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!
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