Garden furniture. Bikes. Further Cummings stories. Viruses and vaccines.

We have a garden bench which spends half the year indoors, taking up a bit of space in our fortunately quite large kitchen and occasionally causing people to bark their shins as they go past it. We could leave it outdoors all year but bringing it indoors mid-autumn reduces the need for serious maintenance. Anyway, finally yesterday we decided to move it out into the garden again. We really should have done so weeks ago as the weather has mostly been so kind to us. But we are where we are and yesterday’s sunshine pushed us into action. Consequently this morning, which was sunny and warm when I went for a run first thing, turned dull and cloudy. Perhaps it will improve again later.

At some point yesterday - well, at a few minutes past 2.00 in fact as I had just heard the news summary on the radio and was about to make a cup of tea - the electricity went off. Not just ours but for all the houses in our row and, as we discovered later when the electrical engineers turned up, for about half the village. So, with no cups of tea available, we did something else that we have been talking about for weeks: we gave the bikes an overhaul and went for a ride along the Donkey Line bridle path, to ensure that we still knew how to work the gears and such like. I am very much a fair weather cyclist. In fact we both are nowadays, although there was a time when Phil used to cycle to work in all kinds of weather. Consequently the bikes haven’t had as much use in recent years as they should have had as we have mostly been away in Spain during the best cycling months. This year will almost certainly be different.

Not long after we got back the electricity supply was restored. So we managed to get our cup of tea after all. I had been contemplating a cheese salad for tea as all our kitchen equipment is electrical. Somewhere in the shed is an old camping has stove from our camping holiday time but goodness only knows exactly where. Perhaps we should do a major shed sort out so that we can be prepared for future power cuts. We already have a vast supply of candles, bought, indeed stockpiled, who know how long ago at a time when winter power cuts were a regular thing. And to think that I have mocked people stockpiling loo-roll!!

There is a story doing the rounds about Dominic Cummings having foreseen the pandemic back in 2019 and having blogged about it. But then there is another story about his having added references to SARS and coronavirus to an earlier blog post some time in April and May of this year. Oh, dear!

Meanwhile jokes and satirical comments abound suggesting that people should go to Barnard Castle for eye tests.

Here is a link to an admittedly rather long article about the last man alive in an iron lung. Paul Alexander, now 74, was six when he caught polio in the early 1950s when it was endemic in the USA, just prior to there being a successful vaccine. His determination and indeed his whole life are an inspiration to anyone. I remember polio scares when I was a child. My mother would not let us go to the local open air swimming pool, the sea bathing lake in Southport, for fear it was a hotspot for that virus. And now, thanks to the vaccine, there are people who have no idea what polio is.

And right now we are struggling to find a vaccine for the current virus. And here’s a scary bit of reporting:

“Scientists have warned there could be major delays in producing a Covid-19 vaccine if current UK infection rates remain low and lengthy waiting times are needed to show if candidate products are working. As a result, some researchers insist that ministers must now consider implementing radical alternative measures to speed up vaccine development.

In particular, they argue that Britain should consider deliberately infecting volunteers involved in vaccine-testing projects – in line with World Health Organization proposals to set up such human challenge trials. Earlier this month, the WHO issued a 19-page set of guidelines on how these trials might operate.

However, other UK scientists have reacted with horror at the proposal to implement human challenge trials for a Covid-19 vaccine on the grounds that these could cause serious illness and possibly deaths of volunteers who had been deliberately infected with the virus.”

One way or another, we need to find a solution and then adapt our lives to the possibility of living with this virus as we live with influenza.

But, looking for silver linings, I was also reading this article about vulnerable youngsters who have actually benefitted from being in school in its odd form during lockdown. Being in small groups, receiving a lot more attention from teachers, having the normal curriculum altered to meet the unusual circumstances has been good for them. Maybe we need to rethink how our schools are organised altogether.

There we go. The sun has not come out again yet but it’s not raining so maybe another bike ride is in order this afternoon.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!