Today I cycled to the market in Uppermill. This is the first time this year that I have got on my bike. It’s been too wet, too windy, too generally miserable. And the bridle paths have been too puddly, too muddy or on occasion too frozen. However, we’ve had some fine sunny days, well, fine and sunny quite early in the morning but veering into dull and cloudy by early afternoon, and I decided it was time to get back on my bike.
It was quite bright, moderately sunny, but very cold. My weather app said 2° but there was a very thin skin of ice on the top of the water barrel in the back garden when I set out. But the Donkey Lone bridle path was dry, which makes a change from the river of mud it resembled for weeks through January and February. Even the approach to the Donkey Line, often full of muddy puddles when everywhere else is relatively dry, was dry apart from a couple of places. And the tunnels where the path goes under a road, tunnels whose roofs drip and that harbour puddles greedily, were largely puddle-free.
So the bike-riding was fine. The actual pedalling is not a problem: it’s getting on and off the bike, when your leg needs a different kind of flexibility, that can cause some slight problems. Anyway, that’s two first-time-this-year events this week: washing drying in the garden the other day and getting on my bike today.
As it happened, the market was seriously depleted, indeed almost non-existent! The fruit-and-veg man was there in splendid isolation, making use of the space to display the spring flowering plants he has on sale. But there was no fish-man, no shoes-and-slippers man, and still no Jenny-Biscuit. Rather different from the market I visited in Silves last week.
I hope this does not signal the demise of the market. It would be a shame if it were to disappear. It’s good to know that you can always get fresh fish there on a Wednesday. Anyway, heres a photo of a small section of the market square from 10 or 11 years ago.
I was reminded yesterday that it’s five years since the Covid pandemic began. We flew home from Oporto, having heard vague rumours of something going on, in a plane full of football supporters - no masks, no checks on where they had been - and within a week we were “locked down”.
Michael Rosen, who was so seriously ill with Covid thatnhe was put into an induced coma in intensive care, wrote a poem full of memories of the pandemic time. He was speaking at a gathering hosted by NHS Charities Together in Staffordshire, which was part of Sunday’s national Covid-19 Day of Reflection.
He asked the audience to join in with the words “we remember” after the lines of his newly-penned poem.
Here is the poem:
“Coughing and coughing, gasping for air.
“Empty streets, no cars anywhere.
“Curry with no flavour. Pizza with no taste.
“Empty days, time to waste.
“Running out of tests and masks.
“What is this zoom thing? Someone asks.
“How many feet are we standing apart?
“A pain in the chest, a pain in the heart.
“Children in their rooms all day?
“Will we ever get away?
“The unprotected driver of the bus.
“Nurses checking, testing us.
“Nurses wearing clinical waste bags.
“People leaving without their name tags.
“Freezing cold, then helplessly hot.
“Blood thinners and blood clots.
“The face we’ll never see again.
“A mind chasing grief and pain.
“The risks you took for working on and on.
“The fatigue and strain have never gone.
“The wards too hot in the June weather.
“Medics in teams working together.
“The endless beeps of drips and machines.
“The news they had invented a vaccine.
“Those we met, the paths we crossed.
“Those who went, those we lost.
“The lives of those who fell or faltered.
“The lives of those forever altered.”
We must not forget or we won’t be prepared for the next time it happens. Forgetting stuff allows us to repeat things that really don’t need repeating.
King Charles has invited Donald Trump to come on a state visit to the UK. But now Donald Trump reportedly feels 'less special' after King Charles hosted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky last week. He has seen the photos! The US President is said to have 'gone cool' on the UK, with insiders claiming images of the King and Zelensky together made Trump feel his own state visit invitation to Britain had been overshadowed. Bringing politics down to the level of primary school playground stuff and being offended about who is invited (or not) to the birthday parties.
Diddums!
There are surely other things to be upset about. Together with other items in the stock market, shares in Tesla have been going down quite in value, drastically it seems. Apparently the President had a bit of a meltdown and declared, "I'm going to buy a brand new Tesla tomorrow morning as a show of support for Elon Musk." After all, the whole thing is an attempt to “attack and do harm to Elon, and everything he stands for.” “Why should he be punished for putting his tremendous skills to work in order to help MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN???”
And then there are the stories about Canada. It seems that Canadian students who often take spring break in Florida are not going this year! And I read this: ‘Canadian shoppers are starting a new habit. After checking an item if it is a US product they return it to the shelf upside down and turn several of the same item upside down so the next shopper knows to skip that product”.
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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