Repairing Notre Dame. Spreading Long Covid via writing. Knitting,

 I thought it was just our government who seemed to be governing by metaphor. Then I came across this:-

“The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has used the reconstruction of the fire-ravaged Notre Dame Cathedral as a metaphor for the country pulling together as France reached the symbolic mark of 100,000 deaths from coronavirus.

Macron toured the upper levels of the Notre Dame site in a hard hat and overalls on the second anniversary of the fire that ripped through the roof of the Gothic masterpiece in 2019.

Workers talked to the French president, who is under pressure as locked-downFrance faces a third wave of the pandemic with many hospitals at saturation point, of their efforts to secure and steady the site, despite difficulties due to lead levels and Covid restrictions.

Macron told journalists from Le Parisien that the damaged cathedral, which is expected to partially reopen in 2024, was “a metaphor for what a lot of people are feeling and what we’re living”.

So while it’s nice to know that the cathedral is being repaired, all the metaphor business is a bit over the top. And do the families of people who have died of Covid want Notre Dame to br the monument to their dead?

As cases of full-blown Covid 19 seem to be falling (thank heavens) we are hearing quite a lot about Long Covid, a debilitating condition where major symptoms of Covid have disappeared but weariness and a general feeling of being out of sorts continue for months and months. 

According to George Monbiot in this article some people think Long Covid does not really exist but is created by lots of people talking about it. There may be an element of that, but as with other illnesses which supposedly come from the “power of suggestion” there must be a bit of truth on there.

Many people have been going on at length about the new skills they have learnt during lockdown. One of these is knitting. It seems that lots of unusual characters have taken up the needles and ball of yarn to keep themselves busy at home. Here’s a link to an article about it.

And finally, here is a new word I have come across recently: typochondriac. This is defined as “one who CONSTANTLY checks (and rechecks) his or her writing for fear of publishing a TYPO online.”

I know some people like that. Now, is there a word for someone who checks but doesn’t actually see the typos until after they have been published?

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!