVID-19 takes it toll. "I think when you're looking at the number of coronavirus cases and deaths in Oldham, you need to look at the bigger picture," he said. "Two thirds of children living in certain areas of Oldham are living in poverty.”

Although we are technically part of Oldham, our house is way out on the edge of town and we have our garden to sit out in and, more importantly, we can manage to stay hame safely. Lucky us,

We’re not really all in this together!

Onto other things, just to take our minds off lockdown. Former French President Valéry Giscard D’Estaing is the latest big name to be accused of sexual harassment. When first I saw the headline I assumed this was going to be another story from years and years ago finally coming to light. But no, it turns out that in 2018 a German journalist interviewed the then 92 year old Frenchman and after the interview asked him to agree to be photographed with her and her team. That was when the former president started touching her bottom apparently. She tried to push him away, to no avail. How hard is it to push a 92 year old man away? And what’s wrong with telling him forcefully to stop? Why wait to bring charges? After all, no matter what important positions he has had in the past, a dirty old man is a dirty old man!

Today is going to be the hottest day in the month so far, according to the weathermen. The sun is shining, the sky is blue and the air (warm by the way) is full of floating dandelion seeds. Yesterday the next-door neighbours had a barbecue in the garden - warm weather food fo many people. As we are not great red meat eaters, on the menu today will be a tomato and basil soup and a nice salad. More hearty food can wait until tomorrow when the weathermen promise the return of colder conditions.

Oh yes, here’s yesterday’s sunset.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone.

VE Day and lockdown. Some thoughts on international cooperation.

It’s VE Day and many of the houses up and down our street are festooned with bunting and flags and banners and posters. Where have they got all this stuff from? Did they all have stashes of red, white and blue fabric just waiting for the opportunity to get out the sewing machine and make a load of bunting? Do Union Jack flags count as essential purchases? Maybe they all bought this stuff months ago, planning ahead for a VE Day street party which they now can’t have after all.

Don’t get me wrong. I fully appreciate the sacrifice of my parents’ generation in establishing peace in Europe. I am however just a little suspicious of a jingoistic cover-up to persuade us that the government is doing a really good job. And then there’s the matter of 75 years of peace. True, we haven’t fought another European country for 75 years but I don’t think we can say the world has been free of conflict for 75 years. And our “boys” have been out there involved in that conflict.

Besides, if Trump and Pompeo keep going on about the coronavirus having been released from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (“Probably it was incompetence. Somebody was stupid”. POTUS), well, goodness knows how long peace will last. The United Nations chief has appealed to everyone to put an end to hate speech and accusations.

“United Nations chief António Guterres has said the coronavirus pandemic has unleashed a “tsunami of hate and xenophobia, scapegoating and scare-mongering”, and appealed for an all-out effort “to end hate speech globally.” The UN secretary-general said anti-foreigner sentiment has surged online and on the streets, and highlighted the spread of antisemitic conspiracy theories and Covid-19-related anti-Muslim attacks.”
 “And I ask everyone, everywhere, to stand up against hate, treat each other with dignity and take every opportunity to spread kindness,” Guterres said. The secretary-general stressed that Covid-19 “does not care who we are, where we live, what we believe or about any other distinction”.

Surely we should all be working together to find a vaccine, not throwing accusations around and even competing to see who can find the vaccine first.

Meanwhile, Cuba has been setting an example in international cooperation, sending medical teams to help out in Italy. Cuba has a long history of sending aid to places that need it, despite getting more than its share of bad press. And yes, maybe Cuba does have a vested interest in helping out right now. The country has been opening up to tourism and no doubt wants to keep that source of income flowing ... just like Spain and France and Italy and all the other places.

So there we are. A little more international cooperation, please!

Today started dull and cloudy but by midday the sun had come out. Will this lead to actual street parties? Especially as we are all a little confused about the state of our lockdown. Will we, won’t we have more freedom? And will that only apply to the under 70s? We shall see.

There won’t be one in our garden, despite Phil having cut the grass. Here are before and after photos.

On the menu today is a salmon and pasta dish with hummus and olives, a bit of salad, a bit of fruit, maybe a glass of white wine!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Social distancing - exercise - rules or just suggestions? And easing restrictions?

Another sunny Thursday. Forget about spring-like! This is positively summery. I have a line-full of washing out in the garden and I might just take my book out there later.

Yesterday I sat reading in the garden. The neighbours with the visiting grandchildren had done their farewell ceremony and gone indoors. A father and his small boy from another house came out to play. After a while they came down into our garden. Our houses are arranged, I should explain, with a shared garden for our house and the immediate next-door neighbours, and another shared garden for the next few houses, with a wall between the two. I assumed they had come to collect a ball which had come over the wall but they stayed and played for a while. Okay. A little later again they came down the steps into our garden once more and started blowing bubbles. On the third incursion I politely pointed out that this was our garden, not a communal area for the whole block. I am not especially protective of my domain but in this time of social distancing maybe we should keep to our own places. The young father said he really knew that but didn’t think anyone minded. Well, he might have asked before he assumed. The outcome was that he and his little boy went indoors and I am undoubtedly now the grumpy old bat who lives in the bottom house! Oh dear!

Now, of course, the rules about where we can go and what we can do are about to change. On Facebook I have witnessed a discussion about what exactly are the current rules about going out for exercise. One poster maintained that we have always been allowed unlimited exercise while others said just one hour a day. Finally it was sort of agreed that one outing and one hour a day was just a guideline, not a legal thing. A suggestion or recommendation not a rule. This is symptomatic of the muddled way lockdown has been dealt with all along. I wait to see whether or not we get clear instructions on Monday when Mr Johnson sets out his “roadmap”.

Meanwhile, the government hasn’t met its target of 10,000 tests a day for the last few days. So Mr Johnson has decided to increase it to 20,000. I know we need more testing but I am not sure of the logistics of getting it done. And the PPE muddle goes on as gowns ordered (eventually) from Turkey turn out not to meet requirements and so will have to be sent back. The mind boggles!

None of us know how easing restrictions is going to work out. Businesses are going crazy trying to plan for the future and keep going. And here is an article about Sicily’s plans. They want to offer special terms to encourage tourists to return to their lovely island. I forwarded the article to an Italian friend, who replied like this:-

“I find all this very strange and utterly untrue as whoever travels from one region to another within Italy, so even more from another country, must spend 14 days in quarantine and isolation. They can be as cheap as they want but if going means you have to spend your holiday in a hotel room... The article tells bollocks...”

Wow! Don’t mince you words, my friend!

There is still a lot of talk and advice on TV and radio about how people are coping with the boredom of being at home. Fortunately this is not a problem I suffer from. But musicians have done online performances, actors are streaming plays and the like. Today I read that Andy Serkis, the actor who played Gollum in the films of The Lord of the Rings, is going to give a continuous, live reading of The Hobbit – lasting around 12 hours – in aid of charity. He is asking fans who listen to the reading to donate to a fund raising money for NHS Charities Together and another charity called Best Beginnings which works to support babies, toddlers, pregnant families and new parents and aims to reduce inequality.

Very nice! Although I suspect that the really bored are probably no going to be fantasy fans.

And once again I find myself thinking that the NHS should not be relying on such fundraising events.

A number of organisations, such as banks and even the BBC, have produced mini publicity films assuring us that “they are there for us” in this difficult time. The style of choice is to come up with a script and then film a host of people saying sections of it, usually against a background suggesting that they are working from home. It’s a bit like a primary school play. Now, it may be the style of choice but it is also the style most likely to drive this blogger bonkers of she sees any more of them. They are even more annoying than the adverts for gambling, which all end by advising gamblers to “play responsibly”.

I have seen so many of these adverts because we have been watching an Italian series “La Mafia uccide solo d’estate” = “Mafia only kills in summer”. Just ine episode an evening. The commercial breaks are annoying but the series has been excellent, showing the trials and tribulations of an end-of-the-70s Palermo family in the struggle against the Mafia. It blended real events from the period with invented goings-on. As so often happens with a good book or good series, I now find myself missing that regular contact with the characters. I shall miss in particular the young actors who played the children of the family.

There we go.

My turkey hotpot on Tuesday was a mixed success as the turkey meat was disappointingly tough. So on the menu today is the potato mix from the hotpot, minus the chicken meat, served up with some other veg and some quite tasty ham. You have to do be inventive!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!