Spiralling down into doom and gloom! And it’s going dark earlier each day!

The world continues to spiral into craziness.

There is, of course, Covid-19 causing havoc all over the show. France goes into a new four-week lockdown. People will only be allowed to leave their homes for essential purposes: food shopping, commuting to work if it is not possible to work from home, and medical or imperative family reasons. Outdoor exercise will be allowed for one hour per day and within 1km of home. Schools will remain open, but children aged six and over must wear masks. So on Thursday night there were massive traffic jams both into and out of Paris as people tried to organise themselves to be with their families for lockdown. Oh boy!

But that’s not all. 

France has been seeing a spate of horrible attacks by outraged Islamists. That country which continues to declare itself a secular state is suffering for, if not religious, then religion-related reasons. It was interesting to note that in the attack in Nice the perpetrator was shot by police but not killed. Now, why is it that French police can shoot to disable and disarm and then take the perpetrator off for questioning while American police seem to have to fire - how many was it in one recent case? - as many as fourteen bullets into the suspect they want to arrest? Fourteen bullets pretty much inevitably leads to death. Is it a hangover from the days of shoot-out at the OK Corral? Do all police officers see themselves as the fictional Jack Reacher, who should be truly traumatised by the number of people he has had to kill in the course of solving mysteries? Or is it something more mundane like the firearms training being rather inadequate?

And of course, over in the USA they are having just about the most interesting and odd elections possible. Will there be a result by this time next week? Or will we have to wait a bit longer while the wrangling continues?

Here in the UK, it’s half term in most places. They’ll be back to school next week, probably not having been able to do much this week as the weather has been so dire. Much discussion has been going on about the importance of letting our children, especially from underprivileged areas, catch up with missed education, trying to close the gap between the haves and the have-nots. And yet I read today that masses of early years providers are going to have to close by Christmas because they simply cannot afford to stay open. Private nurseries and childminders are losing money over fist. So how are parents of small children going to manage to go to work? More importantly, from the children’s point of view, a whole load of small people are missing out on early years education. That’s where the divide between the haves and the have-nots starts.

Meanwhile, instead of fighting this kind of problem, the Labour Party is tearing itself apart again. The BBC coverage of Corbyn’s suspension from the party was singularly one-sided yesterday. Only one of their invited speakers, at least among those I heard, came close to suggesting that Corbyn might have had reasons for continuing to say that the reports of antisemitism in the party were exaggerated.  And they barely let that young man, an avowed fighter against antisemitism, get a word in edgewise. It would have been nice to see a more balanced discussion of the whole business. Is that asking too much?

Boris Johnson must be really pleased. He could not wish for a better distractor form criticising his handling of things. 

And as a backdrop to all of this, it keeps on raining. At around 11.00 am Phil said I should keep an eye on the weather. If it brightened up just a little, he suggested, we should go out for a walk before it goes dark! Yes ... at 11.00 am ... “before it goes dark!” I’ve already run round the village in the rain. And yesterday we walked up the hill to Dobcross in the rain. So far we are doing well with our “there is no such thing as bad weather” philosophy?

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!