Blog 100. Mustn’t Grumble…

I have had a complaint.  No, not a complaint about being a dangerous insensitive bigot, espousing the outdated views of the the 20th century (that position is still available), but for being too technical in my blogs.  A friend of mine has commented that she enjoyed my writings, but found that about a third of the content was too technical and boring for her.  I was delighted that it was just one third, quite frankly.  I took the point onboard, of course, and it was a fair point; but I suggested to her that if I had omitted some of the technical detail with an explanation on the lines of,
“Don’t bother your pretty little head with this my dear, it’s too technical for women to understand,”
then a raging mob of females would have been clamouring for my head and other extraneous parts, and rightly so.  The thing is, I do not write with a target audience in mind: I just share my experiences in life and jot down what I find interesting at that time with the odd opinion thrown in.  I am flattered that some people seem to like my musings (I have a modest international following), but I recognise that not all of the content is of interest to everyone.  Other friends say that they just skip over the boring bits, and I am working on the theory that one person’s boring bit is another persons’s genuine interest.  So there you go: can’t please everyone, but if I can please someone, somewhere, then I am content.

So stand by for a technical bit about the pitfalls of owning an electric car.  If you think that this may be boring and just want a summary, then jump to Paragraph 9.  If you want to skip it all and move to the travel and culinary section, then jump to Paragraph 10.  

I write this piece partly because the UK government has declared that no more internal combustion engined (ICE) cars will be sold in the country after 2030, nine years from now.  Some people may, therefore, be considering buying an electric car and wondering what the pros and cons are; well, here goes.

Range anxiety.  Have you heard of the term?  No, it’s not about the Red Indians worried about the white settlers invading the prairies where the deer and the antelope play.  It’s to do with electric cars: the concern that new electric car owners have that their car batteries will run out of energy before they can recharge them.  And I have just had a basinful – not of energy, but of range anxiety.
You see, we wanted to travel to Tyneside to see my brother and his wife, to pack in a bit of a holiday by the seaside, and to see how much the old home town had degenerated since I took my hand off the tiller and moved Down South.  Tyneside is about 320 miles away and it usually takes us 5 ½ hours to get there by car.  But now, of course, we have an electric car, making a relatively simple journey just that little bit more complicated.  I love my electric car, not because I am Green, but because it is wonderfully efficient.  Used mainly for fairly local journeys (ie out to about 60 miles) it is perfect, for it recoups energy whenever you decelerate, it is quiet, it does not pollute and it is very cheap to run; there is (currently) no annual Road Tax to pay and on some days I recharge the battery using the sun via the photovoltaic panels on my house roof.  On many local journeys, an ICE car never even gets up to full operating temperature and this is bad for efficiency, bad for the engine and bad for the environment because of the incomplete combustion that results.  Travel further than, say, 100 miles in most electric cars, however, and consideration has to be given to where you will recharge on the road: a bit like Wells Fargo looking to change the horses on their stage coaches as they cross the Wild West.  And there’s the rub: drive a car with an ICE and there is no problem with refuelling, for service stations are everywhere – you just stop at the next one as it appears on the horizon and fill up; the car will probably have a range, on a full tank, of about 350 miles or more.  This is not so for recharging an electric car: not only are the chargers few and far between, they are of various types, supplied by various agencies, operated by different means, and are of variable reliability; and that is before you take account of the fact that others may already be using them.  Now my car is a Nissan Leaf with a 40 kilowatt hour (kWh) battery that has, in the summer, a predicted range of 170 miles.  Theoretically, we would only need to recharge once on a 320 miles journey.  However, there needs to be a margin for contingency planning, for not finding a charger working at the 170 mile point and having to find another.  So knock that range down a bit. I tend to recharge when the battery reaches 40% – 50%, or roughly when my remaining range is 50 miles.  Incidentally, if your battery does run out of energy in an electric car, your breakdown service will transport you to the nearest working charger and, in some circumstances, will pay for you to stay in a hotel overnight.

Still with me so far? Right: there are generally three ways to charge an electric car. At the bottom end, you can plug it into a simple domestic AC 13A socket, which is fine if you are staying somewhere overnight: it will take me, for example, about thirteen hours to charge a completely flat battery in the UK with its 220V domestic voltage. The next level up is the ‘Fast’ or ‘Level 2’ AC chargers that can be found on bollards or posts in some supermarket carparks, at workplaces, or may be installed at home; they charge at 7kW so will take, for example, six hours to recharge my car from flat. Finally, there are the ‘Rapid’ or ‘Level 3’ chargers: they are the big boxes with the thick cables you may see at motorway service stations or on trunk roads and they use DC at up to 480 volts and about 100 amps to charge a battery quickly (to further complicate matters there are two types of connector for Rapid chargers, and a third unique to Teslas, but the principle is the same). Rapid chargers will take about 30 minutes to charge my car to 80% capacity and they are the ones to aim for if on a long journey – you go off for a coffee or comfort break while the operation takes place (the rate of charge slows rapidly after 80%, so the norm is to recharge no further than that point). Are there lots of these? Well, at two motorway service stations I stopped at on the M5 and M1, there was only one at each, yes one; the most I have seen so far at these locations was two. So you will see that a potentially big list of public charging stations has now been whittled down to a much smaller list of actually usable places suitable to support long journeys. You find these public chargers, by the way, using a map-based App on your iPhone or computer, called ZapMap, which is free to use.

So how do you pay for this?  The Level 2 AC chargers that you may see on bollards in some supermarket or public carparks are often free to use – you have to use your own charging lead to connect, but otherwise they are good value – but they are no use on a long journey as they are slow to charge.  Different suppliers have different ways of obtaining their fee for the electricity.  The best Rapid charging stations simply work on contactless: you connect up, wave your credit card at the machine and you are away.  Others work on an RFID card that you have obtained from the supplier: you create an account and give the supplier your bank or credit card details.  All also have an App that works on an iPhone or whatever, and some work only from the App (and so are dependent on a good mobile phone reception).  To date I have 15 Apps and associated RFID cards and the list is growing as I discover a new supplier. The charge for electricity ranges from £0.25 to £0.40 per kWh, so a recharge to 80% costs, typically, £5 – £6.

Given all this, I knew I would have to plan the journey to Tyneside, not just with regard to the route, as I normally would, but also with planned recharging stops.  The factors I have outline above also required me to identify alternative locations to be used if the first choice of chargers were not available – rather like an airline pilot has to plan for emergency landing strips and alternatives.  Fortunately, the  ZapMap App tells you where every single charge point is in the British Isles, their type, the supplier, the cost, and whether they are currently working or occupied.  Armed with this piece of software and my trusty spreadsheet I drew up a comprehensive journey plan that General Eisenhower would have been proud of.   So began The Grand Tour.

I won’t burden you with the detail. In a 320 mile journey to Tyneside we recharged four times, five if you count the top-up at journey’s end. Each stop lasted at least 20 minutes. Both chargers at one motorway service station were out of action, diverting us to our alternative charger further up the route. One other charging station was occupied, so we used a second planned alternative. On arrival in Tyneside, four of the planned chargers were either in use or unusable, necessitating a frantic diversion to a fifth in a different town. Finally, in Sunderland, we came across the King of Charging Stations: a station rather like a petrol filling station, run by an outfit called Fastned, and comprising six Rapid chargers. We drove in, we connected up, I waved my credit card at the screen, and we were done. Excellent, but why are there no more of them?
Moving on from Sunderland to visit our friends in Altrincham in Greater Manchester, we discovered – much to our surprise – that that vast metropolitan area, ringed by its many busy urban motorways, had very few Rapid chargers. Very kindly, our friends Sam and Laura in Altrincham invited us to park our car in their drive on arrival, and plug in to their domestic supply. The relief I felt at not having to prowl around Greater Manchester seeking an available and working Rapid charging station was immense, and we relaxed for the first time in the entire trip. Journey time from Sunderland to Altrincham, 130 miles away, but by an indirect route across the Derbyshire Dales to avoid the motorways, required three recharges, all without problem. Finally, the journey south from Altrincham to home in Barsetshire was undertaken on conventional roads as we have always done, the M6 and M5 being very congested and prone to blockages. We recharged three times without problem, though we did have to queue for ten minutes at a motorway service station to connect up. We flopped into the house after about seven hours. The Grand Tour was over and we were exhausted mentally and physically.

In summary, I expected a long journey by electric car to be a bit more difficult than going by a conventional ICE car, but I thought I should give it a try – to push the boundaries, as they say.  It proved to be not so much difficult as to be very stressful, to require careful planning, and to be something of an endurance test.  On the plus side, it was an adventure (shall we say), it cost only about £20 to travel from home to Tyneside, and we have seen a lot of places where we would otherwise not have stopped.  On the minus side, I rarely relaxed on the whole trip except at Altrincham.  Conclusions: while electric cars are excellent for short to medium journeys from home of up to, say, 60 miles (which, for most car owners, may be the commonest usage), they are not really suitable for long journeys unless they have a very large capacity battery.  The UK simply does yet not have sufficient fast public chargers on its main trunk roads and motorways to support the majority of electric cars, as they are currently configured, for long journeys.

With that technical section out of the way, normal service has now been resumed.  Welcome back.  Now, about that holiday.

We do not normally programme in an overnight stop on a journey to Tyneside but, as we knew this journey would take longer, we thought we would plan for a break. Doncaster, that well-known haven of sophistication, aesthetic delights and tweeness seemed as good a place as any, particularly as we expected to be passing through there at the five-hour point. Our initial thought was to stay at a Premier Inn or Holiday Inn, where one is usually guaranteed a good night’s sleep even if the culinary delights are unsophisticated. However, I discovered the Best Western Premier Mount Pleasant Hotel on the outskirts of Doncaster, which came with very good reviews, particularly for the food, so we booked a room there for the night. In my comments on booking, I asked (only semi facetiously) for a top floor room away from any noise, dogs or children. I received a very straight-laced reply that they could not guarantee that on a Saturday night. It was to prove a prophetic response.
The Mount Pleasant Hotel turned out to be a very impressive establishment built in extensive grounds on only two floors in a sort of square doughnut configuration; we later discovered that it had been converted from the stables and other outbuildings of a large country estate. The landscaped grounds were immaculate and the building itself was well found and maintained, presenting an overall welcoming impression of comfort and affluence. There was a large carpark and even a single electric car charger, albeit only a 13A domestic socket, that we plugged into (free) for the night. This, we thought as we approached the grand semi-circular entrance, was our sort of place. The first sign I had that, perhaps, something was going to rain on my parade was when I saw a car being unloaded by a collection of boisterous and plain-speaking northern young ladies carrying long dresses and clutching impossibly high heels. Oh God, I thought, I have broken one of my rules for booking holiday accommodation; how could I have forgotten it? Shacklepin’s First Law of Hotels: never, ever, ever book a hotel that also hosts weddings. Inside the hotel foyer hordes of people milled around, some booking in, others just drifting about. A large lady, wearing a sash that proclaimed “Mother of the Bride”, swept past followed by a marauding band of noisy feral children; a family arrived after us, wearing Sports Direct designer shorts and flip-flops. With a crash, my hopes of a quiet, select stay among like-minded people, pancaked on the hard reception floor. However, we had no choice other than to make the most of it, and Jane was hissing at me to stop grumbling and overreacting. Because of Covid, the reception desk was screened by perspex with a tiny slot in the bottom like you find in the Post Office. This, along with the fact that the receptionist wore a mask, the hard floors in the foyer, and general noise of everyone in the area, made hearing and communicating very difficult: I ended up bending down and shouting or listening through the little slot in the perspex which, I suppose, rather cancelled out the purpose of the screen. Never mind, the receptionist was most helpful and welcoming, and we were soon trundling our luggage up to our first floor room. The room was large, well appointed, and very comfortable with a luxurious en suite bathroom and a walk-in shower. Alas, the view from the room was of the inner roof tops, but one could hardly expect the hotel to allocate us a scenic room for just one night’s stay. We were very pleased. We did have problems with the television, but that was fixed promptly by the Assistant Manager, a delightful man who came from Barbados and who swapped stories about the Caribbean with Jane. At the appointed time, Jane and I changed into our smart clothes and went down to the restaurant for dinner. We entered the bar, with its long tables, hard floors and banquette layout, and ordered pre dinner drinks. Where, we enquired, was the restaurant? The reply was that we were already in it. I gazed around like a visitor to the zoo. Fellow drinkers mostly wore vests or polo shirts, and slacks or (I shudder) denim. Some wore shorts. To think that I had debated with myself whether to wear a tie with my jacket, before deciding – daringly – to go open-necked. Jane wore a lightweight summer dress and high-heels. We both looked a bit incongruous. Never mind, fairly quickly we were whisked into the inner chamber where there was more banquette seating, complemented by hard composite-topped tables. Virtually all the outer walls were of glass, with fine views over a terrace (with more tables) and the garden. On a bright, hot, summer’s day it would probably have been breathtaking and the perfect place to eat. Alas, on an overcast evening in Yorkshire, first impressions were not quite so good. I’m afraid that, at the time, it reminded me of a works’ canteen, but – on reflection – that is a little harsh. The fact is though, the restaurant did not have the comfortable warm ambience that I would have preferred: the hard surfaces and mock-timber floors made for poor acoustics and all the glass doors to the terrace being open made the restaurant freezing. I assumed that the hefty ventilation was to combat Covid, but it could have been because Yorkshire folk thought the temperature outside was tropical. Jane shivered in her summer dress and even I was barely comfortable. The menu, when it came, was all right without being as imaginative as we expected from the reviews. Jane was so cold that she ordered the soup to warm herself up; she proclaimed it to be “nice”: that most English of English adjectives that ranks something as passable without getting too carried away. I had the terrine, which was well-presented and delicious. Jane had a breast of chicken as a main course (declared as “all right”); I had pan-fried salmon fillet coated with pesto, which was of a very high standard. The service was excellent: friendly, efficient and prompt – ranking among the best I have ever had in a restaurant. Overall, I enjoyed the food more than Jane, who basically was so cold that she could not relax. The high point was having a lively conversation with a party of Yorkshire people on the next table, who proved delightful company and were very friendly. When they heard that Jane was cold one of them simply got up and shut all the external glass doors:
“You’re in Yorkshire now, lass. We say and do what we think, and don’t muck about”.
And so to bed for a good night’s sleep. Or not. Shacklepin’s Second Law of Hotels: never, ever, choose one that does live music.
We retired at the early time of 2130, being shattered after our journey, and sat reading. Shortly afterwards, the music started: thump, thump, thump. We looked at each other. The music was coming from almost directly beneath us: so much for the request for a quiet room away from any noise. The music and beat became louder as the evening wore on, but we were so tired that we still dozed off fitfully, and it probably stopped at about 2300, which was reasonable. At 0030 we were woken by loud noises, slamming doors and drunken arguments from the corridor outside; we drifted off again. At 0330 there was a large BANG outside in the corridor, followed by harsh words, muttering, an altercation and more slamming doors; we later were to discover that a guest returning to his room must have swayed into a heavy portrait on the wall in the corridor, which then fell to the ground with a resounding ‘crash’. We drifted back to sleep. We had had to book a time for breakfast, which was a ‘first’ for us, but on the day the staff were not fazed when we presented ourselves early. Breakfast was a buffet affair in the restaurant, served with excellent coffee. There was another wedding scheduled that day and the whole area was buzzing, despite it being fairly early on a Sunday morning. I enjoyed the food, but I don’t do noisy or sociable breakfasts; the occasion filled a little hole, but was hardly breakfast at the Athenaeum Club, and soon we were on on the road again. Overall, it was a delightful up-market hotel with absolutely first class welcoming staff, well-cooked food and very comfortable accommodation. Alas, it was too noisy, too busy and, perhaps, a little too much ‘of the people’ for us. It might be a good place to stay for a week’s holiday provided, of course, that the hotel wasn’t hosting a wedding or offering a tribute to a rock band.

And so to Sunderland, and a stay at the Hilton Garden Hotel right next to Sunderland United football ground, The Stadium of Light.  The location does not sound very prepossessing and, indeed, the view from our room was of the side of a football stadium preceded by acres of carpark.  However, we had stayed before (Blog 28) and had found it to be big, modern, comfortable, and exceptionally good value at about £67 a night for B&B.  The trick, of course, is to check the Sunderland United website before booking, and to make sure that the team is not playing at home during one’s intended stay.  The hotel had not changed: it was still very comfortable, with every member of staff whom we met friendly, welcoming and helpful without exception.  Our room was large, contemporary and of the standard layout – the only minor ‘down’ side was that the carpet was badly stained with coffee or tea in parts and would have benefitted from either a deep clean or, more likely,  being replaced.  We dined in the restaurant that night and the food was fine without being particularly exciting.  I had shredded pigs’ cheeks with greens and creamed potato, which was a pleasant surprise and very enjoyable; Jane opted for simple fish and chips.  The nice thing about modern hotels that are part of a chain is that they are usually predictable and of a known uniform quality.  You do not expect great things in the restaurant, but the food is wholesome.  Overall, we were delighted with the hotel and very likely would stay again: at least we managed to get three nights of perfect, quiet, sleep.

I’m afraid Sunderland, or what we saw of it, was not terribly impressive.  The city came across as very dirty and industrial, with litter blowing around the streets and grit getting into your eyes.  At the car charging station by the River Wear there was a little viewing platform that was approached down some steps from a carpark.  I went down to look at the Wear, where my father’s ships had been moored many a time, and found that the viewing platform was covered in discarded food cartons, old rags, bits of timber, drink cans, and parts of a bicycle: it had apparently been used as a bedding area for a tramp.  I tried reporting the litter to Sunderland City Council via their website, but gave up after twenty minutes of trying to upload photographs; it was not my city, so there were limits to my attempts to help the townsfolk or local council officials.  South Shields, seven miles away and my birthplace, was only a little better.  Many shops in King Street, in the centre of town, were boarded or shuttered up: casualties not only of economic times and new shopping centres, but also of the fallout from the Covid epidemic.  As in Sunderland, litter and dirt blew everywhere in the brisk easterly wind, the town looked unwelcoming and the people poor.  One naturally has fond memories of one’s childhood and, possibly, they are somewhat rose-tinted.  Nevertheless, as I remarked to Jane, South Shields in my youth may not have been sophisticated, but it was clean, had many varied and good shops, several excellent parks, a bustling air and pleasant hard-working people.  Now the place looked run down, shabby and impoverished.  The riverside was still appealing, though there was no longer the industrial activity that there used to be: coal mining and export has ceased and, where there used to be three or four shipyards, only empty sites remained.  We saw only two ships on the Tyne in the whole time we were there.  After all this, I was delighted to see that the fine long beaches and cliffs of South Shields were as excellent as ever, the amenities being much improved from the somewhat  understated way they were when I was young.  The weather was, unexpectedly, sunny and hot during our stay, and the coast was very popular with holidaymakers.  Jane and I did not manage to do as much as we wanted to during the visit, concentrating our time on seeing my brother and his wife: we managed a cliff walk of some three miles, but did not have time to stroll along the beach or South Pier.  It was probably just as well, as the sands were packed solid with people.

South Shields has several restaurants, most of the ethnic variety: Ocean Road, at one time, had the record for having the most Asian restaurants in any one street in the UK.  Of the rest, none could claim the title of haute cuisine exactly, but Colman’s Fish and Chip Restaurant has a good reputation, and Jane always clamours for a Minchella’s ice cream, Minchella being a long established family in the town of Italian descent.  We graced the latter’s ice cream parlour in Ocean Road and asked for two large tubs of vanilla ice cream. The woman at the counter blinked at us: did we realise that the tubs were not just big, they were very big?  Yes, said Jane, we only come Up North every two or three years and this was our treat.  So there we sat in this ice cream parlour at a tiny two-seater table, gazing out at the street and stuffing ourselves from two buckets of ice cream.  There was a certain free-surface effect as the liquid sloshed around in out stomachs when we finally lurched out. 
“See you again in 2023”, I told the staff.

Colman’s Fish and Chip Restaurant has always, also, been in Ocean Road but in the last few years the establishment has  opened another, perhaps more up-market,  venue on the sea front.  At the bottom of Mowbray Road, right next to the South Beach, there is a bandstand: one of those large Victorian edifices that you normally see in English parks.  This particular building was always known locally, for some reason, as Gandhi’s Temple and it doubled as a public convenience, which was located in the basement.  A few years ago Coleman’s bought this building, which had fallen into decay, added a glass extension and made it a seafood restaurant.  There, Jane and I dined on a beautiful summer’s evening, gazing out at the ever-changing seascape.  We had the last booking for the evening at 1930 and our table was still occupied when we arrived, so we were invited to have a drink in the cocktail bar.  This was situated in the old part of Gandhi’s Temple, in the circular rotunda part of the building and the experience was almost surreal: I could not believe that I was sitting in such a perfect contemporary bar, sipping gin and tonic in, of all places, my old home town.  It almost felt like Monte Carlo.  Almost.  The fly in the ointment was a collection of five or six women at the bar, all quaffing sophisticated cocktails, joshing with the barman, and shrieking periodically.  The noise practically pierced my eardrums and I could barely hold a conversation.  Fortunately, our table was soon ready and we moved off to eat; the women remained and it was clear that they were there to drink, not eat.  I was amazed, for it was a Monday night, not a weekend.  Clearly my initial assessment that the town was impoverished was faulty.  There were some good choices on the small menu, one of which was a medley of local seafood for about £54 (presumably shared).  Alas, at that time in the day some dishes were ‘off’,  so I opted for pan-fried sea bass, which was excellent, and Jane had boring-old cod and chips.  The only drawback of this excellent restaurant was the noise.  The acoustics were terrible and you could barely hold a conversation or hear the waitress.  It was such a shame for, otherwise, it was the perfect evening in perfect circumstances: watching the surfers in the freezing water, seeing the ships at anchor in the offing, and relaxing as the sun set and the lighthouses on the Tyne piers lit up for the night.  Recommended, but take ear plugs.

Our last night on Tyneside was to be spent dining out with my brother and sister-in-law in South Shields.  In the past, we have dined in a restaurant called Mambos, which I described in Blog 28 as being a sort of  “Colosseum meets the Acropolis in the Adriatic”.  Despite its brash and ostentatious decor, and the fact that it is popular with large noisy parties, the restaurant produces some excellent food.  I assumed that my brother would opt for Mambos this time (he likes speaking Serbo-Croat with the staff), but he seemed lukewarm on the choice.  Apparently, Mambos had split into two sister establishments, one of which was called “Bun Bun”, the name giving a fair indication of the type of cuisine, and the other “Wine and Dine”.  This time, my brother suggested a little Turkish restaurant that he knew sited, inevitably, on the “ethnic mile” that is Ocean Road.  I shrugged; why not?  I had not eaten Turkish food for a good many years, and it would be a nice change.  On the night, Jane and I duly fronted up at my brother’s house to collect him and Marion, and he opened the door with a sheepish expression on his face.  There had, he said, been a bit of a snag.  He had only just got around to booking the Turkish restaurant that evening, but there had been no reply.  In a panic, he had scoured the internet to check on opening hours and so on, and had found that the restaurant had been “closed down until further notice”.  So, either there was a hygiene problem, or there were no staff because of Covid.  Oh dear.  Fortunately, my brother had managed to book us in at Mambos original “Wine and Dine” restaurant – the one that looked like the Acropolis.  So down we went. In Blog 28 I described how, when we dined there in 2017,  the restaurant  was hosting two vast birthday parties for families of various ages including babes in arms.  Now, in 2021, it appeared that the families, the balloons and the babies were still there.  The noise was terrible.  As before, the food was excellent: my brother had fried squid, I had butterflied chicken, and the girls had steak.  All the food was truly excellent, the chicken being very tender and the steak just right (I had some of Marion’s).  It was hardly believable for South Shields and I was impressed for the second time that trip.  Alas, the atmosphere – just like the night before – was uproarious.  If we heard “Happy Birthday” being sung once, we heard it sung three times and we soon became tired of it.  It was such a shame: another potentially very good meal ruined by noise.  I wonder if the same crowd will be there in 2023?

In Altrincham, Laura and Sam treated us like visiting royalty and we relaxed mightily. The weather was not exactly tropical, but the rain held off for most of the time and we spent a pleasant day at the RHS’ new Bridgewater garden, a horticultural delight for Jane, and even I could appreciate the work that had gone into it. Growth was still at a fairly early stage but the garden had considerable potential and, in a few years, would be even better. The next day we visited Speke Hall, a National Trust property dating from the Elizabethan period, and remarkably well preserved. The National Trust seems to have moved towards choosing a particular theme when describing its property, and concentrating solely on that. The theme for Speke Hall was the oppression of Roman Catholics during the Protestant reign of Elizabeth I and the difficult time the Catholic owners of the hall had, or the torture that Roman Catholic priests endured if caught. It was a fair theme, but somewhat narrow in its outlook: I would have liked to have known more about the architecture of the house, the provenance of the family, and the history of the hall in the 400 years or so since Elizabeth. Like all National Trust properties now, alas, the information boards were written as if they decorated an infant school: the only thing missing was the phrase, “…and are you sitting comfortably children?”. The lavatories helpfully contained signs telling me how to wash my hands. It all rather grated with me, but we still found the visit fascinating. The executives of the National Trust will, of course, be the next up against the wall when the revolution comes and I form the Shacklepin Republic.

Anyway, we are back home now, marking time for the school holidays to end, when we can return to our boat in Devon without – we hope – the heaving crowds.  Jane has gone deaf in one ear – possibly a 1 in 100,000 chance side-effect of the beta-blockers she is on (it could only happen to Jane); she has also developed a repeat of the painful and itchy rash on her chest that she had exactly one year ago (Blog 51), and currently sleeps with an ice pack clutched to her bosom.  Poor kid, she really has been in the wars.

As to Covid, well the daily deaths related to the virus in UK have levelled off at about 90 a day.  Cases were falling rapidly, but have reached a point of inflection and may be rising again, but hospitalisations remain low.  89% of the population has received one vaccination and 77% has received both.  Plans are in place for a booster shot next month.  Symptoms now are still similar to the Common Cold but, although the condition is usually mild if caught by those who are vaccinated, it can still be very bad for some and fatal for a few.  The surge in deaths and hospitalisations that the gloom-mongers expected following the relaxation of compulsory restrictions in England on 19 July has not occurred, but the virus is still with us.  One day things will be completely back to normal, but I am not sure when.  At least we completed the entire Grand Tour without ever wearing a face covering, so things must be looking up.

Mustn’t grumble.

16 August 2021