bunn

There are definitely things about living in Wales that remind me of the 1970's, and not only because I was a child in Wales in the 1970s. 

In England, they are furiously organising walk-in booster vaccination clinics. 

In Wales, we are told that we must wait to be called upon by the State, because heaven forbid that the Welsh should have to queue in the rain in a 'free-for-all' 

It does not seem to have occurred to anyone that if there is a long rainy queue, people will see it and go home, returning at a time convenient to them. 

Whereas, if there is an Official State Letter Giving One An Appointment, inevitably that appointment is going to be at a time and place that many people cannot make, because their lives are busy and complicated, and there is no provision for telling The Government when you simply cannot get away. 

Therefore just as with the vaccination program earlier this year, there will be oodles of missed appointments, particularly since I am pretty sure that once again there will be no simple way to reschedule.  (I tried to call the contact number on my Official Letter, on my way for my Official Government Appointment, after getting stuck in traffic, and found myself in an infinite on-hold-loop.  Fortunately it was fine, I was only a few minutes late in the end, and a lot of other people had not turned up or were also late, so it wasn't at all busy.) 

No doubt there will also once again be a bunch of people who hear on the grapevine that you can just turn up because so many appointments are being missed and the guys doing the vaxing are understandably keen to get doses into arms. Those people will have a 'free for all' after all, while everyone else waits for their turn which will be all the later because the system has no flex for anyone's job, childcare, etc.  

I don't know how people who are travelling for work or have no fixed address for The Letter to go to cope. 

Sigh. First world problems, kind of.  

This Stick Man was erected last year in the first wave of enthusiasm during lockdown when lots of people put up banners and flags and so on supporting key workers, particularly NHS workers who might be passing.  This was a bit of an odd outlier from the first, because it's down a very minor lane with very few people passing, but gained popularity because it's on the route of a circular walk from the nearest large village, and the owners of Stick Man left out slices of tree-trunk and encouraged people to pick them up, paint them, then bring them back and hang them on the gate.


After a damp winter, both Stick Man and his votive offerings are now starting to develop all sorts of interesting fungi.
If you know the local story of him, he's benign enough, but I imagine if you are far from home, (as, for example, a visiting NHS ambulance driver might be) and stumble across this randomly by the roadside, he would be rather disturbing :-D 

Well, this is interesting.  Cornwall, for its low levels of plague, has been awarded Plague Tier 1 (Medium Alert) from 2nd Dec: pubs, cafes, cinemas and shops will re-open, people can meet indoors.

Devon, just across the river from us, is Tier 2 (High Alert). There is no Low Alert.  So far as I can see, Tier 2 and Tier 1 are more or less the same, except that people aren't allowed to meet indoors in  groups of up to six in Tier 2.  I think.

I have now officially lost my ability to remember the changing rules and regulations of the Plague year.  I had more or less kept up, till now, but now?  Nope.  It's gone.

Today we went for a paddle between Devon & Cornwall, so I'm not sure whether we were in Tier 1 or 2 at that point, or would be, if the tier thing was happening yet which it is not.  This was because Western Power had told us we'd have no electricity today, so we planned to go out and walk / paddle about briskly rather than sit in the unelectric house. Then they came and told us this morning that they'd worked out a way to do their works without cutting off the power after all, but by that time we had carefully arranged things so we had a day off, and it seemed a pity to waste it.

I can report that we saw a kingfisher, some frigates, a destroyer and a very nice and friendly police boat which came scooting over to warn us that we were about to be in the way of the destroyer leaving on manoevers, and suggest we might like to move.  Which we did. :-D

Getting back to the shore, we shared a slipway with three people who were extracting a relatively large and recalcitrant motorboat from the water. Two of them were stout middle-aged men, who were frowning earnestly at Equipment, and one was a cheerful woman in late middle-age who had cheerily stripped her bottom half down to her black lacy thong in order to shepherd the boat onto its trailer.  Her legs went the most interesting colour when exposed to late-November seawater.  BRRRR. 

We went to town for the first time since the Before Times, wandered around the park with the hounds, then went and found a cafe that was doing socially-distanced takeaway-with-tables. Felt slightly guilty afterwards because it seemed so wasteful to have all those bags and boxes for one meal. It was all paper / compostibles, though the environmental impact of making & transporting all that card & paper must be significant. The hounds had a sausage each, which pleased them greatly, and it was so warm that even though it drizzled, even Rosie didn't seem to mind.

The car park was nearly empty, and the park and footpaths quiet for a Saturday. Many of the shops were open, but only the food shops seemed to have many people around them. I had to queue for a while for the green-grocer, since only two people in at a time.

Theo found the excursion madly exciting and yanked Pp all over the place, woozeling loudly. He really needs more practice in busier places, seeing more people and dogs, the months of walking in quiet spots have not been ideal. Still, as long as there's no return of the plague, we can deal with that.

Went to the cheese shop and the greengrocer, dressed like bandits with scarves over our faces (still haven't done anything about masks, but scarves are acceptable, apparently.) None of the staff in the shops were masked-up, though the lady at the garage did when I stopped for petrol.

Oh, my new-old Ebay camera came! VERY exciting.

Wow, my car, my camera, my phone and my laptop are all currently in a state of entirely not-broken*! Pity the oven, the microwave and the extractor fan are all currently knackered. We'll get to them eventually.

In other news, I have now re-painted the bathroom, and the front door is no longer chipped-red, but a brilliant bright blue.

*well, nearly. The car check engine light is on, but it's been on for ages, I'm nearly sure that whatever it's complaining about isn't serious.

Took the hounds out for a longer solo walk yesterday.  Theo was pulling on the lead quite a bit to start with, but my iffy knee felt FINE and so I proceeded to walk all the way  up onto the top of Hingston Down and along as far as Drakewalls before turning for home.  It was pretty quiet, though I did see a few walkers at a distance here and there.

( Read more... )

So, our government has just closed all the cafes and pubs officially, and are setting up universal basic income (!!!).

This feels really weird : we run two small businesses from our house, and suddenly... everyone is closed apart from us, grocers and huge megabusinesses?  We only sell online and all the stuff is in the house anyway, so the only reason to close the Shop on the Borderlands would be if the postal service shut down.  The website hosting / maintenance side of things would keep on trucking through even that, though I do wonder how many of our customers there will be still standing on the other side of this. We shall see.

(Actually, the village pub is sort of still open, barely.  You can take a jug down there and they will fill it with beer to take away.  Some of the other pubs & cafes are doing takeaway food.) 

Can still walk the dogs, at a safe distance from humanity, though apparently in France even that is now forbidden. Yikes. Imagine the yodelling if Rosie had to go walkless.  Well, if it comes, then no doubt they will adjust; at least we have a garden.  In the meanwhile, I may make a trip to a nice quiet spot tomorrow.

In other news, I popped these three tiny paintings onto Redbubble, here, this afternoon, and someone just bought six cards of them, which was nice.

I am utterly overcome with indecision. Colin the Art emails to say that art class is still happening on Friday but will then go online.

I have been out a few times this week : picking up car from garage (the window STILL isn't working properly!  Steve is now going to try to buy a replacement door on ebay for me.)  Yesterday I went to the pet shop, to pick up cat food and dog treats, and (probably unwisely) popped into B&M to buy a new in-front-of-the-fire bed for Rosie.  And on Monday, again, probably unwisely, I went to the evening art group and painted a live model.

We have to go to the post office with orders, to keep the business running, which is really essential. Will probably go to the butcher on Friday as usual, because after all one must eat.  Is it that much more risk, to the village or to me, to go to a church hall and paint in the company of a handful of people for a couple of hours?  If they show, which I suppose they might not.  I imagine the loss of business for Colin of closure of all his classes will be pretty severe; he's not well-off, nor particularly tech-savvy, and probably not well positioned to move online: I suspect he will probably want advice from me about that. I feel that he may be in for a shock if he's hoping to get the same amount of money for online classes as in-person ones...

If I wasn't mildly asthmatic, I would definitely go.  I have no hand sanitiser, and the hall has no hot water, so hand washing isn't great there, though there is a sink, I'm sure nobody will be disinfecting the place. arg.

Goodness. I haven't updated since February! I don't know why. I have been reading here, but not managing to comment or post so much. I'm probably only doing it now because I have a fic to write for a Friday deadline and I apparently have no energy for it. I should have written it when I first got the assignment. I did start it, but then I told myself I wanted to finish my Rexque Futurus chapter first, and that has not been flowing, and has apparently caused a word blockage. Bah.

Had a birthday last Saturday, and although Plague was looming, it didn't seem so close then, so we went to the beach with my Mum and Pp's Dad. And the hounds, of course. It was a bit chilly, but Theo had an excellent time, and I did too, almost as much. There's something very calming about the Sea. We ate chips and drank hot chocolate outside. Rather too cold for that really, but allowed for rather more Distancing than sitting in the warm inside the cafe.

( Couple photos )


I've painted a few more things. Here's a dragon in a chair, ink /watercolour, painted very quickly because I felt it would be cheerful. ( Art in Here )

In other Art News, I picked up an art commission, painting a D&D party at the pub. Because I am nothing if not ambitious, I'm basing it on Caravaggio's 'The Calling of St Matthew' with a strong directional light and the characters all talking together. So far I've drafted it in pencil, sent the draft over for approval, and blocked out the figures and light.  It's going well!

I don't know what will happen out in the Wide World about the coronavirus and all the consequent panic and turmoil - well, I suppose nobody does. We are living in interesting times.  I hope the panic buying will recede soon. I get the distinct impression that a lot of it is social media fuelled. The more people see photos of empty shelves and posts about not being able to buy bread, the more panicked they get. But of course people want to talk about inconvenience and worries, and can't blame them for that, and nor can I blame people who can see their only source of income vanishing for maxing out their credit card while they still have one. Ack.

My asthma is playing up slightly and giving me a tightness in the chest, but I am sure that is psychosomatic / stress related (it would not be the first time!). My lifestyle is a fairly reclusive one at the best of times, so no matter how many undiagnosed people are about, would have be particularly unlucky to pick up the virus so soon. I may just have to limit my intake of news a bit.  Which might help with the writing!

I hope everyone reading this is keeping well.