Unfit to govern...

The US has now lost more people to coronavirus in the last three months - 60,000 - than it lost during two decades of involvement in the Vietnam war. From what I see and hear, Donald J Trump has crossed the line from being a divisive figure in the White House to being entirely unfit to govern. Will some White House staffer creep up behind him with a chloroform-soaked handkerchief?

Licensed this morning: another of the eco-houses at Findhorn...

Every little helps...

Licenced today, and for the best price this month...

Just coping...

Read this quote online this morning, by life coach Michael Bungay Stanier. “If you are not struggling a bit at the moment, you possibly haven’t understood the severity of what is going on. Our brains hate uncertainty – we associate it with risk – and now we’re being forced to live it. It’s important to be kind to yourself and not feel like we should fill this time with lists of new year resolutions. Just coping is enough”. That sounds like sense to me… so I’ll forgive him for calling himself a ‘life coach’.

Licensed today: the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford upon Avon...

Fatalities...

The daily press briefing is our new teatime ritual, when a member of the cabinet is wheeled out to offer sanctimonious advice and to announce the statistics for positive tests, hospitalisations and deaths. It was a solemn moment, on Saturday, when the number of UK deaths from CV passed 20,000. And yet these numbers are exceptional only for the fact that all these people died from a virus whose existence was unknown until late last year. To put this figure into perspective, around 600,000 people die in the UK every year..

Licensed today: Rick Stein's restaurant in Winchester...

Up the Junction...

Somebody somewhere wants a picture of the Junction pub in Otley... even though the price they paid would barely buy a round...

Blasphemy...

The Scottish government is about to decriminalise blasphemy, more than 175 years after the last case was prosecuted (a blasphemy case was brought against bookseller Thomas Paterson for “exhibiting placards of a profane nature” in his shop window in 1842), and twelve years after the blasphemy laws were repealed in England and Wales.

Blasphemy is a strange crime, designed to protect religions and deities against criticism or mockery. But it’s people who need protection from bigotry and discrimination; ideas - and beliefs - are reckoned, in the 21st century, to be able to look after themselves. Religious people demand respect for their own beliefs, but are seldom so vociferous in their demands for other religious beliefs to be offered the same rights. Such is the nature of religious exceptionalism.

Everyone in Britain now enjoys religious freedom: the right to worship one god, or many gods, in whatever way they see fit, and the law grants us the concomitant freedom to worship no god at all. The righteous are free to believe religious propositions on insufficient evidence, just as I am free to point this out.

The ruins of Elgin Cathedral, licensed yesterday...

Bassenthwaite Lake...

I watch some of the daily 5pm press briefings from Downing Street. There seems to be an ever-widening gulf between what we learn from whichever cabinet minister draws the short straw - Dominic Raab, Matt Hancock, Michael Gove or Rishi Sunak - and what we learn from the scientists and medical experts to their left and right. Raab looks like a startled deer caught in the headlights, Hancock looks increasingly out of his depth, Gove looks like something you’d buy with pocket money from a joke shop. Sunak at least looks competent, though the job he was tasked to do, as Chancellor, was to pile up debts which will take years, maybe a generation, to pay off.

Boris will no doubt be back at the podium soon, though he doesn’t inspire much confidence either. Despite all the promises, about PPE, testing, vaccines, etc, we are lacking a calm, reassuring presence at the podium who can offer more than the current platitudinous slogan: “Stay home, protect the NHS and save lives”.

Licensed today: a boat moored on Bassenthwaite Lake...

Greetings and consolations...

From everything I’m hearing, it’s likely that the pandemic’s trajectory will extend to months and years, rather than just a few weeks. We’ll have to do without the familiar greetings and consolations: shaking hands, a hug, a kiss, an arm around the shoulder. And the freedoms of older people may be curtailed even more. At age 69 I can count myself among their number. I have no ‘underlying health issues’, thankfully, which would make me much more vulnerable, but I’m going to have to get used to a lot more of my own company.

I can forsee a gradual opening up of shops and businesses, with people wearing masks, and with ‘social distancing’ maintained. But pubs, restaurants, cinemas, theatres, music gigs, S&M dungeons, etc, where close proximity to other people is the point of the exercise? That’s going to be more difficult. Airlines will go bust if they only have, say, one paying passenger in every row of seats. One thing’s for sure: we’re in unfamiliar territory. We’re going to have to acquire a whole new repertoire of social skills.

Licensed yesterday: Malmesbury Abbey in Wiltshire...

Patrington church...

Patrington is a one-horse town on the far side of Hull. It’s obviously been a rather more important place than it is today, to judge from both the size and grandeur of St Patrick’s Church, which dates from the14th century. Pic licensed today, along with two other church pix…

Howden Marsh...

It’s taken me a year to find - and investigate - Howden Marsh, a tiny nature reserve just a couple of minutes walk from the west end of the minster. Despite being surrounded on three sides by housing, it’s an oasis of greenery: perfect for an undemanding stroll in the spring sunshine… 

Sunderland Point...

Licensed today: one of the first pix I uploaded to Alamy, when I was still getting to grips with digital photography. Sunderland Point is only accessible by a sea-washed causeway, and is cut off twice a day by the tide. Once a major port, it's now a place of ghosts and memories...

Woody Allen...

I’m a long-term fan of Woody Allen: particular the early, “funny” films, his stand-up material and his prose (which I may like best of all). Though he’s been caught up in the ‘me too’ movement, because of allegations of sexual abuse made by his step-daughter, he has been investigated - twice - by the police and found to have no case to answer. I’m old-fashioned, and prefer to believe a man is innocent until he’s proved guilty. One thing I can’t deny is that his family life is complicated, and that his attitude to women - as revealed in his early stories - can sound rather dated in 2020.

A sizeable tome - Complete Prose - brings together his three books of stories: Without Feathers, Getting Even and Side Effects. I keep the book on my bedside table, ready to open it up at random and read a few pages. Woody is not just a film-maker who writes a bit. He’s quite the stylist, and his only competitor for ‘gags for page’ is probably Groucho Marx.

Is sex dirty? Only when it's being done right.

My one regret in life is that I am not someone else.

If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit in my name at a Swiss Bank.

I took a speed-reading course and read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It’s about Russia.

I was thrown out of college for cheating on the metaphysics exam; I looked into the soul of the boy sitting next to me.

Don't knock masturbation. It's sex with someone you love.

Not only is there no God, but try finding a plumber on Sunday.

The lion and the lamb shall lie down together but the lamb won’t get much sleep.

I don't want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying…

A bumpy ride...

It’s amazing how quickly things can change when there’s a political will to do so. A hospital can be built in a week. Fashion houses and factories can be re-purposed to produce gowns and masks for NHS and care workers. Passenger flights can be reconfigured to bring in medical supplies. New initiatives are being rushed through the legal process with emergency decrees. Money can be ‘found’ to ameliorate the most damaging effects to individuals and businesses. Apple and Google can collaborate to create smartphone apps which will track and monitor the movement of our citizenry. But will the survellance be reined in, once the need for it has ended?

I’m certain that the virus, and its aftermath, will dominate what remains of my life… and maybe the lives of the next generation too. I may not know where we’re headed, but I’m strapping myself in. It’s going to be a bumpy ride…

Licensed yesterday: one of the first pix I uploaded to Alamy. "All is safely gathered in"...

St Ives...

As a child of the television age, I automatically think of illnesses, and their remedies, in terms of anthropomorphic cartoons. So I picture a headache as a man inside my head with a hammer. Whenever I get heartburn, and take a dose of Gaviscon, I conjure up a pair of uniformed firemen dousing the flames in my stomach with their fire-hoses. There are no images associated with the invisible menace of the coronavirus, and a cure, too, remains aspirational… yet to escape from the confines of wishful thinking.

Licensed today, the Sloop Inn on the quayside in St Ives...

Song thrush...

The song thrush is singing non-stop from a tree in Blacksmith Lane. I remember him from last spring, as I was moving into the Old Sunday School, and being impressed by his stamina. I’m glad I don’t have to proclaim my territorial rights for so many hours each day. I’d get nothing else done!

Licensed today: the old schoolhouse in Hawkshead, where the young William Wordsworth carved his name on one of the desks. Amazing to think that every pupil had an iPad back then...

A year in Asselby...

It’s a year to the day since I moved into the Old Sunday School. I’m glad I made the move when I did. I wouldn’t want to be sitting out the lockdown in a campervan. If the police found me, parked up in a lay-by, they’d probably tell me to “go home”… which would be easier said than done.

The Old Sunday School came without a garden, or even a yard. For eleven months, the lack of a garden hasn’t been an issue, because I was able to get out and about. For the last month I have missed having a patch of greenery to call my own, but, well, like everybody else, I’m missing quite a few elements of normal life right now. No complaints. I have it easy. The spring sunlight is streaming through the arched windows, the trees on Blacksmith Lane are in blossom, a song thrush is singing and yesterday I saw my first swallow of which will no doubt be a very strange summer.

Licensed today: an eco-house at Findhorn…

Sitting, thinking...

Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) is probably best remembered for his ‘wager’: a rather fraudulent argument for believing in God. However, belief is seldom a pragmatic choice made after after weighing up all the options, and objections to Pascal’s craven hedging of bets are not hard to find.

My favourite Pascal quote, also well-known, is more applicable to the world as we know it in April 2020, with its lockdowns, social distancing and self-isolating. “All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone”. We’re desperate to be distracted, which is why we spend hours with our mobile phones: tapping, swiping and scrolling. We will do almost anything to avoid sitting in a room with nothing to do but think (experiments have shown that we would rather give ourselves small electric shocks than contemplate the contents of our own minds!).

A Punch cartoon of 1906 depicts the vicar’s wife visiting the hovel of some local worthy, whose foot is bandaged. The caption reads: “Now that you can’t get about, and are not able to read, how do you manage to occupy the time?” Old man: “Well, mum, sometimes I sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits.”

Angels...

During his later years, when he had spells in hospital, my dad was unstinting in his praise for the nurses who cared for him. “Angels”, he called them. Nursing was a calling, he reckoned, a vocation, while insisting that it was impossible to pay nurses what they deserved to be paid. Though his gratitude was genuine, the idea that nurses are “angels” seemed to provide an excuse for not giving them a pay-rise. The “food of the angels”, according to Exodus, was “manna from heaven”. Exodus failed to mention that angels have bills and mortgages to pay.

One day, once the pandemic is over, I hope we’ll be able to right some of the most glaring inequalities. Even if we can’t pay afford to pay nurses “what they’re worth”… hell, at least we can try.

Springtime comes to the village of Nun Monkton, near York...

Flowers on the doorstep...

Oof… that’s twice today I’ve had a tear in my eye… and it isn’t even tea-time yet. The first time was hearing that Tim Brooke-Taylor had died (from CV19). Such a funny guy, from his days with the Goodies to his appearances on I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue (he was a regular on the show for forty years). Jack Dee’s tribute rang true: “His great comedy gift was playing the injured innocent and he did it with brilliance and a characteristic lightness of touch”.

And a few minutes ago there was a knock on my door. A woman from Howden Helpers left a flowering plant on the doorstep. Apart from a light growth of mould, in the shower, it’s the only living thing in the Old Sunday School (oh, and me as well… though some mornings lately I’ve had to take my pulse to make sure).

It's that time of year: lambing on the Howgill fells...

Rights and responsibilities...

All around the world, as the pandemic spreads, people of faith are demanding their right to continue worshiping communally. Christians demand the right to attend church services, Jews to celebrate Passover, Muslims to attend Friday prayers in the mosque. Some religious folk go further - insisting that they have divine protection, that the virus is God’s punishment for the sins of the world, or that it is a sign of the end of days. These are dangerous delusions for the faithful to indulge. They’re putting their right to worship above the right of others to enjoy good health. By congregating in numbers, despite the call to stay apart, they are not just endangering their own lives… they are endangering the lives of others...

Good Friday...

Beyond the gospels - which offer widely varying accounts of his last hours - there is no evidence for the death and resurrection of Jesus. Historicity aside, the ‘events’ of Good Friday are incoherent even as a metaphor for vicarious atonement: forgiving the sins of humankind through self-sacrifice. For example, if I do you a grievous wrong, I cannot claim to have been forgiven already by the self-sacrifice of a third party; the only person who can truly forgive me is you.

The Christian God, understood by believers to be both omniscient and omnipotent, allows evil to proliferate in the world. This conundrum, the knottiest of theological problems, was authored by believers, not atheists. It is such a huge obstacle to belief that it has a name: theodicy. No matter how hard the rightous try to explain away this problem, it simply can’t be done. It’s like trying to prove that 2+2=5.

Objections to the blithe assertion that God loves us are so massive that they block out the sun. The global pandemic, killing thousands of people every day, should be a devastating riposte to this kind of wishful thinking.

Licensed today: a walker on the Pennine Way in Derbyshire...

Foulshaw Moss...

With the gout receding to nothing more than a dull ache, I was able to get out for a walk yesterday. Just a couple of miles - down to the river and back - but it was good to be out in the spring sunshine, and to hear the skylarks singing. I saw a heron, some little egrets and a cormorant. What’s the difference between a cormorant and a shag? Well, no one ever says “Fancy a cormorant?”.

Licenced yesterday: a bird-watcher at Foulshaw Moss, in South Lakeland...

Front line...

Anyone who is ‘breaking curfew’ and carrying on as though these were normal times, should read this account by a doctor working in an intensive care unit. This is what it really means to be on the ‘front line’.

Licensed today: a heartfelt plea... seen on the high street...

Silhouettes...

Just read a photo essay on the Guardian website, about the power of silhouetted figures in pictures: a rather niche subject, I imagine, for those who aren’t photographers. There are plenty of illustrative pix too, showing how a silhouetted figure, no matter how small within the picture area, immediately draws the eye. Here are three of my silhouette pix...

Room temperature...

Sunlight is pouring in through the arched windows of the Old Sunday School on another beautiful spring morning. Yet I know more about what’s happening in China, the USA, Spain, Italy and the rest of the UK than about what’s going on in the village. I’ve been assailed by gout for more than a week (hint: don’t ever get it!), but now, thankfully, the medication is kicking in… and the wild-haired old man in the mirror is no longer grimacing in pain.

Despite the news, which gets more depressing by the day, spring is bursting with new life and colour and birdsong. I heard a tawny owl hooting in the night. Last year I saw my first swallow on April 3, but I have yet to see the first swallow of what will no doubt be the strangest summer of my life. The weather forecast for today - like every other sodding day - is ‘room temperature’.

A pre-lockdown shot of St Botolph's Church in the village of Allerthorpe...

Fundamentalist fruitcakes...

A number of Evangelical churches in America are insisting on staying open for communal service, despite the lockdown mandated in most states. We might indulge their belief that the plague is a “hoax”, or a “conspiracy” by the left, or that the only way to counter coronavirus is by faith, if these actions only affected members of these churches. In fact, of course, by ignoring all thoughts of ‘social distancing’, these fundamentalist fruitcakes are endangering the lives of other people too.

The idea that “God will look after his own” might have a certain appeal… but only until a congregation is hit by the first positive test, then the first hospitalisation, then the first death. “Ah”, the righteous will insist, “their faith can’t have been strong enough”. This kind of religiously inspired denialism isn’t just self-delusion; it has unfortunate real-world consequences…

Lightshow...

Some people in self-isolation may be going ‘stir crazy’… but not me. I’m learning new skills every day. For example, I've discovered that there really is more than one way to skin a cat. Whenever the walls of the Old Sunday School start closing in on me, I distract myself by putting cutlery in the microwave. The lightshow can be quite impressive. Tomorrow I plan to lick the windows.

'Social distancing' on the shifting sands of Morecambe Bay...

Clattering pans...

The locals were out this evening, at 8pm, clapping, whooping and banging saucepans. I sat it out: not so easy to clap when you’re on crutches. And, anyway, it sounds self-indulgent to me. If I was a ‘front line’ worker in the NHS, what would I appreciate more: people making a lot of noise for two minutes, or having access to the personal protective equipment (PPE) that I need to deal with contagious patients? No amount of applause can compensate for that deficiency. The applause can come later, along with a renewed respect and appreciation for everyone who works in the NHS. Followed up by substantial pay-rises… to match their skills and dedication. 

Licensed today: Flatford Mill in Essex...