Sanders Blog

Sunday, 24th May, 2020

Lovely, sunny morning and 16C/61F at 8.00 am. The Government are showing all the signs of falling apart under the pressure of dealing with this pandemic which they are wholly unsuitable to do. The architect of Brexit also known as Vote Leave Svengali is the arrogant Dominic Cummings who has acted with impunity while threatening the British population with criminal sanctions.

The Prime Minister, who is well out of his depth, has relied on Cummings for the attention to strategic detail required to keep all the plates spinning. Unfortunately, Cummings lacks any real sense of a politician’s understanding of the electorate. A consequence of this has been the tendency towards favouring a ‘herd immunity’ strategy which would have been more at home in Nazi Germany or Eugenicist America than democratic UK. As a result, they have the deaths of thousands more British people on their hands than were necessary.

These are the ideas dominating this morning’s newspapers and political programmes and will almost certainly result in Cummings going soon which will expose Johnson even more. What is particularly despicable is the sight of Cabinet Ministers coming out to defend Cummings breaking laws he has been instrumental in forcing on the UK public. With Brexit negotiations going badly, life could become particularly interesting very soon.

More important on the home front is the trouble with an ugly little grub commonly known as Leather-Jackets These grubs, which emerge as adult crane flies, are proliferating. Everyone around here is moving towards carpet lawns. I am suggesting they pop up to see Ruth’s in Bolton if they don’t know how it works. At the moment, I am persisting with grass although I have got some Leather-Jacket damage.

There is no longer an effective chemical treatment on the market and the only way to control them is to regularly scarify the lawn and pick up their larvae. In the past, of course, gardeners would have to be seriously fit to rake an entire lawn every week. I have got one of these manual rakes but I use it very sparingly on small areas of lawn. In previous centuries, fit, young apprentices would be given a couple of days work once a year raking all the moss and thatch from the Master’s lawn.

Nowadays, there is powered help. I have a Bosch Electric Lawnraker. It takes no time at all to thoroughly rake out the front and back lawns without me passing out. however, this will be my exercise for the day. For the first time in the last couple of weeks, we are not going out for our walk.

Monday, 25th May, 2020

Another glorious morning opening up at clear blue sky, strong sun and a windless temperature of 16C/61F at 8.00 am.. Apparently it is Bank Holiday but nobody could be sure. We are going to walk up to a small, local nursery that specialises in herbs. We’re not desperate for anything but it will be a good walk with some interest at the end of it.

I am permanently having to think about my food intake. I had been able to enjoy good food by working hard at the gym each day. Now, with the Gym closed for the foreseeable future, I find it hard to break out of my eating regime and I’m struggling to readjust and control myself. We are still lots of walking but it is not a complete replacement for our normal routine.

I have always used bananas as a go-to snack when I am desperate. I still do although currently my palate is a little tired of them. Pauline who is ever vigilant, has bought me some packets of Dried Apple Slices. I never eat fresh apples. I don’t like them enough to want to reach for one. Dried Apple Slices, on the other hand, are something very different. I am finding them filling, energy -giving and pleasantly sweet. They are really helping me. Now, all I have to do is control my appetite for Dried Apple Slices because everything has calories. I fear I am a hopeless case.

We have now received half of all our claims for travel/accommodation that we have paid out for this year and we are completely confident that the rest will come back to us although it will take some time. EasyJet will pay us back for at least 4 and possibly six flights although they will make us wait. The Tenerife villa that we should be returning from on Thursday after four weeks away, will be paid out by our insurance company within the next couple of weeks. The Athens hotel suite we are still hoping to occupy but, if we can’t get there because of flights, our insurance company will, once again, reimburse us in full.

We are confident of these things but if, in these insecure times, someone goes out of business, our credit card provider will provide us with a ‘charge-back’ service. All in all, we are fortunate to not be desperate for the money and we can afford to sit back and wait unlike some who have lost their income because of the pandemic and who need that cash immediately to get by.

Tuesday, 26th May, 2020

A hot and sunny day. Up at 6.00 am and out at 7.30 am to Sainsbury‘s. Pauline shopped while I walked to Rustington. Just 15 mins each way amounted to 5,000 paces. Pauline was just returning to the car as I emerged into the darkness of the underground carpark. Back home and after coffee, we set about gardening work. I mowed all the lawns, strimmed all the edges and began to water them with the automatic sprays. Pauline trimmed up the hedges and I swept up the trimmings.

We had an hour or two in the hot sun outside in the back garden. The temperature reached 26C/79F and felt quite humid and oppressive. The temperature on Sifnos, by contrast, was just 16C/61F. No wonder Greece doesn’t want to let Brits in. It would just be too cold.

Six years ago, the year we left Sifnos, (Can you believe that it is six years since we set foot on the island?), the summer heat had just arrived. On this day in 2014 I wrote:

Because of the heat, we were out working on the land by 9.00 am and finished by 12.30 pm – exhausted and wet with sweat. We have just completed another level and, interestingly, a number of people – friends, taxi drivers, local farmers, lorry drivers all stopped to compliment us on our work. It makes no real difference but it was nice.

Cold pig for lunch. The pork had developed a wonderful flavour over night. Pauline knocked up a quick pear & onion compôte with cinnamon and ginger to go with it. How wonderful! She is so clever. We are also gorging on white-fleshed peaches at the moment.

Next year, 2021, will see my 70th birthday. It is our intention – Covid-19 allowing – to return for a couple of months to visit the ‘Poison Dwarf’. Maybe we can taker her a dose. I suspect she will be immune to all infection even so.

This evening, Sifniots in some vain hope of rescuing their ‘season’, are all out painting white lines.

This is a traditional, pre-Easter tradition which obviously was delayed by ‘lock-down’. Now the (mainly) women have been out this evening painting the white lines between the stone paving in Cycladic style.

The lady out in the late evening sunshine today is Margarita who was always lovely to us, coming up to our house with meals she had cooked particularly Gigantes which she knew was a favourite of mine. We liked her particularly because she couldn’t stand the ‘Poison Dwarf’. Margarita’s husband, Nikos, died about 20 years ago now of heart failure. It is good to see her looking strong and happy.

With their three main tourist bases – UK, Germany & Russia banned from entry, the season’s pickings will be thin and the winter will be hard.

Wednesday, 27th May, 2020

Up at 6.30 am on another glorious, glorious morning. We are at 16C/61F at the outset an 22C/70F by 11.00 am.. After a drink for Breakfast, we nipped round the corner to Roundstone Pick Your Own Farm. Broadbeans, Rhubarb and strawberries are currently available. We were just needing strawberries.

My lovely mother-in-Law, Jane (Janie) Barnes lived to 96. We stayed in the North until she died. Almost exactly 40 years ago, we moved her into her own ‘sheltered’ apartment. We furnished it for her to get her started. When she died, we brought her lampshade that had survived from all those years ago and it is now featuring on our bedroom ceiling. The wine goblets she so proudly bought us we still use regularly. The napkin holder we bought for from Greece has come down here with us for our Dining Table.

When we moved down here and were looking for shrubs to fill our border, we couldn’t resist a Hardy Fuschia called Janie. We planted it in Spring of 2016. It is small just like Jane Barnes. After the first winter, it looked as if it had died. There was nothing to be seen. We came back from a short holiday to find that Janie had risen from the dead. That was another of her characteristics. She was a deceptively tough little fighter. You don’t get to 96 without resilience. She was known affectionately by Pauline & I as ‘Mump’. Well Mump or Fuschia Janie is really going for it this year. May isn’t even out but she has been in full flower for a couple of weeks. You just cannot keep a good Mump down.

Thursday, 28th May, 2020

Up at 6.00 am on another beautiful day in paradise. We are flying home at the end of our month in Tenerife today – well, actually, we are going shopping in Tesco. I drop Pauline off at the doors where she begins queueing at 7.00 am in 2nd place behind the same man who has been first on a Thursday for the last 8 weeks. By the time the doors open, the queue behind Pauline is double-banked to 100 yards away.

Every week for the past 8 I have gone on a 5 mile walk round the local area in the sunshine. I start my walk at 7.00 am and try to get back by 8.30 am. I always do the same route because, as I’ve often reported before, I have absolutely no sense of direction or memory of routes I have previously been on. Most people are incredulous when I say that I still require sat.nav. to find my way confidently to shops I’ve visited almost every week in the past 4 years. Before anyone diagnoses Dementia, It has always been like this for me.

This morning I had walked for about 20 mins and was thinking about the sights, sounds and smells I encountered on my way – a tiny, nondescript baby wren hopped out of the bushes to talk to me without any fear whatsoever. A young, grey squirrel almost ran over my foot as it darted out of the undergrowth. Suddenly, on an ordinary residential street, I realised that I was approaching the magnificent image of a mature, Acer tree. Pauline tells me to fix things like that as landmarks in my memory to use to retrace my steps.

I never saw that Acer again. Suddenly, I woke from my thoughts and realised I didn’t know where I was going. I found myself walking down the side of a dual carriageway on the way to BRIGHTON! I admit it. I did have a bit of a panic at that moment. I had no real idea of how to get back to Tesco where the car was parked. I didn’t want to have to phone Pauline to come and collect me. After all, I didn’t know where to tell her to come to.

A symbol of my predicament lay dead on its back on the edge of the pavement. I can’t stand magpies generally. They have become ubiquitously dominant birds in our gardens although they do get bullied by seagulls. It looked unusually beautiful in death as its iridescent plumage shone out against the dull concrete. I took out my phone to photograph it and suddenly remembered we had put a sat.nav. app on my phone. I have hardly ever used Waze but it picks up one’s location and talks one through the directions to walk back to ….. TESCO. Isn’t life wonderful?

Friday, 29th May, 2020

Up a little late at 7.15 am to yet another warm, sunny day. Are we still in Greece? As every day blended in to every other day of clear, blue skies, and strong sunshine, we actually found ourselves longing for some rain, a little chilly wind, a change of season perhaps. According to the Met. Office, we are heading for the sunniest Spring on record – and one of the driest and warmest. Relentlessly it seems, the sun keeps beaming down in apparent disregard for those trying to abide by Lock-Down advice and stay at home as much as possible. It looks like the Spring months of March, April and May will have seen record amounts of sunshine.

We have spent so much time walking in sunshine, queueing for shops in sunshine and sitting in our back garden in sunshine. I am beginning to look like a walnut – certainly more brown than at this time in Greece where much of the time was spent trying to avoid the sun.

Don’t want you to get too excited but I am having my haircut this morning out on the patio. There is quite a strong breeze so I probably won’t have to sweep up afterwards. Half my head will be floating across the valley by the afternoon. The weather forecaster is predicting new clouds of Saharan dust falling over the next few days. If my hair arrives first, it could prove puzzling to local farmers.

Discussions with the Notary about our house sale this morning. I always find that unsettling. Here we are, sailing blissfully along and reality keeps trying to intrude. Never mind. All will be as it will be

Blog Entry – 29/5/2013

Sitting under the pergola overlooking the port and reading was the order of the day. Of course, there is rather a different mindset when the sun shines intensely and incessantly for more than half the year. In UK the appearance of strong sun is more of a rarity and to be made the most of. As a consequence, we tend to stay out far too long and burn. This Spring, we have been able to enjoy it Greek-style in confident knowledge that it will appear again tomorrow.

Last night we went to bed at 12.00 am. This morning, I opened the front door at 7.15 am to find a huge box standing in front of me. It must have been dropped off by Yodel after midnight or before 7.00 am. it was our replacement griddle. the last one has done 4 year’s service but the heat controller has failed. I searched for a new one. It was identical to the first but half the price. It came from China but arrived within 5 days. This afternoon, it cooked the most perfect swordfish steak which we ate with homegrown salad. Delicious!

Saturday, 30th May, 2020

The penultimate day of May, 2020 has opened as a scorcher. As June approaches, we realise that we are sleepwalking through our 69th Summer without realising it. While closing down and claiming back for travel/stay bookings, we are closing down the Summer. We still have a faint hope of Athens at the end of August but it is no more than that.

This morning, a scorching hot and sunny morning on the south coast of England, we set out around 10.00 am to Middleton beach. It is about 5 miles/8.5 kms away.The houses surrounding the beach are quintessentially affluent.

The beach is quiet and beautifully open. We walked for 30 mins towards Bognor Regis and 30 mins back again. We said, Good morning to lots of people and Hello, to lots of dogs who don’t understand time.

Once again, the day has shot past. Our meal was Cod fillets wrapped in Parma Ham with Asparagus Spears and roast Cherry tomatoes. It was absolutely wonderful. I then had a lengthy job watering all our plant pots and trees in the garden.

Sunday, 17th May, 2020

Warm with weak sunshine has started the day. We are forecast for cloud and sun today but followed by clear skies and strong sun with relatively hot weather for the rest of the week. We have had a fairly relaxing morning spoilt by watching Gove on the Marr programme arguing that no teachers or children will be put at risk by going back to school in a couple of weeks followed by admitting that he couldn’t guarantee their safety from catching Covid-19 but thought teachers should take pride in going back to their vocation, to follow their ‘Calling’ as if they had enrolled in some mystical sect. This man is so duplicitous, he gives politicians a bad name – which is saying something.

The television screen is still in tact although it was a close run thing. This is fortunate because I have found a niche, German Historical Thriller set in post First World War Berlin. I quite like it after the first episode in spite of the subtitles. I found I forgot them pretty quickly.

Babylon Berlin is described as a German neo-noir drama which takes place in the seedy underbelly of Berlin during the Weimar Republic, starting in 1929. If I’m going to get in to fiction, it helps me to grapple with historical realities while I’m doing it.

Before that, we’ve got some gardening to complete plus a walk. Today, we are feeding and watering the lawns through this extended dry spell. We’ve almost forgotten what rain looks or feels like. We are completing the potting up of seedlings – bell peppers and some more basil plus sage, and mint.

That completed, we are doing an hour’s walk in the vicinity before settling down to roast salmon and home grown salad.

Managed to source a reasonable quantity of Protective Equipment: surgical gloves – 100 x small + 100 x large – and 50 x facemasks – which will take us through the next few months.

Monday, 18th May, 2020

Glorious morning with clear blue skies and strong sun from 6.00 am. What a great day to … put the bins out! All three – Black bag, Recycle and Garden Waste – will have been emptied by Lunchtime. The temperature was 16C/61F by 8.00 am and is forecast to be excellent throughout the week. Another dry week.

One of the features of the Lock-Down period has been virtually no rain. I think we have experienced anything significant on only one day in the past 7 weeks. I have been watering everything outside and particularly the lawns. I have a rectangular, oscillating sprayer which I’ve used for many years.

It will do a large area in one full sweep. It will actually cover a large part of my back lawn without adjustment. Unfortunately, there are a number of areas at the back and the front which need more targeted spraying. I also need to control the height so it doesn’t invade my neighbours’ gardens.

This morning we walked – ‘walked’! – to our local, large garden centre to buy an alternative. I wanted a multi-programmable, circular one which I can use to control the height and reduce the area of coverage. We were shocked to find long queues outside in the carpark. At least we were all in the beautiful sunshine. We’ve been thinking that for some time. All the shops with ‘socially-distanced’ queueing outside will have another problem when it rains. Customers are going to be far less likely to stand patiently in the driving rain. Certainly we will think again and choose places that have covered waiting areas.

We spent an hour or so measuring up, drawing plans and coming to conclusions about the garden building that we will have erected in our back garden. It started as a covered cooking area. It developed as a storage area for garden tools and then, thanks to the pandemic’s effect on the Health Club, it has morphed in to an alternative gym area. For that reason, although we look like going with the style illustrated above, but just over 30% longer and 25% deeper.

Tuesday, 19th May, 2020

Up at 6.30 am on a very warm but cloudy start to the day. We were out to Sainsbury’s at 7.30 am as the sun was starting to glimmer. Pauline went in to shop and I set off for a walk. I walked to Rustington again.

As I did, this packaging was in the gutter and pedestrians were giving it a 2 metre distance. Who could blame them. It was the extra strong version.

The one thing which is not suffering in this Covid crisis is our Bank Balance. There are just so few places to spend money. Television Sport has been missing for a couple of months and the companies I use are not charging me at the moment. It’s not a great deal of cash but it’s better than a poke in the eye.

Sky Sports is saving us £23.00/€26.00 per month and BT Sports is not charging £16.00/€18.00 per month. If you add that £49.00/€55.00 to our monthly £150.00/€168.00 for the Health Club and we are up to a saving of £200.00 per month. We’ve already received refunds from Travel bookings of around £2,000.00/€2,234.00 and we have another £5000.00/€5,586.00 agreed will be returned. Things look as if our Greek trip might just be on at the end of August but everything will depend on EasyJet and the flight. Clearly we won’t be doing quarantine at either end of the trip or we won’t start it.

With so many people unemployed through this crisis, so many ‘Furloughed’ on reduced earnings and so many furloughed who will never be taken back to work, being comfortably retired is, for the moment at least, an enviable position. In fact, salary levels were only just beginning to return to the levels before the last crash in 2008 when we retired and now look set to be deflated again. In spite of optimism in a ‘V’ shaped recovery rather than an ‘L’ shaped one, the Chancellor is even today talking about long term ‘scarring’ in the economy with particular problems for the young just entering the workforce and the older workers who may never get back in after layoff. This is not a good time to be a worker.

Wednesday, 20th May, 2020

Welcome to mid-Summer. What a delight. It was like waking up on a morning in Greece. Deliciousness on the senses. This morning I experienced a moment of χαρούμενη σύμπτωση or happy coincidence. Every time I switch on my desktop computer, I am presented with a new and usually wonderful start up photograph which fills the screen. Yesterday, it was the Taj Mahal from the back. The day before it was the central square in Bruges. Today, I was thinking about Greece and whether we’d get there this summer when my screen opened up on the delightful Greek Island of Leros.

After Breakfast, I liberated the tree I have been growing for the past 18 mnths from a seed pod picked up in Tenerife – November 2018. It was moved outside for the first time in its pot a couple of days ago and planted out this morning in the secluded, sunny spot behind the garage next to the fig trees.

The tree is a native of North Africa and grows to about 30 ft with bright red bracts of flowers. This one won’t. I predict it will feel quite happy until the end of September and early in October will beg to return to its home. If I stand it up straight currently, it would stretch to 6 ft but I won’t be able to repatriate it so we will part our ways.

It will be sad because I have looked after it for so long but we both just have to accept the transience of life. My tree will never reach maturity and I am conflicted about bringing it to this stage in the full knowledge that it will never look like this:

I mowed the lawns front and back and then, after a light Lunch, we set out for our walk in the woods on the perimeter of our Development. We went from bright sunshine and hot, fresh air to dark, cool and damp smelling vegetation as we walked down the woodland path.

All around us entrepreneurs, professionals, small business owners who have been able to afford property in this expensive area are beginning to look a bit vulnerable. All are talking only tentatively about their way forward. Nobody really knows and that is destabilising for confident go-getters with expensive, new houses with large BMWs and Mercedes in the drive. They live and ride on confidence which has been punctured by this crisis. Everybody is watching closely while holding their breath silently.

We, on the other hand, received a boost from our May trip to Tenerife. The company paid our cost back into our account this morning. Actually, they repaid more than our outlay because of the changing currency exchange rate. We bought when sterling was high and were paid back when sterling was lower. We would rather have had the trip but this, at least, is compensation.

Thursday, 21st May, 2020

May is running away. We would be completing our third week in Tenerife today.. Only one week to go is a feeling that sees optimism slide a little. We start to think of all the things to be done like book a taxi, check-in online for the flight, Make sure clothes are washed and reading for packing. Because we would be in the villa, we would be still buying in food but planning and managing how much we need. For example, with a week to go, we would be buying a joint of Swordfish and a joint of Tuna from the HiperDino Supermercado to get us through the week

We are not in Tenerife but we are in the sunshine. Up at 6.00 am, today is even hotter than yesterday which reached 254C/75F, by 9.30 am, I had already walked 5 miles/8 kilometres while Pauline was shopping in Tesco. I was walking mainly through typical coastal suburbia. Bungalows abound. Gardens are small but generally well maintained and shrubs we have struggled with for 40 years in Yorkshire grow abundantly and richly down here.

Back home we were visited by a Mediterranean man in a white van who dropped off 3kg of Swordfish, 3kg of Tuna and 2kg of Cod all packed in ice. The delivery man asked if he could come to Dinner because we had chosen his favourite fish. We apologised and said we didn’t think there would be enough to share.

The above is the sort of sight one would see regularly in Sifnos with deliveries piled up outside a shop/taverna and left in the scorching sun with no concern for pilfering. Today, this scene is outside Subway next to Tesco in West Worthing.

Not wanting to rest on our laurels, Pauline set about portioning the fish into steaks and bagging it up for the chest freezer in the garage. Approximately 8 kilos of fish produced 15 excellent meals for two at an average cost of about £5.00 per person per portion. The quality is unrivalled and well worth the cost. While that was going on, I set about cleaning and valeting the car. Now that is exhausting especially as the temperature climbs to 25C/77F. Things got better as my gorgeous, little assistant finished her jobs and came out to help me complete my very arduous task.

Friday, 22nd May, 2020

A warm night opened with 16C/61F at 6.00 am but unusually grey skies. A weak sun broke through by mid-morning but it is rather windy so we decided not to go on the planned Pick-Your-Own trip round the corner at our local farm. Currently, they are open for Strawberries, Rhubarb and Broadbeans. We will probably go on Monday if the day is bright. Instead, Pauline is cooking and I’m searching for jobs to do. I have to vacuum the house at some point before we go out for our walk.

Just over 4 years ago, we bought a commercial, electric griddle/cooking plate. We have used it 2 or 3 times every week and, recently, the thermostatic controller has become unreliable so one of my jobs is to source a replacement.

In this difficult, commercial world, prices are certainly under pressure. This one I’ve found this morning is less than half the price I paid 4 years ago

Since the start of Lock-Down, we have had an app on our iPads and smartphones which asks people to report whether they are well or have any Covid symptoms and whether they have had a Covid test. It is completed each day by well over 3.7 million people and informs a database analysis led by Kings College, London. It takes about 30 secs a day and may prove worth while. I’ve just completed it for the 50th consecutive day.

We did a 2hr walk before we ate and I was exhausted by it. We went down through the village towards Sainsbury’s. On the left is the fat dual carriageway and Sainsbury’s Superstore. On the right is old Angmering.

The joy of our village is the mix of rural relaxation with suburban facility – on one side a superstore and on the other a cornfield. It is absolutely delightful. We only reached 19C/66F with a stiff breeze but it was a sweaty walk and we were pleased to get home. Our meal was cod goujons and green salad. Absolutely wonderful!

Saturday, 23rd May, 2020

Lovely but windy day. Quite warm all the same and we now know that it is going to get much warmer for the coming week. We nipped round to the PYO strawberry fields in the hope of giving Pauline a chance to make a few pounds of jam this weekend but, by 9.30 am, it was absolutely packed. We turned round and drove to the beach which was virtually deserted. The tide was coming in and there were one or two windsurfers and a canoeist in the sea. One man had a couple of fishing rods set up to catch a Sea Bass, Plaice, Grey Mullet or two.

We walked on the beach as the tide came in. The air was delicious and the sun warm. It was surprising how quickly the tide did come in and the sand we walked on one way had disappeared by the time we turned to go back. We moved higher up the beach for our return as the waves of the turning tide crashed on the pebbles.

Pauline loves this. I like it but there is something elemental and, maybe, in her memory banks that is satisfied by this experience. We walked for an hour or so and then drove home for coffee.

My lovely sister, Ruth, is 73 today. It is amazing to think this photograph was taken 70 years ago and the year before I was born. It would explain why she is so much more wrinkly than me but it is still a shock. When we review our lives and I’m not sure how much Ruth does of that but I do it constantly, the change is immense.

Instead of moving forward from 1950 to today, try moving back 70 years to 1880. From candlelight, oil lamps to electricity. from horse and cart to steam and combustion engine. From cottage industry to Factory production line. From steam ship to air travel. From printing press to radio and television. from telegraph to telephone. So much changed.

In my view, however, so much more has changed in Ruth’s lifetime. The development of communication via television, mobile phone, internet has absolutely transformed the world. The jet engine and the electric car are totally demolishing the ancien régime. Ruth talked to me this morning about conducting Zoom nights with her extended family during this pandemic crisis. Imagine that 73 years ago. At that time, Dad had just finished building his own transistor radio to listen to the BBC News. I inherited part of that but not the technical bit.

Sunday, 10th May, 2020

Lovely, warm morning which has reached 22C/70F by 11.00 am but rather grey and overcast which comes as something of a shock after the past few weeks. By 2.00 pm, it has started to rain gently but is providing a real tonic for the lawns and shrubberies.

We have decided, mainly because of the weather, to forgo our daily walk and do other things at home. Pauline prepared roast chicken with sage & onion stuffing accompanied by roasted carrots & parsnips and cauliflower & broccoli for our afternoon meal. I vacuumed the house. In the mean time, we are discussing alternatives to travel in the short term. Probably, like many people, we are looking to invest in/upgrade our home facilities if we are to spend more time here. We have long been talking about extending our patio flagging. Talk has always been terminated by the observation that we will be away a lot so let’s put it off until we’re older.

This pandemic has suddenly made us feel older. We are beginning to draw in our horns ad to consider time at home. We are also spending so little money. If only investment packages made our involvement worthwhile. Not only have we talked about extending flagged areas of our garden but we’ve anticipated erecting a formal, garden kitchen. It looks like a good way to invest for our future.

We will use this building to put in kitchen staging with a series of electrical sockets and lighting. We will install a large, commercial griddle, a electric hob, a deep fat fryer and a wood-fired oven. This building is sold at an outlet which is within walking distance of our house. We are inundated with firms wanting to lay flags in our garden. If we are limited in our travel this summer, it looks an opportune time to do the work.

I don’t know about you but I am missing watching sport. Strangely, I am missing cricket more than football. This afternoon, I watched the 2005 Ashes Test series. I knew the result of each match and yet I still got seriously nervous, frustrated, ecstatic as the matches unfolded. I was told off by my wife for screaming uncontrollably as we won the Ashes. It didn’t stop me.

Monday, 11th May, 2020

A cooler, greyer, breezier day. Much of it was spent at home fiddling around with small jobs that amounted to very little. It is looking possible that our Athens hotel could receive us but our Easyjet flight might not take us in mid-August. It’s possible that we will get a break in France sooner.

We went for a 90 min walk which has settled in to a daily routine. We walk around our Development and past the new building work where a huge, old house in a couple of acres garden is being demolished to make way for a new Care Home. We wonder if it will be ready in time for us. The partly demolished building is at the stage where we can peer over the wall and see inside the bedrooms which have been exposed. We stare in fascination although it feels almost indecently nosey.

I can’t help but think of the lives that have been lived, the loves that have been experienced and the sadnesses felt in those rooms. All now gone from the earth. It reminded me of the day I saw my old school in its last vestiges of crumbling façade as it was levelled to the ground in preparation for its redevelopment as private housing. In this case, many of my own years of experiences were being swept away but also those of many others I had known – some dead, some having moved on. Hopes and dreams had either been dashed or rewarded; relationships maintained, strengthened or broken and dissipated.

These uplifting considerations populated my thoughts as we walked down the woodland path which presented its own signs of demolition.

The strengthening winds of last night had brought a healthy young tree down and it was now blocking our path. Of course, being impetuous youngsters, we scrambled over it and continued on our way. I even considered trying to move it myself but was instructed not even to try. Of course, I always do as I’m told.

Tuesday, 12th May, 2020

We were up at 5.30 am for no other reason than the sun was streaming in and a cup of tea was calling. Freshly squeezed orange and tea and then out at 7.30 am to ….. Sainsburys. The morning was glorious and, while Pauline shopped, I walked to the nearby town of Rustington. Rather as its name suggests, Rustington is dominated by the older generation. It is a little chintzy and sentimental and, in these dangerous times, fairly deserted.

I didn’t realise how easy it was to walk here. I have only driven in the past. By the time I’d got back to Sainsbury’s, Pauline was loading her bags in to the boot. Just for fun and from a distance of 30 mtrs, I remotely shut the boot on her head. As a result, I was told off for being reckless.

We both got over the fun, drove home, unpacked, had coffee and then set off for the beach.

Today we went to Elmer & Middleton Beaches. They are about a 10 – 15 mins drive away. When we got there, they were almost deserted save for a few dog walkers.

We walked for 30 mins or so in this lovely environment. It is too lovely and too peaceful. It fills visitors with absolute joy.

By the time we had arrived back home, a bit of cloud cover was arriving and the air felt cooler. We were going to sit out in the garden but thought better of it. There will be plenty of warmer, sunnier days to come … as long as we live.

Wednesday, 13th May, 2020

Nice, bright sunny morning although a little on the sharp side. We went out fairly early for a 90 mins walk. It was still tee-shirt and shorts weather for exercise. The gardens down here are so much more advanced than in the North. We used to feature Peonies in our garden in Yorkshire. They were at their crimson, blowsy best just as we were going away for Wakes Holidays in the last week of June. Here, they are in full bloom now – about six weeks earlier.

Planting is really spectacular in this village as we have found on our daily walks during lock-down. Of course, it used to be totally dominated by Horticultural industries – acres of glass houses which grew and supplied outlets with herbs and salad vegetables, vineyards, garden centres, garden designers, etc.. A number of those enterprises have be sold on for new housing including where we are but we still have around 4 garden centres and 2 vineyards within walking distance. Today, the biggest and nearest garden centre, Haskins, has reopened. Joy of joys. We will there in the next few days.

As a result, the local gardens seem to be well stocked with interesting and less usual plants. On our walks, we have been marvelling at the quality of the Ceanothus flowering profusely in deep blue and gorgeous, pendulous racemes of mauve/pink Wisteria set against Sussex stone.

On the corner of an older house just a little way down from our house, a white Wisteria Alba has been developing. Just as the pink ones are fading, the white one is in full bloom. I’ve never seen one before and I love it now I have.

Thursday, 14th May, 2020

Glorious if rather cool start to the morning at 6.00 am. We were out at 6.50 am and off to Tesco in West Durrington. Pauline queued up at number 2 in the list while I set off for a walk. This is a fascinating area that neither of us know anything about. I walked for about 75 minutes which was plenty but meant Pauline had only just entered the store at 8.00 am to start shopping. She had mask and gloves on. I was unencumbered.

I was interested to go past something I spotted the other day. A working class response to hardship and being a third class citizen.

I have never heard of St. Symphorian and had to find out about him. I found that Symphorian was a Christian executed in Autun near Dijon in France. Flavius Heraclius, Emperor of the Byzantine Empire in the first century AD had Symphorian’s head chopped off for refusing to worship pagan gods. Why? I’d have readily worshipped a packet of crisps to keep my head. Still, I suppose I wouldn’t have had a church dedicated to me. Oh dear!

The St Symphorian Church was established in Durrington in the 13th Century and rebuilt in the 17th Century.

Poor deluded people were persuaded that religion would explain and ameliorate their poverty and inequality, that they would be compensated in death for what the rich had received in life. I know which I would prefer. Religion certainly was the opium of the people. As the poet and C-of-E vicar, Charles Kingsley wrote, the bible is a mere book to keep the poor in order. Interesting to find a Working Men’s Club next door although I can find no history of its inception.

Friday, 15th May, 2020

Today is gardening day. We don’t have to shop. We don’t have to go anywhere. We have some regular jobs to get through even on this sunny morning but the core of the day is gardening. I am mowing the lawns before the garden refuse men come for my bin on Monday. It’s an extra, ‘paid-for’ service but well worth the money. While we are not able to travel, I have taken it on myself to look after all the street-side lawns of my road. The couple across the road are 80+ and fitter than me but I tell them I’m working for Help-the-Aged.

I love the natural world and love to identify and remember all the Latin names of the plants, shrubs and trees that I see. I love trying to grow plants and sometimes successfully. One of the early hobbies Pauline & I found we had in common was gardening. I was fascinated to find a joint love of growing plants was where it began and ended. While Pauline likes natural disorder (in my eyes) and unstructured collections of plants which mimic the anarchy of Nature, my eye cannot cope with that and immediately needs to tame and structure the natural world with classical symmetry.

The joy I get after cutting the lawn, edging it with my electric strimmer and sweeping away the cuttings to reveal that clean, straight line of grass neatly butting up to patio flags is immense. You will notice above the pot of geraniums which I’ve allowed to be placed to slightly break the lines. After a deep breath, I can cope with that. Compromise is what marriage is about.

Pauline does have her uses. She is a little more delicate and considered than I am. When I was 6 years old, I will never forget running excitedly out of the classroom in my little, village school and, in my eagerness to get out, I knocked my teacher’s cup of tea off her dais-mounted desk. Miss Marlor, a kindly, grey haired lady near retirement from teaching in 1957, called me back and lectured me on the impetuosity of St Peter. I understood the analogy and knew what she had identified in me.

Unfortunately, bull-in-a-china-shop impetuosity has remained with me ever since. I try to temper it and do sometimes manage but it is always my first instinct. Because of that, jobs which need care and subtlety like sowing seeds and potting up seedlings are done by Pauline. Jobs which require physical strength and brute force are done by me. Like Jack Spratt and his wife, we complement each other.

Today we potted up home grown tomato and basil plants some of which are going outside. We are already eating huge amounts of our own lettuces. Tomorrow we will pot up our bell peppers but we’ll need a trip to the Garden Centre first. Thank goodness it’s open. Thought I’d include this delightful photo from the front of The Times this morning. It was taken by a teacher who was in her garden participating in a Zoom conference call with colleagues. As she held her smartphone, a robing came to say, Hello. Don’t you just love robins? There are so many around this year.

Saturday, 16th May, 2020

Officially, we should be into our 3rd week in a villa in Tenerife. Of course, we’re not. We’re sitting at home in West Sussex wondering if we’ll ever travel again. It is looking more and more as if this year is over which is rather a depressing thought. It wasn’t helped by an photo sent from Sifnos this morning.

They are going entering an early heatwave of 40C/104F but without the benefit of tourists. That is hot although were in Athens one year to buy floor tiles for our house when we experienced 43C/109.F. I could barely walk. Greece has just confirmed a continued ban on passenger flights to and from Italy, the United Kingdom, Spain and the Netherlands. We are supposed to flying to Athens in late August and have been really looking forward to the newly refurbished Omonia Square.

Omonoia Square – Πλατεία Ομονοίας, Plateía Omonoías, –  Concord Square is one of the oldest squares in the city of Athens. It is located at the centre of the city at the intersection of six main streets: Panepistimiou, Stadiou, Athinas, Peiraios, Agiou Konstantinou Street and 3rd Septemvriou Street. If we can’t go in August, we have already decided that we will try to go October/November. We’ve only been once before in Winter which was after we had sold and were repatriating a large amount of money from an Athens bank. Nervous but successful times.

Sunday, 3rd May, 2020

Feels quite chilly at 6.30 am at it was just 9C/48F. The contrast between the micro and the macro level of my world experience is immense. From reading, analysing and railing against Trumpian America, social Europe and the eugenics of Tory Britain to sourcing our own PPE and tending lettuces in the back garden. All of this flashes across my mind over Breakfast.

I’ve rejected the idea of injecting myself with bleach. I hate injections. From Day-1 of the lock down, I have been advocating the use of facemasks for personal and social protection and always thought that this disgraceful government manipulated ‘expert’ advice for their own purposes. Having not followed up the pandemic planning and committed cash to stockpile enough PPE for the future, they had to dissuade the public from buying up stocks of PPE and so depleting that available for the NHS.

In just the same way, Staying at home, closing schools and social distancing has been the mantra until someone who wanted/needed to get the economy going again suddenly ‘discovered’ that social distancing is perhaps not so important, children do not suffer from or transmit the virus to others and staying at home is just as dangerous to mental health and well being so the economy can get going again as long as we all carry a Government led tracker on our phones. No!

Many of you will remember that mad man, Keith Joseph, who was Education Secretary under Thatcher-the-milk-Snatcher between 1981 – 1986. When the Tories wanted to cut the Education budget and employ less teachers, Keith Joseph, who declared his Conservatism was founded in Christian Democracy and who was educated at Harrow public school where classes were so small they could happily self-isolate, argued that it was a well known fact that children learnt much better in very large classes. He was neither Christian nor democratic in that regard but his disingenuousness is reflected in the latest pandemic policies of his Tory successors as they clapped in the Commons at defeating the nurses pay claim and then clapped on the street to show their appreciation for the nurses ‘cheap’ commitment to saving lives.

Back on the ground, in spite of chilly weather, the lettuce leaves are growing quite rapidly. I have chosen cut-&-come-again leaves which incorporate soft green leaves, Ruby, Oak-leaved variety, Rocket, Frieze and Mizuna. When this is combined with basil leaves and dressed with olive oil, lemon juice, crushed garlic, salt and pepper, it is absolutely delicious. I will successionally sow them and hope they take us through the Summer or until we go away – whichever comes first.

Monday, 4th May, 2020

Lovely day in which we did very little. We prepared all our documents for our latest insurance claim. It involved scanning in documents, highlighting relevant areas, turning them into PDF files and preparing them for uploading. Actually, it’s a quite a long winded process but, when you consider it’s worth around £5,000.00/€5,720.00, then the couple of hours is well worth it.

When the whole process has been completed, there is a great sense of satisfaction that comes from untangling a mess of loose leads and we can relax. Actually, it gives one a real sense of the strength of one’s claim. Of course, we didn’t relax. We went out for a 90 mins walk in the woodland path around our development. The birds were at full hue and cry in their search for mates and defence of territory. Back home, Pauline griddled the most wonderful Tuna Steaks in the garden which we ate with salad. Life felt good.

I’ve been following the unfolding story of a German couple who have been stranded on the Peloponnese in their campervan since the Greek lock-down. Each year they spend six months touring Greece before returning to Germany. They are stuck and they say they know of at least six other couples in the same position but with properties in the country.

It is six years since we left Sifnos. We would set off for our drive across Europe at the end of March and return at the beginning of October. We crossed the borders of Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy and, finally, Greece.

The current situation would have ensured that our house stood empty and unmaintained for at least a year. We would have been extremely frustrated. One can only imagine what those stranded in a campervan are feeling.

Tuesday, 5th May, 2020

Gorgeous pink-purple sky last night and a beautiful day with blue sky opening up this morning. I’m really getting in to this new shopping mode. It is really easy for me. I drive to the chosen supermarket and Pauline goes shopping. I use the spare time to get some exercise. On Tuesdays, it is Sainsbury’s which has a football pitch size, underground carpark. Last week it was raining so I walked round the perimeter in the dry. This week it is warm and sunny so I’ve ventured outside and across the shopping park development, past Pets at Home and Halfords, on past the extensive Dunelm to the leafy path towards Rustington.

Things are definitely changing. The store opened at 8.00 am and we arrived 10 mins after. Pauline was able to walk straight in and almost had the store to herself. There was nothing she couldn’t get apart. Of course, the wet fish counter has gone. Wonder if it will ever come back? Anyway, we have found such a brilliant supplier that we probably won’t need it. The roads were very busy. People round here are certainly anticipating change. To be blunt we haven’t really let it cramp our style with the exception of travel.

Interesting thread on social media from ex-pupils and ex-(young)-colleagues. Pupils have been asking after our welfare which is nice but the staff who were young when we left but are now in middle age are throwing copious amounts of cold water on the idea of going back or sending their children back to school safely. Anybody who has any experience of education management will know immediately that it is impossible to get children to socially distance. It would be like herding cats. Corridors, old classrooms

Wednesday, 6th May, 2020

Up late today at 6.50 am on a beautiful, sunny morning with clear skies. After breakfast, we were straight down to the Office to officially file our insurance policy claim for our May Tenerife Holiday. The claim comes to around £5,000.00/€5,720 so is not insubstantial but we are confident of getting it all repaid. It may take about four weeks but it will come. The £700.00/€800.00 for the easyJet flights will also come but it will probably be 6 months in the wait. We uploaded all our documentary evidence and then felt satisfied that the nagging injustice had been, temporarily, removed.

We went on to do gardening in the sunshine. Pauline trimmed the hedges until she was shaking with the stress of the hedging tool. I mowed the lawns and all the street-side edging strips.

After lunch of homemade soup, we went to the eye clinic for my Diabetic Retinopathy check up. It was very different from any other I had ever been to. I was the only client present. The clinician came to greet me at the door of the building completely suited in PPE. I was taken up alone while Pauline waited in the carpark. My pupils were dilated with drops and then my eyeballs were photographed. In a couple of weeks, I will hear of the results.

We drove back via the seaside where there were crowds of people walking along the coastal path along with dogs and cyclists, skateboarders and joggers. Nobody seemed to be bothered about spacing or health aspects. All seemed intent on socialising rather than isolating. Do they know the dangers?

Back home, we griddled swordfish steaks – the best we have ever eaten – with home grown salad. The meal was quite delightful. We have completed our exercise targets for 50/56 days of Lock Down which we think demonstrates good self-discipline. Most people agree that we won’t be going back to the Health Club any time soon so walking the local area will continue.

Thursday, 7th May, 2020

Up at 6.00 am and out by 6.45 am to Tesco on a glorious, warm and sunny morning. We have accidentally fallen in to a pattern of Pauline shopping while I exercise. Tesco opens at 8.00 am so, when we arrived an hour early, Pauline was 3rd in the queue. I left her reading her phone and set off to walk to our Health Club. The day was delightful and the bird song was wonderful as I walked. It took me about 30 mins.

After a walk round the Health Club car park to take some pictures and then a walk back, Pauline had been in the store shopping for about 10 mins.

By this stage, the double-backed queue stretched to infinity and was constantly growing. Before joining the shopping queue, there was a queue to get a shopping trolley. It really does pay to go early not least because, for all their efforts, supermarkets are fairly slow to re-stock the shelves so being first means a wider choice.

Back home before 9.00 am, we have a lovely, sunny day in the back garden to enjoy. Pauline is out there now using her new skipping rope which she hasn’t done for at least 40 years and she’s breathing quite heavily. This skipping rope has digital handles which allow her to input her weight, set the time and it will out put her total ‘skips’ and ‘calories burned’. If she doesn’t collapse completely, she will continue with her bread dough which is rising outside in the warm sunshine. I’ve been marinating (garlic, dill, salt, pepper and olive oil) boneless chicken thighs for griddling out in the garden this afternoon.

Friday, 8th May, 2020

Wonderful day of long, hot, sunny hours. We were up early before 7.00 am. After a liquid Breakfast, I set the sprinkler system up to water the back lawn because it has been so dry. We don’t have any sign of rain in the next couple of weeks so the grass must be supported.

The media was dominated by VE Day. Victory in Europe Day celebrates the Allied Forces defeat of Nazi Germany’s armed forces, marking the end of World War II in Europe. Who could not wish to celebrate that? Well I have a serious problem with the way it is presented. The British Nationalists like to have us believe that Brits won it unaided. Actually, it wouldn’t have happened at all without the allies which included – apart from U.S. – Poland, France, Yugoslavia, Greece, Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, Czechoslovakia, Luxembourg plus lots of non-European countries. UK has always belonged to and needed Europe to support it.

Currently, it is not possible to be objective about these ‘celebrations’. Is it right to be celebrating the defeat of a fellow European friend? Our next door neighbour is German. We don’t mention the war. We are going to need a strong relationship with Germany in the future. As we went on our neighbourhood walk today, slightly less than a quarter of the houses were advertising their Nationalism. There is a paradigm shift of ideas which integrates base Nationalism, Brextremism, Boris-worship and Tory policy on Covid-19 control. It is a bit like National Front made (marginally) respectable.

A Tweet from this morning rather succinctly summarised my view:

Don’t wave your Union Jack in my face. A lot of us, each in our own ways, fight against the nationalism, racism and xenophobia that gave birth to Nazism everyday of our lives. That’s why we opposed and oppose #Brexit. #VEDay2020

Boris Johnson, under pressure from Keir Starmer at PMQs, hinted blunderingly that the Lock-Down would be lifted at the end of the week. It was another sign of his inability to control the situation. So many people have taken it as a hint that they can go where and when they want. The roads around here are roaring with a back-to-normal traffic flow. Barbecues are being fired up for ‘Patriotic’ street parties. The Tories are going to find it hard to hold on to the public’s coat tails for another month.

Saturday, 9th May, 2020

If there can be a better day than today, please let me see it. Up at 7.00 to 16C/61F with lovely sunshine. After Breakfast, we drove down to the beach for a walk. It was still fairly quiet although the roads were quite busy.

The tide was out and the sand was empty. We walked for miles in the sunshine with the soothing sound of the waves gently lapping the shore. It was idyllic! There is something timeless and eternal about the sea that strikes to the heart of humankind.

After driving back home, I used my electric rake to rake thatch out of the back lawn. It looked wonderfully healthy with its green/blue iridescence after I had finished striping it. I then watered the front lawn and the roadside verge for a couple of hours with my automatic sprayer as we went out for a walk. Back home, our lunch out in the heat of the garden was green lettuce leaves, sweet cherry tomato halves and smoked salmon with a few prawns. Absolutely joyous!

I turned my attention to the seedlings/plants. The seedpod I grew into a tree is now over 5ft tall. It is champing at the bit to be planted out but is unaware that cooler nights are on the way. I am determined to plant it out in June and let it enjoy a few months of Sussex sky before the winter cool brings an end to its life. It would be lovely to see it flower crimson red before then but we can only hold our breath.

As it is, today has been wonderful. I feel so fortunate to be alive and enjoying this time with my lovely wife. What more can any man want or expect?

Sunday, 26th April, 2020

As we march through mid-Summer in late April, the wonderful days keep coming. Hot, sunny with blue skies and no rain. Actually, we are forecast to have another lovely day tomorrow and then some rain on Tuesday which the lawns will be pleased to receive. Last week, I cleaned the car, mowed the lawns, potted up the seedlings, tidied the garage and vacuumed the house. Today, I am reduced to tidying the Office while Pauline is making bread, soup, sage & onion stuffing to accompany the roast chicken and so much more.

Before we go out for a long walk in the sunshine, I need to explore a replacement for Pauline’s smartwatch the second of which has failed just after the year’s warranty is up – exactly as the first did. It is a Garmin_Vivofit4 which she likes because it is slim, light and waterproof for swimming. Unfortunately, it is also short-lived. It cost £50.00/€57.15 each time. To replace it now would cost £70.00/€80.00. Effectively renting a watch for that price each year seems daft so we are looking for a better alternative. I have a Garmin which is great and has now done 3 years but is too un-ladylike for Pauline. Garmin software is really pleasing to use so I need to find another Garmin if I can.

We set off for our walk at mid day. In lovely sunshine, we walked down in to the village, down the 19th century, raised pavement. The walk takes about 10 mins from our house.

Everywhere looked and sounded delightful. The skies were more blue; the birdsong was more audible; the gardens were more colourful and cared for; the roads were almost empty. We have to savour all the benefits of this time while hoping that it ends and doesn’t return.

There are some plants and herbaceous bushes that do particularly well down here in the warmth and additional sunshine of the south coast. Blue is quite a rare colour to find in plants and the Ceanothus provides it in profusion. It does so well here. This example was flowering strongly on the outside of a garden that we passed on our walk today. “Ceonothus” comes from a Greek word meaning “spiny plant” – keanōthos – although the genus is native to North America.

Monday, 27th April, 2020

Today is the 12th anniversary of the death of my Mother. She was born in 1923 and would have been 97 this August. She died at the end of April 2008. Her maiden name was Coghlan.

Her father was James Joseph Jeremiah Coghlan and there are no prizes for guessing his Irish, Catholic origins. The surname Coghlan was first found in Munster in the Middle Ages and its origin appears to be in the Gaelic metonymic for a Priest or Monk as Cochlan, Cochal – a hooded cloak, a Cowl-wearer. Members of the Coghlan family were, unsurprisingly, Catholic clergy. Grandad Coghlan was born in Brighton – just down the road from where I now live – in to absolute poverty but he was an industrious man who trained as a French Polisher, was a natural salesman (of furniture) and taught himself about both the value and restoration of antiques.

He bought and sold many houses in his time and moved from his birth in a shanty shack in Brighton where he dived from the pier for pennies thrown over the side and ran behind the roast beef cart for a bread and dripping treat in the street to a life of relative affluence in the then leafy streets of bourgeoise Croydon.

I know Mum’s Irish origins were something of an embarrassment to her. We easily forget the way English society viewed Irish immigrants right up to the 1960s. Here the apocryphal signs are said to have appeared in the windows of properties for rent. Even if this is shown to be more myth than fact, it does illustrate the way in which all waves of immigration – Jews, Irish, Caribbean, post Colonial Indian sub-continent, were first received with huge suspicion until being accepted and subsumed. However, I know that Mum found some social rejection in her Convent school and Training College leading to the need to assert her status by overstating it. It led to a mild snobbery that many of us inherited.

I go back to her graveside every year to pay my respects. I feature her every year in my Blog to maintain the memory. I like to post a photograph from my collection but, this year, I have no new ones and I am grateful to Jane for the above. Jane tells me that Mum vividly remembers the bear she is holding being torn from her grasp and sent to be incinerated because it could be carrying disease. One of the stories from her past that Mum recounted and which clearly left a huge impression on her was contracting Tuberculosis at a very young age. If I remember rightly, she was confined in a sanitorium for the best part of a year. At the time, no one knew that tuberculosis spread through the air via microscopic droplets and that sneezing or coughing transported a bacterium capable of attacking the lungs of those who inhaled it. (Does that remind you of anything?)

One of the ‘cures’ was considered to be fresh air and Mum told of spending days and nights on her bed outside on the balcony as in the picture above. Whether she was exaggerating or not, she told of bats hanging from the rails at the foot of her bed at night time. What ever, she survived the experience and never showed any signs of the effects in her future health.

Tuesday, 28th April, 2020

We woke to the expected rain. It was beautiful, refreshing and welcome. We were going to Sainsbury’s superstore which has a huge, underground carpark with stairs/escalator up to the store which incorporates Specsavers, Lloyds Chemists, Timpsons, EE Mobile phone shop and Argos. We only needed a specific list of items so Pauline decided she would do it all herself. I was her driver and as then instructed to walk briskly around the carpark so I could do a proportion of my daily exercise in the dry.

We definitely fit in to the group known as Worried Well. We try not to focus on illness but we do concentrate on fitness and wellness. We exercise every day. We monitor our weight. We test our blood pressure regularly. I test my INR every week. I have regular Type 2 Diabetes checks which I always attend and always take any medication prescribed.

At the age of 69, we are moving towards the most susceptible group in terms of the virus pandemic. We have been taking that reasonably seriously without allowing it to dominate our lives. We go out to shop when we want. We go out to exercise when we want. We bought a stock of face masks which we wear. We bought a huge stock of surgical gloves which we wear. the two main, measurable indicators of covid-19 are raised temperature and reduced oxygen saturation. We bought an up to date digital thermometer and, yesterday, we ordered a fingertip oximeter. It arrived today and we tested our oxygen levels. They were perfect.

We went out for our walk and were amazed to find how much fresher the countryside looked after the morning’s rain. Vibrant, green, growing explosively and totally oblivious to the world’s sickness. Everywhere was glorious and quiet apart from the wonderful accompaniment of birdsong.

Wednesday, 29th April, 2020

A pleasant and bright start to the day for lots of reasons. We were up at 6.00 am and the sky was bright although it looked as if it had rained over night. This morning, the Nat.West Black Account Insurance phone lines open at 8.00 am and we intend to be their first customer. This morning, we should have been loading our suitcases into a taxi and setting off for Gatwick Airport. We were going to the Gatwick Sofitel Hotel today (They have already refunded our payment of £140.00/€160.30.) and then flying early morning on Easyjet to Tenerife South–Reina Sofía Airport and then on to our villa for the month of May.

We booked and paid for the whole thing long before the pandemic was observed. The flights cost £640.00/€733.00 and although Easyjet had cancelled them some time ago, they make it incredibly difficult to seek a refund. They try to force their customers through a credit/voucher scheme rather than fulfil their legal obligations. It isn’t possible to get anywhere on the phone. The website sends one round in a spiral of despair in the search for anything other than what they want to concede. Fortunately, after hours of searching, I found and saved the link to Refund Request Form and put in our claim. We don’t have the cash in our Bank Account yet but we are confident of receiving it and we have our Insurance Policy + Mastercard to underwrite that.

HomeAway are a different case entirely. A lot depends on the individual property owner although initial deposits are held centrally. We were able to cancel our month in Tenerife in November after only having paid the deposit of £1,800.00/€2,060.00 which was immediately returned to us by the company. However, our May villa has gone long past the cancellation stage and we have paid £4,300.00/€4,917.00 and the owner has a ‘No refunds’ policy published. This morning, Pauline had the patience to sit at the phone for about 40 mins before getting through to our Black Account advisor who was completely reassuring of paying out our claim and guiding us through the claim process. Very satisfying! We will resolve that in the next couple of days.

I reported having bought and despatched a pack of dried yeast sachets to Mandy, Pauline’s niece, so she could make pizzas.She turned it into a competion for her family of husband and three sons.

Mandy sent us the results last night and they look almost edible. The girl is James, by the way.

Thursday, 30th April, 2020

We are exercising every day but eating and drinking too much. We are putting on weight so tomorrow, the first day of a new month, has been chosen to become more strict on ourselves. Out goes alcohol again and food intake will be more rigorously controlled. We have to do it! Pauline decided to finish on a high by making a cake.

She never makes cakes and we never eat cakes …. but today we will. Tomorrow we will address the problem.

When we ordered fish the other day, they couldn’t source fresh swordfish only tuna which has proved to be absolutely wonderful. Today, we received a phone call to tell us a 2.5 kg joint of fresh swordfish would be delivered this morning.

The quality is wonderful. The weight is 2.5 kg and the price is £49.90/€57.50. It produced nine, large steaks. Griddled with salad, it will be wonderful. It is lovely to know that we have a long term stockist for wet fish.

We still managed to go out for our walk – about 70 mins today. The local area is looking lovely.

There is a committed and enthusiastic group of retirees who form the Angmering in Bloom team. They work hard and produce simple but effective views. It certainly makes walking round the village enjoyable.

Friday, 1st May, 2020

The first day of May, 2020 should have seen us waking up for our first morning of 28 in the sunshine of our southern Tenerife villa and leaping into the pool for a swim before breakfast. Instead, we were up at 6.00 am and out before 7.00 am on a bright morning but chilled by stiff breeze as we set off for the Tesco Superstore.

Today, we decided that Pauline would go in clad in surgical mask and gloves while I walked round and round the huge carpark like some demented hamster. As I did so, the queue to enter the shop steadily grew until, by the time it opened, it was more than 100 strong and it only inched its way into the store on a one-in-one-out basis. The carpark perimeter walk was almost exactly 1,000 paces and I was half way round my 10th lap as Pauline re-emerged.

After our short drive home, I found that I had received an invoice from the villa owner in Tenerife which itemised a sum of money he had sent back to me, a sum of money which the HomeAway company was sending to me and the precise amounts which the insurance company will pay back to me. For the first time, I am completely confident that I will get all the outlay back. The only thing I expect to have to wait for is the Easyjet refund. This is rumoured to be something between 4 – 6 months potentially. If Easyjet go under because of the massively reduced demand for air travel, we will go back to our insurers and claim from them. At least we are in the extremely fortunate position of not being desperate for the cash even if we are desperate to get it back.

Nil Desperandum! In a sunny back garden this afternoon, we griddled steaks from the newly delivered swordfish and the quality was unrivalled. Sometimes, it is important to focus on what one has rather than what one hasn’t. Somebody has just told me it’s Friday. Friday night used to be Chinese takeaway night. Haven’t had one for well over a decade and I wouldn’t go back to all that monosodium glutamate but I can recall the pleasure of the experience.

Saturday, 2nd May, 2020

Beautiful day of sunshine, blue sky and gentle warmth but enough of that. I must tell you about my balls.

Yesterday we started a month – maybe two … three of dietary restrictions. No alcohol and less food basically. Currently, it wouldn’t be easy to do more physical exercise so it is calories in that we need to reduce. However, there will always be times when we crash and crave so Pauline makes High Energy Balls to be kept in the fridge for just those moments.

They consist of Dates, Dried Apricots, Dried Apples, Sultanas, Almonds, Rolled Oats, Lemon Zest, Vanilla , Cinnamon and Honey. The whole mixture is roughly chopped, formed in to balls and wrapped in Desiccated Coconut and then left to chill in the fridge. Of course, we have to be careful about our trips to the fridge because the whole thing could be counterproductive but we treat it as emergency rations and exercise self-control.

A gardening day today in this beautiful weather. The tree which I grew from a seed pod gathered in Tenerife two years ago is venturing out into the fresh air and sunshine for the first time in its life. We are preparing it to be planted out to enjoy its summer before the Autumn chill ends its life. It is a native of Africa after all.

It has been quite fun looking after it for all this time but we knew it wouldn’t sustain once it grew too big for the kitchen. It will be planted out in the next couple of weeks and will then fend for itself.

Sunday, 19th April, 2020

Gorgeous, hot and sunny day – 22C/70F – and delicious. The seedlings in our conservatory windows – basil, tomatoes, peppers, salad leaves, etc., are growing apace. This morning, I’ve been pressure washing all the large, clay pots from last year in readiness for potting everything up. We have managed to recycle the geraniums from last year. The Winter was so mild that they were screaming, “Save me! Save me!” even before the lock-down. Now, it is a necessity.

Soon I will be potting up cherry tomato and bell pepper plants because we expect the main part of our summer to be spent at home which will be an unusual chance to see them through to fruition.

We planted out fig twigs which were single strand and less than 24″/60cm behind the garage in a warm and sheltered spot. Three years later, they are vigorous, multi-branched bushes at a height of 100″/250cm and already presenting lots of fruit for the coming summer. We know from last year that the fruit is extremely sweet and has a wonderful flavour.

Monday, 20th April, 2020

For years we have been paying plenty of cash each month for a private account with our bank. Banking has never been ‘free’. The reason we have been prepared to do it has been for the individual service and extra but peripheral benefits. From ‘free’ overdrafts to Airport Lounge Membership and Mobile Phone Insurance, we generally thought it worth the price on balance.

We have always used their Travel Insurance but never had to claim. It has been important to our confidence particularly when we were away in Greece for 180 days at a time.

Suddenly, never has this service been more important. Consulting the website, the travel Advice is absolutely wonderful. It all is predicated on bookings made before March 18th and on FCO advising against all but essential travel within 28 days of travelling. If those conditions are fulfilled, we can claim a full refund. We booked every element of our times away this year before March 18th so we are going to claim every euro back and reassess when travel becomes comfortable.

We are still holding out the hope that we can fly to Athens in late August and go to our favourite hotel. Our commitment there is around £2,000.00/€2,900.00 but our insurers say we can leave that right up until the day of travel and beyond. NatWest assure us that there is no time limit to register your claim. I’ve always spoken highly of them!

Tuesday, 21st April, 2020

Glorious, glorious day which started at 6.00 am. We were out at 7.00 to Sainsburys and, having secured skimmed milk, fresh sweetcorn and fish loins – haddock & cod plus a couple of tuna steaks, we were home long before 8.00 am. We eat tuna and swordfish steaks griddled outside in the garden at least twice a week. Our fish monger on the beach has been closed for 3 weeks and we have run out of supplies. Although we have managed to buy some tiny, pre-packaged steaks today, I have made a real breakthrough. A local supplier of wet fish to hotels and restaurants appeared to be still trading

Speculatively, I emailed them and asked if the current crisis had led to a change of business model and if they would now be delivering to home customers. I was contacted by return and offered ‘free delivery’ to our house of 3 kg joint of fresh yellow fin tuna at a cost of £59.25/€67.50 and a 3 kg joint of fresh swordfish at a cost of £74.85/€85.25. It will be delivered, packed in ice, on Friday morning. Joy of joys!

The Business Insider website reports that

The coronavirus pandemic has hit the Greek tourism sector hard with 65% of hoteliers saying they could face bankruptcy.

The Hellenic Chamber of Hotels found that 65% of Greek hoteliers said that bankruptcy of their business is either “likely” or “most likely.” They said, “We obviously believe it’s a year that, touristically, will be lost.” The really big question for me is, Will it all come back and will it be in the numbers of the past? I have a feeling that this experience will change people’s view of travelling and that could seriously impact tourism for years to come.

Wednesday, 22nd April, 2020

Another wonderful day of hot sunshine and 24C/75F, we stayed at home doing jobs. I have been doing some gardening including weed killing lawns. Pauline has been hedge trimming. I’ve also cleaned the car. All these exciting jobs I was longing to do. This wonderful weather is set to continue for a while yet. I’ve given the lawns a long and sustained watering today because there is no rain in sight for the near future down here. In Greece, by contrast, the press is reporting April weather of Snow and rainfalls, powerful wind and Saharan dust.

Any of those keen to get travelling again soon, sources in our government are suggesting that lockdown for older people may have to continue until the new year. Certainly, the E.U. is saying that air travel will be governed by social distancing both in airports and on airplanes with the middle seats being kept free although it is hard to see how much good that will do.

Thursday, 23rd April, 2020

Mid-Summer continues in mid-April. Today was wall-to-wall sunshine with temperatures peaking at 24C/75F. We were up at 6.00 am to go shopping at Tesco. Home by 8.30 am via Asda with shopping to get us through until the middle of next week. We do this on Thursday and Tuesday, Tesco & Sainsbury. We are scrupulous in our hygiene. We arrive early and are either first or in the first few. We wear masks and gloves. We use our phones to scan and pay for our goods. We clean everything minutely as we finish.

We are good at hunter-gatherer techniques. Our neighbours needed flour. We sourced and bought flour for them. Pauline’s sister wanted flower seeds to try out through the summer. We found them and sent them to her in the post. Pauline’s niece said she couldn’t get yeast to make a pizza. We sourced dried yeast in Tesco today and put it in the post to her immediately. It all adds to the fun.

When we got home, I cut the lawns. I cut the grass verges throughout our road. I fed and watered after that. They are looking pleasingly healthy after such a difficult winter. Shiny, green and striped. Even the die-back has been filled in with healthy grass.

The big moment of the day was the delivery of a spray bar fitment for my watering can. Unlike the normal rose attachment, this provides a bar with small perforations which make weed filler application simple and economical. It arrived by post today and, tomorrow, I will be able to weed treat the grass verges up and down my road.

Friday, 24th April, 2020

I shall miss these wonderful days when they end. The sunshine I mean not the lock down. I cannot imagine what it would be like to spend it in a flat without a garden or just to spend it on one’s own. Pauline and I motivate each other during the day from springing out of bed shortly after 6.00 am to turning out the lights shortly before midnight. This morning we couldn’t go out because we were expecting a delivery. A large joint of Tuna and of Swordfish from a local supplier.

When the van arrived and dropped off a 2.6 kg joint of Tuna packed in ice, we were told that they couldn’t source the swordfish this week but would try again next. The price of the fish came to £49.27/€56.30 which we were able to phone through on Mastercard so the whole process was easy. Lovely people and lovely service!

While we were waiting, Pauline was making a batch of vegetable soup and I was downloading the travel insurance claim form and collecting up the necessary evidence to retrieve all the cash for our May holiday. Each morning I take the covers off the garden furniture but, in spite of the glorious sunshine, we hardly allow ourselves much time to relax and enjoy it. Relaxing is for old people. We have to keep motivated and active and, at 11.30 am, we walked down to the village – about 25 mins – to collect Pauline’s prescription. The queue outside was only 5 people and it only took 10 mins to start walking home. This is the new normal.

Back home, we had a bowl of home made soup and then potted up some seedlings of cherry tomatoes, bell peppers, and basil. Out for a walk around the area for about an hour and then home to griddle fresh tuna steaks in the garden and to eat them with salad. Absolutely wonderful. Apparently it’s Friday today. Haven’t had that feeling since March, 2009.

Saturday, 25th April, 2020

Shock as the morning opened overcast. Shock over as the sun broke through by 7.30 am and the day got going. We have decided to stay at home today and leave our exercise target unfulfilled for the first time in three weeks.

Staying at home allowed me to have my haircut. This is a tried and tested routine which has been going on for over 40 years. Pauline is brilliant at it and, even more importantly, cheap. I don’t have any pretensions about my appearance. If you could see me, nor would you. Just after finishing my haircut, the door bell rang and our neighbour across the road appeared with a bag of scones which she placed on the hedge.

I’m embarrassed to tell you that we ate them immediately. We have so little self control.

We sat in the sun for an hour or so and then I vacuumed the house while Pauline steam cleaned the hard floors downstairs. Our meal on this sunny and warm day will be cold. Smoked salmon, cold, roast salmon tails with pesto topping and tail-on-prawns accompanied by homemade hummus and salad. These are pinpricks of light in our darkness.

Sunday, 12th April, 2020

There was a beautiful sunset last night and I told Pauline to come out to the front of the house to look. She was reluctant but obedient and was rewarded with a little present and card left at the front door for us by our next door neighbours. Two crème eggs and a card had an amazing effect of raising our spirits. It is the first chocolate we’ve eaten since Christmas and was incredibly sickly. We won’t eat chocolate again for a few months.

After the political programmes this morning, we set off for our walk in glorious sunshine. I have never seen so many fat dogs being forced to go on walks or stroppy kids being forced to go on family bike rides, or reluctant parents being forced to take their kids out to get fresh air and exercise an we are really getting to know our local area as we explore on foot what we normally passed in the car.

We have no religion. We abhor religion. Even tradition is something to be wary of. However, years of Greek Easter have accustomed us to eat lamb and we just couldn’t miss it this year. Interestingly, we could only get New Zealand lamb legs in Tesco. Where is all the Welsh lamb going? We don’t eat bread and cakes but Pauline loves making them. Today she indulged herself and made a batch of wonderful, hot-cross-buns. She bagged them up and I delivered them to our neighbours. On each door I rang the bell, put the bags of buns on the step and walked away. What a strange world!

Monday, 13th April, 2020

I really do not read or watch fiction. The main caveat to that over the years has been reading fiction written at a particular time in history to inform other research into that period. I genuinely struggle to escape from reality and to suspend my scepticism. The circumstances surrounding this pandemic have changed many people’s view of many things. I have managed to reconnect with music although I am still having to force myself to remember that. The lack of sport on television has created quite a vacuum and, yesterday, I even found myself tensely watching a replay of the Cricket World Cup last year. I knew the result. Everyone did but I still found myself getting nervous in that final over.

However, political reporting, exposition and analysis are so dominated by Covid-19, we have had to resort to looking for FILMS and DRAMAS to fill the gaps and relieve the tension. Quite by chance, I found a series that was first shown in 2014 while we were in Greece but is available for download. Many of you will probably know of it already.

The Missing – series 1 involves the snatching of a young child from the father’s care while on holiday in France with his wife. It has echoes of the Madeleine McCann saga. It featured James Nesbitt, who I knew of, and an interesting man called Tchéky Karyo I’ve never heard of. He plays a grizzly but thoughtful, retired French detective called Julien Baptiste. This detective links Series 1 & 2.

The second series is centred around young women imprisoned by lone man for long period rather as we have seen in Belgium and America over recent years. It features David Morrissey and Keeley Hawes both of whom I have already heard.

Elements of these two series – amounting to 16 hours of drama in total, are interesting, thought provoking and the French detective, Baptiste, is an unusually rounded and sympathetic character but, in both storylines, we were both left feeling strangely unconvinced. Having fought to get to grips with the narratives throughout, the denouement in each case was a step too far. This leaves one feeling short changed and questioning why one bothered to invest one’s time in them.

Going out in the real world now for a 90 mins walk. Decidedly chillier this morning. At 1.00 pm, it is sunny but windy and reading only 12C/53F which is almost half yesterday. I’m debating the possibility of shorts and tee shirt or warmer coverup. We Derbyshire men can’t show weakness!

Tuesday, 14th April, 2020

A lovely day of warm sunshine and blue skies. Our neighbour is desperate for self raising flour. This morning, we tried to help her get some by rising early and driving to Asda at 7.00 am for an 8.00 am opening. We were 3rd in the queue which stretched all round the car park and into the next door Garden Centre by the time we got in. They were lucky it was dry and sunny. As soon as we were let in we knew they didn’t have any flour of any sort at all. We bought a few other things on our list and left. As we walked out of the store 20 mins later, we realised that the queue had disappeared completely. Two lessons learned there.

When we got home, I found I had received a voucher from Eurotunnel for £150.00/€173.00 to replace the travel we should have been using this morning. We had booked a hotel for a few days in France. We received the money back for that almost immediately I cancelled but a voucher for Eurotunnel which will be valid for 2 years will definitely equal money in the bank which we’re bound to spend …. if we live.

Our walk today was on the woodland path at the perimeter of our development. It is where the ‘Fat Rabbit’ lives and who could blame it. The path is set in the most idyllic woodland situation.

Back home. I cooked our meal to give Pauline a rest. She was baking bread in the meantime. I cooked strips of roast chicken thigh in tarragon & garlic with green pepper, onion and mushroom. I have to say it was delicious.

Wednesday, 15th April, 2020

Already mid-April. My life is running away in this lunacy. Up at 6.00 am to the most beautiful day. After juice, we drove to Worthing multi-story carpark. We were going to Wilko for garden products. They open at 8.00 am. When we got there, there was a queue of 5 or six people spaced out in a line, basking in the town centre sunshine.

Wherever we go in a social situation, we are dressed in face mask and surgical gloves. It feels weird but necessary. We were in the store in minutes and I was buying lawn weed & feed, plant food and packs of seeds. We are sending some flower seeds to P&C who will be social isolating for the next 5 years at their advanced age. We thought we might give them an interesting project for the summer. We went on to Waitrose to buy things we had been struggling with like fresh corn-on-the-cob.

We drove home slowly but couldn’t resist a walk on the beach. It looked deserted, sharp and beautiful. The air is sweet and the sound of the sea is soothing. At home we have a ritual of disinfecting handles and doorknobs, mobile phones, etc.. We wash our hands in anti-virus gel after unpacking our shopping. The big worry about this routine is how quickly we are feeling it is normal. It is quite ridiculous.

After coffee, I water all our salad seedlings. Tomatoes and Peppers are doing well now. My tree grown for a Canarian seed is now around 5ft tall and really ready to go out but it will have to wait for another month to avoid all risk of frost. We went out for a couple of hours walk in the countryside before coming home for a meal of smoked salmon, smoked mackerel, prawns and salad. Lovely day again.

Thursday, 16th April, 2020

Up at 6.00 am and out at 7.00 am for the short drive to Tesco. Suited and booted in surgical gloves and masks, we lined up behind two others in the lovely sunshine. My task was to go straight down to the Home Baking aisle to get flour. Miraculously, there was flour. The shelf said we were limited to 3 items per customer. I put 3 x 1.5 kg bags of self raining flour in my bag and took 3 x 1.5 kg of strong bread flour to put in Pauline’s bag. I had a list to complete and so did Pauline. We managed most of it and then went, individually, to pay. As supermarkets control purchase proportions and the force couples to shop separately, the increase the number of shoppers and double the amount households will buy.

As soon as we got home, our next door neighbour received 2 bags of self raising flour which she hasn’t been able to get for over a fortnight. She is a keen cakemaker and has been frustrated at not being able to make any since the lockdown. Pauline calculates that she now has enough bread flour to get her through until October. Life in UK is reasonably serene for us although not for the poor, the newly poor and those on the margins of society.

On the margins of economic society, Greece is being hit hard. The I.M.F. forecasts a nightmarish deep recession for Greece in 2020, as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. They expect the Greek economy to shrink by 10% of GDP and unemployment to jump to 22.3%. They are still in lockdown and the staple of their economy, the tourist industry, will remain there for some time to come. Imagine inviting visitors from around the infected world back into your country after you have done your best to keep it infection free.

Of course the coming weekend is Greek Easter and, usually, Greeks leave the cities to go back to islands to celebrate with their families. Not this year. Nobody is allowed to take the risk of delivering infection back to the islands.

While we are basking in the sunshine and we have been for a couple of hour’s walk and I’ve mowed and fed the lawns including those for neighbours all around, Greece was experiencing something less seasonal.

Friday, 17th April, 2020

In bed last night at around 1.00 am, I heard the fairies drumming across our roof in their hobnail boots as torrential rain crossed the south coast. I was immediately reminded of the joy we felt when the same noise, rather amplified, woke us in Greece as the first rains of the Autumn washed our flat, Cycladic roofs. It disappeared as soon as it arrived but left a world freshly washed as we awoke this morning. At 6.00 am, the world was bright, green and renewed.

Unfortunately, it didn’t last. Just as we were going out for our walk at about 11.00 am, it began to rain again. After 10 mins, we decided to give it up as a bad job and go home. We have only missed our targets on 6 days in the past two months so I won’t feel too bad about today.

I have taken advantage of the weather by continuing the progress of claiming money back from firms we have booked with and paid for future travel/accommodation. All those represented above have paid us back with the exception of Eurotunnel who are holding our crossing tickets for a maximum 24 months. We are confident of using them before then. Easyjet were trying to avoid refunds by offering vouchers for future travel but we held fire and today it was announced that they would be paying full refunds. This is good news because we have 4 flights booked with them this year at a cost of £1,300.00/€1,500.00. Initially, we are only reclaiming cancelled flights for May. We are really hoping that Athens at the end of August will go ahead.

Today, the car will remain in the garage and not be taken out until Tuesday. Although we’ve visited plenty of places, I haven’t filled up with fuel for 4 weeks. The price of Unleaded seems to have been reduced by £0.15/€0.17 per litre in that time. I want to buy cheap petrol!

LATE NEWS – By 5.00 pm, the rain stopped; the skies cleared and sun began to shine weakly across the land. We went out and did our walk as quickly as we could. I was shattered by the end of it. Over all, we haven’t done too badly over the past month of ‘lock down’. I have only missed my target on 4 occasions and I’m still averaging 6 miles/ 9.7 kilometres walking each day for a month. I really need these sorts of targets to motivate me.

Saturday, 18th April, 2020

Feels like we are sleep walking through the month of April – busy doing nothing. Well not exactly nothing but certainly not what we expected to be doing. We should have been driving back from a week in France today. Instead, we were re-arranging travel for the month of May in Tenerife. We’ve already been repaid for the month of November but this one is a bit more tricky.

Every day for the past week or so, the travel journalist, Simon Calder, has been addressing the crisis/dilemmas in the travel industry caused by the pandemic. It is broadcast by The Independent newspaper and has proved useful in pursuing our commitments. Until yesterday, the Easyjet website was making it almost impossible to reclaim payments for flights. This position is not a legal one. Their answer, was to make everyone phone and wait for hours to get a refund. Yesterday, Calder found a route through this. I followed that route and claimed my full refund.

Assuming our trip to Athens goes ahead in late August, we have sorted everything out apart from a villa in Tenerife booked for the month of May. The owner is offering us a credit to rebook at any time and that appears to be the best resolution for all concerned. We will check with our insurers on Monday. It is €5,000.00 that we had already spent and which we can use as soon as the ‘lock down’ is opened.

Lovely walk around our village today although the sky was fairly heavy and the atmosphere was rather humid. The backdrop to our walk was a symphony of birdsong punctuated by the drumming of a woodpecker which resonated all along the road. We walked for about 80 mins and came home to slow roast chicken with root vegetables and sage & onion stuffing. Absolutely wonderful! Life, even in lockdown, can be so good.

Sunday, 5th April, 2020

My last day being 68 years old. I am imminently rising 69. It could be worse, of course, but not a lot. As you will notice, I have hardly changed over the years:

Mum loved curly hair and so did all the old ladies in the village who cooed over me. I always wanted straight hair.

I needed a wife so had to improve my appearance temporarily. Not sure about the 1970s pornstar glasses but, otherwise, I’m gorgeous!

Too busy and too fat for photographs for many years. I next felt it was important to record my image soon after I retired aged 59.

At least today has been one of those wonderful and optimistic preparations for the future. Today, in scorching sunshine, we sowed 4 different types of salad greens, cherry tomatoes and sweet peppers. We trimmed up, fed and watered our herb pots to face another summer of harvesting. We are trusting in Nature to see us through. What else is there?

Monday, 6th April, 2020

We are 69. I have received Birthday wishes from many people and most of my thousands of brothers and sisters via text, email, Facebook and a card from my favourite, wrinkly sister, Ruth. She is so old she understands me perfectly.

Ruth, of course, is much older than me but I love her all the same. She seems to have the idea that I like red wine and that I am tempted not to stay at home. Of course, she is absolutely right in both instances. We will go back to our diet and exercise regime tomorrow.

Today we have been sowing two different types of Basil in pots to grow indoors. I do the donkey work and Pauline sows the seeds because she is delicate. Our Bay Tree is flowering in this beautiful sunshine. I’ve never noticed how beautiful these small clusters of primrose yellow flowers are. We have sat outside in the warm sunshine with a bottle of iced Sauvignon Blanc and thought through our future travel strategy for European travel. The only thing about being 69 is that being 70 would/will be worse

Tuesday, 7th April, 2020

Another bitterly wonderful day with hot sunshine – 18C/65F – which drove us to spend so much time outside. First, however, we spent time speaking to Eurotunnel / LeShuttle about a booking coming up. We have accepted vouchers in lieu of cash refund. We could have spent another 3 or 4 hours on the phone arguing about a refund but life is/could be too short. We have cash-equivalent vouchers valid for 24 months. We will certainly be using them within that time so it is money in the bank.

Outside in the sunshine, Pauline trimmed up the hedges while I weeded and fed the roadside grass borders for us and our neighbours. We reseeded an area of the front lawn that had faded and thinned over winter. By the time we had finished, the exercise, fresh air and hot sunshine had tired us out. Pauline had made pea soup for lunch and then we went out for our walk.

Under this gorgeous sky, nature was bursting with optimism in its normally, chaotic way. There was no stopping it We passed a couple of people as we walked and they immediately stepped away to let us pass at a safe distance. We live in the purview of Arun District Council.

I think we win but, embarrassingly, in the conformity stakes. This is not a badge I wear comfortably.

Wednesday, 8th April, 2020

In Covid-19 lock down, people worry about getting supplies of food and other supermarket products but it takes an incident that is not foreseen to really make one think. For example, a couple of days ago, while unstacking the dishwasher, I ‘broke’ it. I’m not subtle in my actions. Something happened when I pulled out the bottom tray/basket and ‘pieces’ fell in to the bottom of the washer. Instinctively, I looked in and then away with horror. Surely I imagined it? Who could manage without a dishwasher?

Fortunately, I have a resident mechanic/electrician/builder/decorator and, after she had finished beating me for being so clumsy, she simply clipped the parts back in and walked away with a grin.

What this did lead to, however, is consideration of all those absolutely essential services one might have problems with and find difficult to have restored under current conditions. A friend of mine lost his Sky reception and believes the LNB has failed. This really does require a ‘little man’ to replace it and set up a new one. Can you imagine being without TV/Radio reception at this time ?

Over the past week, at Boot Up, my Desktop PC has been holding up at this error message. Having suffered a chip overheat and burn out long ago, I was suddenly faced with the prospect again. Pressing F1 does proceed Startup smoothly and, as time has gone on, I have come to believe that this is a BIOS error rather than a physical fan error. Thre is no sign of overheating. I am a computer user not an expert mechanic. Updating the BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) looks fraught with difficulties. Could I cope without a Desktop PC? Probably in the short term but I wouldn’t want to. Where to buy a replacement in extremis? Relief, Curry’s/PC World is still open on-line and delivering to homes. …… and breathe (hopefully).

Thursday, 9th April, 2020

What a wonderful day! It started at 6.00 am for us as we got up and drove to Tesco. We were there for 7.00 am and in for 8.00 am. They had everything we wanted and we were out in just over 30 mins.. By the time we got out, the queue was too long to view the end. The only consolation for all of them was the wonderful sunshine to stand in. We drove home for coffee in the garden where the temperature steadily rose to 24C/75F. It is only 14C/57F on Sifnos today. Know where I’d rather be. We have just been acknowledging that we would be setting off for our house around now in the past but failing to get there. It could have been left unattended for two years. What a waste!

Talking about waste. We didn’t get much post today but we did get this:

Apparently, it cost more than £5 million to print and distribute. You have to ask yourself WHY? It says nothing that hasn’t been repeated ad nauseam across all forms of media. The one thing that stood out for me was this chart below.

I have a Masters Degree in research and, I have to admit to struggling to make sense of this. I think of the kids I taught over the past 40 years who are now parents and ask myself if they would understand the message here. I have to say, I doubt. There again, it may just me being dim.

Friday, 10th April, 2020

Up early on another beautiful morning. It is 20C/68F by 10.00 am. All my seedlings are loving it. I am going to celebrate the weather by raking the main lawn. Gone are the days when I have to use a manual lawn rake. I have a wonderful, electric one nowadays. It is so easy to use that I am encouraged to do it more often than I otherwise would.

Across the media one question dominates and it is when this lockdown will end and when it will be safe to follow normal social movement including travel. The answer will vary across the world and across Europe but what we can be sure of is that this year’s Summer tourist season will not proceed. It is dead. European economies that depend on tourism and small businesses may suffer the most. No country in the eurozone is more dependent on tourism than Greece and it is a nation of small businesses, which typically do not have many resources to weather hard times.

At the start of this year it seemed as if Greece might have turned a corner. After a downturn that lasted longer than America’s Great Depression, its economy was growing again. Market capitalisation at the Athens Stock Exchange rose by 47% in 2019, the sharpest increase in the world. Tourism was booming, consumers were spending and Greek banks were reducing their burden of non-performing loans. Greece’s attempts to recover from its long economic crisis are now being threatened by the coronavirus pandemic, which is expected to deliver a heavy blow to the country’s tourism revenues.

It will be the longer term effect on people’s confidence in flying, in traveling to countries with less well equipped medical facilities, in the virus mutating and resurging in changed form and in the fear of trusting bookings which are suddenly cancelled without recompense that will undercut the tourist industry. Greece needs to diversify rapidly.

Saturday, 11th April, 2020

Gorgeous sunshine. Clear, blue skies. Warm temperatures. Give me lock-down any day if it’s like this. Birds are singing; rabbits running; bees are buzzing and grass is growing. Life goes ahead at pace ….. except, it doesn’t. This is no more evidence than in the world of agriculture/horticulture. In Greece, Kathimerini reports that prices for fruits and vegetables in Greece are up by 200% because of labour shortages for harvesting and packing.

In UK, this is Easter weekend, a religious festival for the few but a gardening ritual for the many. Garden Centres could expect to be super busy. Instead, millions of plants and shrubs will be binned in the coming weeks, with garden centres and nurseries facing financial ruin amid mass closures due to the coronavirus outbreak. The Horticultural Trades Association warned a third of UK producers could go bust imminently.

I would have been an enthusiastic visitor to my local Garden Centres – we have four within a mile of our house. I managed to buy potting soil and Lawn Seed before the lock down. Since, I have found that Wilko’s sell plant food, lawn weed & feed and vegetable seeds with very short queues to get in. It is hard to believe that these little things will develop into 3ft/1 metre high plants that will keep us happy all summer. Nature is fabulous!

Sunday, 29th March, 2020

Woke early with a head full of jobs to do. It is a beautiful day – bright, sunny, blue sky but chilly and breezy. I am feeling energetic having slept well. The routine starts. I am a person of routine. Regular readers will know the routine so I won’t bore you but, I believe, most lives are lived largely in routine. In the currently uncertain times, routine becomes even more important. 

Over a routine breakfast of juice, tea and coffee, I’ve downloaded the newspapers, checked my Twitter feed, checked my Facebook pages and turned to the political programmes of the morning. No guesses for the main content. What caught my eye in my Twitter feed this morning was a tweet from one person I’m following who was having trouble sleeping. A few days ago, I wrote about exactly that and experiencing and remembering an ‘anxiety’ dream which is totally uncharacteristic and certainly not routine for me. This person on Twitter reported dreaming of people breaking in to her house and it was followed by lots of her followers reporting similar experiences. These are unsettling days.

I am so pleased that I am returning to music. There is real comfort in Beethoven’s Symphony No.6. I haven’t played it for years. I associate it with driving home from work over the Pennine moors from Lancashire to Yorkshire on sunny afternoons with the car windows down and the sheep on either side of the road grazing unflinchingly although I was singing along, hopelessly out of tune. I relived that in my West Sussex office today and then followed it by the movingly beautiful, Violin Concerto in D Major.

I wrote yesterday about the crisis that has hit the tourist industry and how it might be longer term than some think. I think it my spell the end of many small suppliers of travel and accommodation across Europe. Today, I continued to contribute to that decline with cancelling/revoking bookings with several hotel chains, airlines and Channel Tunnel crossings. The money is already coming back in and it is amazing how accommodating companies are being but many say the crisis is stretching their capabilities to the limit. Their normal 5-7 days repayment policy is now likely to be weeks. That’s no problem. I just feel bad about having to do it at all.

It is walk time and beautifully sunny but too cold for shorts today. I go upstairs to change. I put long trousers and a jumper on. As I pulled the jumper over my head …. it began to darken and, by the time I had got down stairs, rain was driving across the front of the house. How could that happen? It certainly wasn’t forecast. Just as suddenly, sun breaks through and skies clear. We go out to walk. Just 5 mins later, we are home to escape torrential hail. In Sussex? What is happening? The start of Summer? I blame Brexit!

Monday, 30th March, 2020

Down here the weather is taunting us mercilessly. We were up early and out to Tesco under blue sky and strong sunshine. Nobody else around here seems capable of early rising. We had the supermarket to ourselves and the shelves had been well stocked. The roads look, feel and sound as if the entire population have been wiped off the face of the earth and left it to us and to the natural world. Never seen so many fat rabbits chomping on kerbside grass without a care in the world and without fear of disturbance.

Usually, around here it is just the seagulls who are that bold. They attack passers-by and steal anything that even begins to look edible. Today, they savaged our black bin bag which I put out for collection this morning. We had to sweep up and re-bag after they had scattered fish bones and used serviettes along the pavement. They even scare next door’s cat!

I’ve read a number of people’s recent comments on suddenly becoming aware of bird song in these peaceful times with few humans and even fewer cars around. Of course, it is nesting/breeding time and everybody is singing at the tops of their voices in the tops of the trees. 

It is strange to think that birds have no conception of what is happening to the human world. It has no sense of import or fear. As one population closes down so another expands and feels free to populate the space.

Tuesday, 31st March, 2020

An early start on a clear, sunny and cool morning. Up at 6.00 am and out at 7.00 am. We shop at Tesco twice a week but some things – especially fat-free milk has been removed from the shelves so we fit one Sainsburys in as well. They open at 8.00 am currently. We were there at 7.15 am and 2nd in the queue this morning. The carpark is underground and that is where the queuing starts. Even so, it was cold.

NHS workers are allowed in 30 mins before us at 7.30 am. I’ve always strongly supported the NHS but feel less supportive at this time in the morning. There is a competitive, hunter-gatherer element to this process and seeing people arrive and breeze past me, after I’ve stood in the cold for 30 mins, raises an unreasonable sense of resentment. 

We are extremely lucky. We want for nothing ….. except for SKIMMED MILK and GHERKINS and MEDJOOL DATES!!!! Fortunately, we found them all at Sainsbury’s today. We queued for 45 mins and shopped for about 20 mins. One of the real boons that we bought last time was a box of 100 pairs of latex gloves.

Instead of spending half my time cleaning my hands with sanitiser and wipes, I put on a pair of gloves as I leave home and remove and throw them away as I get in the car to return.

When we got home, I spent the rest of the morning working to get refunds for Easyjet flights to Tenerife that they’ve already announced are cancelled and a Channel Tunnel trip in a couple of weeks time. Actually, we are not particularly bothered about the cash and will happily accept vouchers for future travel because we will certainly make use of them when the coast is clear.

Wednesday, 1st April, 2020

This is the only April Fool’s Day that I have ever known when it was impossible to shock others outside daily reality. One of my ex-pupils wrote yesterday that she was going to wake her kids early this morning and get them dressed in their school uniforms just to shout April Fool at them. In reality, that seems almost normal in the context of the times. If you told someone that they couldn’t go out and live a normal life for months, they would call your bluff. I wish you a happy new month and I wish you survival.

On our walk today, the fat, brown rabbit that we pass on the edge of the wood can hardly be bothered running away any more he/she has become so accustomed to see us walking the perimeter path. The first time we met, fat rabbit shot into the brambles instantly. Today, our footsteps failed to move the rabbit at all as it lay in the long grass munching away. As we came within a few feet, the rabbit slowly stood up and ambled away with utter nonchalance. In these unprecedented times, the natural world is reclaiming its domain.

We walked in the wonderfully strong sunshine. I was in tee shirt and shorts. These are delightful times for vibrant colours to walk in. The exercise is so different compared to our gym workouts. The fresh air is incredibly tiring. When we got home after about an hour and a half’s walk, I was absolutely shattered. I was going to sow some seeds but just couldn’t face it. I elected to read instead.

Just before shops were forced to close and with no clear inkling that they would close, I went to the garden centre and bought grass seed to reseed a bit that had suffered over the winter, lots of bags of soil, Lawn Weed & Feed and a few packets of salad seeds. I wanted to grow some peppers but the new season seeds weren’t in so I thought I’d wait. Little did I know that the next day all non-essential outlets closed down.

I wanted to grow some peppers but the new season seeds weren’t in so I thought I’d wait. Little did I know that the next day all non-essential outlets closed down. Today, I’ve found I can get them delivered by Amazon so normal life can be restored. We’re certainly going to eat a lot of salad this summer.

It’s beginning to look as if this is the first time I won’t need my automatic watering system because I’ll be at home to do it myself. If we survive this pandemic, we’re going to spend years criss crossing the globe while we can!

Thursday, 2nd April, 2020

Up early in a fairly mild morning and out to Tesco. We were there by just after 7.00 am for an 8.00 am opening. By the time the store opened, people were queueing (socially-spaced) round the carpark perimeter. We weren’t. We were second in the queue. It is lucky, however, that the weather has been so benign because queueing outside would certainly hit many of us. 

The shelves were well stocked and we could get what we wanted including skimmed milk which delighted me. The latest innovation was arrows stuck on the floors everywhere illustrating the direction of travel to maintain safe spacing.

Since this crisis started, I’ve been genuinely puzzled why NHS staff have been desperate to obtain face masks but the general population have been told that they are pointless or positively dangerous. Immediately the virus was announced, I ordered facemasks online and received them from China. It took strength of self belief to wear them when we go out near people but we did when few around us followed suit. Today, we are told that this policy is being reviewed in the light of research in other countries which have always found them more culturally acceptable and where the virus appears more contained. It seems essentially sensible to construct a barrier against air-borne-virus spores however imperfect. Received wisdom seems to be catching up with me.

The Greeks have been scrabbling to avoid Covid-19 insinuating itself on to the islands. Today we learnt that 6 refugees on Lesvos have tested positive and, on Mykonos, a 69 year old Greek woman who has not been abroad nor know anyone recently who has been abroad. That is really serious because it means that a secret spreader lives on the island. It means that this is not going to be contained at the moment. It is very hard to see Greek islands open themselves to international tourism safely within the next 4 months. If they manage to keep an island Covid-9 free at the moment, they will have built up no immunity to survive the tourist onslaught.

To add to their problems, snow has fallen heavily in Thessalonika. You can certainly say that Greek Easter is cancelled this year and Greek Summer is likely to go the same way.

Friday, 3rd April, 2020

I know you will find this weird but I check two, financial apps every morning. Actually, I check the £/€ rate a number of times a day. It is a carry over from buying/selling property in Greece. These were crucial times and made a big difference in getting it right. We also check our bank account/credit card statement every morning. Pauline updates her ‘Money Program‘ records. We are always up to date and have been for the past 40 years. This morning, HomeAway had paid our deposit for a property in Tenerife back into our account because we can’t complete the transaction. This is a company who deserve to be recognised for their integrity. We will certainly book with them again as soon as this pandemic is over.

These are difficult times for everyone We went out in mid morning to Worthing town to Wilko’s to purchase some garden products. I managed to get seeds, lawn food and plant food to tide me over. Even here, there was a measured, queueing process but we soon worked through the store and were on our way home. We stopped at the seaside for a few minutes fresh air and a walk. It was delightful and enjoyable.

Back home, we sat in the peaceful sunshine with a glass of wine to celebrate some anniversaries. It is exactly 11 years ago today since we last went to work. On this day in 2009, we drove away from our school for the last time, reached home and felt the extreme anti-climax of retirement. This is what I wrote:

We have retired! Pauline & I left our School at 1.00 pm today after 37 years of loyal service. We cleared our desks and the Office we shared, gave our kettle and fridge away, left our keys in the draw and walked out. It was a very strange experience and soon became totally anticlimactic. We left a couple of years early without loss of pay which suits us fine. Now on with our lives…

Exactly 11 years ago and via Yorkshire and Surrey, almost 4 years ago today, we moved into our new home in Sussex. The kitchen was furnished with old, garden dining furniture which now has disappeared to the junk yard in the sky. It seems so long ago. If we have to be in relative ‘lock down’, we couldn’t ask for a nicer prison.

Saturday, 4th April, 2020

Up early on what is forecast to be a lovely weekend. For us, it is going to be a gardening weekend. Jobs include:

• Final pruning of hydrangeas;
• Tidying and weeding of side beds;
• Cutting the lawns plus feeding them;
• Tidying up and feeding herb pots;
• Opening up the fig trees;
• Sowing salad seeds – various lettuce leaves outside and tomatoes started off inside;
• Cleaning the patio flags.

Of course, we will be still going out for our walk in the sunshine. It is amazing how civil and friendly a pandemic can make strangers. When we walk on narrow village paths, people coming the other way stand back to let us through while keeping a safe distance. Even driving in the car, it is noticeable hat others are far more charitable than normal. Of course, part of it is because the stress of work and time-pressure has been removed.

How times have moved on. Exactly 11 years ago today, we woke up early on our first day of Retirement, went out to buy Euros, put the house to bed and set off for Manchester airport. We had hand luggage only because we were going to our house on Sifnos. We were catching an Olympic Airlines flight which left at 10.30 pm.

Olympic, famously once owned by Onassis and the national carrier of Greece, was a really good service to Athens. Unfortunately, we caught one of its last flights. It ceased trading 6 months later. Actually, this was our last flight to Greece for another 5 years as we drove there and back until we sold our property.

Sunday, 22nd March, 2020

These are (almost) unprecedented times. It is hard to understate the position. The 1918 influenza pandemic was the most severe in recent history. It spread worldwide during 1918-1919. Although it is not certain where the virus originated and it was commonly known as Spanish Flu, it is estimated that about 500 million people or one-third of the world’s population became infected. The number of deaths was estimated to be at least 50 million worldwide. My mother-in-law (b. 1914) and my Dad (b. 1915) lived through it. We hope we have inherited their strength.

It feels as if life is changing swiftly and radically and in a way that we may take a long time to turn back.

It was hard to compute the immediacy of this beautiful day with the ongoing climate of fear as the pandemic takes hold. We walked down to the beach at East Preston in sheer, opulent sunshine, delighting in the moment while holding the future in our heads.

Pauline had slow-cooked the most wonderful garlic chicken with root vegetables and sage & onion stuffing for our meal. After staggering home from a 2 hour walk, it tasted like nectar. We are so lucky and we can’t bear to think that our fortune will be threatened by this virus.

Monday, 23rd March, 2020

What bitter/sweet irony these days are portraying. These are days in which oxymoron is exteriorised. Indoors the radio and television news, the newspapers, websites and social media all scream: Virus, Pandemic, Isolate … Outside, the world purrs: Beauty, Freedom, Blue Sky Purity and Strong, Warm, Health-giving Sunshine. We thank our lucky stars that we are in such a lovely, uncrowded place with such good medical support. We are so lucky not to be in Greece on an island with no hospital and hardly any doctors. We are so lucky to have moved from Surrey in an area dense with people many of whom travel in and out of central London daily.

We were out at Tesco at 6.00 am today. The carpark was fairly quiet. The store was reasonably quiet and everything was available. They actually had milk, sides of fresh salmon, fresh sweet corn, lettuce, tomatoes, oranges, coffee, tea, all the staples of our life. Consequently, there was no panic buying. It felt very normal.

Last Saturday, Pauline went out to have her hair cut and, this morning, she has received a text to say the salon was now closed indefinitely. Today, I thought I would occupy my enforced home stay with some gardening so I went to the garden centre round the corner from my home to buy, seeds, soil, plant food, lawn reviver and broad leaf weed killer. That should keep me busy for a while which s fortunate because we later saw this header on their website. The world is closing down….. Hello World.

Tuesday, 24th March, 2020

The weather outside continues to taunt us. It is glorious outside. Clear, blue sky, strong sunshine, no breeze, warm – only 11C/52F but feels really comfortable in shorts and tee-shirt. Exercise today will include lawn mowing, patio sweeping, garden furniture uncovering and cleaning as well as a long walk in the sunshine.

I am not naturally an especially panicky person so you can imagine that I was absolutely alarmed this morning when I opened the bedroom door. I challenge anyone to be anything otherwise. As I opened the bedroom door I found a strange man sitting on a chair with another standing at his side waiting for me. They had come to take me away. How did they get in to my house?

Through the power of dreams. I was having a dream. I never dream or never remember dreaming. Clearly, I had gone to bed feeling under threat and insecure. These are uncertain times for all of us. Clearly, I have internalised this anxiety and it has sought an outlet and resolution. The dream was so vivid that hours later I could paint the scene that faced me on the other side of the bedroom door. I have surprised even myself.

When I opened my bedroom door in real time, I faced an emergency far more serious and immediate than any pandemic. Every television Sky Q Box in the house bar one had lost its internet connection. What a time to lose our window on the world. I wish I could said it was a dream but no. My first thought was that the mooted drop in web bandwidth that the crisis might engender as more home working was adopted may have been the cause. However, my internet connection still gave me 350 mbs download. 

I rushed around the house reconnecting everything. Thank goodness for the WPS (Wi-Fi Protected Setup) button. Unfortunately, by the time they were all connected to the web, the handsets had lost their settings. It took me 20 mins to realise that. I had to check Google to be reminded how to reset them and, at last I could relax and just panic about the news of the virus pandemic.

Wednesday, 25th March, 2020

The beautiful, pandemic days go on. We opened the conservatory doors to the sunshine and I had my hair cut in the kitchen. My head feels great now. We went out to Littlehampton to buy fresh fish from the fisherman’s shed. The roads were very quiet and we were lulled in to a false sense of security. We called in at Asda en route. People were queuing around the car park at 2m intervals to get in and shop. We drove on. We came so Sainsbury’s and thought we’d try our luck. People were queuing around the car park at 2m intervals to get in and shop. We drove on. 

When we got to the pier at Littlehampton, it was clear that the fisherman was not open. 

Although there was plenty of traffic up and down the water, the blackboard outside the shed announced: Sold Out of Fish. So, all in all, not a very profitable trip other than a delightful walk.

As we drove home, we spotted a Tesco Express which had no admission policy but had a new delivery of bananas and milk which were on our ‘To Find’ list.

Back home, we enjoyed the weather in our back garden, sunbathing, gardening and relaxing. We went out for an hour’s walk in the locality. Later, we griddled chicken in the garden and DRANK WINE. Joy of joys! If I’m going to die, I’m not going to do it abstemiously.

Thursday, 26th March, 2020

You can’t maintain a Blog and ignore a pandemic at the moment. It is at the forefront of most of our minds. As the media constantly updates the number of people infected and the number who have died, as people roam the supermarkets manically hunting for food stuffs, as fellow humans cross the road to avoid those they once spoke to happily, I have been wracking my mind or an echo that has been chiming there. Last night, it suddenly dawned on me. 

In 1975 I was a young teacher working hard during the day and doing a distance learning degree at night. I had little time for television but one thing really gripped me. It was a post-apocalyptic, serial drama created by a man called Terry Nation who was also famous for creating the Daleks in Dr Who and a space drama called Blake’s 7. Fiction does little for me. Science Fiction leaves me cold. I have absolutely no interest at all. Genuine ‘scoping’ of can grip me and one burned into my imagination. 

In 1975, Terry Nation’s drama, Survivors, was broadcast on BBC1. It concerns the plight of a group of people who have survived an apocalyptic plague pandemic, which was accidentally released by a Chinese scientist and quickly spread across the world via air travel. Referred to as “The Death”, the plague kills approximately 4,999 out of every 5,000 human beings on the planet within a matter of weeks of being released. Total anarchy reigned. Small pockets of survivors roamed the streets searching for food and water with no services being run no electricity, no fresh water, etc. Armed vigilantes were the biggest threat, ransacking deserted supermarkets and terrorising others who challenged them. If you thought the current situation was bad, it could all get a great deal worse.

Of course, in a crisis, it’s wonderful to have a wife who can bake. This happens every week in our household and has done for the past 40 years. The smell pervades the whole kitchen and gives a confident, relaxing feeling.

Friday, 27th March, 2020

A beautiful, sun-filled day but cooled by an edgy sea breeze. I have spent a large chunk of the day organising and collecting in payments for travel over the coming year that we are now unlikely to enjoy. Already, the IHG Hotel group has refunded bookings for two weeks in Yorkshire and France. Today, I have been addressing two separate months stays through HomeAway in Tenerife. The first is in May and the second in November. It looks as if May is definitely out of the question. Spain currently has a complete lock-down and the Foreign & Commonwealth Office advises against it. If that advice remains for a couple more weeks, we can cancel with full refund. 

Our November trip can be cancelled with full refund of our deposit at this early stage and that’s what we have done. If the situation clears up by then, we will consider rebooking.  We still have a week in Athens in late August booked. Greece is also in total lockdown currently and we may have to rethink our plans. However, I have not failed to touch Greek soil in any year since 1981 and I will fight hard to keep that link going. It will have to be really serious to make me miss this year.

Our bank balance is beginning to look swollen but our hopes for the year are diminishing. Who knows, good things may come out of all this but first we have to stay alive.

Saturday, 28th March, 2020

The world is quiet – almost in a coma.  In our area, at least, people are respecting the request to stay at home and, largely, stay indoors. It has been made really ironic as the weather is quite delightful This has been beach weather, near a beach but one which is quiet and largely deserted.

It is hard to see tourist areas recovering in time for this year’s summer season. It is hard to see many airlines, hotels and restaurants surviving this trauma.