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Sesame, Steamers and Supply Chains…

humanist55

If you have seen my Theme Reveal for the A2Z Challenge 2022, then you will know that I am writing about becoming Vegetarian gradually as a response to the crisis in food supply chains sparked by the pandemic and made worse by the WAR in Ukraine. As well, I am keeping to the theme I originally planned of food which can be eaten in its own right as well as becoming an ingredient in other dishes…

Photo by Slashio Photography on Unsplash

Okay, so eating sesame on its own is a bit of a stretch but I had to shoehorn it into this A2Z because I love sesame and keep it in my kitchen in several forms. I honestly can’t remember whether the first time I encountered sesame was in the form of Sesame Snaps (bought ones but a recipe here) or Gomasio which is a delicious condiment made simply of salt and toasted sesame – it is so long ago and these things seem always to have been in my life…

Gomasio
1. take 2 cups of raw sesame seeds and toast them in a wok or frying pan carefully stirring till just turning brown
2. Add the toasted seeds and one tablespoon of sea salt to either a mortar and pestle or a grinder/blender and grind until it forms a coarse meal
3. Store in an airtight container and use in place of ordinary salt – it adds a nutty savour to your food. Some people like to add seaweed to Gomasio, kelp, dillisk (dulse), nori – all these can also be lightly toasted before combining with the salt and sesame and grinding for extra taste and minerals such as iodine.

Sesame seeds have little taste when raw but blossom with flavour once toasted so they are ideal to sprinkle on top of bread or cakes (see above) where they automatically get the toasting treatment. The other way of adding the nutty taste of sesame is to use Sesame Oil – this is something I gleaned early on from Chinese cookery – I will use a mixture of sunflower and sesame oil when making an omelette quick style (mess the eggs up with a fork and chuck it into hot oil in a frying pan as opposed to the separating the egg whites and beating to a froth kind). When you have a Chinese dish such as egg fried rice, this how they make the egg part and add it to the fried rice at the end.

Steamers

Nothing to do with supply chains – ships are diesel-powered, not steam these days lol, but more of supply chains later. No this is about cooking vegetables and other things – they are not exclusively a vegetarian implement – in fact I always use them for that logistic nightmare which is Christmas Dinner – carrots in the water at the bottom, sprouts in the next layer and frozen peas at the top. Cooking all these things together uses only one ring on your hob and uses less fuel so good for the planet.
Vegetables are not the only things you can use a steamer for – you may have had a Chinese or Japanese meal including steamed or even steamed and fried dumplings, meat or vegetarian, and thought that they involved some arcane Asiatic magic cookery techniques, but they are really easy to make. The first ones I tried used sausage meat as the basis with various additions, but since the object of these posts is to move towards vegetarianism (with the cost of meat going up) here is a recipe for steamed dumplings filled with stir-fried vegetables which is first steamed and then fried to give them a crispy bottom – it even tells you how to freeze them…

Supply Chain Issues…

Supply Chains mean the linking of one or more sequential factors in the supply of food. Initially sparked by Covid19 but exacerbated by the war in Ukraine, these problems look to get worse as 2022 progresses. They might include the following, failure at the farm side, failure in the picking, failure to deliver, and failure at the food processors. At the farm or faraway plantation, covid reduced the workforce available and likewise to harvest produce. Of course, in Britain, we are especially cursed by our insane decision to leave the EU and close the door to migrant workers who used to plant and pick vegetables. Likewise, abattoirs are short of skilled butchers. Brexit also compounded the shipping of produce with lorryloads of strawberries and fish rotting as they failed to get through to the ports in time, mired in red tape which the Tory government promised would not be a problem… Supermarkets and food processors all have staff shortages and if you have problems at all these possible stages, you got you a Supply Chain Issue. Some of these issues are relatively local, but the increase in oil prices means the shipping of say, apples from New Zealand to the UK, might be prohibitively expensive – it is a challenge to globalization.
Is there a silver lining? Well everybody from nations to individuals, could grow their own. British apples, because of their seasonality, have decreased in popularity as they have been supplanted by apples from every part of the apple-growing world until it’s too much trouble for supermarkets to host UK produce during it’s season. Well not anymore! Learn to embrace your local seasonal produce, grow your own in your garden or allotment – if life hands you lemons…

Rhubarb and the Return of Mercantilism…

humanist55

If you have seen my Theme Reveal for the A2Z Challenge 2022, then you will know that I am writing about becoming Vegetarian gradually as a response to the crisis in food supply chains sparked by the pandemic and made worse by the WAR in Ukraine. As well, I am keeping to the theme I originally planned of food which can be eaten in its own right as well as becoming an ingredient in other dishes…

https://gardenerspath.com/plants/vegetables/tips-growing-cooking-rhubarb/

There are two themes running through my A2Z challenge this year and whilst you may think that rhubarb and Mercantilism are pretty random blog-fellows, in fact, the one illustrates the historical application of the other nearly perfectly! Some years ago, I was reading the lengthy series of historical novels – Poor Man at the Gate, by Andrew Wareham when I came across a passage in which the protagonist, by this time a member of the government, was discussing the reasons for a chronic shortage of silver in circulation. The reason given was that the Chinese were insisting on being paid for goods, not in trade for other goods, but exclusively in silver. The goods we so wanted, were silk, tea and rhubarb! I did a double-take thinking “how would you even ship rhubarb halfway around the world?” I had to investigate… The Chinese were acting out Mercantilism, one of the tenets of which, was that you should try to accumulate silver and gold to make a country rich, and you did that by trade restrictions – restrictions on imports and pushing exports for hard currency. The opposite philosophy, which came in the mid-19th century, was liberalism which pushes entrepreneurship and free trade – Liberalism favours individuals getting wealthy whereas Mercantilism favours the State accumulating money. Mercantilism confuses monetary wealth with the wealth that a wide selection of goods offers. The state – which is big in mercantilism, may grow wealthy in money, but the population came off badly. The British tried to get around the import bans by trading with merchants upstream from the government and eventually resorted to selling opium and getting a nation hooked on it – not one of our finest hours… The Chinese government retaliated by completely withholding the rhubarb – of course, it was not the fruit, but the powdered root which had medicinal value – it was touted as a cure for digestive disorders, flatulence and constipation. So much of the medicine did we buy, that the Chinese reasoned that we Brits must be really bunged up and that withholding the vital rhubarb would soon bring us to our knees – perhaps literally! If you want to read more fulsome explanations of Mercantilism then you can find them here and here.

The thing is, mercantilism has never really gone away, indeed the Chinese (and several other south-east Asian countries) have done very well for their economies by practising this economic philosophy whilst in the US and Europe, we have embraced the liberal and neo-liberal philosophies – there has been some meeting in the middle with globalism – China, South Korea and Taiwan exported lots of geegaws to the West which our consumers happily consumed, but with the fallout from the war in Ukraine threatening globalism, a resurgence of protectionist policies – apart of mercantilism is on the cards…

Enough with the economic philosophy stuff – now to the fun bit – Rhubarb as food! Rhubarb is properly speaking, a vegetable that we happen to regard as a fruit. It is the petiole, or leaf stem that we eat, never the leaves which are quite poisonous – containing a lot of oxalic acid – very bad for your kidneys. The fleshy stems can even be eaten raw – especially when young and tender – my partner used to eat it as a child, by dipping the end in sugar… Rhubarb stems contain vitamin K and also the antioxidants – anthocyanins (which give it its red color) and proanthocyanidins. Brought to Europe for its medicinal properties, the increasing cheapness of sugar, meant that by the 18th century, rhubarb was transitioning to culinary usage. It needs sugar because it is quite tart or acid so although it is a favourite in pies and crumbles, it is also (like gooseberries) a good sauce element to serve with oily fish like Mackerel. I have shot myself in the foot for a recipe by talking about Rhubarb and Ginger jam in my post about ginger, for this is a classic pairing. I also talked about how to concentrate young and tender rhubarb stems so they don’t cook to mush and that technique can be used for any soft fruit that has the same tendency – such as strawberries. Strawberries are also sometimes paired with rhubarb – to the disgust of rhubarb purists…

MONTY RAKUSEN/GETTY IMAGES from https://www.tasteofhome.com/article/forcing-rhubarb/

I will leave you with this magical image of the forcing sheds where early season rhubarb is picked by candlelight for early season, extra sweet shoots. We live near the Yorkshire Rhubarb Triangle where such sheds abound, if you live in the US, then half of all rhubarb comes from Pierce County, Washington. Here in Yorkshire, this is the time of year…

Lemons and Land Use…

humanist55

If you have seen my Theme Reveal for the A2Z Challenge 2022, then you will know that I am writing about becoming Vegetarian gradually as a response to the crisis in food supply chains sparked by the pandemic and made worse by the WAR in Ukraine. As well, I am keeping to the theme I originally planned of food which can be eaten in its own right as well as becoming an ingredient in other dishes…

Giant Lemon from Crete

In case you are thinking that nobody eats Lemons in their own right, I have a guilty pleasure to confess – when nobody around me is looking I eat the slice of lemon from my, say – Gin and Tonic – and maybe even my partners. Zest, which is the name for the outer layer of citrus fruit and contains the oils, also means enthusiasm for and so, when I owned a Frozen Yoghurt shop – I called it Zest!

To be fair, Lemons are mostly used as an ingredient for other dishes and rather than following the trite maxim “If Life Gives You Lemons – Make Lemonade!” here is a list of the many wonderful things you can make with Lemons. For example, the giant lemon pictured above next to a normal lemon, is cooked by the Greeks, in syrup and served on yoghurt or ice cream. We hid in Crete for six months whilst the pandemic was at its worst and from our apartment balcony, you could reach over the rail and pick lemons from a tree which reminded me of Andrew Marvell’s – The Garden in which he describes the bounty of cultivation thus:-

What wond’rous life in this I lead!

Ripe apples drop about my head;

The luscious clusters of the vine

Upon my mouth do crush their wine;

The nectarine and curious peach

Into my hands themselves do reach;

Stumbling on melons as I pass,

Ensnar’d with flow’rs, I fall on grass.

Lemon Curd
Lemon Meringue Pie
Lemon Marmalade
Lemony Greek Roast Potatoes
Limoncello
Preserved Lemon Mayonnaise
Lemon Drizzle Cake
Lemon Sorbet
Lemon Posset

I invite you to contribute your own favourites using this yellow skinned, zesty miracle…

Lastly, I want to share some more about the issue of the land it takes to raise meat compared to a vegetarian diet. I take this quote from here.
“A Bangladeshi family living off rice, beans, vegetables and fruit may live on an acre of land or less, while the average American, who consumes around 270 pounds of meat a year, needs 20 times that.

Nearly 30% of the available ice-free surface area of the planet is now used by livestock, or for growing food for those animals. One billion people go hungry every day, but livestock now consumes the majority of the world’s crops. A Cornell University study in 1997 found that around 13m hectares of land in the US were used to grow vegetables, rice, fruit, potatoes and beans, but 302m were used for livestock. The problem is that farm animals are inefficient converters of food to flesh. Broiler chickens are the best, needing around 3.4kg to produce 1kg of flesh, but pigs need 8.4kg for that kilo.

Other academics have calculated that if the grain fed to animals in western countries were consumed directly by people instead of animals, we could feed at least twice as many people – and possibly far more – as we do now.”

There is a lot more in that article… If you have been trying to cut down on the amount of meat you eat in order to save money, or the world, whether as a result of the ideas shared here or because you were already on this track, please share how it is going for you and what you would like to know more about or see discussed…

I is for Information…

humanist55

 My goal in the 2021 A2Z Challenge is to complete a novel I started a few years ago but which has languished for lack of love (writing!). Each Post, daily in April (Sundays excepted), will consist of some aspect of the novel plus a chapter from it. I hope that the Alphabetical items will give a bit of extra background, muse on the writing process, but most of all, help me develop certain ideas to improve the novel. Some 12 chapters are already written so I have a bit of a head start…

Please comment with any opinions good or bad – you have no idea how much I need feedback at this stage…



We are living in an age of Data – the fruit of the 20th Century’s revolution in Information Technology. Computers can do things undreamed of even in my childhood and the proliferation of information, or data proceeds at an exponential way. In addition to commercial “in-house” server farms proliferate to store all this data “in the cloud”. Huge unprocessed collections of data are known as “Data Lakes” and whilst lakes and clouds evoke lovely images of the natural world – the truth is that data storage is a growing threat to the environment. A friend who worked for the storage division of a famous computer firm explained it thus, at a party. “You have just taken a video of the party on your smartphone and will later post it to the group and various members will decide to download it to their computers or perhaps they will store a copy in their piece of the cloud. So what started off as 1% of a gigabyte on your phone might have grown 20 fold in a couple of hours…” 

By 2025, the amount of data generated each day is expected to reach 463 exabytes globally. If you are a real nerd or a serious environmentalist, you will go and check out that link and find out what an exabyte is – but my point is it’s a shit load of trouble for the environment. Just to give one more example, Bitcoin – the much touted new form of currency, is created by solving complex mathematical puzzles which make each coin something impossible to forge. To do these calculations takes so much computing power that the amount of electricity being consumed by the process, is equivalent to the consumption of a not insignificant nation-state! You couldn’t make it up! 

My book is a work of Science or Speculative, Fiction, but the premise in it, that our original Earth was destroyed by environmental catastrophe, caused not least by the exponential growth of data, is not a complete fiction. Cat videos, porn, unnecessary social media – Just Say No! That is a nod to one of the slogans of the so-called War on Drugs. And is it not worth considering our addiction to data as being dangerous to our health in the same way that criminally sourced drugs are? The war on drugs will never succeed and we should instead substitute a medical treatment approach – but that’s a post for another time. However, the following chapter does touch on the use of drugs on Hawaii 2 and beyond…


Chapter 9
Underbelly 

Jack stood outside a front door in the least salubrious part of New Orleans. It being Hawaii 2 that was not saying a great deal – denizens of the least salubrious parts of the other human colonies would have thought they had died and gone to heaven to find themselves in this particular suburb. Nevertheless, by the standards of Hawaii 2, Lowtown, situated along the river banks downstream of the port of New Orleans lived up to its name. Originally named for a marshy area, one of the last to be reclaimed and built, the soubriquet described the nature of the suburb well and it was a favourite argument of intellectuals as to whether the name created the character of Lowtown or whether it was the geography. Either way, Lowtown was the focus of what passed for rebellious youth, home to the alternative lifestyle of the alternative planet. Jack recalled his first conversation with Stig at the treehouse when Stig was posing as the Investigator and, presumably to add verisimilitude to his role, was talking about how people on the other colonies imagined life on Hawaii 2 to consist of lying around doing nothing, because nobody was forced to work. Lowtown, thought Jack, was the only place on Hawaii 2 where life in any way resembled that imagining, and even then, it differed in so many ways.

Residents of Lowtown were not enthused by civic duty so the periodic communal clean-ups ubiquitous to other communities, when people would get together to pick up litter and repaint the playground equipment in the parks, did not happen in Lowtown. Not that there was much litter except of the natural variety such as leaves – even in Lowtown, the civic duty not to litter, inculcated from an early age still held sway over Hawaii 2’s rebels.

Since everybody got paid their stipend regardless of whether they worked or not, there was little crime of the variety that usually funds the lifestyle of societies’ underclasses. Drugs were not illegal so another reason for crime was missing but since drug users like to group together for a shared experience, at least on the outward surface of things, Lowtown was the focus of young people experimenting with the doors of perception and many artists also made Lowtown their base. The legality of drugs made them cheap with no dealers ramping up the price and pushing their customers into crime or prostitution to fund their habits. In fact, serious long-term addiction was rare on Hawaii 2, even in Lowtown and mostly young people drifted into the area, sowed wild oats, dabbled in drugs and eventually moved away again when they were ready to take a more productive part in society again. Despite the many different aspects of society on Hawaii 2, teenage rebellion remained a fact of life, parents blamed hormones and waited for the phase to pass. It’s hard to sustain rebellion when there is nobody to kick against… 

The house Jack stood outside of, was an old friend of his from school who had accompanied Jack on his rite of passage trips to Lowtown in search of adventure and experience but unlike Jack, who had grown beyond that excitement, Clem had actually moved there and still remained, doing what? Well – Jack couldn’t really imagine. Stig had suggested a hotel for Jack to rest up in after their eventful day, it not being considered wise for him to return to the treehouse, but Jack had said he would rather stay with a friend, Stig suggested someone he wasn’t in regular contact with and Jack had come up with Clem in Lowtown which Stig had agreed to and an unmarked government car had spirited Jack away from the underground car park beneath the Parliament building.

Now, finally, the front door opened after a long wait, considering that Jack had rung Clem first to ask if he could come and stay for a few days and Clem was thus expecting Jack. Jack had not relished standing in the open for so long even though the car driver had assured him they were not being followed, the recent events had induced a healthy degree of paranoia in Jack. “Jack! How the Devil are you?” Jack, no slouch himself, was enveloped in a bear hug by a six-foot six-inch giant of a man dressed in a kaftan and with twelve inches of bushy untrimmed beard resting on his ample chest. “I’m good Clem, thanks for this.” “No problem mate, I’ve missed you!” Clem pulled Jack through the door and closed it behind him – series of dead-bolts clicking into place automatically. “Come through and make yourself at home.” Clem led the way through to a large living room furnished with large comfortable settees that begged Jack to sink down and relax. “I heard about the train wreck Jack, I am so sorry for Anna, I only met her at the wedding but she seemed perfect for you…” An awkward silence followed. Jack had been so wrapped up in Douglas since he got back from hospital that he had not seen many friends and had to experience the double-edged sword of condolences – the bitter-sweet of shared memory. “I hear you have a son though! Miracle eh?” Jack could have gone down the route of telling Clem about Douglas but he had realised that everyone on Hawaii 2, almost everyone, believed the story that the train wreck had been a gas explosion in the galley and he suddenly felt the need to tell the truth to another soul. “About the crash – it wasn’t an accident!” he blurted out. “What! What do you mean Jack, it was in all of the papers? You were the top subject of conversation for weeks after the explosion and again when you came round.”

“I mean it was a bomb, not a gas explosion.” “What the hell! Who would do such a thing?” “We don’t know, and this is just between you and me, right?”

“Sure Jack! Who is we?”

“People from the government”.

Jack had been warned by Stig not to discuss events with anyone but he and Clem went way back and besides, just by staying here he might be putting Clem in danger. It was only fair he knew what was going on although Jack stopped short of telling him about Stig and his background as a protector of Hawaii 2, for that was how Jack now thought of him. Clem fetched a couple of drinks and Jack unfolded the story of the last few days referring to Stig simply as an official investigator. Clem whistled when Jack described the intruders at his mother’s house and again, when Jack described the meeting with the President. Not that the President was so elevated from the ordinary citizen of Hawaii 2, nor hidden behind a wall of security, there was no need, but nevertheless, it was unusual for someone you knew to be having official meetings with him.

“So that’s it and here I am, a fugitive from – I don’t know what…”

“Well mate you’re safe here! But I can’t get over it – what possible motive could anyone have to do such a thing?” “The government think it could be something to do with Anna’s research. She went to Hawaii 1 to follow up some earlier stuff she saw which might mean an alternative way of accessing space from Hawaii 2 other than the space-lift and they think if the Trans-Planet Corporations got wind of it they would use it to open up the planet whether we liked it or not and our whole society would change.” “That could be true, I certainly know…” Clem suddenly shut up as if he had said too much. “You know what? Jack sat up as Clem twisted his hands looking uncomfortable. After a moment, Clem began. “Look, Jack, I don’t make a secret of what I do here although if I did it on any of the other colonies I would probably be locked up, albeit it might be in a research facility. You remember our first trips here to Lowtown?” “I do, though I am not sure I remember all the details!” said Jack with a laugh.

“Exactly, sex, drugs and rock and roll! And for me, it was the drugs that were foremost which is why I ended up moving here although by that time my interest in them was slightly different.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, I got interested in the manufacture, the pharmacology, even the history of drugs. Lots of recreational drugs started out as medicinal back on Earth, cocaine – anaesthetic, ecstasy – couple counselling dis-inhibitor, poppers – muscle relaxant and so on. By the 21st century, the molecular chemistry was so well understood that things moved to synthetics – drugs with great purity, before they hit the street anyway, and with predictable effects, in the majority of users anyway. Now things went the other way – occasionally one of the synthetics was found to have application in the world of medicine, and that is what interests me, Jack. These days, the recreational side of things is secondary to me although I am always concerned with finding safer highs… Come and look at this.” Clem got up and led Jack through to the back of the house and then downstairs to a basement. To his amazement, Jack stepped into a gleaming white-tiled laboratory in contrast to the scruffy but comfortable décor upstairs.

“Yup this is me now – Doctor Clem!”

“Seriously Clem you are a Doctor?”

“Well, not a medical doctor though I do have a doctorate in Pharmacology” grinned Clem. They spent the next half hour looking around the lab with Clem explaining the function of various pieces of equipment and how he was directing his research more and more towards medical drugs and searching less for new, recreational highs. He even had a separate room housing animals for initial toxicity testing.

“Of course, anything I discover in this microscopic lab has to go on to be tested rigorously by the big boys off-world, we don’t have much of a pharmaceutical industry here on Hawaii 2 – probably because we are so much happier than the other colonies so we don’t need many of the drugs that are given out to treat depression, anxiety and stress. Many other physical illnesses that follow on from those conditions are also reduced and require shorter treatment when they do occur. Mental illnesses are also less frequent, which we put down to a happier social environment, and again, when they do occur, we treat them a lot more with talking therapies which means all-in-all, we use so few drugs it’s easier to buy in what we need, even though drugs come into the low-weight high-value export that we can send up the space lift.”

They were back upstairs in the living room now. “I’m glad you have found your niche Clem, I was starting to worry about you, especially when you moved to Lowtown – I thought you were becoming a professional addict!”

“No, I was almost through that phase when I moved here and starting to take a more useful interest in pharmacology. Actually, I am quite a rich man now albeit off world!”

“Really Clem – and you the man least likely to…!”

“I know, it’s mad isn’t it! Not that it makes much difference to me, I mean I still get my stipend like everybody else, and there’s not much I can or need to spend money on here. This house was paid for initially from the recreational drugs I developed but then I came up with a pain killer with fewer side effects than lots of existing ones and sold it to TransPharm. The upfront deal was derisory looking back, I was naïve but then the percentage on sales whilst small, has paid me a fortune because it took off like a rocket! Then TransPharm tried to make it up to me by offering me a position at their R. & D. on Hawaii 1, but I didn’t want to go there and be a wage slave. Then they offered to send in masses of equipment at great cost and pay for staff but again I turned them down and bought what I needed out of my own money and God knows I could afford it and so kept my independence. Whilst nothing I have developed since, has had the success of that first drug, I have made some significant discoveries and – I am my own man and I work on whatever I want, whatever interests me.”

“Wow! That’s fantastic Clem, good for you. It even proves that the ethos of Hawaii 2 works better in R. & D., small scale, intellectual freedom, personal motivation other than money, incredible!”

“Exactly! But TransPharm still doesn’t get it – they keep on asking me when I am going to come and enjoy all the money I’ve earned and can’t understand that I have everything I need and want here – chiefly my work.” 

The two of them sat sipping the drinks Clem had poured them in the companionable silence only possible between the kind of old friends who can pick up where they left off after a long time apart. Eventually Jack broke the silence. “Do you believe in God?”

“You’re kidding me, Jack, no I might have found my profession since I saw you last but I haven’t found God! Why do you ask?”

“It’s just an expression you used ‘God knows I could afford it’. I mean you and I and probably most of the population of Hawaii are Atheist apart from the small groups who came to achieve religious freedom and they don’t make much headway gaining followers and yet we still use expressions like ‘God knows’ all the time!”

“Ha! True enough. I suppose we could say ‘goodness knows’ but that posits goodness as a thing and I am as sure there is no more such a thing than there is God. Goodness is what we do, by choice, the very idea of goodness, or God come to that, only exist in the minds of human beings because we are able to make that choice.”

“My thoughts too. Even after learning that the train wreck was really caused by a bomb, and not knowing who or why someone did such an awful thing, I still don’t think that evil exists any more than good or God, not as concrete things. And if anything were going to make one change one’s mind it might be something like that. I mean we don’t have much crime here, bad things done by people don’t happen and the bad things that are natural, well we seem to cope well enough with them without turning to religion for comfort.”

“Yeah, well, even those religious groups that did come here with the initial colonisation are withering away, young people drifting away. Maybe it’s because society isn’t so bad that religious leaders have to contain their flocks against a world of sin. Sin! What even is sin?”

“I think you’re right Clem.” And they lapsed into silence again. This time it was Clem that broke it.

“Talking of bad people, I’ve just been thinking about something, I don’t know if it’s connected to the train wreck but it happened about the same time.”

“Really Clem, what was it?”

“Well about two years ago there was a guy, a drug user, one of the ones who used to test out my new highs and distribute them to other selected users and get them to report back on any side-effects. I am lucky, or good at what I do, don’t know which, but so far there have never been any serious side effects to anything I have produced. Anyway, this guy, Gervald, he hung around a lot and was interested in what I was doing, so much so I was urging him to study too which eventually he did. Then he was able to be useful doing some of the routine work and it was good for his course work. During that time, I came up with a recreational drug that whilst not the greatest high in the world, was exceedingly cheap and easy to produce. I don’t tell TransPharm about my recreational drugs, there are enough drugs on the other worlds and because politicians are not brave enough to deal properly with the issue, there is still a separation between legal and illegal drugs. The criminals lobby politicians not to change the status quo otherwise they would stop making money and so the users have to pay prices that are well above legal drugs like alcohol. So how do they pay for their hit – they steal, so more criminality. The freedoms we have here on Hawaii 2 do away with all that criminality and as you know, most users drift away from drugs in the end. It’s an experiment that was tried on Earth in a country called Holland and whilst it had some success, it was skewed because all the other countries around didn’t join in, so Holland became a destination for addicts from everywhere else. At least that can’t happen here with our restricted access but I wonder about what Gervald might have been up to, something always nagged away about him at the back of my mind.”

“How do you mean Clem?”

“Well, you’ve seen my setup here, I mean I have locks on my front door which I keep locked and that’s more than most people do here, and even then it’s not against theft, but in case some idiot comes in here stoned and causes mayhem. If this was any other planet there would be cameras and security and all sorts of regulations which would mean I probably wouldn’t even be allowed to operate in the suburbs like this. But with Gervald it reminded me of what I’ve read of those other places, a bit paranoid, edgy, as if we were doing something illegal which of course we were not, in fact as I moved into medical drugs more and more, it was even less questionable – were it on any planet! Yet he had this clandestine feel to him.” “You think he had something to hide?”

“Maybe but I could never figure it out. And then he disappeared under what you might call suspicious circumstances. In fact, it was about two days after your accident, well or not, as the case may be.”

“Oh, it was definitely a bomb and no accident, the authorities are sure of that, it’s just that they don’t have a clue who or why!”

“Well two days after the train wreck, Gervald’s house went up in flames, a really bad fire although not so bad that they couldn’t rule out the fact that no body turned up in the ruin and they couldn’t figure out how the fire started either. The door was locked which you know, is unusual but they couldn’t say whether accelerants were used to start it because it turned out he had been storing quite a lot of chemicals there. In fact, it looked as if he had his own lab there. And Gervald had disappeared. Completely!”

“How did you find out the details – I mean aren’t the police quite cagey about giving out information?” asked Jack.

“Well yes, usually they are, but firstly they were all busy with the train wreck and this didn’t rate high on their priorities, although at any other time it would probably have been their top case. But secondly, they questioned me as a known associate of Gervald and then asked for my help as a sort of expert witness.” “Expert on what?” “On drug-making – on the equipment in particular. After the fire, they found a lot of machines in the ruins but so badly burnt they didn’t know what to make of them – so they brought me in.”

“And could you tell what they were?”

“Oh yes, easily. I had expected to find equipment related to Gervald’s studies although I had no idea how he would be able to afford such things, so expensive to import we all used the university labs even though it meant working at silly o’clock sometimes to get your slot. But here’s the thing, it wasn’t a student setup at all, no, it was a manufacturing plant, small but capable of turning out quantities of a single line of drugs. So how the hell did he manage to import that lot? And what was he producing and who for? There are a couple of guys who make the drugs used here on Hawaii 2, medical and recreational and the latter are closely monitored by the authorities both as to quantities, usage trends and price. As even the recreational drugs are available over the counter in pharmacies, there is no clandestine world of dealers and no new producer would have a way to sell his product.”

“So, what do you think happened to Gervald, where did he disappear to?”

“Still more questions than answers, Jack. Bit like your case! I wasn’t officially on the investigation but you know how it goes here, things are a bit more relaxed than they are on other colonies and a bit more pragmatic. Hey! Have you ever thought about the fact that we get plenty of ideas about how it is on all the other worlds through the vids, all those crime dramas but they have no idea how things are here ‘cos we don’t really have a film industry and if we did, we’re so boring there’s no crime to film anyway!” Both men laughed at this old chestnut about life on Hawaii 2.

“Well that was the case anyway…” said Jack more soberly.

“True!” replied Clem and they lapsed into silence for a minute. “So, you’re a father now Jack!”

“Yes indeed!” A wave of longing for little Douglas overwhelmed Jack and he spent a few minutes telling Clem all about the strangeness and wonder of coming round from the coma to find himself a father and how great it was looking after this new little person except that the person who he had always imagined sharing the experience with was not there. With that Jack welled up and Clem went off to make a cup of tea for them both giving him space to let flow the tears. Putting the cup in his hand, Clem put a firm hand on Jack’s shoulder and Jack pulled himself together again. “If there’s anything I can do Jack… In any case I can’t wait to meet Douglas…”

“Thanks Clem and so you shall when all this mystery is settled…”

“I’ve been thinking about that and the more I think about it, the more I wonder if it was just coincidence that this thing with Gervald happened so close to the train wreck.”

“How do you mean? You didn’t finish saying what happened in the investigation?” “Yes, well, as they didn’t find a body, they tried to find him but it was then that I realised that he never really talked about where he came from, I mean he obviously wasn’t from around here. But you know a lot of people who wind up in Lowtown don’t really want to talk much about their past and you get used to not prying – when they want to talk, they will. So I couldn’t be much help to the police there, hell I didn’t even know the guy’s second name and that’s par for the course around here too. He had a camper van and that was missing too so the police put out an alert for that but by the time that happened, it was four or five days after the fire so if he took off in that he was long gone – assuming that’s what he did. It’s a mystery, who he was, where he got the equipment and what he was doing with it and if he disappeared voluntarily, then why he gave up a promising career, his college reports were good, or whether, as the police seemed to think, there was foul play.”

“It’s certainly strange. And you really don’t have any idea why he had a drug manufacturing set up – couldn’t you tell from the equipment? And why do you think it might be connected to the train wreck.” asked Jack.

“I don’t have any concrete thoughts, it’s just a hunch brought on by your describing your mystery and maybe I am just connecting them because they have superficial similarities, you know explosions and an absence of motive or hint of a perpetrator. But in answer to your first question, my best idea of what he might have been making was that drug I mentioned, I called it Sunset because of the way the high faded. I told you it was simple to make and cheap too and that’s because there were certain stages of manufacture that were unnecessary in making Sunset compared to other recreational drugs and the machines he had seemed to match the process. I told the police that, but it didn’t make any sense – there are much better drugs available here and indeed when Gervald was trialling it with the users, they didn’t dislike it, but there wasn’t a demand for it either, so I didn’t pursue it directly, only kept it in mind for ways of incorporating it into future medical applications. So why would Gervald set up to manufacture it with no market? Talking to you, I suddenly thought, what if he was sending it off world? Not only is it cheap and easy to make but Sunset is tiny in volume, like the original LSD which could be impregnated into a dot of paper – ideal for smuggling, especially given our unique access to space and its weight limitations. We were just thinking about it wrong looking for a local market.”

“So Gervald knew how to make Sunset?” “Well, I never specifically gave him the formula or the method but he was around enough, and he did have access to my computer files for the bits of work he did for me. I don’t have very elaborate security on the system, I never felt I needed it, and although the files were password-protected I suppose it wouldn’t have been difficult for him to hack them. That’s what I told the police anyway and they suggested I beef up security, which I have since done – even though it goes against the grain.”

“Well, if he was smuggling Sunset off-world, what would the advantage be, to the people at the other end that is?” asked Jack “And why destroy the lab and the train that takes you to the means of getting the product off-world – it doesn’t make sense!”

“Let’s face it none of this makes sense but thinking about your first question what would the advantage be?” Clem sat thinking for a minute head in hands. “Okay, so it’s a new source of product which the authorities wouldn’t be looking for, especially with that source being Hawaii 2 with its noticeable absence of exports. Secondly, if it is being smuggled, then the transport is not being paid for in the regular way, it could be impregnating the packaging of one of the other small, high-value exports we do send so it’s cheap that way as well as cheap to buy from the originator, let’s presume that’s Gervald. But then what’s the point for Gervald, he can’t spend the money here on Hawaii 2 because you don’t need lots of money, and conspicuous consumption is frowned on and, well, conspicuous!”

“But let’s say he wasn’t from here, or he was from here, but could get off-world eventually to spend his money?”

“I suppose that’s possible,” Clem said, “I mean people do come and go, hideously expensive as it is. I have been myself to meet with TransPharm and spend a bit of my own ‘drug money’ though to be honest, I couldn’t wait to get back!”

“Really. Why’s that, I’d love to go?”

“Oh I enjoyed the trip, especially going up in the space lift, it’s so slow – but it gives you time to enjoy the view of this beautiful planet of ours. Although apparently, some people can’t deal with it, it gives them vertigo and they have to travel in a windowless lift capsule – mad eh?”

“Too right, I want to see it all when I go, – if I ever go! You know in the early days of space-flight, when they used rockets, you got into orbit in ten minutes or so but you couldn’t see anything because you were crushed into your seat looking at the inside of your capsule. Anna told me that…”

“I can’t imagine what you’ve gone through losing her Jack and though it can’t bring her back, I hope the bastards who did it get caught!”

“So! What didn’t you like about going off world?” said Jack to change the subject and move away from the subject that was still too raw to cope with in daylight and with company.

“It’s the people mainly, at least the one’s I had to deal with at TransPharm. They were so up themselves with their limousines and salaries and expense accounts. I think they were trying to show me a good time and boy did they pull out all the stops to impress me, but although I tried not to show it, they did just the opposite. When we were driving around in the city, you could catch glimpses of how the majority of people live and if you really looked hard you could see the really poor people in the alleyways, going through trash looking for food. But I never got to meet anyone outside of business – they said they were protecting me but I felt like an asset being guarded. I told them I wanted to spend some money going somewhere exotic so they arranged for me to go to this hotel somewhere in the tropics but it was just like being in the city except for the scenery – which was beautiful I grant you. But everyone was rich and you couldn’t even talk to the staff privately, they were all terrified of being seen fraternising with the guests. I actually ordered a prostitute, not for sex you understand, but because I thought at least it would be somebody I could talk to but she was so drugged up she couldn’t understand I only wanted to talk. Her one thought was that if I wasn’t satisfied by her then she would get into trouble. When I insisted I didn’t want sex and asked her to go, she burst into tears saying it was too quick and they would know she hadn’t pleased me so I let her sleep in the bed beside me till morning and then promised I would give good feedback if anyone asked – which they did in a thinly veiled way next morning. After that, I just wanted to get back here to normality. So I’m not likely to spend the money I earn, and I’m looking into some charities – medical aid for those who can’t afford it – it’s all charged for there you know!”

“So, going back to Gervald, let’s suppose he doesn’t have the same scruples about spending the money he’s earned and hopes to leave Hawaii 2 sometime, or maybe it’s a case of returning to wherever he’s from, what happened, why destroy the lab that’s making you money and why disappear?”

“Maybe he didn’t do the destroying, maybe it was the people he worked for.”

“But why? It doesn’t make sense.”

“Maybe they had got all they needed from him.” Said Clem thoughtfully.

“You mean enough product? Surely drug dealers never have enough…”

“No! I mean maybe they got the formula out of Gervald. After that they wouldn’t need him anymore, they could make it wherever, and without all the complication of smuggling. They are very hot on what you take up the space lift you know. It’s not that they are looking for contraband, I don’t think there is anything here worth smuggling, well until now perhaps, but it’s the weight, everything has to be calculated exactly for the lift system to work properly, worst case it could damage the cable if the loads were unbalanced. Sometimes you can’t go up immediately if there isn’t a balancing load coming down or sometimes the cargo sits in space waiting for upcoming traffic. It’s weird you know, when you get to the middle of the cable which is the geostationary point, there are all these freight containers just sitting in space not moving, I mean they do tether them but they are so still, while you are all over the place experiencing weightlessness for the first time. Eventually you manage to stop bouncing around and then there you are stock-still too – weird!”

“Well, there’s a whole lot of speculation around Gervald, including the idea of some connection to the train wreck but I suppose it’s worth putting it to Stig, he might get things moving, I mean it sounds like the investigation got a bit side-lined or de-prioritised or something.” said Jack.

“I think you’re right Jack, the train wreck took all the energies of the authorities and if Gervald took off in his camper van, well, it’s a big planet to search, plenty of wilderness to hide out in…”

“Well let’s hope he did take off and get away and that if he can be found he might shed some light on his mystery at least. I’ll talk to Stig tomorrow. Now, have you got anything to help a man sleep?”

“Is the Pope a Catholic?” laughed Clem as he took the lid off a massive carved wooden bowl to reveal a cornucopia of brightly coloured tablets. “Just like old times!” said Jack with a smile.

Locusts…

humanist55

It is not my intention to make this a nature blog, but when a locust, an animal of mythical status quite literally, drops into your hand, or to be precise, onto the USB cable you have in your hand – it is worthy of a photo at least. They do occur in small or rather, regular numbers here in Crete but I understand they rarely get triggered into the massive swarms possible in nearby Africa. A quick search of the internet shows there are many species of even the European Locust but I was not able to identify this one easily – any entomologists out there?

Locusts are an apt metaphor for the outsourcing companies that the UK Tory government see fit to issue with contracts for Covid 19 Test and Trace as part of their ideological drive to centralise power with the Cabinet, richly reward their donors and no doubt themselves at some point down the line. It is the latest version of neo-liberalism and driven on the ideological side by Dominic Cummings (principal advisor to Boris Johnson) who is determined to curb what he sees as the bloated power of the UK Civil Service. However, as the linked article shows, this outsourcing is highly inefficient and costly. to give one example, local authorities in the UK have highly skilled tracing teams for use in sensitive areas such as STD cases but the government ignored this resource at the outset of the pandemic when it could have made a great difference in holding back the tide – preferring to centralise power to itself, not to mention the profits inherent in outsourcing. The outsourcing teams were undertrained, the privacy issues minimised for centralised efficiency and due to general inefficiency, were underused (staff reported being paid to sit on standby for calls and not receiving any) and when they did get calls, their efficiency in tracing (64%)was much lower than that achieved by local authority teams in their fields (97%). Still the locusts swarm around the government who are secretive about the amount they are dishing out but may very well run into billions on track and trace alone…

Meanwhile, here on Crete where our personal escape plan seems to have succeeded, that is to say, we arrived by air without so far, displaying any sign of having Covid 19 (touch wood). Due to the UK government first saying it was impossible to issue travel/quarantine on return bans for anything less than a whole country, they then did one of their trademark U-turns and following a planeload of returning holidaymakers from just one Greek island, the government imposed a 14-day quarantine on all people coming from all Greek islands. This ignores the fact that it was those British holidaymakers who probably took the disease with them and shared it amongst themselves as well as the islanders. Consequently, many people cancelled their Greek holidays, unable to take unpaid holiday leave to quarantine on their return and their employers unwilling to grant it anyway. Our own direct flight to Crete was one of the casualties and we had to fly via Athens which was a rushed and harassing connection.

The effects on the Greek tourism industry have been catastrophic – especially on the islands which often depend on tourism and considering that the total covid record for the whole of Greece amounts to say – one day in the UK, this seems very unfair and it is quite ironic that one should be expected to quarantine passing from the comparative safety of Greece to the dangers of out-of-control Britain. Given that most Greeks do not know anyone who has contracted covid 19, even at several removes, the level of compliance in mask-wearing in shops and by those serving in restaurants, is all the more remarkable. I feel that in the long term, people will look back on this pandemic and see the apparently limited numbers of victims compared say, to Spanish Flu) as opposed to the long-term effects which we are just beginning to suspect the extent of and be amazed at the initial good response of people to something they could not see happening for themselves and the squandering of that good effort by some governments due to concerns for economic health. The Greek islanders – through no choice of their own (unlike say, New Zealand) – have been forced to take the economic hit but been saved, so far, the health hit – it remains to be seen whether they will feel blessed by that…

Meanwhile, Barbara and I are still in the process of settling in to what is clearly more than a holiday (at a projected three-month minimum) and yet not an outright move to live in another country. This is what exercises our minds presently…

P.S.

On the millipede front, I was wondering what other creature might benefit from the bonanza of the beast’s appearance since this seems to be axiomatic fodder from our watching of nature documentaries. Every morning there are many dead bodies on the steps down to our apartment and no sign of anything eating them – so imagine my surprise when I saw the not merely dead, but somewhat desiccated body of a millipede moving with apparently unnatural animation – a sideways movement impossible for a live millipede. The cause was an ant, a fraction of the millipede’s size who not only dragged the beast on the horizontal, but up a 7cm step. Unfortunately, I missed this feat by the time I got the video up on my phone but below is some of the heroic event on the flat – David Attenborough eat your heart out!


An open letter to my MP

humanist55
Dear Mr Moore


It is with ambivalence that I write to you and with which, I imagine you will receive this letter since you are one of the MP’s who replaced – in our case, a very good and well-liked MP – on the strength of a facile slogan “Let’s Get Brexit done!”. Whether that was one of Boris Johnson’s own efforts or the handiwork of Dominic Cummings is a moot point but you undoubtedly owe your seat – in part – to the behind the scene machinations of Cummings – BUT – and here is my point, you may well lose it due to the catastrophic misjudgement of Dominic Cummings and his “boss”, the Prime Minister, if not now, then in the long run.

The Tory handling of the Coronavirus has been woeful, if understandable in their terms – the economic consequences of the crisis are inconceivable and immeasurable at present (though they will emerge in retrospect ) but it now appears that the delay of a week to eleven days at the outset whilst considering “herd-immunity” (a Cummings idea?), has cost many thousands of lives. If this was in any way a reflection of the work of the Prime Minister’s Chief Advisor, it was not well done, but we are unlikely to know that. What we DO know, is that Cummings – supposedly the great reader and manipulator of British public opinion – has got this one very badly wrong. Either he thinks the public stupid (but they are not, and with all the time in lockdown, are well supplied with the facts and incentivised to understand the facts) or Cummings is arrogant and dismissive – or both.

Cummings is a self-professed Disruptor and this was his modus operandi over Brexit – disrupt the status quo by taking us out of Europe and I don’t know whether he even cares if the beneficiaries are neoliberal profiteers – I feel the disruption is an end in itself for Cummings. He says a great deal about what he doesn’t like but very little about what he does like which suggests that whilst he at least knows how to disrupt efficiently – it gives me no faith that he has anything constructive  to offer the Prime Minister, your party and the country in terms of fixing the economy .

When an advisor acts so inadvisably, surely he must go! Perhaps he “has something on Boris Johnson” which accounts for the seeming hold over him and I am sure that he is telling Boris to hold his nerve and all this will go away, but I ask you to keep the pressure upon the Prime Minister, to remove Cummings forthwith because, apart from anything else, the public will not forget this element of the crisis when and as the full analysis of it takes place. Your party has a large majority with a full term but…

Kind Regards
Andrew Wilson

A Fork in the Road…

humanist55

Three fictional responses to the best and worst possibilities that could grow out of present times…

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.


Robert Frost


Devolution 1

Gemma – Transformation

I can hardly believe how life has changed since the Covid 19 crisis. And for the better too. Life used to be a merry-go-round of work, kids, husband, sleep, and then work again. Yes, the kids are back at school again – there’s still the husband – lol, and I do work, but it’s different work now. I’m working for myself now. I used to work in a factory, making rubber gloves and my task was to pack the ruddy things into boxes – all day long – mind-numbingly boring! It was a small firm and when the virus struck and the need for personal protection skyrocketed, the boss thought that we’ld be quids in. He wrote to the government offering gloves at a very good price but we heard nothing back and meantime, most of us were on zero-hours contracts and he couldn’t claim the money the government was offering – he had to let us all go. I saw him the other day – coming out of the Social Security Office after claiming for Universal Credit like the rest of us used to – the crisis wiped him out – bankrupt. He said he heard that the PPE contracts all went to some big firm – he said it came out in the paper that some Tory minister had connections with the company… I never trusted the Tories as far as I could throw them – a lot of people I knew went over to them with Brexit, their heads full of nonsense about immigrants and getting our country back, but as far as I can see, the only people who ever stole our country from us, was the sodding Tory government.Anyway, back to lockdown – I went on universal credit and of course, it wasn’t going to come through for weeks, in fact, it took two months – thank God for Mike, my husband and a delivery man, and YES! – his company actually was quids in with the crisis! He worked all through the lockdown flat out and miraculously, managed not to catch the virus. I love Mike to bits but I was so relieved we didn’t have to be locked down 24 hours a day – him, me and the kids – we wouldn’t have made it. Don’t get me wrong, Mike is a lovely man, but he can’t keep still for five minutes so out on the road was the best place for him whilst I did my best with the kids – home-schooling, painting rainbows to thank the NHS, making up quizzes – I didn’t know I had it in me. Course, there were loads of tips on tinternet and that’s where I first saw about people making scrubs for the  NHS and Care Home workers – weeks before it was on TV news.
I had my mum’s sewing machine – she used to make clothes for me when I was little but when I was a teenager I had loads of arguments with her because I wanted shop-bought clothes – selfish little minx I was ‘cos she couldn’t afford them. Well, I started teaching myself to use the machine from YouTube videos and soon I downloaded patterns for how to make scrubs. You had to use the right kind of material so they were washable and you made a bag for the scrubs to go in so the workers could put the bag straight in the washing machine without touching the scrubs. It took a bit of practice but soon I got it right and the feeling when I had my first pair collected by the co-ordinator in my area – well! You had to pay to talk to me! Then my kids got interested, Lisa and Liam, they helped me by cutting out the pieces and washing the materials my friends and neighbours dropped off. They still had to do their home-schooling but they went at it with enthusiasm so they could get on to the scrubs. Also, they had a bit more respect for me since they seen what I had done – in the early days I was struggling with their schoolwork – I hadn’t been that hot at school meself but with a bit of patience on their part, we figured stuff out together, mostly. Once the crisis was over, they did their own washing and ironing lol! And I – I started making clothes for a living. While we was still in lockdown, Lisa and I got so fed up with not being able to go shopping for new clothes and we used to watch the Great British Sewing Bee where the contestants had to do a Transformation challenge so we decided – since we couldn’t get any nice fabrics – to take one of my old dresses and make one (a lot smaller) for Lisa. She was so thrilled with it, not just because she had a new outfit ‘cos she couldn’t go out in it (though she shared it on Instagram with all her friends) but because I had made it for her. Who’d have thought it! All that fuss I used to make with my Mum and Lisa went for it! Maybe ‘cos she was proud of what I had done with the scrubs – they weren’t just plain blue or green like regular ones because of the fabrics people gave us, they had patterns and even superheroes from children’s duvets. Then again, all her friends thought her dress was really cool too! I’d never done anything like this and I was so proud of myself and my kids, and how many scrubs we managed to make together! So after the crisis, Lisa and I went to a fabric shop once they opened again and though we started by buying and making a few patterns both for her and me, they were a bit naff and soon I started making up my own ideas. Lisa was using the sewing machine by now and together, we started making clothes for her friends. After a while, the local paper, well it was an online thing, did a feature on me and then a local shop asked if they could show one of my “creations”. Then a small firm asked if they could make one of my “designs” and soon I was making enough money that I came off Universal Credit – what a proud moment that was!

So the crisis did me a big favour, lucky enough, no-one in my family died though one uncle was touch and go, but me, I came out of it with a whole new life and according to the mayor, I have “done something to help the local economy” – result!

Revolution

Annie – 1 – Feral…

God knows we never imagined we’d end up hiding in the Scottish highlands, protected by guns, booby traps and subterfuge, and still the question we keep asking ourselves is – how did it come to this?

Was it that first eleven days when the government dithered around the idea of sacrificing unknowable numbers of people to, possibly, arrive at herd immunity? Of course, they knew at that stage that the elderly were affected more by Covid 19 and who knows whether, in the Cabinet meetings, they dared to whisper the idea that culling of the ever more expensive baby-boom generation would solve a lot of problems, reduce the pressure on the NHS costs, liberate inheritance money to the next, less fortunate generation. Of course, there was the unfortunate fact that these were the Tory party’s traditional power base voters, but heck, they had five years till the next election and maybe that next generation would be grateful and pick up the votes…

I am on Guard duty, as usual. Mr McPherson, Jock is tending to his animals with help around the farm from my husband Tom whilst Mrs McPherson, Maggie, is baking bread and making jam from the strawberries that grow well in the sheltered hollow where the farm is nestled. The hollow is completely hidden by a bend at the top of the long straight valley that leads up to it so that you would have no idea that there was a farm here when you look up from the main road below – except for the track leading up the valley. And that was a problem when we arrived with our unwelcome news, two months ago. Tom had been in the army reserves when he was younger so he and Jock worked out a plan to put off anyone tempted to investigate the farm track. We had passed a car whose occupants had been shot at close range where they sat and Tom and Jock loaded up onto Jock big trailer and brought it back to the farm. Carefully positioned in the entrance to the farm track, as if trying to leave, the car with its gruesome occupants, both blocked the track entrance and hopefully suggested that death had already passed this way and there was nothing to be had here. As long as the group who had murdered the car’s occupants didn’t return and recognize their handiwork – it might work, but then again…

I’m getting ahead of myself. The first two months of lockdown went better than expected in the UK, the hospitals were not overwhelmed by the rising numbers of patients and the people, by and large, accepted the restrictions imposed on them without complaint and clapped every week in appreciation of the bravery and dedication of first, NHS workers, then delivery drivers and anyone not locked down but continuing to work and support the rest of us who were. Then the problem of people living and working in the care sector became apparent. A bit of the shine went off the NHS when it was realized that the people sent back from hospitals to residential homes without testing, in the early days of the crisis when hospitals were being cleared for action, were probably the reason why the virus decimated those homes so quickly and completely. In turn, this reflected on the government for their failure to prepare for a pandemic and the more specific failures in this particular case as well as the suspicion that they just didn’t care enough about the residential homes’ occupants. Under increasing pressure from the press and the public, the government did what it always did, looked for distraction and scapegoats. 
People, perhaps orchestrated behind the scenes and in tabloid papers, were clamouring to go back to work and the government stoked it by unclear messages about the safety of doing so, sowing confusion so that no blame could attach to them, or rather nothing that would stick. Lots of people had lost their jobs, mainly in the lower end of the job market, the gig economy, the zero hour contract end of the market. There were a lot of unhappy people as what aid there was to be had from the government, came through slowly – food banks grew in importance. Those that did return to, or find new jobs, were forced to accept lower wages – companies claimed they couldn’t afford more after the lockdown and it was “take it or leave it”.
Of course, nobody in government would have dreamed of officially suggesting the affluent old as scapegoats, but the forces on the right have always pulled the strings in a sly way, whether it’s the Nazis, Moseley’s Blackshirts or the National Front – there’s always someone behind the scenes, whispering in the ears of yobs and disaffected youth. Of course, the concept of an age war had been around before the Covid 19 crisis, babyboomers living in comparative luxury and drawing down NHS services in increasing numbers, and as more things became treatable, demanding those treatments. The younger generation was facing the prospect of paying for this older generation on the “strength” of inadequate jobs, unable to get on the housing ladder, which Margaret Thatcher had sold to the nation as the inalienable right of British citizens. But these rumblings and grumblings might never have come to much without the Covid 19 crisis…

I squint down the telescopic sight on my automatic rifle and check that the farm track is clear right down to the road. There are grass and weeds growing up on it now, which is what we want – no indication that anyone travels up it or that there is anywhere to go to at the top of it. We travel a different route to the road now when we need to, and its usually only Jock and Tom who go, driving a four-wheel-drive buggy over the hills surrounding the farm, and down to the road further along from the now disused farm track, and being careful not to leave evidence of their passage. They make occasional, very discrete outings to check up on other local farms, farms not as lucky as the McGregor’s, lucky that we arrived when we did. The friends who were our first destination, were not so lucky. When the troubles threatened us at our home on the outskirts of Newcastle, we decided to visit Pat Tricia and Steve, some farmer friends near Aberdeen who agreed to our plan – safety in numbers and Tom’s military background was reassuring. We loaded our aged camper van with food and anything we thought might be useful, we locked down our house as best we could in the limited time we felt we had. Gangs were already raiding nearby suburbs on a random basis, the rumours were of scores being settled, particularly conspicuous consumption, flash cars, big houses – they were drawing the attention first. We didn’t expect that our friends’ place would be a target at all – remote as it was, but it turned out, the remote farms, far from being safe in their isolation, were easy pickings for the feral gangs, Killing the occupants if they were older and sometimes even if they were younger – the yobs failed to distinguish between landowners and tenant farmers. They robbed whatever valuables they could find, often torched the property, took the odd sheep for celebratory barbeques back in the cities. 
When we arrived at the farm, we could see immediately that there was something wrong – there were a lot of cars parked in the farmyard although we couldn’t see anyone about. Tom parked off the approach track, behind a group of trees. He instructed me to watch the farm from cover, with binoculars and keep in touch with him using our mobile phones on earphone for silent operation. He crept up to the farm along a hedge line. As he made it to the corner of the house, I saw a man with a gun come out of the front door, lean the gun next to the door and wall over to some bushes and start to urinate. Thanks to my silent warning, Tom had flattened himself to the wall and the intruder, wiping some blood on his trousers as he went, passed almost within touching distance of Tom, his Bowie knife already drawn. The intruder didn’t have time to react as Tom cut his throat and fell silently to the ground and Tom dragged his body out of sight. Tom quickly secured the gun – an automatic rifle he told me when he had moved to the cover of a wall on the opposite side of the yard – a position which gave him command of the whole yard. I knew Tom had been on lots of training exercises, but he had never been deployed in an active combat situation – to see him kill a man in cold blood with such decisive efficiency, shocked me to the core. Now he waited until someone else came outside calling a man’s name. A couple of others drifted out, laughing and swigging from a bottle of brandy and joined in the shouting of the missing man’s name. Suddenly Tom started shooting from his concealed position, sweeping the yard with a long burst of automatic fire that dropped all the men to the ground. One other man emerged gun in hand but by the time he had realized all his companions were on the ground, a short burst from Tom despatched him too. He told me he was going around the back of the house to check whether there were any more invaders inside and to keep watch. It was as if I had not known this Tom and yet I realized I that I had always known him – just expressed in different ways – how he packed for a journey, knew where to find things. I felt safe with him – as I always had, but more so. Ten minutes later Tom appeared at the front door and shouted and beckoned to me to come to him. I ran down and into the house and found Tom bent over Patricia on the floor, bleeding. Steve was face down on the other side of the room, not moving.
” You’ll have to go to Jock and Maggie now – warn them, they’re good friends” Patricia was saying weakly “you’ll find their number in my phone, you’ll be safe there -they’re way up in the highlands.” She winced and her eyes screwed shut. “Thank you Pat” I said, “typical you thinking of others first but we will get you to a hospital!” But it was too late, Pat’s body gave a little spasm and she was gone. I turned to Tom and burst into tears, so much had happened, had changed in the last twenty minutes. He held me tight for as long as I needed but then as soon as I let him go, he said, “We must do what she said Maggie – it’s obviously not safe even here – we need to move as soon as possible.” And so it was that we buried Pat and Steve together, left the intruders where they were as some sort of warning, gathered all their weapons and the stash of ammunition from their vehicles, plus Steve’s shotguns “God knows where they got the automatic weapons!” Tom said. We packed them along with more food, into the camper van and left a couple of hours later just as it was getting dark. We had found Jock and Maggie’s number in Pat’s phone, she hadn’t bothered with locking and passwords, and we rang and told them what had happened. I heard Maggie gasp but they said to come on up and gave us their address. We pulled into some forestry off the road and slept in the front seats for a few hours, the back was too full and resumed the journey in the early hours of the morning when we thought we would be less likely to encounter trouble…

As soon as reports of violence against older, richer people began, the government deployed the army and whilst the sight of a few patrols calmed things down in the trouble spots, mostly in deprived northern cities, it soon became apparent that most of the army had moved south and were deployed to protect what used to be called “the Home Counties”. Soon the press reported that the government had lost control of the northern half of the country and formed a protective cordon south of Birmingham and that’s when law and order really broke down – riots, retaliation from the police, all-out attacks on police stations and of course, looting. Once the shops were looted, picked clean, then the mobs turned their attention to individual houses and that’s when Tom and I had decided to leave. Pat and Steve had been longtime friends who we went to stay with most years – being farmers it was harder for them to do the opposite. Jock and Maggie were like them in some ways, not dourer but a bit more reserved. They were shocked by our tale when we arrived but practical, Tom clearly knew how to defend us and he and Jock quickly went off to hatch a defensive strategy and Maggie and I unpacked the food from the van and bonded over the act of stowing it in her pantry and cups of strong tea.
The television was still going then, still showing a semblance of the news, but it was clear that either less was known about what was going on “up north”, or that the government was censoring the news. As the days went on, the untroubled south became less and less real or relevant to us though there was coverage of what was happening in other parts of the world. More right-wing governed countries like Poland and Hungary had suffered worse from the virus, not locking down soon enough, their hospitals overwhelmed and there too violence flared and soon there were no more reports coming out of those countries either. We had the internet for a bit but only by going up onto the hill and connecting Tom’s laptop via his mobile phone – Jock and Maggie were had not bothered with the internet before – but soon the phone network went down just as the landline had done a few weeks before. We cannot contact our children any more though Tom and mine at least know where we are, the authorities do not know about us or our fate. We are completely on our own now.

It’s getting too dark to see now and in the unlikely event that anyone comes past the dead people at the bottom of the track and makes it up to the farm, there are booby traps on tripwires. They are meant to be blank shotgun cartridges to scare foxes and maybe poachers, but we have loaded them with live cartridges – we need the upper hand in the event of an attack. I extricate myself from my hide and walk round the bend to the farmhouse where the lights are on and supper will be ready for us all.

Tom and I used to talk, in the early days of the lockdown, about how the pandemic had not turned out like in the movies and tv dramas – lots of dead bodies everywhere and the survivors going feral in the ruins of civilisation – little did we know. Back then, it all seemed very unreal, the government and the media quickly adopted the language of war, – fighting the virus, the workers on the front-line and so on, but that’s not how it felt, you looked out of the window and the streets were calm and empty and the TV and web were full of diversions to occupy adults and children alike and re-runs of old comedies. It all changed and went downhill so quickly so still we ask ourselves – how did it come to this…

Devolution 2

Annie – 2 – Reformation

We had always been Tory voters and everyone around us in our posh suburb of Newcastle voted that way too, as far as we could tell. When lockdown happened, we were comfortable enough in our detached house with a big enough garden to walk around in and work on but we started to feel cut off by the high fences and hedge that separated us from the neighbours. We could hear them but not see them and if we wanted to talk to them, we had to shout an invitation and then meet them on the pavement out front – socially distanced of course. Thursday night clapping for the NHS seemed a feeble affair when we were all so far apart – not like the enthusiastic affairs pictured on the news from terrace streets in inner cities.
We did our social duty, of course, surveyed the area to see if there were any older people who needed shopping doing for them, but either they had children nearby or insisted on driving to the shops themselves – masked and gloved. There are no corner shops in the suburbs so it was always a trip to the supermarket and the chances of running into people we knew in the queue to get in, was slim. Our only contact with the outside world then, was via the internet and the telephone. It was lonely.
Newcastle, whilst socially and architecturally vibrant, was still impoverished or rather socially divided into well-off and deprived, affluent suburbs and older inner-city terraces. Years of austerity had whittled away at the local authority provided services, drug and alcohol services, school facilities, hospitals – for people like us, with BUPA and no vices, this was not a problem although the prospect of having to go into an NHS hospital in the event of catching the virus, added to our determination to avoid catching it.  not that we were snobs, but just afraid of being treated in an overwhelmed or failing facility. But for most of the population there would be no choice. London succumbed to the virus first and then spread unevenly, thriving in hotspots which it appeared, were related to areas of deprivation – including Newcastle. Scientists speculated as to causal links, shifted their thinking from a flu-like disease to a multi-organ attacking complaint, from one strategy to another. And the numbers of infections and deaths in Newcastle, rose steadily.
The press started asking more searching questions. What was the government’s exit strategy? When would lockdown end? Did the government accept any blame for the slow start to lockdown, the return of infected elderly patients to care homes and so on? And gradually, Tom and I started to question the government’s record too. I should say that Tom was a retired barrister but who was a member of the Army Reserve and I had used to spend many weekends on my own whilst he went off on training weekends. So Tom was used to both incisive, analytic thinking, and also, to decisive action plans. He moved from default Tory voter to “They couldn’t organise a piss-up in a brewery!” in about six weeks.
We both watched the daily briefings from the government but Tom started to read far and wide on the internet – seeking answers to the mysteries of the virus which seemed to deepen rather than achieve resolution and to the evaluation of different governments performance in tackling the pandemic. 
My research was rather more prosaic, mostly centred on Facebook and Tom had to disabuse me of a few conspiracy theories and other examples of fake news but Tom had to concede that the articles which were shared showing that countries with women premiers had acted faster and better and got better results – certainly than our own government’s performance. And so between us, our knowledge grew and our views changed.
Furthermore, as time went on, we both grew more and more frustrated at not being able to contribute anything to “the war” on the virus – language you would imagine Tom, as a part-time soldier, would have embraced, but no! He read an article showing how such language is not helpful except for whipping people up with speeches. By the time lockdown ended, Tom and I had sustained a Damascene conversion, we were anti-austerity, anti-centralised government, pro-local sourcing, pro-devolution. When the lockdown ended, in a muddled way that we suspected was designed to prevent blame attaching to the government, Tom and I joined our local branch of the Labour Party but after attending a few meetings, we were disillusioned with them too and turned to local government and Tom decided to try and stand in the next council election. I supported him, acting as his promoter and social secretary until he said that we should both try and stand. 
But then came the second wave of Covid 19 – a much worse one than the first wave – deaths soared – lockdown resumed and all of the government’s dissembling and attempted blame-shifting fell flat – people saw through it! The regions had become increasingly bolshie about the strictures being handed out by central government, they took their own line, tried to obtain information about their own regions in order to base their decisions on. More importantly, they talked to their neighbours, co-operated, shared resources, sourced local solutions. This rebellion against the government was not lost on the government and their five-year, massive majority started to implode. The opposition party eventually called for a vote of no confidence and incredibly, enough Tory MP’s rebelled and the government fell in only the second year of its term. For the first time ever, the recent local elections had attracted a larger turnout than the national election which resulted in a hung parliament which dragged on in useless stalemate and decreasing their role even more. That scuppered the no-deal Brexit that the Tories had plainly been headed for and with all the other problems faced by ourselves and our European neighbours, the whole thing just seems to have slid into inactivity and things between us are changed more by Covid 19 than Brexit.
Tom and I failed to get selected by local Labour Party – still too middle-class looking, but we did become activists working with the councillors who were elected, and in many ways, this proved better for us because we were free to work, liaise and support whatever causes and issues we wanted to – keeping homeless down, encouraging synergy between local businesses. People made unemployed by the lockdown have found new and innovative ways to make a living – we watched a piece about a woman who taught herself to sew scrubs for key-workers during the lockdown and now designs clothes that are made by a local firm and sold in local shops. No transport costs, no foreign sweat-shops or possible child-labour. Farmers markets have returned bigger and better, not just for the middle-class but for everyone. Okay, the vegetables are more seasonal but people are more experimental with their cooking – not in terms of exotic foreign ingredients but home-grown things. It’s not just necessity now, it’s an informed choice by consumers – old-style, growth-based capitalism seems to have died…fingers crossed. Yes we miss travel, foreign holidays, but you can’t argue with the figures on reduced pollution – same with commuting, much reduced as people now insist on working from home and those who have to physically go to work, are gradually moving to be nearer rather than do the big commute – and who ever enjoyed that – really!
From sleepy semi-retirement, we were drawn into a new and active life. We have new friends and we have purpose and meaning. We act as sentinels against the excesses of central government and campaign to keep local government strong – we won’t look back…

W is for Work…

humanist55
This post is part of the A to Z 2020 Challenge. I have decided to theme the posts around personal and societal responses to the Covid 19 crisis, including my resumption of Blogging!

Work in the time of Covid 19

If I was still working at my normal job (General Manager in a Gelato and pudding factory) – I wouldn’t be sitting here blogging! It’s not just the time factor, I struggle to fit in the two-and-a-half hours it mostly takes me to write and promote each piece – no, its the lifestyle. After eleven hours out of the house, I don’t have the energy to sit and blog. Also, my partner is already retired and so, in “normal” times, we need to spend the three days I am not working doing more “together” things.
Covid 19 has changed a lot of things for a lot of people and made them, and certainly me, reassess work, priorities, life.
It has been hard not to be useful when, away from the calm, bird-song filled streets and parks, you know that some people are still working frantically, whether on the “front-line” of the health service or in companies than can do mail-order and delivery -which includes my own place of work. My particular work can’t easily be done from home and because of mine and my partner’s age, I have been furloughed anyway.

 

“Cedar Waxwing, March 25, 2020, Allen Station Park, Allen, Texas” by gurdonark is licensed under CC BY 2.0

I watch the news of apparent government incompetencies in the supply lines, and the management of testing and I itch to get in there and help sort things out. I have had such varied jobs over the years that I think I have the ability to think outside the box and to translate thought into action, whereas it seems to me, most politicians have no experience outside politics and are lacking in any other skills. At 65, I would until recently, have been entitled to my state pension this year, but being part of the post-war baby-boom, it has been necessary for the government to extend working lives…

New Values

Like many people then, I have had the time and opportunity to think about the future, post-crisis, the so-called “New Normal” and personally, I am not sure I want to go back to work as I used to. My job in the factory was hardly a vocation and the things it was promised that I would be able to apply my skills to improve, have mostly not happened. On the other hand, blogging and knocking an allotment into shape, have felt worthwhile. The allotment, we hope, will make a contribution to our and our daughter’s family larder whilst blogging, has I hope, provided food for thought or maybe entertainment. Coming back to a comatose blog with no followers and slowly making friends and readers suggests some small success. Indeed, it makes me think that I would have enjoyed journalism and even, that it is not too late to contribute in some way. 

Because let’s face it, the world was in a sorry state before Covid 19 – the looming environmental crisis, the rise of right-wing governments, the wanton break up that was Brexit, the failure of capitalism, based as it was on constant growth and spurious war mongering. I remember going to a debate whilst a student, and being frustrated at not being able to formulate the questions I wanted to ask the speakers in time. Over the years, the themes and issues that keep me awake at night, have become clearer to me, the links between things, more obvious. I do know the key questions and have some ideas about the desirable direction of travel – if not the full answers.

It might be some time before my age-group are deemed safe to return to work and my partner and I, when we finally examine this month’s spending, may find we can manage without me going back to work, or maybe I can find a new way to bring in a little extra money to keep us ticking over – for me, just as for many people, there are uncertainties and opportunities in the wake of the coronavirus…

Q is for Quality of Life…

humanist55
This post is part of the A to Z 2020 Challenge. I have decided to theme the posts around personal and societal responses to the Covid 19 crisis, including my resumption of Blogging!

The current crisis has changed the lives of almost every person in the whole world and the following are fictional responses, imagining those changes (albeit with some research) and especially changes, for better or worse, to the quality of life…


Susan, Sex Worker

My working name is Susan and I am a sex worker according to my key worker, a prostitute if you are the pigs, a tart if you are a punter, and I am a drug addict. I got to do heroin because I can’t face working the streets without it and I work the streets because I need to buy heroin. Dealers know this and use it against me and the other girls, they let us have the first score of the night for free but then we have to pay back double plus the next score so we are playing catch up all bloody night. Then when we are ready to finish, they give us some bad shit that makes us feel so ill we need to work again for one more score – bastards.

But things are different now – what with the virus. The week before lockdown, the dealers were selling cheap – afraid they wouldn’t shift their gear – that meant we had an easier week. But when lockdown began the police were all over us girls on the street and we couldn’t go out without risking being locked up properly overnight – not good when you’re dying for a hit. The dealers wouldn’t come out either ‘cos the police were everywhere and stopping cars all the time. Then there was the boyfriend – pimp some would call him, since he was always pushing me out the door to work and score for both of us. After two days without drugs he chipped – not without givin’ me a black eye first – I think he went back to stay at his bro’s so I don’t have to fight with him no more – good riddance!

I can go to the pharmacy in town each day for my methadone but for a few days I was starving for food. I thought about it and then I rang George. George is a punter who I used to visit at home and he is 65 and he give me a home for now and food. Of course we do the business but now I am there all the time, he don’t want too much. Maybe once a week was enuff anyway – I think he is more glad of the company – he can’t go to the pub no more and I don’t mind him neither, an’ he has loads of books which I like. I do the shopping for us – I go out each day for the methadone which I often used to throw up ‘cos I’m bulimic but my life is less stressful than for as long as I can remember so I mostly keep it down.

Quality of Life Before Covid 19:- 1
Quality of Life Since Covid 19:- 7 

Freddie, 6 year-old boy

My brother and I live in Stevenage, which is in Hertfordshire, with our parents and during the week, our nanny. Daddy does something with money – I don’t really understand and Mummy is a lawyer but I don’t really understand what that is either. They have explained but I can’t tell them I don’t understand ‘cos then they’ll think I am stupid and they are very strict about being clever at school. Usually, we go to school in the week and our nanny – she is called Jane, she takes us and picks us up and stays with us till Mummy comes home. Jane lets us sing on the way home but we are not allowed to sing at home. We made Rainbow paintings on our last day at school, but we got into trouble because we drew a rainbow on the driveway with chalk, like we saw other children do on the TV. Mummy made us wash it off and Jane and Mummy argued. Jane is fun and now she is teaching us at home because we can’t go to school because of the virus and although Mummy and Daddy are home all the time – they are still working and we mustn’t disturb them. I miss going to school and seeing my friends. We still get to sing when Jane takes us out for exercise – everybody is allowed to go out to exercise for one hour a day. This is the best bit of the day!

Quality of Life Before Covid 19:- 7
Quality of Life Since Covid 19:- 6

James 85 year-old in a Residential Home

I am afraid for my life – more even than during the Blitz. My parents wouldn’t let my sister and I be evacuated as we lived just outside London on the hill above Greenwich and when we came out of our shelter after the all-clear, we could see London burning and once a bomber crashed in the High Street but never was I as afraid as I am now. Last year I had a leg amputated which is why I am in here but I was doing okay till this Covid 19 thing. I needed help going to the toilet and in the shower but the staff at this home were kind and brilliant. Now though, they are doing the best they can but still, 12 people in the home have died of the virus and the staff haven’t got all the equipment they need to keep themselves safe or therefore me. I try to call on them as little as possible but sometimes I have to. I know they always liked to help me before because I don’t have dementia, like lots of the residents, and they could have a proper conversation with me – but now they are stressed and afraid both for themselves and for me. I watch the television and I understand what is going on, I may be 85 but I’m not stupid, and it’s obvious that everyone in residential homes has been abandoned – they are not even counting the deaths in homes – only those who die in hospital. The government says that that is how all countries are measuring the course of the disease but it feels like we just don’t count any which way…

Quality of Life Before Covid 19:- 8
Quality of Life Since Covid 19:- 2

Glen, 10 year-old boy.

We had to sleep on the street last night because Mum can’t work and the landlord threw us out of our flat – Mum told him the government said he wasn’t allowed to but he told her to fuck off and he nearly hit her. Today we went to a hostel and we have got a place to sleep tonight but it’s horrible and we are not allowed to be there till this evening. We sat in the town centre but the police wouldn’t listen to mum when she said we were homeless and told us to move somewhere else. So we are now sitting by the river where there are no police but people keep giving us funny looks ‘cos of all the bags we have with us. I’m hungry…

Quality of Life Before Covid 19:- 5
Quality of Life Since Covid 19:- 1

George, 65 year-old

I have been furloughed because of my age and my partner Jane’s age and our health. I am pre-diabetic and she has COPD so we are especially vulnerable to Covid 19. My job is such that there is nothing I can do to work from home and I am unlikely to get paid again till this is over though, and for people our age, self-isolation could go on a long time. In the old days, at 65, I would have been receiving my state pension but now I have to wait until next March. We are saving a lot of money, no commuting costs, no going out costs at weekends (I only worked four days a week anyway so we had long weekends) and we are eating less. Even things we might like to buy, like plants for the allotment we started last year, we cannot, because garden centres are closed. Still, we are lucky, we did equity release recently so we won’t run out of money, whatever happens. Our daughter and grandson do the shopping for us each week which I miss because I like to cook and I like to do the food shopping. Jane likes to shop for clothes – she even bought me some new trousers online because I needed some – at least you can still get some things that way…
We thought it would be really difficult spending all our time together instead of three days and evenings, but it is like both of us are retired now, not just Jane who was already retired and we have proper togetherness most of the time and the time seems to fly by – so much so that it would be hard to keep track of the days if we weren’ keeping a diary. Of course, we have our moments, such as when I spend too much time blogging and not enough talking together, or we just get a bit fed up at the things we miss doing and the people we can’t see. But on the whole, we know we are lucky to be alive and to have each other and our health – fingers crossed…

Quality of Life Before Covid 19:- 7
Quality of Life Since Covid 19:- 8

J is for Judgment

humanist55
This post is part of the A to Z 2020 Challenge. I have decided to theme the posts around personal and societal responses to the Covid 19 crisis, including my resumption of Blogging!

An open letter to Boris Johnson


Dear Prime Minister Johnson

or may I call you Boris since you are now to be perceived as one of the people,” in it together”? I wish you well on your recovery from Covid 19 and I despise those who have made political capital out of your illness and I wish you no harm as a fellow human being.

Whilst I disagree strongly with decades if not centuries of the policies of your party, I know you are not responsible for all that, but you have willingly picked up the mantle. On a personal level, l am given to understand that your position on Brexit had more to do with seeking the highest office in politics rather than conviction and now you have achieved it. Your personal approval ratings are high as the jolly man who promises to “Get Brexit Done!” But this pandemic means that all bets are off, Brexit almost irrelevant for now except that the benefits of international co-operation have never been more needed or more obvious. Furthermore, now that you have experienced the very best treatment by a National Health Service which your party has done so much to wear down under your plans – to change it into an American for-profit system – I hope you have seen the results of those policies, understaffed, under-resourced, yet offering heroic service to the nation in the present crisis.

I hope when you return to work after the rest which your father has prescribed for you, that you’ll see things in a different light – you may question the wisdom of your earlier judgments. I know you will be surrounded by a cabinet full of the people who still believe in austerity as the default position, the same people who pressured this country into Brexit and they will not be happy to see you turn your ideas around but I beg you to do so for it is not possible for this country or indeed the world to return to things as they were. Do you endorse your stand-in having said, whilst you were ill, that “this is not the time to be thinking of a raise in salaries for nurses.” Surely you of all people must now agree that there can be no better time…

You may wish to emulate the man I understand to be your hero – Winston Churchill – a man who made many errors of judgment in his career before finding his ultimate role as leader of the country in a time of war, much as you are now, However, remember, despite having led us through the war successfully, Churchill was disappointed to lose the election in a landslide to Labour after the war, because the people knew by then, that they were entitled something better and they rejected those who traditionally felt entitled. This is how the Welfare State was born and the time has come for the government to renew the Social Contract and rebuild the Welfare State for the people, or as Labour would have it “For the Many Not the Few”. After your election victory you realized you had to look after the so-called Labour red wall seats or else you might lose at the next election. None of us could have foreseen that this crisis would spring up so quickly on your watch, but here it is – your Churchill moment. How are you going to play it? You have the chance to be an outstanding leader if you dare to take a radical position as the times call for. Or you can just attempt to restore things as they were with the massive gaps between rich and poor. But will you then succeed at the next election with an electorate who have had unlimited time to understand and consider how we got to this place in such a poor state of preparedness and to watch how you manage to deal with the crisis.

Please! Go for blue-sky thinking, out-of-the-box thinking, make judgments based on new criteria, try something different – make no mistake that is what is required in what will be a new world order.

PS Your senior advisor – the self-styled Disruptor, Dominic Cummings – is he the right man for the job now. Breaking things is so much easier than trying to fix them and Covid 19 has surely given him as much disruption as even he could wish for -just saying…