Monday. More thoughts on nostalgia. Omens? Lockdown frustration. And children.

Another Monday. Much like the last one. And the one before that. And another wide blue sky. You could almost get used to it, except that here in the Northwest of England it is unusual to get such a run of sunny days, even if the temperature fluctuates.

Just before I went to bed last night I looked out on a clear sky, stars all over the place but no meteorites. Someone had told me that we are due a meteorite shower and another big moon. The best time to see the meteorites was supposedly between midnight and dawn, so I was almost certainly a bit too early in my looking out. I woke in the middle of the night, in the wee small hours, and had another look. By then the cloud had moved in, as often happens here when something interesting is going on in the sky. So if there were meteorites showering up there I didn’t get to see them. Mind you, there is time yet as I am informed that this will go on for another two or three nights yet.

So in the last few months we have had floods, fire - on the moors near us - and an ongoing pandemic. And now we have meteorites. All we need is for it to rain frogs and maybe a plague of locusts to arrive and we might start talking about “omens” and the “end of days”. Ah, but, we don’t need locusts to eat our crops; we just need to continue being unable or unwilling to harvest them. Oh, boy!

In this article about nostalgia, the writer finished like this:

“One site for downloading 1990s computer games was upfront about the demand it was currently seeing: “Due to the Coronavirus Disease (Covid-19), we are under a heavy load of retrogamers wanting to travel back to those old and safe times,” a large sign on its homepage read.
One of those games, Civilisation II, tasks the player with building a civilisation from the dawn of time into the modern age.
It ends in the year 2020.”

Is that date significant?

Enough of that nonsense.

Yesterday evening we avoided the One World: Together at Home concert on the television, just as long ago we didn’t watch the LiveAid concert. We did, however, watch most of Richard Thompson’s second concert streamed from his living room wherever he is currently in lockdown in the USA. I say we watched most of it as we had some difficulty getting it started. Looking back, it must have been quite funny to see two adults, usually more than averagely competent at dealing with technology, having difficulty accessing a bit of live streaming through Facebook. We got there in the end but the sound was not as good as in the first concert we watched a couple of weeks ago, despite our (unsuccessful) attempts to play it through the speakers of our music system. I suspect there were technical hitches at Richard Thompson’s end too. Another competent adult struggling with technology?

I received an email from an old friend who tells me she is growing weary of all the “idiot people with qualifications in b****r all, going on about it and giving us all motivational clap trap. How difficult it is in lockdown etc etc, here’s a picture of a tree, don’t waste your time, do something positive. learn something new. We are going through a collective trauma, loss of jobs, loved ones, poverty, mental health issues, terrified it might be you next, etc etc etc.”

She went on: “I’m therefore only listening to professionals and making a list of all the people I’m going to kill when this is over, top of my list at the moment are several joggers.”

Like us she is fortunate enough to have a big enough house and a bit of garden and therefore does not feel too cooped up. Also, like us, she is a retired lady, used to occupying her time at home. However, I appreciate and sympathise with the sentiments expressed.

I am particularly irritated by the urgency many people, even those who have no children at home to annoy them, feel to get the nation’s children back to school. If they really worry about children getting poor results they should read this article  about places where children have missed significant chunks of schooling and did not suffer especially but on the whole achieved better results in public exams and standard tests. A number of friends and former students of mine now working in schools have all expressed their feelings that we should wait until we know it’s safe before we get the children back together.

And many of those teachers are still in schools looking after the children of key workers and finding time to send reassuring emails to parents such as the one my son and daughter-in-law received from their little girl’s school. It ended like this: “Please look after yourselves and reflect on the fact that the children won’t remember whether they spent hours online trying to keep up with their learning or whether you baked constantly with them or made your own playdough. What they will remember is how they felt, whether they felt safe and loved, whether there was still laughter and most importantly LOVE.”

There you go.

On the menu today is leftover pasta and salmon and veg.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!