Cancellations. Consequences. Changing symptoms. Criticism. Things coming to an end.

Monday has come round again. I’m not quite sure how that happened. According to a radio news report, today should have seen the opening of the Chelsea Flower Show, another even that is not happening this year. One of the odd consequences of the cancelling of all these events - the Chelsea Flower Show, Wimbledon, Glastonbury, a whole range of music and sporting events - having been cancelled is that there is likely to be a strawberry glut. Who knew that so many strawberries were sold at such events. English strawberries are the best in the world, naturally, and I am rather partial to strawberries. So I hope that the prices come down for us ordinary mortals, not Wimbledon fans or the like.

The government has just added loss of the sense of smell to the list of symptoms to look out for. As I hung washing on the line one of the neighbours told me that she had been suffering from chilblains, which she had heard was some kind of symptom. How odd! Her chilblains have disappeared and so she assumes that she is all right now. I have heard nothing to suggest that chilblains have anything to do with the virus crisis, but it is odd that she suffered from them when the weather was still warm rather than in the colder weather that followed. 

According to this article some people have been taking advantage of the ongoing chaos to go out shooting birds of prey. Why they would want to do so is a mystery to me. Red kites are among the species suffering. Whenever we visit our son in Buckinghamshire we admire the red kites that swoop elegantly and ride the thermals above his house. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to shoot them, but some people do such things just because they can.

Around here we suffer more from dog walkers who seem to have decided that lockdown has made it more acceptable than previously to festoon the area with pooh-bags. And this is despite the notices reminding them that there is no such thing as the pooh-fairy and that they should take their dog-pooh home with them.

Over in the USA (former) President Obama has been addressing graduating students and incidentally making some criticism of how his successor has been dealing with the coronavirus crisis. Mr Trump has been rather huffy about this but he remains confident of sorting things out. “So I think we had a great weekend. We did a lot of terrific meetings. Tremendous progress is being made on many fronts, including coming up with a cure for this horrible plague that has beset our country,” said Mr Trump on Sunday. “It was a working weekend, it was a good weekend. A lot of very good things have happened.”

It must be nice to be so confident.

Other things are sneaking their way into the news:- Brexit and the whole deal or no deal, extension or not question is back in the news. I feel quite nostalgic for a time when that was our main concern.

There is also the matter of what will happen to Nazarin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, as this article makes clear. She is currently out of prison on a kind of parole at her parents’ home because of an outbreak of the virus in the prison where she was held, but she could be sent back to prison, perhaps indefinitely, at any time. We mustn’t forget the doubly locked down.

Back in September (at least I think it was September but it seems to have been going on so long it feels permanent) they began repairs to the drainage system along our road. The road was closed to through traffic and diversions appeared all over the place, We watched the works approach our house, give us a noisy interlude while they dug up the road immediately outside our house, and then move on, disappearing from our immediate view. Our stretch of road became remarkably quiet, even before lockdown reduced traffic everywhere. You can walk down the middle of the road with relative impunity. We grew used to the quiet and the cleaner air. It was supposed to take sixth months but it has been longer. It must have been considered essential work for it has continued throughout our house arrest period. And now it’s about to end. What kind of “normal” will be resumed over the next couple of weeks?

But then, life goes on.

Today on the menu we have mushrooms on toast, a fairly simple dish.

Stay safe and well, everyone.