When will it end?

I have been re-reading Hilary Mantel’s “Wolf Hall”. This started with my having bought and read her latest book, “The Mirror and the Light”, prompting me to go back and re-read the previous two. In the book there is talk of the regular “sweating fever”, which carries numbers of people away each summer, including Thomas Cromwell’s wife and daughters. Back in old Henry VIII’s time they also seemed to know when to expect plague, rather like we know when the flu “season” is. And now I wonder, as scientists and medical experts talk about the possibility of the coronavirus coming in waves, if we will have to grow accustomed to a Covid-19 season. Not a happy prospect!

Meanwhile, we are now hearing a lot of talk about the “exit strategy”. Now, I know that we need to work out how life is going to get back to something like “normal” but as we really understand so little about this disease, we need to take it carefully step by step. But there is this sort of thing going on already:

“Three UK takeaway chains have launched limited reopenings, with staff wearing personal protective equipment (PPE) and practicing physical distancing.
Burger King and KFC have reopened some sites for delivery only, while Pret a Manger is doing deliveries and takeaways. The three firms argued that reopening would help NHS staff and other key workers, and promised stringent safety measures for their employees were in place.
Burger King was operating at four sites from Thursday in Bristol, Swindon and Coventry as part of a phased reopening of more restaurants in the coming weeks.”

No doubt we shall see how this pans out eventually.

There’s a lot of gardening going on. We smell a lot of garden-waste fires when we go out for walks. It’s not just small stuff either; trees are being cut down. Our eldest granddaughter has been angry and upset about one of her neighbours cutting down a tree in the garden behind hers. It’s not just the fact that this neighbour will now be able to look more or less straight into her living room but more the fact that the tree was full of birds and their nests. Her garden is now a quieter place.

I read that our sleep is being affected by lockdown stress. People are having coronavirus anxiety dreams. Some of this apparently is because a lot of people are actually sleeping more. It may be a sort of chicken and egg thing: people are having more stress dreams because they are sleeping more as an escape from stress. I am reminded of a friend from my sixth form study days. Her parents were going through a very messy divorce and my friend’s way of escape from it all was to sleep. We would find her curled up in an armchair in the sixth form common room. When she realised that we knew where she was likely to be, she took to hiding in the Spanish stock cupboard and sleeping there. Back then nobody talked so much about stress and depression but that is clearly what was going on.

Here’s a link to something to cheer us all up in the middle of all the madness.

The weather remains cheerfully sunny around here. No doubt, this will all change when lockdown eventually ends. 

On the menu today is a garlic and mushroom tart with accompanying veg and salad.

Life goes on. Stay safe, everyone.