Things to look out for on your exercise walks. Virus odds and ends. And food!

The sun is shining again. The weather seems to have sorted itself conveniently so that it rains in the night but then is fine and dry in the morning. How considerate!

Around here suddenly we have lambs: it’s that time of year again.

There is also a rash of painted stones along the edge of bridle paths, perched on top of gate posts, wedged into nooks and crannies, balancing on the lower branches of trees. Some are just painted with splodges of colour but others are very carefully executed. Some time last year my six year old granddaughter had me looking for “fairy stones” in the park near her home in Chesham. Now they are appearing around here. Clearly parents have found another way to keep their offspring busy. And it’s another thing for those offspring to look out for on walks, along with rainbow paintings, teddy bears and other kinds of messages in windows and gardens.

Now that we can no longer even get near enough to kiss people in greeting, here is a very corny joke: 

Q: Can you name a nationality that kisses five times?
A: A Corsican! (Of course I can).

And here is a reminder to keep your distance.

Perhaps a timely one, as our prime minister, who only weeks ago boasted of shaking hands with coronavirus patients, has now been hospitalised.

If you want more of the same sort of cartoon, follow this link All the cartoons are based on children’s stories. Primary school teachers, parents of small offspring, and grandparents who read to their grandchildren will recognise them.

I have come across two stories about Barbados. One says that the USA has done a bit of piracy and seized ventilators en rout for Barbados. The other says that Cuba is sending 100 specialist nurses to Barbados to aid in the fight against Covid-19. If they are true is says quite a lot about a difference in life philosophy.

In a news programme the other day they were talking about food production in this country. There are odd discrepancies such as the farms that rear speciality breeds of beef cattle to provide fancy steaks for top class restaurants, now closed of course. What we need now is not fancy cuts of meat but standard minced beef for people to make spag bol at home - but not me, a no-red-meat person. So what will they do with their specialist beef? We may also need to produce a lot more of our own fruit and veg as transport difficulties arise.

And then there’s the soft fruit, strawberries, blueberries, raspberries and the like, which have been picked for years by seasonal workers coming in from places like Bulgaria and Romania. Here’s a link to report of Scottish fruit farmers who are recruiting students and restaurant bar workers laid off because of coronavirus. They will need training as it’s more of a specialist skill than most of us imagine.

The religious nuts who don’t want to comply with social distancing are still around. Ron DeSantis, Republican Governor of Florida, designated religious services as “essential activities”. Then he swept away the right of cities and counties to ban them. “I don’t think the government has the authority to close a church. I’m certainly not going to do that,” DeSantis said. “In Easter season, people are going to want to have access to religious services.”

And in Israel they are having problems convincing ultra-orthodox Jewish communities that social distancing is necessary. They are meeting together in synagogues to pray. Yehuda Meshi-Zahav, an ultra-Orthodox Jerusalemite who used to take part in anti-government demonstrations, said some rabbis took a “long time to internalise the severity of the situation … and they truly believe that studying Torah is more important than anything else.”

Then there the more secular stories like this one about a young man who got lost trying to walk across the Pyrenees from France to Spain to buy cigarettes.  Clearly he has never heard the tales of Republican refugees from Spain during the Spanish Civil War or the French refugees fleeing the Nazis in World War II. There was a reason why those people needed a guide to help them get across the mountains, for goodness sake!

While I have been writing the sun has disappeared and the clouds have moved in. So much for considerate weather!

  On the menu today is Purple Chicken (a chicken casserole dish so named by my eldest granddaughter: the addition of red wine colours the chicken and makes the sauce taste good), the aubergine and tomato bake I invented the other day and whatever other veg is in my store cupboard. There might be blueberries for dessert.

 That’s all. Stay safe everyone!