Wednesday is (rather diminished) market day. Lockdown rules!

It’s Wednesday again. The sun is shining again. It’s even quite warm again. So what do I do? I get up and walk to the market in Uppermill.

I stood in a short queue outside the co-op, where I finally managed to get an iceberg lettuce, among other necessities.

I stood in a long and slow-moving queue outside the baker’s. They only allow one customer in at a time but still manage to have three assistants working there! As some customers are still going there for complicated sandwiches for lunch, or even for a late breakfast I suppose, those customers spend quite a while waiting and we spend a long time waiting outside. Those of us who just want bread are in, via the front door, and out, via the back door, in no time at all. The bakery normally does a very nice rye loaf but it appears that they cannot get the rye flour at the moment - I can’t imagine that all the newly-enthusiastic home-bakers are buying up all the rye flour - and have replaced it with an equally good spelt flour loaf.

I stood in a short queue outside the delicatessen, where they sell very good sun-dried tomatoes and where I had another loaf on order. I am bulk buying bread when I hit the shops and then store it away in the freezer. This gives us a regular supply of good bread.

I stood in another long and rather slow-moving queue for the fishman, who has returned to the market after several weeks’ absence. He assures us that he will be there every Wednesday from now on. From that queue I assessed the available fruit and veg on the fruit and veg stall. A diminishing supply, mostly potatoes and leeks. Lots of plants, however. And so I decided not to stand in the queue there.

I stood in a shorter queue for the cheese and biscuit stall, where I replenished our supply of oat flips, a tasty oat biscuit which I have to hide to prevent them all being eaten up on day one.

And then I gave up and walked home.

On the radio news programme they are talking about how people are coping with the lockdown and its rules and regulations. One interviewee talked about an ongoing survey, of sorts, where they are asking people to keep a diary, not a detailed diary but noting down things that occur to them. Boredom features a lot. I am not going into that. I have gone on about that before. Some people report on their neighbours “cheating” on the lockdown rules. One case in point is the correspondent who talked about her neighbour obviously having an illicit visit from family. The writer said they were all keeping the requisite social distance but she expressed her feelings of anger, somewhat incomprehensible to herself, at these people breaking the rules.

Now, we have neighbours, the sunbathers, who regularly have visits from their family, probably a couple of times a week. The grandchildren play football and run around while the parents and grandparents chat. At the end they have a lengthy farewell ceremony, full of expressions of love (How much do you love Grandpa? To the moon and back!) and how much they miss each other. It does not make me feel angry. They do me no harm. It would not occur to me to report them to anyone. In fact I am considering asking our daughter bring her small people around to do the same.

Some people are more vindictive, or just more pettily law-abiding, than I am and they report such things to the authorities. Somebody did just that to Professor Neil Ferguson, adviser to the government on the handling of the crisis. He had a visit from his lover, going against all his own advice and guidelines, and someone was so enraged, or so disliked the professor, that they blew the whistle on him. Professor Ferguson’s justification was that he had had and recovered from Coronavirus and therefore has immunity. Matt Hancock described Ferguson’s decision to flout lockdown rules as “extraordinary” and one that had left him “speechless”. This despite the government spinning figures all over the place!

The net result is that Neil Ferguson has resigned from the advisory committee and presumably the government is deprived of his insight. Not really a win-win situation!

On the other side of the Atlantic POTUS has decided to dispense with the Whitehouse Coronavirus Taskforce. Governors of individual states, it seems, can get the job done. “I’m not saying anything is perfect, and yes, will some people be affected? Yes. Will some people be affected badly? Yes,” Trump said during a trip to Arizona – a battleground state in the 2020 presidential election – on Tuesday. “But we have to get our country open, and we have to get it open soon.” So, if he was peaking in Arizona, he is clearly still travelling around the country.

Mind you, this is the country where a supermarket cashier is reported to have cut a mouth and nose hole in her facemask ... to help her breathe more easily!! It’s also the country where a five year old boy set off to drive his parents’ car to California so that he could buy a Lamborghini.

We should not be too critical. According to this report only 273 people arriving in the UK were quarantined as we approached lockdown. And I believe people arriving are still drifting unchecked through airports. Is that really so?

Anyway, because of the return of the fishman to the local market, on the menu today we have rainbow trout with a variety of vegetables. And we have a salad that includes iceberg lettuce, although we have grown used to the dandelion leaves. One or two might still sneak in there.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone.