Goodbye to 2020... and good riddance...

The seasonal salutations are unchanging and formulaic. “Happy Christmas and a merry new year" is an unthinkable construction… especially at the end of 2020. In lieu of anything more positive to say about 2021, here’s a picture of some sheep…

 

Lives at risk...

Yesterday set the sort of record that no one wants to see, with 53,135 new cases of the virus in the UK. The hospitals are full, yet, even if the whole country now goes into severe lockdown, the number of admissions will continue to rise. Such is the entirely predictable - and preventable - consequence of allowing people to gather together over Christmas.

I’ve been reading an account by a senior registrar in intensive care medicine: essential reading for anyone who still thinks that the virus is some kind of hoax, or who may be considering a new year’s knees-up.

“Long gone are the days of claps on doorsteps. Things put in place to support NHS staff during the first wave have been taken away at the time they are needed most. Free parking. Access to tea and coffee during the long nights. Mental health support. Let alone the promised pay rise. And now, even as staff continue to put their lives at risk every day that they turn up for work, they find themselves at the back of the queue for a vaccine”…   

Birdoswald...

Christmas, traditionally, is the time of year when I obsess gloomily about my many shortcomings… when I am confronted most starkly with the contrast between the goodness in the world and the badness in me. Not this year, though. It doesn’t mean that I’m becoming a better person, alas; it just means that the world is going to hell in a handcart.

Licensed today: Birdoswald Roman fort, on Hadrian's Wall, near Gilsland, Cumbria… 

Ambleside...

Another place, another time...

 

Change of use...

Just read an interesting article on the Guardian website, by Simon Jenkins. He notes that barely 2% of the nation regularly go to their Church of England parish church, and a third of them are over 70, with only 1% of 18- to 24-year-olds now identifying as Anglican. This decline in Christian observance leaves a lot of churches surplus to requirements. What, he asks, should we do with them? The situation is complicated by the fact that some 70% of England’s churches are listed and undestroyable, including 45% of the country’s Grade 1 historic buildings. Unless they are de-listed, we can’t allow them to crumble into picturesque ruins.

Though it may seem strange for an atheist like me to be concerned about the fate of old churches, atheism is not, in fact, a belief system. Atheists can appreciate religious art, ecclesiastical architecture and the church's place in social history; we’re not the Taliban!

Some churches are being re-purposed, with many currently serving as much-needed food banks. The church in my pic - at Beech Hill, near Reading - doubles up as the village shop. Everything folds away behind screens, when the building is required for services: the counter, displays and even the frozen food cabinets…

 

Flatlands...

Sodden fields, this afternoon...

St George...

Licensed today: a statue of St George killing the dragon, in Alnwick, Northumberland…