Blog 80. Pull The Ladder Up, Jack…

“Someone seems to have got out of bed on the wrong side this morning”.
So went the breakfast greeting from my dear wife earlier in the week as she bounced into the Garden Control Tower in her new plimsolls. I grunted in reply. I had woken at 0500 and tossed and turned, as you do, snuggled up to Mrs S, was told to get off, rolled to my side of the bed, then nearly fell out. Then I remembered that we had discussed a possible strategy for this vulnerable and delicate time in her day that involved me simply getting up and leaving her to sleep in peace, bringing up a warming cup of the oolong several hours later only when summoned. So I got up, washed, shaved, dressed and repaired to the Breakfast Room (aka the Garden Control Tower) for a cup of black coffee and a glance at The Times. And that is where I made my first mistake of the day.
“Social Distancing Likely To Be In Force Until At Least The Autumn”, screamed the headline. I could hardly believe it. Here we were, in our third miserable lockdown, the UK economy in its worse state for three hundred years, half the population in a state of hysteria, yet with infections, hospital admissions and deaths plummeting like a stone because of a highly successful vaccination programme; and the prediction now was that we would still be faffing about with masks and two metres in September. Oh Brilliant! And I suppose the whole lot will start all over again in the Winter as the first sniffle comes along and that will be another Christmas ruined. Hrrmph.
That was the start.
Then I remembered that I had a parcel to collect from the Royal Mail sorting office, which was open from 0500 – 1230, so I thought I would take a break in that direction. It is an interesting characteristic of our national postal service (though it is actually a privately-run company nowadays) that, whereas all other delivery services or couriers, such as Amazon, will leave parcels with a neighbour or in the back garden, or will redeliver on another day, the Royal Mail insists on putting a card through your letterbox if you are not in, requiring you to pick up the parcel at the Main Sorting Office, which has totally inconvenient and anti-social opening hours. Theoretically, you can go onto the Royal Mail website to ask for a redelivery, but as the postman never fills in the reference on the card that he or she puts through your letterbox, that option is not available. Anyway, as an escape from The Times’ gloomy news I took the car out and drove through the cold, dark and deserted streets into town, waited five long minutes while a lorry took three attempts to reverse into the Sorting Office, searched for a parking slot, then dived out into the freezing cold to collect my parcel. On the door of the Sorting Office was a notice that said,
“Covid Restrictions. Office Opens at 0800. Sorry For Any Inconvenience”.
This was my second mistake of the day.
I was practically spitting blood. A return home, another cup of coffee, more gloomy news from The Times, a return to the Sorting Office at 0801 and final docking back home had all preceded the memsahib’s discerning assessment of my mood, given at the start of the paragraph. After I had snarled my way through breakfast I was offered some further advice:
“…and don’t take your bad mood out on me!”
And, behold, I was immediately calm for verily, I feared exceedingly, and said to myself, ‘what manner of woman is this, that even the wind and the sea obey her?’ (With apologies to St Mark).

Well, this could be the end of civilisation as we know it: the French have waived their law that prohibits employees from eating their lunch at their workplace. The last bastion has fallen. The reason, of course, is that well-known excuse for just about everything bad or inefficient at the moment, the Corona virus. If there are no restaurants open then, ergo, French workers cannot eat a proper lunch – hence the relaxation of the rules. We can gloss over the fact that the French actually have (had) a law that bans workers from eating at their workplace. For the benefit of those who have not been to France, I should explain that the whole of that country except the hospitality industry shuts down at noon for about two hours, and the natives go out for a proper sit-down lunch, perhaps with a small glass of wine. During this period businesses shut, parking charges are suspended, and the good people of France shake off their work problems, socialise, and generally relax in a civilised manner. They eat a proper cooked and delicious meal (ie not [usually] burgers and chips) which is served to them by harassed-looking, yet thoroughly professional and efficient, waiters or waitresses. The same procedure is followed in schools, where the children receive a balanced meal with not an Angel Delight or a Cabinet Pudding in sight. Odd and distinctly parochial though it may sound, I had never been to France on holiday before 2005. I had, of course, frequented the ports of Toulon, Marseilles and Cherbourg in the course of my service with the Royal Navy, but the odd beer in the red light district, a haircut run-ashore, or an expedition to buy a bottle of ink did not really count as cultural visits to the country of Britain’s nearest foreign neighbour. My reluctance to visit before 2005 was twofold: first, there was the natural English aversion to France, England’s natural enemy (or has been since 1066); second, and the main reason, was that I could not speak a word of French. My schooling, while excellent in many ways, did not include languages because I was a 13+ entrant to Grammar School, and that was the system’s punishment for me being a late developer; Grammar School 11-year-olds were taught languages but, as a late entrant at 13, I was taught instead how to draw the curve of interpenetration in engineering drawing, a rare skill no longer taught anywhere. On travel, I have always had the philosophical view that, for reasons of politeness and good manners, one should at least try to speak the language of a host country and so any holiday plans involving France (or any other non-English-speaking country) always reached an impasse. Up to 2005 we took all our holidays in Britain, where the language was intelligible (except for that time in Wales), the accommodation expensive, and the weather predictable (usually grey and wet). I must have had some sort of epiphany in 2004, because at that time I decided to teach myself French and I have never looked back since. Behold, the half was not told unto me: what a beautiful country, with lovely food, empty roads, perfectly decent people (even if they are French) and a totally different culture and approach to life. I have heard it said that the British eat to live, but the French live to eat. That is somewhat simplistic and trite, but not a bad summary. And when I say ‘live to eat’, I don’t mean that all the French are porkies; I mean the quality of the food, even in little roadside cafés is usually excellent. The French can even make a salad taste good. I do hope that the country reverts to its proper lunchtimes when all this is over – if it ever is in my lifetime.

Language and communication are so important, don’t you think?  I have commented before about the misuse of English and the need to avoid ambiguity that could lead to misunderstanding; saying “disinterested” when one means “uninterested” for example, or “infer” when one really means “imply”, such pairs having totally opposite meanings.  I was reading, some time ago, of an incident involving the emergency services that illustrates my point about the misinterpretation of language very well.  Someone had dialled 999 and, in a panicked voice, asked for the Ambulance Service.  He was put through and the conversation apparently went something like this:
[Emergency Operator]: “Ambulance Service.  Can I help you?”
[Caller]: “Oh my God! I’ve killed my friend.  I’ve killed my friend.  We were out hunting and there was an accident.  I’ve shot him. Help, for God’s sake, help.  There’s blood everywhere…”
[Emergency Operator]: “Calm down, sir.  Calm down.  It may not be as bad as that.  We’ll send an ambulance but, for the moment, only you can save him. Now, listen carefully.   First, make sure he’s dead”
[Caller][in a more stable voice]:”Right, right…I’ll do that…yes”
The operator heard footsteps as the man went back to the casualty.  Then there was a loud BANG and the caller came back on the line.
[Caller]: “Right.  I’ve done that.  Now what do I do?”
I suppose in a case like that, the breakdown is not just in communication, but in fundamental intelligence.

One way of characterising older and wiser citizens (apart from the sigh as they sit down) is by their conversations involving their medication or pain such as,
“I’m on the blue pills…”,
“Ha! I was on those last year. Now I’m on the green pills. They’re much better”
“Oh I need the blue pills for my leg. I get this ache just here…”
And so it goes on.
However, a further characteristic has now been added in 2021: the conversation regarding their Covid 19 vaccinations:
“Have you had yours yet?”
“Oh yes, I had the Oxford-AstraZeneca last week…”
“Pish, pish – I had the Pfizer two weeks ago…”
“We haven’t had ours yet. We aren’t yet 70”.
“Oh dear…”
As most of our friends are older than us (we hope that some of their wisdom, though preferably not their age, will rub off on us), the above has been a typical conversation on email, Facetime or whatever passes for a conversation nowadays. I am pleased to say that such dialogue has now moved on to a new level for – at last – I have been ‘done’ (vaccinated, that is, not gelded). Jane received the Oxford jab locally on Friday and I received mine at the racecourse of the Big City early on Saturday. The disparity of locations may be explained by the fact that Jane received a text from our local surgery and a local appointment shortly after; coincidentally, on the day she was vaccinated we both received letters from the central NHS Authority authorising us to log in online and book appointments at a nearby National Vaccination Centre. I opted to take the last option (having heard nothing from our surgery), a bird in the hand being worth two in the bush. Saturday dawned for us at 0630 on a dark and freezing morning and one of us leapt out of bed with great eagerness for what the day would bring; the other had a hangover after having consumed too much Crémant de Loire the previous night. The Big City Racecourse is located high on a hill north of the city itself and is very exposed to the elements. When we arrived for the 0820 appointment the temperature was -4C with a brisk easterly wind lowering that to about -8C by the chill factor. A whole host of volunteers, together with a clutch of firefighters from the local brigade, had turned out to greet me, which was most gratifying. It was some sacrifice, for I have to tell you, dear reader, that the conditions up there were perishing. The action took place in a large marquee that shook and crackled so much with every gust of wind that I could hardly hear what was being said to me. I was checked in at three separate desks and sterilised my hands at four separate stations. I was issued with an NHS standard facemark to be worn instead of my own. Wherever I sat, the seat was wiped down afterwards. Marshals (guides, not the US-variety) were everywhere to steer me in the right direction (very necessary as my spectacles had steamed up), and full credit to them for turning out in such inhospitable Arctic conditions. Finally, I got to sit down and be vaccinated with the Oxford-AstraZeneca serum, the most mundane part of the entire event. Afterwards I was directed to a high-backed easy chair such as one finds in the lounges of Old Peoples’ Homes to ‘recover’. My question of,
“I don’t suppose there’s any chance of a cup of tea…?”
was ignored, but I was given the precious card stating that I had been ‘done’. Alas, there was no badge and not even an offer of a boiled sweet for being a good brave boy.
I was released into the void after fifteen minutes (presumably to make sure that I didn’t die on them) clutching a leaflet entitled delicately, “Covid-19 Vaccination – A Guide for Older Adults” that depicted smiling grey-haired stalwarts looking cheerful or sitting in wheelchairs. That’s it then; booster dose on 1 May, when the sun will be shining, birds will be twittering in the trees, and all will be right with the world.

Incidentally, vis à vis these early morning expeditions in the (electric) motor car, my Nissan Leaf has the feature whereby one can tell it to get its interior warmed up in time for the humans to enter.  This can be done on a programmed schedule, or on spec.  One simply sends a signal to the car on getting out of bed and, on departure, scuttles across to the garage, unplugs the car, and climbs into a warm cosy environment, steering wheel and seats hot, ready to depart into the frozen landscape.  I just thought I’d mention that if you are still driving that dreadful fossil-fuelled gas guzzler.  What’s that?  You’re going to keep it?  OK – you know best, I suppose, but what would that precocious little Swedish girl say about it (has she gone away yet, by the way)? 

The UK remains in its third lockdown but, as stated earlier, the number of infections, hospital admissions and deaths from Covid 19 are all plummeting.  At the time of writing, deaths in the last 24 hours stood at 621, dropping at 26% a week. 14 million people (28% of the adult population) have been vaccinated and the government has achieved its target of immunising those over 70 by 14 February.  Vaccination of the Batch 5 people, aged 65 – 69 (including me), has now started.  I am sorry to report further instances of police over-zealousness, this time of an incident more local.  The granddaughter of friends of ours works temporarily in Iceland, a frozen-food supermarket in a nearby town.  She was familiar with two elderly women who were regular customers, coming in weekly on the bus from a town 6 miles away to order their groceries and arrange to have them delivered.  Last week the bus duly arrived and the two old dears alighted – to be met by the Barsetshire Police who asked their business and whence they had come.  On replying, the ladies were promptly given an on-the-spot fine of £200 each and told that they should shop in their own town.  There was no warning or discussion; no attempt to explain; just ‘bang’, “you’re nicked”.  I think that that is totally out of order and, moreover, an illegal fine.  As I stated in Blog 76, the actual UK law on Covid 19 makes no restrictions on distance travelled, or time taken, to shop or exercise: what it says regarding shopping is “…you must stay at home…except to obtain essential supplies…”. If I were in those ladies’ positions I would refuse to accept the fine and let the police prosecute me in the Magistrate’s Court – if they could.  But then, two old ladies are such an easy target and unlikely to complain.

I see that the Europeans have decided to avoid using the Oxford vaccine because “it is less effective than the Pfizer and has unpleasant side effects”.  This is contrary to trial results, experience in Britain over the last three months, and the recommendations of the World Health Organisation (WHO).  It would appear that, because  our continental cousins have been unable to organise themselves and obtain sufficient of their own stocks of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, their strategy now is simply to discredit the remedy used by their hated arch-rival, Britain, and sow seeds of doubt in the minds of any Britons already unconvinced by the efficacy or safety of the vaccine.  More fool the Europeans, and what a childish and pathetic strategy.  The European Union has also extended its previous policy of preventing the export of vaccines from Europe in order to retain the material for its own use, this time at the expense of an order placed by Canada. One could not find a more clearer case for establishing strategically important manufacturing capability on one’s own soil, and so much for Whole World cooperation.

I was baffled by reports of the number of British people returning to the happy homeland in the current circumstances because it was my understanding that we were in lockdown, the fundamental requirement being “stay at home”.  As I described earlier, two people here were recently fined for travelling a mere 6 miles to a nearby town to buy a a packet of cornflakes, a bag of frozen peas, some corn plasters and a bottle of milk (or whatever).   How, therefore, is it that some people are returning from the Bahamas (where they spent Christmas, how nice) or Dubai (where they had many pictures taken as they sunned or inebriated themselves).  It turns out that these people are “Social Media Influencers” and so their trips were essential and permitted because it was “work”.  Yeh, right.  Look: I write this blog mostly every week and post it on the internet, which I suppose is a kind of social media.  Not a week goes by without me offering an opinion or sage advice in the hope of influencing my readership.  Do you think I could do a bit of crowd funding to pay for the memsahib and me to travel abroad?  To Fiji, perhaps to soak up the atmosphere and report on the quality of the restaurants and the sartorial standards there…The offer is on the table.  What’s that?  You can’t afford it?  No, neither can I.  Social Media Influencing indeed: a bunch of overpaid, over-indulged, over-exposed and over-suntanned air heads who should never have been permitted to leave the country in lockdown.  Stick them in a B&B in Workington in quarantine for a fortnight, eating pease pudding and saveloy from the local pork shop, and let them tweet, or whatever it is they do, from there.

So, here we are: 13 February 2021and the eve of St Valentine’s Day; bitterly cold in Britain and the Thames frozen over at Teddington; the wind blowing a hooley at -4C; no snow here in Barsetshire, but the windows are rattling and it is distinctly uncomfortable outside.  Yet the snowdrops are up, the hamamelis is in flower, and Mrs Shacklepin has started painting her toenails for the forthcoming Spring and Summer (always a good sign).  She is also preparing Beef Wellington for our celebratory dinner tomorrow.  What more can you ask as the counterpoint to my opening paragraph?  Oh yes, I forgot, I have had my first Covid 19 vaccination.  Just pull the ladder up, would you Jack?  I’m all right.

Brrrrr, it’s cold.

13 February 2021

Blog 79. Still in Isolation

Earlier in the week I fell foul of my own sage maxim outlined in Blog 75 namely, “never trust instruments alone”.  For this, I blame the influence of that latter-day Eve, Jane, who had enchanted me with her siren song on health.  It was Day 3 of my quarantine with CV19 infection and still no symptoms.  Over breakfast, I was discussing with her (or rather hailing the masthead, as we were still far apart) that I thought the heart monitor on my new exercise bike was reading too high: the alarming figures it displayed did not match my observations from measuring my pulse on my wrist.  She suggested I try measuring my pulse using her rinky dinky wrist fitness monitor (are they called a Fitbit?) and she slid it forward across the gulf between us.  Regular readers will recall that this device was the beast that kept telling her that she had had an awful night’s sleep when, in fact, she had completed a deep dive to 500 fathoms and had resurfaced, free of barnacles, as if a new woman.  I put on the bracelet, ignoring the helpful advice of my dear wife telling me, “you strap it to your wrist” (thank you dear, I managed to work that out). I tapped the Heart Beat option and, after a minute or so, it came back with the totally unsurprising news that the old positive displacement pump was still going and that it was ticking along at idling speed of 72 beats per minute.
 “Try the pulse oximeter, try the pulse oximeter”, she urged.
“ And what will that do?”, I sighed.
“It measures your oxygen level!”, she said conclusively, as if that were the knock-down drag-out final answer.
“Well, I’m breathing.  That must be a good sign”.  
She looked at me in that way of hers.
“OK, OK”.  I tapped the option.  Back it came with a reading of 93%.
“So what does that mean?”
“I don’t know”, she said.
This reminded me of a time when we went walking with friends near Dartmouth and were ascending a very long, steep road that reached far into the sky, disappearing into the clouds (or so it seemed).  We paused to recover at every lamppost and my friend, a very keen fitness fanatic, said,
“When we get to the top, you must time how long it takes for your heart to return to normal speed”.
Knowing nothing about the subject, but always being willing to take advice on matters fitness provided it required no effort on my part, I took this onboard.  When we eventually reached the top of the hill I duly stood there with the rest of the party, gasping and heaving (some gasping and heaving more than others). I monitored my pulse as advised and finally came up with the recovery time.
“Right”, I said to my friend who, I noted, had recovered quite some time ago. ”My recovery time is six minutes” (or whatever it was). “Is that good?”
“I don’t know”, said my friend. “It’s just something you should do, I think…”
Ever since another friend, a personal trainer, told me you could eat as many scones with jam as you like after taking exercise, without any detrimental effect, then subsequently vehemently denied the statement, I have been a bit dubious of what these fitness experts tell me;  this further piece of evidence added to my scepticism.  Why, I read the other day, that these people get a ‘buzz’ out of running for several miles, and travel abroad to take part in marathons. Are they mad?  Why on earth do they think we invented motor cars?  There is definitely something wrong there.  I tell you reader: beware these fitness addicts: they live in a parallel universe and wear jock straps and sports bras.

Post paragraph note: I wish I hadn’t mentioned those scones and jam; I feel hungry now.

I thought afterwards that I would pursue the business of the blood oxygen level (I had nothing else to do) so I went on the internet – that well known source of gloom, doom and misinformation – and discovered that, at 93%, my blood-oxygen reading indicated that my body was fighting an infection.  Oh dear.    I immediately felt off-colour.  Then I remembered reading an article somewhere about buying an oximeter for monitoring your health.  Excellent! An opportunity to buy yet another new gadget and monitor my deterioration at the same time, thus killing two birds with one stone.  I reached for the trusty iPad: ah yes, there was an oximeter on Amazon for £26, much recommended and bearing a CE kite mark.  A ‘Must Have’, I suggested to the Head Nurse and ordered it forthwith.  It came the next day.  You have probably seen these things: they are like a big clothes peg that you clamp on your finger; you press a button and it tells you your heartbeat and blood oxygen level, all very nifty.  I clamped mine on and waited in trepidation: 72 beats a minute and 98% blood oxygen level.  Perfectly normal, the British Standard Healthy Human in fact.  I immediately felt well again.  Jane, of course, felt that she should be in on all this, so she tried it.  Her reading was 32 beats a minute and 97% and this immediately gave her cause for concern (and so it should have – she apparently was fading away even as I sat there looking at her).  We took the risk of me taking her pulse in her wrist, but she had none.  I think she must have been alive as she was still standing there and giving vent to her concern that she must be ill.  I took her pulse from the carotid artery in her neck and used my watch in the old fashioned way, like Hattie Jacques in Carry on Nurse:  seventy beats a minute.  Still nothing wrong with her, but – mark you – there is something odd about someone who never has a pulse in her wrist, can rarely yield a blood sample, and whose body defies precision medical equipment recommended by the ambulance service.  I think she may be from the planet Venus and should not to be trusted.  I also think that, maybe,  I need to get out more.

My first day in purdah dawned with a knock on the bedroom door at 0745, shockingly fifteen minutes before “Turn To”. I had been awake for an hour and was gasping for a cup of tea, but I had been ordered not to contaminate the kitchen utensils or crockery, so lay rigidly in my bed awaiting room service. My original plan (see Blog 78) had been to take to bed the little handbell used in our household by the Sick and Dying to summon help in time of need, but the Head Nurse saw (and heard) me surreptitiously picking it up the night before and I was challenged before I even reached the stairs:
“Just where do you think you are going with that?”
I resisted the involuntary urge to protect my bottom with my hands.
“Well, I thought I would take it into the bedroom in case I needed a paracetamol or a cup of tea or something…”
“You will not! Kindly put it back, please. This is my opportunity for ten nights of undisturbed sleep and natural wakening. I’m not having you ringing that damned bell at six o’clock in the morning”.
I replaced it, abashed.
Anyway, to return to the present, there was a knock on the bedroom door, but no tea. I tried calling, “Enter!” but, strangely, no one came in. So I padded across and opened the door. Outside had been erected a little trestle table and on it was my tea, with Jane standing behind it in her fluffy No 2 dressing gown (Gown, Officer’ Wife, Size 10, Arctic).
I adopted my best Pathetic Sick Person stance and passed the back of my weary hand across my (un)fevered brow.
“Why, thank you darling”, I said, while thinking she really was taking this isolation seriously: surely she could have held her breath as far as my bedside table and back. I awaited the customary concerned enquiry; the sympathetic look, perhaps; the yearning in her eyes that said she had missed my masterly presence last night, and would be devastated if it were gone forever.
“Well, thank you very much!”, was the greeting from the Concerned Enquirer. “Turning on that hall light at a quarter to seven! It woke me up! I had only just managed to get of to sleep at five o’clock”.
I was mystified. I had done no such thing. Indeed, I had not been downstairs that morning, and I said so. Then I realised what it was: the hall light comes on automatically at 0645 (fifteen minutes before “Call the Hands”), the better to light my way as I proceed to make the early morning tea in more normal times. I explained this and she grunted in response before retiring to The Lady Boudoir in a dudgeon while I returned to my dungeon.
“Hmmm”, I thought, “this is going to be a long ten days in semi-isolation”.

Everyone is concerned about me.  Periodically I receive a telephone call from the Test and Trace Team, who ask how I am coping then mention, casually, the swingeing fines that will be imposed on me if I cross the threshold; this is followed up by text messages on alternate days  saying the same thing.  Concerned friends have called, asking after my welfare.  It is all rather touching (I didn’t think anyone cared) but, the truth is, dear reader, I am one of the lucky ones and am loafing.  Apparently the PCR test is pretty accurate and the likelihood of me being a ‘false positive’ is not great; however, as far as I can gather, around 20% of those people tested positive have no symptoms at all.  I guess I am one of the latter, but the mystery of how I caught the virus while Jane remained untouched, remains a mystery.  Maybe it does not affect Venusians.

There are perks, of course.  One must always look on the bright side.  I am now excused all duties and have, for my personal and individual use, (a) the electric blanket; (b) the bedroom television with access to Clint Eastwood films; (c)  the en-suite bathroom and shower; (d) the en-suite lavatory with seat left up; (e) the electric toothbrush and (f) the power to go to sleep or to get up whenever I want.  It is quite heady stuff.  Jane, for her part, has the spare bedroom (negative electric blanket and Warm Man); the main bathroom, shower over bath, lavatory seat in lowered position; and the downstairs lavatory, ditto lavatory seat status, designated The Lady Toilet.  No contest really: no wonder she’s grumpy – she misses me, bless her; I can tell.  As I write this, by the way, it is Day 9 of quarantine and I am still perfectly healthy; it must be the way she looks after me.

My isolation ends at 2359 GMT on Saturday and Jane has a bottle of bubbly on ice to facilitate the celebration.  I did suggest that Jane sneak into my bed at 0002 GMT on Sunday in a sort of pretend lovers’ tryst to spice up the ennui, but she said she would be asleep at that time.  She had a twinkle in her eye when she mentioned Sunday morning but, when I enquired further, it turned out that she was looking forward to me making the early-morning tea again.  That’s married life for you.

Oh yes, I forgot to mention that we completed our month of ultra-strict diet on Monday and, at Weigh In, I had lost 5.7 kg, or 13 lb in old units, during January.  We have reverted to to the 5:2 diet now, with the “2” bit (two days of only 800 calories) kicking off next week.  We had cottage pie on Monday night followed by, in Jane’s case, a choc ice.  That meal was divine.

Well, the new robot vacuum cleaner has arrived from Austria, having been ordered on 31 December. I think it must have come here under its own power judging by the delay though, to be fair, the tardiness was because of Brexit and the resulting paperwork involved. The machine works an absolute treat. The old one lasted for about 15 years before giving off its last spark and refusing to move further than one foot from its charger. This one really is whizzo dizzo and it talks to you occasionally to tell you to pull your finger out and empty its dirt bin. Jane is very taken with it, not least because it is relatively quiet after its predecessor, which used to wind up like an RB211 on take off. The new one is an iRobot Roomba 980 and I have called in Marvin to make it feel part of the family.

The rapid implementation of the Covid 19 vaccination programme appears to be having a good effect, such that the rate of positive tests is now dropping at 25% a week, as is the rate of hospital admissions (22%).  Weekly deaths are also falling, currently at 13%.  The overall absolute figures remain at a high level, however, and there were 1,014 deaths in the UK in the last 24 hours.  Evidence has emerged that vaccination reduces transmissibility by nearly 70%, which augurs well for the lifting of social distancing, but the government – perhaps rightly – is a little wary of relaxing lockdown earlier than March or April.  Concern that the scientists and the government may be moving the goalposts on the criteria for lifting restrictions (Blog 77) continues and the matter has been raised in Cabinet.  I see that the Isle of Man has not only come out of its own brief lockdown, but has removed all social distancing measures entirely: pubs and restaurants have opened, theatres are putting on plays and life has returned to normal (the island has its own government and is not technically part of the UK).  Of course, the Isle of Man closed its borders some time ago and remains closed to any visitors.

Looking back at my early blogs from Spring last year, I see that I was conscious of every week of lockdown, counting off the weeks like a prisoner doing porridge.  Almost a year later I sense that we are all becoming inured to the situation now, taking each day as it comes with dull lifeless eyes and grateful for any crumbs that the government throws to us.  We are beginning to suffer a kind of Stockholm Syndrome.  That is why I think that, when all this is over and the POW camp gates are thrown open, we will still  want to stay inside the compound, wearing our comfort face nappies and afraid to go out or go near anyone.  Rehabilitation will take quite a while, I fear.  It is interesting that, in the Isle of Man, the Manx government has asked residents to be tolerant of those of its citizens who may choose to continue with their own social distancing measures such as wearing masks. I infer from this that some Manxmen are emerging from their holes with considerable caution.  I will not be following their example when the time comes.

The late naval author John Winton once said that a typical wardroom argument in HM ships took the form of a flat statement, followed by a flat contradiction, followed by personal abuse.  I think that that could now be expanded into many sections of society ashore today, and we are beginning to see a lot of it at the moment: the strategy of playing the player not the ball.  This is evident in all areas of social interaction, but is none more obvious than in our present situation with Covid 19.   Putting to one side the arguments of the conspiracy theorists who think that the Corona vaccine contains a microchip that will be used to monitor and control us, there do happen to be members of the scientific community out there who disagree with the current strategy to tackling the virus.  Their qualifications may be just as good as the official government advisors and their arguments may be just as valid.  There may also be members of the public who are perfectly capable of reading the government statistics, analysing them for themselves, and coming to a different conclusion from the official line.  At the very least, the matters they raise should be heard, examined and debated and, if appropriate, rejected based on logic.  What we have instead  is that anyone (appropriately qualified or not) who challenges the True Faith, founded on the shrine of Lockdown and celebrated by the communion of The Face Mask,  is personally vilified, labelled as a crank, and their advice or views are dismissed out of hand.  Worse, learned papers are simply suppressed without peer review or are deleted from history as being inconvenient.  No attempt is made to examine any evidence put forward, to talk about it sensibly or to consider that – occasionally – these people might just, possibly, be right; instead we have the 21st century equivalents of the witch hunt and being burnt at the stake to cries of ‘heretic’.    It is as if we have learned nothing from the Ancient Greeks who took pride in practising debate, rhetoric and logic, and brought us democracy: we, as the human race, are the poorer for this current narrow minded zealotry.  

Of course, in writing that last paragraph, I freely admit that it is contrary to the views that I put forward early in the epidemic in Blog 44, in which I advocated One Official Strategy and declared that this was no time for fannying about with debate.  But then, there you have it: the perfect balanced argument.

Now tell me: why can I not buy a decent pair of trousers anymore? The ones on sale either have ‘stretch’ waists to kid the owner that he is not really putting on weight, narrow bottoms like the drainpipe trousers of the 1960s, or a truncated fly opening. Of all of these drawbacks, this last is probably the most irritating. I first came across the phenomenon on a third-party basis some years ago when I was in a public lavatory, pointing silently at the porcelain as we men do. I was considerably disconcerted when I noticed, out of the corner of my eye, the bloke next to me undoing his belt and starting to drop his trousers. “Oh my God”, I thought,”It must be my hairstyle that attracted him”. Thankfully, the disrobing stopped there and the bloke carried on as if things were perfectly normal. I tackled a friend on this and asked if he had had a similar experience. He explained that it was because some trousers now came supplied with only half the length of fly zip; consequently, undoing the whole garment was the only way to – you know – gain full access to the equipment. Now I find myself in possession of just such a pair of trousers with half a fly zip and it is, indeed, a lengthy operation to perform what used to be a quick and easy natural function. What is the mindset on that? Are the tailors saving money on zips? Come to think of it, the shirt tails aren’t as long as they used to be either, but perhaps that is in order to serve those members of the male community who choose to walk around with their shirt tails hanging out like errant and defiant schoolboys (I suppose it does hide their pot bellies).

The Beast From the East is expected to return this weekend after a relatively mild spell in the south of England (14C at one point). I use the term ‘England’ advisedly because poor old Scotland has not had much respite from the freeze (-12C last week in Altnaharra in the Highlands). Although we are a relatively small country we still encounter quite a difference in weather between the extreme south of England and the extreme north of Scotland (about 700 miles). I remember when we lived near Glasgow and I had business in London. I left a very cold and flooded Scotland to fly south and found, in London, people sitting outside pubs and restaurants in the sunshine and in their shirt sleeves. A few years ago I was asked to give a lecture to the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) in Thurso (about as far as you can go north on the mainland) and I opted to do it in April when I thought the weather would be reasonable. Thinking we would make something of a holiday of it, Jane and I stayed with friends who very kindly put us up in Cullen (home of the Cullen skink), roughly two thirds of the way up Scotland and due east of Inverness; I reasoned that the trip to Thurso from there would be a half skip and jump. How wrong I was. The rickety train journey from Inverness to Thurso, on a single rail track with a passing place in the middle, took forever and passed through just about every type of winter weather system going. At one point the train ground to a halt in the middle of a wilderness that would have done justice to a scene from the film Braveheart. We wondered what the problem was, but then I saw the guard walking along beside the train carrying an enormous crowbar. He and the driver then set-to on the points, which had become frozen and jammed. This little DIY job seemed to work and we were eventually on our way, but in order to make up the time the train driver decided to miss out Thurso from one of his stops and carry straight on to his final destination in Wick; passengers for Thurso (including us) were dropped off at some tiny halt in the middle of nowhere to await a minibus. We unhappy few huddled in the tiny waiting room (which, thankfully, was heated) for over an hour while day grew darker and the sleet and snow lashed at the windows like something out of an Agatha Christie murder mystery. Eventually an old minibus taxi turned up and we piled in to be driven across the highlands, the vehicle frequently veering across the road as gusts of wind blasted across the heather and glen. We made Thurso eventually and it was freezing, but the lecture went well: I suppose me turning up was the only excitement the engineers of the IMechE had that year. Thurso: nice place, nice people, but go in July next time. Cullen, after that, was positively tropical (or so it seemed).

The snowdrops are coming up and Jane was out in the garden yesterday, talking to the other plants and making a mess.  Daylight is increasing at two minutes every day.  Soon, I am sure, we too will be blossoming out into the human beings that we once were.   Roll on Spring.

5 February 2021

Blog 78. “Unclean, Unclean…”

Well that’s a bit of a bummer.  Apparently I have Covid 19.  Yet, by some fluke, Jane is uninfected.  There is, of course, nothing wrong with me or, rather, I have no symptoms whatsoever.  It all started with Jane complaining yesterday that she had a headache, aching limbs and generally not feeling tip top.  I dismissed the headache (which we both have had, off and on, all month) as a known side-effect of the low-carbohydrate diet that we are on, and I would normally have glossed over the rest of Jane’s symptoms as the outcome of her known long-term chronic valetudinarianism; however the aching limbs did sound worrying.  The two of us participate in a long-term Covid study being undertaken by King’s College in London which asks us simply to log in every day and report whether we are well or not.  I suggested that she duly report ‘sick’ on the App and back they came, asking her to arrange a test, using the study as authority, with the option of taking a friend.  We managed to arrange a test within the hour and duly piled into the car for the drive-in experience, repeating the process of last October.  That was at 1400 yesterday; by 0800 this morning we had the results.  Jane’s email came first: it was negative. 
“Told you so”, I said with great relish, “Nothing wrong with you”. 
Ten minutes later my email came in; it was positive. 
“What?”, I said, “WHAT?  But, but….I haven’t been anywhere”. 
I haven’t mixed with anyone.  I haven’t even been out to exercise.  On the odd occasion when I have left the house I have simply sat in the car in a supermarket carpark.  The only person I have mixed with is little Miss Negative, and she has not been anywhere other than the supermarket, once a week, where she wears the obligatory mask and disinfects the trolley and her hands religiously.  I think my result may be a ‘false positive’, but we can’t afford to take any chances: if Jane gets ill then I will starve to death, my corpse found three months later on the kitchen floor with a withered hand reaching out for the can opener.  The long and short of it is that Jane and I must isolate from the world now for ten days.  I looked at Jane and she at me.  She made the decision for me:
“I’m moving out”.
“Oh fair enough I suppose”, I said resignedly, “I suppose it was the whistling that finally tipped the balance…”
“Not out of the house, fool”, she said, “Out of the bedroom.  I’ll move into the spare room”.
“Whoopee! So I get the television and en-suite bathroom?”
“You’ll need them if symptoms develop and you have to take to your bed”.
“Oh.  I hadn’t thought of that”.
We cannot easily isolate during the day, but we have pulled out the leaves of the dining table so that I sit at one end of the table while she sits two metres away at the other end, like Lord and Lady Muck taking tiffin in Shacklepin Towers, but without the footman to serve the food.  The frequent bleach disinfection process of door handles, remote controls and switches has been reinstated with a vengeance and I have been banished from the downstairs loo (now re-designated The Lady Toilet, seat down, lavatory paper dispensing from the top of the roll).  A no-touch policy has been introduced and we are swerving around each other like two like-poles on magnets.  It seems a bit daft seeing as how we slept together last night, but there you go. The windows have been thrown open and I am writing this in a freezing gale like Captain Scott scribbling down his final words in Antarctica after failing to reach the South Pole. Oh well, I wondered what we should do to pass the time this week.

I must say I was very impressed by the process that was triggered by my positive test result.  Within five minutes of my bad news I received a barrage of texts and emails telling me (us) what to do and asking with whom I had been in contact recently (no-one) so that they could be contacted.  It was all very slick given the negative press the government has been receiving over the last ten months.  The vaccination programme is a further instance of a UK success story: over 8 million people (roughly 13% of the UK population) have received their first injection and we seem to be on track for immunising everyone over the age of 70 by mid February.  Jane and I, at 69,  are in the next phase after that.  An unseemly row has broken out now because the EU was slow to place orders for their vaccines, slow to approve them for use and slow to start immunisation.  The organisation insisted that the task must be undertaken centrally, and not arranged by individual countries of the Union, with the result that the Union’s immunisation programme has been as sluggish as a suet pudding, and just as wobbly.  The UK placed orders with Pfizer three months before the EU, and approved the vaccines just before Christmas.  The EU is now demanding that the laboratory  in Belgium stop fulfilling the UK order and divert the output to the Europe instead, threatening to stop any exports.   Moreover, the EU is demanding (note that pejorative verb) that the laboratories making the Oxford vaccine in Britain should stop supplying the UK and should send the output  to Europe.  You couldn’t make this up.  It makes me so glad that the UK left that poisonous organisation on 31 December last year.  Closer to home, last week in Wales the First Minister defended his order for vaccination teams to slow down their rate of injections as “it would use up all the stocks of vaccine allocated and leave the teams idle”; someone pointed out to him that the best place for the vaccine was in a vulnerable person’s arm, not sitting in a vial. Statistics-wise, the number of positive test results remains high, but continues to fall, as does hospital admissions; daily deaths in the last 24 hours (measured by date of death) stand at 1,239 and is also falling (https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/deaths).  The media is taking enormous delight in reporting that the total death toll from Covid in the UK now exceeds 100,000 and implies, with relish, that every single death is Boris Johnson’s fault (“The Prime Minister has blood on his hands.…”).  Oh, for heaven’s sake!  Overall, we may possibly have turned the corner, but it will be a long waiting game.  A review of lockdown in England will take place on 22 February (don’t hold your breath) and it has been declared that schools will remain closed here until March at the earliest.

The issue of educating our children in the present circumstances is a thorny one, not only because of the months of schooling lost, but for mental health reasons.  A high incidence of mental health illness in the young has been reported, probably as much because of concerns over failing examinations as the inability of children to meet and play.  Parents have also reported serious difficulty with trying to balance working at home with home-schooling of their children. I am not sure how parents who cannot work at home manage with childcare, though key workers can send their children to school as normal.    I believe A-Level and GCSE examinations this year have been cancelled and pupils’ results will, instead, be assessed by their teachers – a process that could be likened to someone performing their duties to their own entire satisfaction.  It has been suggested that universities lower, or abandon some of, their entry standards to facilitate the admission of disadvantaged children.  This may be a fair proposal provided the universities do not lower their graduation standards at the same time – a very real concern:  I, for one, do not want to cross a bridge, fly in an aircraft or sail in a ship designed by a so-called engineer who has not been educated to a proper standard, nor do I wish to be treated by a half-trained doctor.  I understand that home-schooling for state school pupils varies, but know of one report where the pupils receive only two hours of on-line tuition a day.  In contrast, our neighbour’s children, who normally go to private school, receive on-line tuition from 0800 to 1600.  In Portugal, the socialist government has banned private schools from giving on-line tuition because Portuguese state schools cannot match it, the motto apparently being that if we all cannot fit into the lifeboats, then none of us will be allowed to abandon ship: a strange philosophy. 

It is a funny old thing being under close arrest, or lockdown as governments prefer to call it.  Some of us are content in our own company and can cope, but there must be many – particularly those without a partner or spouse – who face very real challenges or mental issues.  Imagine being stuck in a high-rise flat on your own in a big city, perhaps with a noisy neighbour upstairs, no job, and the only exercise being in a crowded urban park.  Add to that the possible overlay of being old, computer illiterate, with no friends and no relatives.  It must surely be hell for them.  Logic dictates that if we isolate ourselves then the spread of an infection must surely be inhibited (though I refer the honourable reader to the exception that proves the rule, moi), so one can follow the argument that a lockdown is necessary for the good of all.  However, if you look at the UK government’s own statistics ((https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/cases ) you will see that infections in the UK actually peaked on 1 January 2021 and were already falling when this lockdown was implemented on 5 January.  This is very curious, but suggests that the previous Tier system of focussed regional restrictions may have been producing fruitful results before the present extreme universal isolation measures were brought in.  In a similar vein, some pundits have blamed the increase in infections on the UK’s relaxation of restrictions on Christmas Day (hence the, “blood on his hands” reports), but the data does not support that: infections were rising steadily in the UK from about 28 November (when the second lockdown was still in force) and the statistics show no spikes on or after 25 December.  I have taken the exceptional step of including links to the UK government statistics on the Office of National Statistics (ONS) website in my blog this week, just to counter any thoughts you may have of “Horatio on his hobby horse again”.  The pressure on our hospitals and their staff is indisputable, as are the deaths that continue; I merely suggest that a more targeted isolation régime, with some compromise with normal life, might balance the Covid deaths with the deaths from neglected medical conditions and the cases of mental illness.

Working from home is a relatively new experience for many and, of course, it is a process that can only be practised in limited cases by white-collar workers.  Some people have sworn by it, predicting that it is the way of the future and that many city offices will close; others are not so sure.  A recent report by two top finance companies has suggested that the practice is “fraying at the edges” and will not last after the present epidemic.  Certainly the concept sounds good: no need to dress, no commuting, no timetable.  You set your own agenda within the bounds of producing a defined output.  In practice there are problems: you miss the company of colleagues, socially and professionally; problems that once could be solved by wandering over to the next desk for a chat now have to be tackled formally and lengthily using email or video conference; motivation can be hard (I recently heard on the radio of people who did all their work in bed and never got up except to prepare food and drink and use the lavatory); personal standards fall; there are domestic distractions; you never get away from the job.  I experienced the last drawback in a very minor way when I was serving in my last ship, HMS NONSUCH.  There was an Engineers’ Office deep in the bowels of the ship where I had a desk and where I normally completed all my paperwork, but many other officers simply worked from their cabins.  I thought I would try that, and have the correspondence brought up to me on a regular basis.  I lasted a week. I found I could not resist tackling the paperwork in my IN tray, often drafting letters or writing reports up to midnight, and I could not force myself to take a break.  More currently, my son who normally works for the government in London, has been working from home since March 2020.  I asked him how he was getting along and he reported that his day started at 0600 and he was still participating in video conferences with ministers and others at 2200; he said he felt exhausted, and I am not surprised.  He does have a critical job, so his experience may be an extreme case, but I am sure the drawbacks can be applied to many home workers.

Previous generations would often have their future trades or jobs chosen for them by their parents, and would be pushed into them with the help of some nepotism.  I know of cases, even in my generation, of friends who ended up in a career that way: girls thrust into nursing or secretarial courses, boys pressured into joining the Navy.  Some of us, however, have the luxury of choosing our careers and being contented with our decision (the secret, probably, is to decide the job you want to do while at school before your parents decide it for you).  We generally choose the type of job we want to do and, if we don’t like the way it is panning out we move on.  Mid-way through my time in the Royal Navy I decided to leave and become an engineering consultant in industry.  The job was academically challenging and very rewarding, but after three years I could bear it no longer: I left and rejoined the Navy, taking a pay cut in the process.  The reason?  The job was destroying my soul.  Do you remember what it was like when we took our school or university exams in the gymnasium or hall, each of us sitting at desks far apart, total silence, and writing all the time for hours?  Well that was what it was like being an engineering consultant: you came into work at 0830, you sat at your desk, you took out the paperwork for whatever project you were working on, and you completed calculations or wrote reports all day until 1700, with thirty minutes off for lunch.  There was no office banter or chatter, no formal coffee break and every minute of the day was recorded against a contract; you felt guilty even visiting the lavatory or reading a technical journal because it was using the client’s time and your own project’s resources. The only break I received was getting out on visits for meetings with clients.   I was used to the mixed social and professional life of the Navy: Management By Walking About, working all hours but enjoying myself in the process, socialising with shipmates and encouraging my workforce.  Hence the return to the True Faith, despite the drop in pay.  The moral of the story is that all work and no play makes Jack a very dull boy (and can, in extremis, give him or her mental problems).  By the way, my return to the Royal Navy did my career the power of good in a personal sense (I had learned a great deal), if not a professional one (damn, I had always fancied that Vice Admiral’s hat).

With the exception of minor war vessels and submarines, the Commanding Officers of HM ships always relax and eat in their own cabins and are the only officers to have en-suite facilities and their own separate dining cabin.  Other officers, of course, eat in the Wardroom and the Captain only enters that mess by invitation.  This is a traditional practice that dates back beyond Nelson’s time and is based on the premise that it is easier to command and make unpleasant decisions if one is not too chummy with one’s subordinates.  It makes for a very lonely life for a Commanding Officer, however, and they all seem to develop a particular aura, some in the manner of a Roman emperor.  Of the ships’ captains under whom I served, some were unpleasant; many were unreasonable; all were very demanding; most were eccentric in some way. None was “nice”. Yet all were professional, first-class leaders for whom I had the greatest of respect.  I believe the Masters of merchant ships are often imbued with the same characteristics, despite – in their case – messing with the other ship’s officers in the saloon.  Yes, working alone does have its problems.

The Diet is still rolling along or, in Jane’s stated case, not rolling along fast enough.  She has started fantasising about steamed puddings and jam roly poly now.  Just to give you a flavour, we had soft- boiled eggs with asparagus soldiers for breakfast this morning (crikey, isn’t it amazing how rapidly your digestive system passes that asparagus through your body) and, for luncheon, we had miso soup with slices of mushroom and spinach.  The latter had the colour and consistency of Irrawaddy River water, and it appeared to be flavoured with debris removed from the strum box of the starboard stern gland bilge pump, but it all tasted very nice.  We end Phase 1 of this diet (ie the really strict bit) at 0800 on Monday 1 February, when we have the Weigh In.  We will see how I got on after just under a month.

The Archbishops of York and Canterbury have asked the nation to join in prayer every night at 1800 from 1 February to remember those have died from the virus and to pray for our recovery from the epidemic.  I won’t go all religious on you other than to say that prayer has worked for me at least three times and I think the proposal is worth serious consideration: we cannot come together in churches at present, but perhaps our collective voices may be heard from our own homes.  Alas, prayers or faith healing do not always work despite our best efforts.  I once heard of a chap who went to one of those mass faith-healing sessions, much favoured by American evangelists.  The preacher gave a long and very sincere sermon, alternately haranguing the audience for their sins then assuring them that if they prayed hard and seriously enough, then miracles could be performed.  After an hour or so he called for two people in the audience who were afflicted in some way to come forward and be healed.  Two men volunteered: one was crippled in one leg and walked only with the aid of crutches; the other had a very bad stutter.  The preacher called them up onto the stage, but asked them to go behind a curtain so that they could concentrate all the better on their prayers.  He then called on the audience to join him in prayer for healing the two men, to concentrate hard and urge God to show His power and help the afflicted.  He prayed for about ten minutes, frequently crying out for mercy and kindness and encouraging the audience to work with him.  He then turned his attention to the men behind the curtain and called out:
“We pray for your recovery!  You, with the crutches: throw them down”
There was an encouraging double ‘thump’ from behind the curtain.
“Praise the Lord”, said the preacher.  He went on,
“We pray for your recovery!  You, with the stutter: say something”,
And a plaintive voice from behind the curtain said,
“He’s fa – fa – fa – fallen over!”

You can’t win them all.

The day is drawing to a close on Day 1 of quarantine and I simply must purloin the little handbell that we use in the Shacklepin household to summon help or service from our spouse when ill.  After all, I am the one who is supposed to be infected, so I think I should have it.  I will give it a try tomorrow morning when I wake up to advise Jane that I am ready for that cup of tea.  I will let you know how I got on next week, virus willing.

28 January 2021

Blog 77. Who Fancies a Cruise?

On the face of it, Jane’s request was quite reasonable: could I make the breakfast smoothie tomorrow morning while she was exercising, so that everything could be ready for when she came down?  Her supporting instructions were comprehensive, exhaustive even: she had prepared all the ingredients and all I had to do was pour them into the liquidiser with 300ml of milk and some spices (jars on the counter) according to the recipe (also on counter), then blitz.  Before we went to bed she repeated the above instructions and underlined them metaphorically.  She even started to read out the recipe before I stopped her:
“Yes, yes, whatever.  I‘ve got all that.  Even I can follow a recipe Jane”, I said.
The next morning, when I went to make the tea at the usual un-Godly hour before dawn, I switched on the ice machine (ice cubes to chill the smoothie) and glanced at the recipe book, helpfully propped open by two spice jars: no problem, a piece of cake.
The minor ripple in the space time continuum began when I came downstairs, fully dressed, ready to embark on this exciting culinary exercise while Jane was hosing herself down in the shower and bracing herself for the daily door-propping-up manoeuvre that dominates her leg exercises.  I looked at the recipe book: 
“Take half a cucumber…”, it started. But then I remembered that she had done all the preparation already.  So I opened the Main Fridge and searched: no, there were no ready-assembled ingredients with a cucumber in there…I then went to the Auxiliary Fridge and searched there: nope, nothing there either…I wondered where she kept the cucumbers and pulled out the chopping board (forcefully labelled Vegetables Only in stern writing after that time when I prepared a fruit salad on the onion board).  Then I realised that I was reading the wrong recipe: it was not the Green Smoothie that I was supposed to be doing, but the Mango Smoothie (bottom of page).  I put away the chopping board hastily and started a second search pattern in the two fridges.  I could find no pre-prepared ingredients.  There was a tray with mixed unidentified fruit and half an orange that looked promising, and a bowl of cut-up pineapple, but no other candidates.  Tentatively, I removed the tray of fruit, but thought I should page the oracle to provide some helpful feedback that, contrary to assurances, the pre-prepared ingredients were not, in fact there.  I called the Head Chef on Alexa.  The conversation went something like this:
“Are you there?  Hello?”
“Yes?”, was the somewhat terse reply.
“These ingredients: there are no pre-prepared ingredients in either fridge”.
“Yes there are”.
“No there aren’t”.
“They’re in the Main Fridge in a porcelain bowl”.
“No, I’ve looked in there and pulled everything out.  Definitely no fruit apart from this tray of half an orange and other things, and a bowl of pineapple”.
There was a thump from upstairs (as if someone had just lost their balance) followed by an uneven clumping noise that suggested that a poltergeist was coming down the stairs.  The kitchen door swung open to reveal Jane, still in her knickers, muttering with growing volume,
“What did I say to you?”
I drew breath to reply.
” I said everything was in a bowl ready”, she continued before I could speak.
” All you had to do was add milk and spices.  You Never, Ever, Listen”.
The last sentence was set in italics and bold for emphasis.
I was standing with the Main Fridge door open holding the tray of obscure fruit and I pointed out, confidently this time, that there was, quite definitely, no bowl of prepared fruit.  Easing me to one side she reached in and took out what I had thought had been the bowl of pineapple chunks.
“Here”, she said, taking away the tray of fruit that I held in the other hand.  “All it needs is milk and spices.  It’s all prepared.  It’s all in there”
“You never, ever, listen” was her parting shot as she stomped back upstairs.
I looked at the bowl of yellow fruit.  I still thought it looked like pineapple, such assessment being driven by the fact that I thought a mango was green (which it is – on the outside).  I placed the bowl on the counter and re-read the recipe. 
“Add the juice of half an orange”, it said.  “Ah ha”, I thought, “I can do this”: only a minute ago I had seen just such half an orange in the Main Fridge.  There was an orange squeezer conveniently drying on the draining board and so I set to work.
“Add two centimetres of root ginger”, continued the recipe.  Easy, I thought, I even know what it looks like.  I opened the Auxiliary Fridge and there were three twigs of the stuff. 
“Oh, we’re on a roll here”, I thought, but which one to use: the oldest perhaps?  Better check.  I called Jane again on Alexa (getting good at this),
“Hello, are you there?”, I said in mollifying, oleaginous voice.
“Yes”, said a world weary voice, grunting as if propping up a door.
“I’ve found the root ginger”, I said, not without a certain pride in my initiative. “Which one would you like me to use?”.
“What did I say to you?”
“Errm….”
“What did I say to you?  I said EVERYTHING is already in the bowl: the ginger, the zest, the mango, the lot.  All you have to do is add the milk and spices!”.
“So I don’t need to add any ginger…?” I said in my little boy voice.
“NO!”
“Right. Right.   Sorry to have bothered you”.  There was another thump upstairs as if someone had fallen over again.
I looked thoughtfully at the freshly squeezed orange juice. 
“So I won’t need that then”, I decided, “best get rid of it and clean up the evidence before she comes down”.  So I drank it off and just managed to get the squeezer washed and cleaned before she appeared for the final time in all her awful majesty.  There are no prizes for what she said,
“You Never, Ever, Listen”. 
No dear.  Peace be upon you.

As a footnote, the smoothie was delicious.  The next day I heard her rummaging in the Main Fridge muttering, 
“I could have sworn I left half an orange in here…”, 
but I was all right: I had buried the orange peel deep under some smelly rubbish in the bin where she would never find it.

Of course, we are still in lockdown and daily deaths from Covid are still greater than April last year, currently 1,401 in the last 24 hours.  Positive results of tests are still plummeting for the country as a whole, however, and the time lag between infections and deaths seems to be coming into play so that daily hospital admissions and fatalities may be flattening.  Inoculations are continuing apace, currently at 400,000 a day, and 5.4 million doses have been administered to date.  Almost all the over 80s in the UK have now been done, with the focus now on the over 70s.  Everyone I have spoken to who has had ‘the jab’, no matter where they are in the country, has reported a very slick and well-organised vaccination operation so I think we should mark that down as a success story and something to be proud of.  The government has stretched out the gap between the first dose and the second from the recommended three weeks to three months, the laudable aim being to concentrate on getting as many people partially immunised as soon as possible.  Unfortunately, the vaccine manufacturer, Pfizer, has cautioned that the vaccine was never tested for that extended gap between doses and such an approach may render the vaccination programme less effective or even useless; the debate continues.
To my dismay, I am beginning to sense that the government may be about to move the goalposts with regard to the immunisation programme and the current restrictions.  In Blog 75 I praised the Chief Medical Officer for his pragmatism and what looked like a recognition that once everyone at risk had been immunised, then hospitals would not be overloaded and society could return to normal, accepting a certain amount of risk and – essentially – living with the virus just as we do with other illnesses.  Now, there seems to be a drift towards wanting to totally eliminate the virus in the entire population before there are any moves towards relaxation.  Heaven knows when that situation will be reached, if ever; if we are to wait until all 66 million British citizens have been vaccinated then it will be September at the very earliest before we reach that stage.  That is totally ridiculous, in my view.  Next, they will be imposing lockdown to stop the spread of the Common Cold or the flu.  The experts are also saying that, even when we have had both doses of the vaccine, we must still isolate, wear masks, and avoid contact with others. The reason given is that an inoculated person might still be infectious.  I don’t follow that: surely if you have had the vaccine then your body will overcome any potential infection so you won’t have the disease; if you don’t have the disease then you cannot infect anyone.  Dear oh dear, just as you see the light of hope on the horizon then the fog comes down. Are we downhearted?  No, but I’m starting to get angry again.  Give us some hope, for heaven’s sake.

A stiff drink might help my blood pressure, but we are still on The Diet and that includes no alcohol.  I can’t say I have missed it most of the time, and the meals we have had continue to be very palatable, if somewhat heavy on the green vegetables.  We are still losing weight, Jane’s weekly weight loss being only a fraction of mine, but then she was quite light to start with.  We are keeping on with this low-carbohydrate stage until the end of the month but then, sensibly, we will be coming off the extreme measures and moving onto a more steady régime: the gentle jog after the short sprint.  For the first time, after just over two weeks of The Diet, Jane has complained that she is hungry at the end of the day and that she could do with a glass of wine; it hasn’t affected me quite so badly.  It is curious, both physiologically and psychologically, that she should have lasted 18 days without any pangs; she now talks wistfully of Shepherd’s Pie and Steak and Kidney Pudding on a daily basis.

The 20 January saw the inauguration of the 46th president of the United States of America and ex President Trump retired to Florida, refusing to attend the ceremony.  For the first time Jane and I thought we would watch the inauguration on television but, my goodness me, how it went on.  I had no idea.  We kept changing channels in order to get warm (it looked freezing in Washington, and apparently it was), but every time we came back the ceremony was still going on.  We actually missed the swearing in of Joe Biden, but we did see the singing of the National Anthem by a lady known, apparently, as Lady GaGa.   She looked like the Widow Twanky to me, and I thought she sang a bit flat at one point (why didn’t they use a proper opera singer?), but she certainly made one heck of an entrance: very showbiz.  That’s America for you: modern, bold, and the land of the free.  I wish our cousins well under the new administration.

With a loud ‘clunk’ the mail fell through the letterbox and Jane immediately leapt up to retrieve it.  It is a characteristic of our confinement that the simple visit of the postman should inspire such enthusiasm and activity.
“Anything exciting?”, I asked.
“Regency Cruises”, she said in a disgusted voice, “they never give up do they?”
Indeed.  Who would contemplate a booking a cruise in the present circumstances?  In our case, not for fear of catching Covid, but rather for fear of cancelled bookings and losing our deposit.  Oh yes, and the small minor matter that we no longer have money for such luxuries.  We thoroughly enjoyed our cruise to Australia and back (Blog 1 – Blog 26) and would do it again if we came into a small fortune, but the likelihood of that is not great.  Glancing through the hefty glossy cruise brochure from Regency, I wondered – in my usual pessimistic way – just how many cruise passengers ever considered how they would get off a cruise ship in an emergency: very few, I would imagine.  Sure, you can pile into the lifeboats if you have the time, the weather is calm, and the ship is on a reasonably even keel; otherwise, however, you could be on a bit of a sticky wicket.  That assessment is just for the able-bodied of course: I remember in Blog 1 commenting on the very large number of wheelchair and walking-frame users onboard QUEEN MARY 2 and deducing that they did not have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting off the ship in an emergency, even if (as we were assured) a member of the crew were detailed off to assist each disabled passenger. In 2019 a cruise ship lost power in a storm off Norway and was drifting ashore.  The sea state prevented lifeboats from being launched and attempts were made to evacuate the 1,300 passengers by helicopter but, inevitably, it was a very piecemeal effort lifting people off the deck by wire, and only 500 were removed over a long period.  Fortunately, the ship’s anchors held and she eventually managed to restore power and make port under her own steam, but it was a close-run thing and – I hope – a salutary lesson to ship owners and cruise passengers.  In normal times I lecture on disaster at sea and I always tell the audience that, when they embark for a cruise, the first thing they should do is work out how to escape from their cabin in the dark or in smoke and to know their lifeboat assembly point.  I do the same thing on ferries and in hotels, and Jane thinks I am an old woman but, as I keep telling her, I will survive and she will go under.  The second thing that I tell the audience is that the ship is your best lifeboat and that they should stay onboard and dry for as long as they can (mind you, the trick is knowing whether the ship is going to sink or not).  There is a common tendency when abandoning ship to leap overboard, but that is one of the worst things you can do: if the fall doesn’t kill you then the shock of hitting cold water probably will, particularly if you are old or have a weak heart.  Once in the water you start losing body heat rapidly and hypothermia sets in, even in the tropics: you gradually become disorientated, lose the use of your limbs, ingest water and die.  You will die of exposure in any sea temperatures less than 37C, though it might take a while in warm climes (in 2018 a woman survived a record ten hours after falling overboard in the Mediterranean); however the sharks or barracuda will probably get you in that time, so the end result will be the same.  Yes, far better to wrap up very well and step, dry, into that nice lifeboat having, first, taken a seasick tablet because the change in motion will otherwise make you as sick as a dog.  Anyone for a cruise now?

I remember when I was the aircraft carrier HMS CASSANDRA in the Western Approaches and we received a distress call from a yacht that was in trouble.  She was reasonably nearby and the ship immediately worked up to full power and headed for the yacht’s position.  Main steam throttles were opened, the boilers roared and gauges quivered.  It was all very exciting.  When we were in range we launched the Search and Rescue (SAR) Helicopter and the beast clattered away in a whiff of paraffin while the sick-bay team under the Surgeon Commander sharpened their scalpels and prepared to receive casualties.  The SAR helicopter eventually found the yacht, but she had inconveniently beached herself in a safe, though isolated, haven and the crew could be seen strolling along the beach.  The helicopter landed and contact was established.  The yacht crew said they were all right, thank you, but the airmen weren’t having any of that: didn’t they know that an aircraft carrier and its entire ship’s company were, as they spoke, pounding along towards their rescue? They unceremoniously bundled the protesting yacht crew into the helicopter, citing safety concerns, and took them back to CASSANDRA for a health check. The disgruntled yacht crew were eventually landed somewhere, safe and dry and we all smiled smugly: job well done – please, no thanks.

Clearly my cooking skills at breakfast earlier in the week had impressed the Head Chef.  I know this because I offered to help prepare the dinner on Friday night (hoping that she would decline, so that I could scuttle off and watch Wheeler Dealers in peace), and she unexpectedly accepted.  Would I be preparing the sauce for the Prawn Korma with Cauli Rice, I wondered?  Peel a prawn, perhaps?  Well, no, she didn’t go that far: I was directed to pour the pre-chopped Cauli Rice into a frying pan and stir it while it was heated; and don’t let it burn, on pain of death.  Oh well, strong oak trees from little acorns grow, I thought philosophically.  Half way through this onerous and demanding task I was diverted to remove the Korma sauce and blend it with the hand liquidiser.
“But I can’t”, I said, “I’m doing this!”
“Nonsense”, she said. ”You can do both jobs. Women multitask all the time”.
“Well, I don’t know…don’t blame me if the rice goes brown…”.
I moved on reluctantly to parallel Task Number 2.
I was, of course, stick gathering.  You probably are not familiar with the term so I will explain.  At the Royal Navy Leadership School, where Senior Ratings are trained as part of their advancement, the students are set a series of outside tasks involving leadership, initiative and teamwork: get the whole team and a dummy across a chasm using an old washing line, two nails, three logs and a roll of sellotape, that sort of challenge.  Now here’s the thing: whatever the course going through, the instructors always found that there was one member of the team industriously beavering away on a a totally non-contributory task, trying to look busy whilst carefully avoiding any actual useful work – neatly rolling up a hose when others are fighting a raging inferno for example, or gathering up twigs and branches when others were bridging a chasm.  Stick gathering, in fact.  When that ‘stick gatherer’ was challenged and directed to stop doing that and, instead, do this, then he would invariably argue,
“But I’m gathering up these sticks, sir.  Very important job.  OK sir, but I must say that if I leave it then those sticks will never be collected…”
Anyway, to return to the cooking, I was actually quite flattered to be asked to do something mechanical that involved machines, and picked up the hand liquidiser with relish.  It was fortunate that she did not see me press the button and eject the business end of the liquidiser into the flask (wrong button, fool), but I managed to recover it (licking my fingers to hide the evidence) before she returned and I did a creditable job of blitzing the sauce, though I say it myself.  That the sauce looked like it had just been sucked from the starboard sullage tank after a particularly severe case of oil contamination could hardly be my fault: that was just the way it was.  As it happened, the meal was delicious and the team work that led up to it was most satisfying.  Oh yes: this week, smoothies and Prawn Korma; next week, who knows?  Sauce Béarnaise perhaps?

Be careful out there.

23 January 2021

Blog 76. Picnic Anyone?

Another day in ‘solitary’. Well, sort of ‘solitary’: I still have Jane for company. I thought of scratching off the days on the walls of my cell, but thought better of it as I would undoubtedly be required to repair the marks with Polyfilla and re-emulsion them in the Spring. My, how January drags on. The first big lockdown was not quite so bad because the two of us did get out into the bundu every two days, or sat in the garden; this time, it has been considerably more confining and I have hardly been out at all. Mind you, that is not necessarily a hardship, for the weather has been quite bitter and has not encouraged outdoor exercise. Parts of Britain (notably, Up North) have been covered in snow, as predicted in Blog 75, but we have seen none of it here. Nevertheless it has still been quite cold, with occasionally a freezing wind. Winter in fact; now there’s a surprise. In writing this I am conscious of the fact that some of my readership is international. If you are reading this in Saskatchewan or Mongolia then the British Winter, with temperatures merely hovering around or just below 0 degrees C, will be just little potatoes but, heh, for us this is cold and any flake of snow brings the entire transport system to a halt. I may exaggerate slightly but, from the the annual warnings in the media about clearing windscreens and driving carefully on ice and snow, one could be excused for wondering if some of the British public had ever come across this season before. I remember my Canadian friends once telling me that the worst thing about Winter over there was the time it took to put on all their outer clothing before going out – and the time it took to take it all off again on return; popping out to the dustbins to ditch the gash without putting on warm clothing first really could put you at risk of hypothermia. We don’t get that. Mind you, Jane’s cousin from Calgary once commented to us about the continuous overcast and clag in Britain. How did we stand it? In Alberta it was either sunny (with or without cold and snow) or overcast and raining; the climate never, or hardly ever, reverted to weeks of low cloud. I pointed out to her that our rotten overcast weather was the reason why the British had gone out and created an empire.

Writing above that phrase, “never, or hardly ever”, which originated in Gilbert and Sullivan’s HMS Pinafore, reminds me that it was quoted so often in an American newspaper (I think it might have been the New York Times) in the 19th century that the editor of the paper grew weary of it and finally called all his journalists together to tell them that the practice was to cease: they were no longer to use the phrase, “…well, hardly ever” in their articles.  Inevitably, someone at the back said,
“What, never?”,
and unthinkingly the editor replied,
“Well, hardly ever”.

I broke with my policy the other day and made the mistake of watching the television news:
“Another 48,000 cases of Covid 19 were reported yesterday and hospitals report that they are close to being overwhelmed. 1,248 people died from the virus in the last 24 hours…”, proclaimed the broadcaster in that urgent, thrusting headline tone that they use when trying to impart the fact that WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE. I found it profoundly depressing and frustrating. What, exactly, do they want me to do about it? Could they not focus on the good news, that (for example) over three million people have been immunised and that the inoculation programme is going well? Some opposition politicians and know-it-all journalists have urged even stricter controls on lockdown, but there are virtually no additional measures that can be taken: Jane and I are already holed up here like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (I will leave you to decide which is which) and shouting at us that WE ARE DOOMED or IT’S ALL YOUR FAULT is not helping the situation one iota. Actually, if you look at the Office of National Statistics (ONS) website, you will see that the rate of positive test results in Britain actually peaked on about 1 January (ie before the present lockdown) and is now dropping. In a similar vein, if you look at the death rate by date when the death occurred (as opposed to date when death reported) you get a more meaningful and lower figure (eg 873 cf 1,162 on 7 January). The death curve seems to follow the infection curve with a time lag of about two weeks, so we should be seeing the fatalities easing off by the end of the month. All that is not to say that the situation is not grave: we are experiencing more infections, more hospital admissions and more Covid-related deaths than ever before and our hospitals are running at over 80% occupancy. Hospital staff, already weary from the day-to-day grind of looking after patients are additionally overloaded by staff having to isolate if they or their family get the slightest sniffle. However, shouting at us when we and the majority of the public are following the lockdown rules is unhelpful, lowering the morale and could be counter-productive.

There have been some well-publicised cases of “rule breaking”, with police apparently breaking up a few private parties and raves, but we don’t get that sort of thing in sleepy Barsetshire. Two women drove separately to a beauty spot in Derbyshire last week to go for a walk, two metres apart, in the wild blue yonder of the Dales but were pounced upon by several police officers and fined for breaking the Covid lockdown rules; their big mistake was to carry take-away cups of tea, which the police said constituted a picnic. The fines have since been rescinded after a public outcry, but a more clearer case of police over-zealousness would be hard to find (Derbyshire police has form: in the first lockdown they pursued hill-walkers, hiking miles from anyone on the Derbyshire Dales, with a drone). In Bournemouth an agent provocateur, who did not agree with lockdown, tried sitting alone with a flask of coffee on a bench on the seafront in a brisk westerly wind. She was immediately challenged by at least four police officers and, when she refused to give her name and address, was arrested and led away in handcuffs. Your papers please… She undoubtedly was “trying it on” for publicity purposes (how else could it have been filmed for social media?), but the Dorset police fell for it. Did they really need to use four officers and use handcuffs? Part of the problem is that there is a dichotomy between what the law says (as laid down in legislation by Parliament) and what the UK government guidance says: the guidance says that the public can only exercise once a day “locally”; the actual legislation says that the public must stay at home, but can leave home to exercise – it does not specify a time limit, distance or frequency. The police can only enforce the law, not the guidance, but they have stated that some people are not ,“following the spirit of lockdown”. By contrast, some police forces are not following the spirit of common sense and the principle of minimising the spread of infection. A person walking (or sitting) on a windy seafront over two metres from others constitutes no risk to others whatsoever; likewise for people walking in the vastness of the countryside, with or without a cup of tea, or people driving in their own in cars. The British police have a proud reputation of policing by consent and this epidemic has put them in a difficult and invidious position with the public whom they serve. Most people would be sympathetic of the position they are in and would advocate a clamp-down on genuine rule breaking, but disproportionate and over zealous action by a few officers could result in the loss of support for all the police. That would be a great pity.

Enough of Covid, depressing subject anyway, let us move on to holidays. Have you noticed that the television advertisements are gradually moving away from charities to, now, pushing holidays abroad? I am astonished. I would not contemplate booking a holiday in the present circumstances for the simple reason that we have no idea just how things are going to pan out with the current restrictions, whether in this country or abroad; some clown of a scientist has already predicted, with customary gloom, that we will still be under the thumb even in the Autumn. Yet I read in my newspaper today that holiday bookings, particularly for the over 50s, are up 300% . I can understand the desire to get away, preferably in the sunshine, after all this, but I shan’t be thinking of it until it really is all over. Besides, we are saving quite a bit of money at the moment through not dining out, buying clothes, going to the theatre or entertaining: I can buy quite a few warps, gizmos and sundry other desirable items for the boat with that. Best not mention that possibility out loud.

I read an article in the paper by an Asian gentleman the other day, about the difficulties he had encountered in mixing and settling down among the social classes from public schools as an undergraduate in Oxford (or maybe Cambridge). The thrust of it was that “things ought to be done” to make his life easier in that regard for him and people like him. It was not clear to me if he was writing as an Asian, drawing on the currently popular claims of “white privilege”, or as a person from a middle or lower social class background trying to mix with the “knobs”. Either way, I was baffled. Moving on to, say, university invariably takes you away from the social mix in which you have been brought up and involves you mixing with people from all classes, colours and creeds. It is part of growing up and maturing. It broadens the mind, teaches tolerance, and helps us all get on better in society. Having been brought up on Tyneside with its flat vowels and (at that time) fairly parochial outlook, I remember being baffled by some of my fellow Cadets’ accents and mien when I joined the Royal Navy. The bits that stuck in my memory were their odd names (some double-barrelled) and the practice of carrying an umbrella: you did not carry an umbrella if you were male and lived in South Shields; not if you wanted a quiet life. It did not take me long to merge in (the accent took longer) and we all got along together famously. Some years ago I read a book about National Service in the UK (a compulsory requirement to complete 18 months of military service that ran from 1949 to 1960): it was a compendium of short accounts by men from all walks of life who had had to do it. Most just got on with it, some resented it, but quite a few acknowledged the fact that National Service had broadened their outlook, opened their minds to the depths that human nature could descend to, allowed them to mix with people from all social classes, smartened them up, taught them tolerance, and – in some cases – allowed them to experience life abroad. Returning to the article by the new undergraduate, I just wonder if his view (which I may have misunderstood) may have been symptomatic of the latest student attitude that could be summarised as “I don’t want to hear your point of view and I don’t want to mix with you”. I may be wrong on this specific instance, but I still think that mixing with all, listening, debating differences and tolerating others are all part of growing up and living in society. Incidentally, none of the British armed forces would advocate a return to National Service today: it would take too long to train men and women up to the technological standard required to achieve a useful return on investment. Mind you, it might actually educate a few young people, teach them how to wash and shave, give them some pride in their appearance and help them realise the importance of working as part of a team or community instead of being self-centred. You never see a squaddy wandering the streets half-shaven, in pyjamas and flip flops.

Should parts in dramas, plays and films only be filled by actors or actresses of like colour or sexual preference? This is what has been advocated by a dramatist, who has suggested that homosexual parts should only be played by homosexuals. The Dickens character David Copperfield was recently played by an Asian and Anne Boleyn is shortly to be played by a black woman: is this dramatist advocating that this was, or is, wrong? Should a heterosexual only be played by a heterosexual? There could be a lot more out-of-work actors or actresses if this policy were followed. Surely the whole concept of acting is in the name: actors and actresses pretend to be someone else and there are some excellent examples of how well they do it. Conclusion: this is yet another example of woke nonsense.

I see that a Russian naval captain has been charged with selling his destroyer’s propellers and replacing them with poorer quality replacements.  I must say that this is the most extreme case of capabar  that I have ever come across.  The ship was in dry dock at the time, so at least he didn’t have to hold his breath while wielding the spanner.  Corruption in the Russian Navy is, according to the newspaper report, fairly commonplace but even in that environment the theft of a pair of manganese bronze propellers weighing several tons each must surely take the biscuit.

Well, the diet is going very well (I knew you’d be interested).  I am coming to the end of Week 2 now and have yet to have a meal that has not been tasty and enjoyable.  At weigh-in last Monday, after one week,  I had lost 3.2 kg (7 lb), much to my astonishment.  The exercise bike project is going well too, though I have yet to procure the outfit and am having to make do with an old shirt and walking shorts.  Oh yes, I feel like a new man (no, this is not an invitation, so don’t write).

At a time when the term “fake news” has become commonplace I am reminded of an instance when faulty information led to unpleasant consequences.  This was a true story told to me by a friend about the process of obtaining security clearance for Service personnel.  All government personnel are subject to the Official Secrets Act and have clearance to see documents up to a certain level on a need-to-know basis, officers routinely up to Secret.  For access beyond that level (required for certain appointments) they have to undergo a process that used to be called Positive Vetting (PV), now called Developed Vetting.  This involved completing a lengthy questionnaire on dubious things you might have done in the past, extensive probing into your finances and dealings, and interviews with people who knew you.  The aim was to assess whether you were vulnerable to blackmail, bribery or sexual temptation, to check your character and (by re-running the process later), to check if you were prone to lying.  For the Royal Navy, this process was done by the Director of Naval Security (DNSy) who employed retired officers for the front line work.  The story goes that one officer who had to be vetted was serving in a frigate and was told he would be interviewed. One day, the DNSy interviewer duly turned up at the dockyard gate, showed his identification, and was directed to the frigate’s berth.  About an hour after his arrival the telephone rang at the dockyard gate and was picked up by a constable of the Ministry of Defence Police (known in the vernacular as The MOD Plod).  The conversation apparently ran something like this:
Constable: “St Levan’s Gate”
Caller: “Is that Devonport Dockyard?”
Constable: “Yes, it is”
Caller: “DNSy here.  We are putting out an alert because we’ve had a series of incidents in which someone has been impersonating one of our vetting officers and infiltrating MOD property.  They claim to be a Commander Ponsonby and the description is that he is a short man in his fifties, greying black hair, fair complexion, walks with a slight limp.  If encountered he should be apprehended at once and held for questioning”
Constable: “Strap me!  He just passed through the gate about an hour ago.  He said he was visiting HMS CANTALOUPE”.
Caller: ”Excellent.  We may have caught him.  You must apprehend him immediately”.
Now the members of the MOD Plod spend most of their days in a gatehouse, twiddling their thumbs and thinking up new ways of making life even more difficult and obnoxious for honest sailors of the Royal Navy (this, an unbiased point of view).  There is not a lot of love lost between the force and the civilian police force either, not least because the latter have to run around actually trying to catch criminals.  Whatever, this telephone call was just what the dockyard police had been waiting for for years: a chance to do something exciting and positive.
Fast forward to the scene at HMS CANTALOUPE, lying alongside the wall at 7 Wharf (or wherever).  It was a relatively peaceful dockyard setting on a quiet weekday in harbour: some light dockyard traffic passed along the jetty; a few sailors on stages were painting the ship’s side trying to avoid the Chief Boatswain’s Mate; the quartermaster was strolling up and down at the gangway wishing his watch would end; the White Ensign was flying from its staff, stiff in the breeze.  On the whole, pretty quiet apart from the cry of the odd seagull,  the characteristic hiss of air cooling the ship’s radar system and the distant roar of steam from a ship that was flashing up further down the jetty.  Suddenly, into this gentle nautical scene came a screech of tyres, and round the corner of a building hurtled a Black Maria that then shuddered to a stop at the ship’s gangway.  Up the brow charged four large MOD Plods who challenged the quartermaster on whether he had seen the imposter.
“He’s with Lieutenant Podgson in his cabin”, said the bemused quartermaster gesturing towards the screen door and the cabin flat. They moved purposefully forward.
Meanwhile, in the cabin, the DNSy man was just getting on to the juicier bits of his interview with Lieutenant Podgson concerning that last run ashore in Malta.  Suddenly the cabin door was hurtled open and, without any challenge or introduction,  he was picked up bodily by four large policemen.  He was bundled unceremoniously along the upper deck and then dragged down the gangway with his heels bumping a rat-a-tat-tat on the treads of the brow.  Still protesting, he was thrown into the back of the Black Maria and the vehicle shot off. Peace descended again, the members of the ship’s company of CANTALOUPE who were on deck wondering if they had imagined it all.
Several hours later, after a long interrogation, a few telephone calls and some harsh words, the DNSy man was released.  The call had been a hoax with the aim of retribution on the DNSy man for some ancient grievance.  Now that is what I call fake news, but it entertained the ship for many years to come.

Thinking of interrogation, just as the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE) controls the extent that police interview techniques can go, so the Geneva Convention dictates and limits the form that interrogation can take. Traditionally, a captured serving officer may only be required to submit his name, rank and service number to his captors. Ships’ officers always have a range of other duties in addition to their primary task and one officer will always be designated as the Interrogation or Intelligence Officer, his or her role being to interrogate captured enemy personnel, such as divers trying to attack the ship. As part of their training they have to complete a course which, naturally, includes being interrogated themselves and on how to resist questioning. There was one chap who was in this position and went on the designated course, which was part run by the Special Boat Service (SBS) – part of the Royal Marines and a rival to the more well-known Special Air Service (SAS) in the cadre that we call Special Forces. He was given a secret password and told he was not to reveal it under any circumstances during a forthcoming interrogation. For the sake of the story, let us say that the password was “Hungerford”. Taken into a bare interrogation room that was furnished with just a table, two upright chairs and an incongruous galvanised bucket, he glanced warily at the two SBS men who were to interrogate him. He sat down opposite one of the Marines while the other Marine wandered the room randomly. They started questioning him, the seated man shouting and yelling, the standing man asking him more gently: the standard “hard and soft man” technique. He stood firm, repeating his name, rank and service number,
“I know my rights under the Geneva Convention”, he said, ”I cannot reveal that password. You cannot torture me or hurt me in any way”, he said, folding his arms and smiling smugly.
Without warning, the Marine behind him picked up the galvanised bucket, upended it over the officer’s head, and proceeded to beat the sides with a hammer: PING PANG PING PANG PING PANG reverberated around the interior.
“The password is Hungerford! Hungerford! For God’s sake stop!”
Game, set and match to the SBS, I think. And no animals were hurt in the course of that interrogation.

It’s a bit odd really.  We are both sneezing around the place as if we had head colds, but have no cough, sore throat or fever: just the sneeze.  I say ‘odd’, because we have not been out so cannot have caught anything from anyone.  I proffered a theory that might explain it: we are allergic to something. A squirt up the nose with antihistamine solved the problem and Dr Shacklepin scored yet again with another successful diagnosis.  But what are we allergic to?  It cannot be an allergy to pollen at this time of year.  What else?  Then, at breakfast, I hit on a possibly cause: dust mites.  Stuck indoors with no fresh air, we are breathing in an excess of dust.  I voiced this hypothesis with great triumph.  At that moment there was a distinct chilling in the atmosphere, as if some manifestation had been conjured up from the depths of the Mariana Trench.  I felt distinctly uncomfortable and looked up from my reading.
“What?”, I said.
“Are you implying”, she said with an icy voice,”that I keep a dirty house?”
“Ah.  Nay, nay my dear”, I replied, working up to Full Astern. “I was referring to the little creatures who live with us, your Dermatophagoides pteronyssinus, those pesky creatures.  They positively relish a clean house, just like us humans.  No, no, the house is immaculate…maybe that has encouraged them…”, I trailed off.
“Hmmm.”  She looked at me as if I were a house mite myself.  “Just watch it”.

Now, just drop your trousers and bend over.  This won’t hurt.  Oh, you’d rather give me your arm?  OK.

15 January 2021

Blog 75. Start Pumping That Iron.

Well, I never thought I would ever be reporting this: it is undoubtedly a tergiversation in Shacklepin behaviour, so marked that I am still reeling under the realisation that I have done it. I won’t keep you in suspense any longer, better out than in: I have ordered an exercise bike.
Those who know me, or are regular readers of these blogs, will recognise that all sport and any form of organised exercise, gymnasia, sports gear and gym shoes are as horrifying to me as kryptonite is to Superman. The very smell of a medicine ball makes me shudder. Yet here I am, going completely off piste and siding with my nemesis. The reason, of course, is that the current confinement and Jane’s minor disability have made even me realise that I must take exercise if what passes for my muscles are not going to atrophy. Already those hams, once firm and the envy of many, are starting to wither and sag like the sails of a once-fine ship-of the-line becalmed in the doldrums. Drastic circumstances demand drastic action and I have done the deed. Naturally, I must now give consideration to the creation and purchase of a new rig to be worn for the cycling exercise: an old pair of grey flannels with bicycle clips will probably not do. I do not possess any sports rig: my Navy-issue gym shorts that reached to my knees (and would now be trendy) were outgrown quite some time ago; ditto my Jellicoe Division gym vest from Dartmouth. Tee shirts do not feature in my wardrobe. I did once have a track suit top with “RN Engineering College Shooting Team” on the back, but that disappeared years ago. Hence, a whole range of sartorial options is now available to me. Trim white gym shorts with zip fly, side waist adjustment and discreet logo, perhaps or maybe a track suit? A plain tee shirt or just a polo shirt with the RNSA crest? Lycra, perhaps, with those funny leggings and padded seat? I am not sure about the feet – I draw the line at “trainers” – but I think I may have a pair of old gym shoes, as required for wear in the petroleum-ridden atmosphere of the AVGAS pump room of HMS CASSANDRA, stowed in my old naval trunk, hopefully with a bottle of shoe whitener; short white socks to match the shorts should complete the ensemble. I wonder if a headband would be useful to keep the sweat and my hair out of my eyes; perhaps not? Gosh, this is so exciting. I suppose I will have to let Jane have a play on the machine, but that is only fair.

To complement the exercise, a weight-loss diet has started – this time in earnest.  Jane has borrowed The Fast 800 Diet by Dr Michael Moseley that reports the loss of  seven kilograms (~15 lbs) after two weeks by one user.  Yeh, right: I bet it isn’t that quick for us.  Weigh-in took place on Monday morning before breakfast (trust me, you don’t want to know) and this task will be repeated weekly.  Having measured her BMI, Jane subsequently claimed that a diet for her was unnecessary, but she felt that I would benefit from it (glancing at my firm pert buttocks) and thoughtfully said she would  keep me company on the journey.  Of course, alcohol is banned and we have had to scoop up all the Christmas sweets from the coffee table and donate them to the children across the road to avoid temptation.  So far it hasn’t been too bad: we do not snack or eat a great deal in the normal course anyway (though we do eat well – quality not quantity), so I am hoping the transition to a strict régime will be painless.  The other morning we had egg and bacon “muffins” for breakfast, comprising eggs wrapped in bacon, sprinkled with parmesan and baked in muffin moulds (there was no actual muffin).  They tasted a bit like mini Quiche Lorraine and were delicious. The trick of these weight-loss diets is to follow the recipes religiously and that involves weighing out each portion accurately.  The diets do work (we have been there before), but it places the onus on Jane to produce the food.  Before you leap to her defence, yes, I have offered to help with preparation several times and, no, she didn’t want my help.  You see, in the present confinement she is desperate for things to do and doesn’t want me stealing her jobs; she even asked me not to empty the dishwasher while I routinely made the tea in the early morning, because she wanted something to look forward to.  She is crackers, of course, but we all get our thrills in different ways.  As to the diet, my guess is that, by the end of January, every stick of celery on our plates will taste like a Mars bar and every grain of rice will be licked off the bowl.  But think how slim and streamlined we will be: positively svelte.  Maybe I should go for that lycra after all.

Poor Jane.  She has a punishing régime in the mornings which starts with her having to drag her eyelids up at Call the Hands and moves on to the 4-minute painful leg massage (by moi); a shower in the “freezing” 24 degree C atmosphere of our bathroom; the drying and styling of her hair; the usual mysterious female cosmetic treatment; ten separate leg exercises; and the application of ice packs for five minutes afterwards.  She then turns to on the breakfast, just to bring a smile to my little face (usually, after all that, it is about ten o’clock).  God broke the mould after He made her, for she is The Perfect Wife.  Mind you, it’s a pity about those plimsolls and she can be a bit bossy when she wears wellington boots.  Can’t have everything.

The United Kingdom is experiencing déjà vu.  As I predicted in Blog 68, on 5 January the country was plunged into Lockdown Number Three, but this one, unlike November’s, has no end date.  The Chief Medical Officer has even stated that lockdown may have to be reimposed next winter, despite the vaccination programme.  I will not repeat my two-word response to that announcement, and I would have added his name to The List if it were not already on there.  In announcing the latest lockdown, the prime minister suggested April as an end date, but no one believes that. 
It would be easy to become depressed by this development,  but one must keep in mind the positives: vaccinations using the Oxford-AstraZeneca have now joined the Pfizer vaccinations in a two-pronged attack on the virus and the aim is to immunise the most vulnerable by mid February.  The total number of people vaccinated as of 3 January was 1,296,432. Such a programme of inoculation is quite ambitious, but just feasible; it will depend on first rate organisational skills by the NHS (hmmm…), but the Armed Forces, in the form of the Army Logistic Corps, will be assisting, so that offers some hope of success.  It comes none too soon, as the rate of positive tests is still increasing markedly and hospitals in the worst affected areas are close to 100% capacity.  Daily deaths are approaching the value that we encountered in the April 2020 peak, currently 1,162. .  As a precursor to all this, on New Year’s Eve in London the mayor authorised significant expenditure on a firework display showing the flag of the European Union (which we had just left), a Black Lives Matter aggressive fist, and a display saying “I Love You NHS” (pass the sick bucket).  The public, having been drawn out to watch the pretty fireworks, were promptly ordered to disperse by the Metropolitan Police, London – at the time – being in Tier 4 (motto “Say At Home”).  You couldn’t make this up.  Like it’s predecessors, the latest lockdown will not affect us much personally because we have stopped going out anyway, but when Jane’s leg gets better we would have liked to have driven farther afield for a walk; that is now forbidden.  We have broken out the reserve jigsaws.

The choice of jigsaws can be an interesting one (or it can in a lockdown with not much to write about).  I favour the mechanical or industrial ones that involve artefacts, perspective, order and method; Jane (naturally) favours the ones that involve plants or birds.  I ask you!  How could you prefer wishy washy flowers to the firm lines of a locomotive with its strong elegant design and the Stephenson Link?  Alas, we have just completed an excellent jigsaw of St Pancras Station depicting a 1950s versus a modern scene and I have been forced to accept a new puzzle that takes in chaffinches, goldfinches, celandines and asters. The things you have to do for a successful partnership, but I shall survive.

Inevitably, a debate is developing over the priority attached to the Covid vaccination programme.  No-one has actually said “Let’s not bother with these dozy and dying old people: We are more important”, but the inference is there.  The latest section of the community demanding immediate immunity are the teaching unions, who are clearly terrified that their largely fit and young members Are Going To Die unless they receive a vaccination, because they are in close quarters with apparently contaminated children for six hours a day, 190 days a year (or they were before lockdown).  The fact that supermarket staff are in contact with the potentially contaminated adult public for 15 hours a day, 364 days a year without complaint seems to have escaped the teaching unions’ notice.  Priority for receiving immunisation was bound to be a contentious issue, but the primary aim of the UK vaccination programme is not, contrary to what many believe, to stop everyone from catching Covid 19: rather it is to ease the pressure on hospitals and and minimise associated deaths.  The people most likely to have to be admitted to hospital with the virus, or to die from it, are people over 65 and those with other underlying conditions.  To his credit, the Chief Medical Officer has pointed out that:

“We accept there is a level of risk that society will tolerate, and we should tolerate. People die – that’s one of the things that happens… zero risk is not something which is a realistic possibility”

Sixty years ago we had the public safety announcement, “Coughs and sneezes spread diseases.  Trap your germs in a handkerchief” and left it to the population to use their common sense.  In 2021 the government feels the need to put the entire population under house arrest in order to achieve the same goal.

“How many times have we seen this?”
So went the refrain when I selected The Good, The Bad and The Ugly on the television the other night (you can’t beat a good Clint Eastwood film, that’s what I say).  I clicked over onto Tora, Tora, Tora and there was an even louder groan. Scrolling through the channels, I hovered the remote selector over The Longest Day, but thought better of it.  I did point out that the network was showing Forty Shades of Darkness (or something like that), which we hadn’t seen, but my suggestion that we should give it a go was met with a very robust response:
“We’re not watching that!  It’s all about H&M.  We’re not having any of that nonsense”.
I pondered on what the ‘H’ must stand for, but then vaguely recalled that H&M might be a women’s fashion chain, hence the confusion.  Either way, the film was off limits.  The fact is, the television choices have been pretty dire over the last ten months and the festive period offered the worst selection of all.  We are not addicts of the television set, preferring other pastimes, but we do like the odd armchair treat now and again after a hard day of doing nothing.  As well as the free channels we do have the option of Amazon Video, but even when that is taken into account, there is very little there that really appeals to us.  As to the repeats that I mentioned above, it is sometimes nice to see an old programme or film again, but it becomes a bit tedious when the same feature is repeated two or three times in a week.  I think The Longest Day has been on about six times in as many weeks; likewise the (many) others.  Ironically, PBS America has come up with some good documentaries; I say ironically, because often the production originated in the UK in the first place. I started watching one programme about the Civil War on PBS America the other day, searching in vain for signs of the Roundheads and Cavaliers before I realised it was about a different civil war (odd that).   Sky Arts has also produced some good offerings that have been worth watching, such participation being the video equivalent of reading an improving book and being very good for increasing our smug factor when dropped into a Facetime conversation.  Quite a few of our friends like opera and we keep wondering if we are missing out by not sharing their enjoyment.  Every now and again we dip into that murky pool to try it out, but so far the pleasure has evaded us.  I was listening to Nessun Dorma from Puccini’s Turandot the other day and commented to Jane on how moving and beautiful it was; she agreed, but then asked rhetorically would we like to sit through four hours of it.  So the jury is still out on the subject of opera.  But I wonder if our disenchantment with the television programmes on offer is part of a broader fading of interest in television as a medium for entertainment: perhaps there is so much on offer on the networks that very little of it is a treat any more and we are much harder to please.  I also wonder if we have the attention span that we once had.  When we had one television channel, the BBC, it broadcast in black and white only from 1700 to about 2300 (concluding with a religious epilogue and the National Anthem), but we quite enjoyed most programmes.  A film was shown on Sunday afternoons or, later, on Saturday evenings, and we thought of that as a tremendous treat.  In hindsight, not all the other programmes that we watched were actually all that good, but I suppose we knew no different.  Come to think of it, I wonder if we in western society  are becoming harder to please in all walks of entertainment: holidays abroad (the more exotic the better) are a must-have; cruises in hazardous areas such as the Antarctic are popular; children must be entertained in Disneyland or Alton Towers; fairground rides must be absolutely terrifying and include near-death experiences; leisure trips in outer space will probably become commonplace in my lifetime.  We are becoming very sophisticated in our tastes.  It is odd, really, for I have always found the bracing easterly wind on the beach in South Shields in the summer to be very invigorating on a family holiday.  For the present, I shall derive simple pleasure from being able to browse through a shop again without wearing a face mask.

I have said it before, and I say it again. I will never understand women. Jane and I were sitting at breakfast the other day, quietly reading our digital papers, when she said,
“Are you having another cup of coffee?”
“Probably”, I said absently and continued reading details of the latest problems in Belarus.
Ten minutes later she got up abruptly and proceeded to get herself a cup of coffee. Difficult though it was to display a flounce while wearing cords and “trainers” in the short journey from the breakfast table to the coffee machine, she managed to do it. There was definitely an unspoken message there, and I raised an eyebrow (I am not insensitive to atmosphere you know).
“Did you want another cup of coffee?”, I asked. “You should have said, that’s my job” [regular readers will know that I am The Drinks Person and she is The Food Person].
She harrumphed.
“I asked for a coffee ten minutes ago”.
I was mystified.
“No, you didn’t”.
“Yes I did. I asked if you were having another coffee”.
“Correct. And I replied ‘probably’. You didn’t ask for a coffee for yourself”
“It meant the same thing”
I will not repeat the remaining dialogue as I am sure you get the gist and, if you are a man, you will understand my frustration. Women: they never say what they really want. I should have learned that after that dress purchase débâcle described in Blog 42.
Well that’s at least 50% of my readership that I have alienated I suppose.

Thinking of coffee, the success of High Street coffee shops, such as Starbucks and Costa Coffee never ceases to amaze me.  Of course, they are not a new thing as Coffee Houses were popular meeting places in Britain in the 18th and 19th century, but they experienced a revival after that chap started Starbucks in Seattle in 1971.  Jane and I really enjoy our coffee and are very picky about the form it takes: it has to be fresh, for we never drink instant coffee.  Consequently, you would reasonably expect us to love the likes of Starbucks or Costa but, actually, we rarely frequent them.  There are two reasons: first, because we could just as easily make a really good cup of coffee at home without the expense (we currently have three coffee machines); and, second, because I find the process of ordering the coffee and enjoying the drink awkward and annoying.  In Costa, Starbucks and other coffee chains I first of all have to queue to place my order, an exercise which is fundamentally anathema to me.  After I have waited while someone ahead of me orders six entirely different and complex versions of coffee with sprinkles, I finally get to order.  I pay for my drink then have to hover around at the counter like a lemon for an undefined period, wondering if I have been forgotten, while the brew is created.  Finally, when I have the coffee, it is usually delivered in a small bucket instead of a cup and I am faced with the prospect of finding a free seat or table, drifting around the coffee shop like a satellite lost in space, spilling coffee onto the tray in the process.  And that does not take into account of the difficulty facing me with all the choices of coffee available: skinny latte, flat white, macchiato, caramel brulée, cappuccino to name but a few; all I usually want is a black coffee, preferably made with Mocha, Java, Colombian or Jamaican Blue Mountain roasted beans.  If I visit France or Spain I can walk into a café (or sit outside) and I will be served a coffee, at my table, by an efficient waiter or waitress.  I can sit and watch the world go by, chat with my companion, and generally enjoy the relaxing experience in a pleasant atmosphere. I also get a little biscuit.  If I want another cup I can simply summon the waiter or waitress, who will also accept my payment in due course.   We cannot do that in the UK (or, presumably, in the USA).  There used to be a very good family-run coffee house in Britain called Cawardines, which mirrored the continental experience; the wonderful smell of roasting coffee pervaded the area around the shop and encouraged customers.  Rather than a choice of somewhat bizarre confections, the range of coffee was based on the type of beans.  Sadly, many of their shops have now closed, though a few still remain in the West Country.

The top news this week must surely be the storming of the Capitol Building in Washington DC by supporters of the shortly-to-depart President Trump.  The politicians inside the building were debating the finer details of the November 2020 election with a view to endorsing (or rejecting)  the result when the incursion took place.  Rioters stormed the building and rampaged through its chambers and corridors. One posed in the Speaker’s chair. One person was shot and three others died from other causes.  The police and security officials were overwhelmed and the debate had to be stopped.  The National Guard was called out to restore order and a curfew was imposed in the city.  The rioters had been whipped up to a frenzy by a call to action by the outgoing President Trump, who felt that the recent election contained irregularities and was, therefore invalid.  He had made similar statements and rallying calls after the election result in November.  Later, a pipe bomb was defused and a lorry loaded with assault weapons was intercepted by the police.  After reconvening and examining the results from several states, Congress endorsed the election of Mr Joe Biden to be inaugurated as President on 20 January 2021.  I do not normally think it appropriate to comment on another countries’ political affairs, believing that such topics are an internal matter for the people of the country concerned.  However, I remember President Trump’s speech after the election result very well, and I have listened to his later speech just before the Congress debate.  There is doubt in my mind that in both speeches he was inciting revolution and insurrection because he did not like the democratic result.  I was shocked then and I am appalled now.  I do not believe any right-thinking American, Democrat or Republican, would endorse this sort of behaviour.  I would venture to suggest that the USA came close to a coup d’état on Wednesday 6 January.  It is unprecedented.  There is talk of the Vice President and Cabinet invoking the 25th Amendment for the first time and removing President Trump from office now.  Whatever, the whole affair was deeply shocking and I think there will be a reckoning.  My heart goes out to decent Americans at this very difficult time.

The weather in Britain is currently running through a steady cold spell, with temperatures hovering around freezing for over a week now.  It was -3 degrees C at noon today.  For next week, the weather forecasters are predicting another “Beast from the East” (journalists love these terrifying phrases): a euphemism for a severe cold spell, possibly with heavy snow.  Well, it seems to me that, if we are to get heavy snow and disruption then this is the best time to have it, with many people working from home, minimal commuting, and schools shut.  Bring it on.

We were sitting there in the drawing room, reading our books and listening to classical music on the wireless, when suddenly Jane burst into life and started peddling her legs in the air and winding her arms around like a whirling dervish.  My initial thought was that she really had lost it this time and I gently sought an explanation (‘gently’ because you never know how these people will react).  It appears that her fitness watch (purchased after her heart episode last year) had told her that she had been immobile for too long and that she must start moving.  This was her solution.  I shook my head sorrowfully: a further manifestation of this dubious addition to the household.  Already, the simple question in the morning of, “Did you sleep well, dear?” produces a glance at her watch and a deep scientific analysis of her slumber, invoking terms such as ‘sleep quality’ and ‘REM sleep’.  Often, the objective report clashes with the subjective report so that a report of, “Gosh, that was a good night’s sleep” (no doubt dreaming of her garden again) will subsequently be tempered by, “Oh dear, only five minutes of REM sleep and Quality of Sleep only 30%”.  As I told her at the time, you can become too fixated on instruments: if you feel that you have had a good sleep, then you have had a good sleep.  In a different context, I remember once when I was in the destroyer HMS BARCHESTER and she was conducting a gunnery exercise with a consort, HMS PLYMOUTH.  I was listening to the conversation on the internal gunnery broadcast between the Director Control Officer (sitting in the high-up gun Director with powerful binoculars) and the ship’s Gunnery Officer (sitting over a radar display in the dark Operations Room, deep in the bowels of the ship).  There was a dispute as to what the Director (and, hence, the ship’s armament) was aiming at; it was supposed to be pointing at HMS PLYMOUTH.
[Gunnery Officer]: “Director, report target”
[Director]: Target is HMS PLYMOUTH
[Gunnery Officer]: “Director, check again”
[Director]: Target is HMS PLYMOUTH
[Gunnery Officer] (beginning to lose his calm demeanour): “It can’t be PLYMOUTH! Director, describe target”
[Director] (looking out of Director window with binoculars): “A vessel under way, long and grey, one forward gun turret, one mast, one funnel with black cap.  White ensign.  Looks like a Royal Navy frigate.  There is a number on her side: F 1 2 6”
[Gunnery Officer] (subdued): “Ah….Roger…”
Moral of the story: try to keep both feet on the ground and don’t always trust the instruments. 
The footnote to the exchange, by the way, was the pipe:
“Weapons and Electrical Officer, bridge” on the ship’s Main Broadcast.  When things go wrong then always blame the maintainer.

At a favourably reduced price we have acquired two more Amazon Echo devices, so that we now have pods located in the drawing room, the Garden Control Tower (aka the conservatory), the bedroom and the study.  The world is therefore at our vocal command from almost everywhere in the house.  The latest capability that we have discovered is to ‘drop in’ on another room, that is to say, to use the Echo as an intercom.  Initially this went well, but I have encountered a few technical problems more recently.  The command from the study, “Alexa drop in on the conservatory” and the subsequent request to Jane for a cup of tea seems to result in a somewhat loud garbled response and no tea.  I think there must be some interference on the wifi loop or something, which I shall have to pursue in due course.  Odd really: Jane heard me all right when we first tested it.

Now, if you will excuse me I must change into my kit and start pumping iron.  Or is that to do with the other end?

7 January 2021

Blog 74. Keep Taking the Tablets

Well, if you are reading this, then congratulations: you have survived Covid 19, a particularly unpleasant virus that has dominated the year 2020 and made it a thoroughly miserable one. The virus may still be with us, but I hope that – by this time next year – we will at last be free to resume our normal lives again, with hugs and kisses and no face masks: poor as a nation, but alive.

The Covid 19 epidemic continues a pace and the number of people tested as positive in the UK is increasing at about 23% per day. More regions of England have been placed in the highest state of readiness, Tier 4, joining Scotland and Wales in what amounts to a full lockdown, with a return to school for some children postponed. We in Barsetshire have moved up a tier to Tier 3. Frustratingly for the alarmists in our society, the number of daily deaths is not increasing at the same rate as the infections; indeed, the number of daily deaths from Covid currently stands at a comparatively modest 414 and is falling at a rate of 4%. The key concern, however, is – and always has been – the pinch-point of hospital capacity. Several hospitals are approaching full capacity, with admissions rising at 16% daily and ambulances queuing to discharge their patients. As surmised in my last blog, those vast temporary hospitals, the “Nightingale” hospitals, mostly stand idle because of a lack of staff to man them; indeed, the one in London has been dismantled. What was once a logistic triumph and a great hope has turned into a waste of money. A very worthy attempt to recruit retired NHS nurses and doctors to help with the crisis has been frustrated by red tape, each GP offering to return to service apparently having to submit 21 separate documents, such as certification that they had completed Prevent Radicalisation training. Of the 40,000 retired doctors and nurses who applied to return to service in March, 30,000 were considered eligible and only 5,000 had been employed by July; many had simply given up when faced with the bureaucracy. What an opportunity lost: personally, I would rather receive my vaccination from a retired healthcare professional than some heavy-handed layman who has only just received training. It is so heartening, at this time of national emergency, to find that the Department of Health has lost none of its standards and rigidity: if we were abandoning the TITANIC then the DoH officials would be there, checking our tickets and insurance documents before letting us into the lifeboats. On a high, and very encouraging, note the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine has finally been approved for use in the UK and the programme of those vaccinations is due to start on 4 January. The Oxford vaccine is cheap, works differently from the other vaccines and is much easier to administer as it does not require near cryogenic temperatures to store it. GP surgeries can readily use the vaccine and a broader and ramped-up immunisation package is anticipated. Given our age (we are Level 5 priority), Jane and I do not expect to receive our first jabs until February, with the follow up jab three months later. On completion, I would still like a sticker saying “I’ve had the Covid 19 jab”, along with a barley sugar for being a good boy and not crying.

Christmas with the Shacklepins started with the traditional Christmas walk into the countryside: a daring move given Jane’s poorly leg (now diagnosed as “Jumper’s Knee”), but an adventure that she thought she would try.  You might be excused for conjuring up in your mind’s eye a scene of a crisp, sunlit day, with our two adventurers frisking joyfully through virgin snow from Wrinkly Bottom to the distant church tower of Little Smidgin, smoke rising vertically from a nearby cosy cottage and the homely smell of cooking turkey pervading the atmosphere.  Alas, it was not to be.  The day was, indeed, sunny and crisply cold after a hard frost overnight, but there was no snow.  There hardly ever is in England: I think all those Christmas cards that we send must be based on the hard Dickensian winters that the country experienced in the early 1800s, when the River Thames froze so solidly that the people could roast a whole ox on the ice.  Such practice would be vetoed today, because Health and Safety regulations would ban people from the ice, vegans and vegetarians would be offended by us carnivores eating an animal, and the Green Party would claim that eating beef was adding to global warming.  But I digress.  What the Shacklepins trudged through, instead of snow, was mud: ankle deep mud, enlivened by the occasional puddle that was knee deep.  After a mile of trying to make progress through this agrarian adventure playground that resembled the Battle of the Somme during a ceasefire, the novelty was beginning to wear off.  The memsahib, as was her custom, was covered in splashes of mud from boot to eyebrow and was grumbling mightily.  When she became temporarily entangled in a bramble hedge while trying to avoid a large puddle, the decision was made to loop around and return to base.  We lumbered across a field that was devoid of all livestock and followed an all-too-well trodden path that would eventually take us back to the road.  The usual argument as to the correct route punctuated the journey, with myself (holding the Ordnance Survey map and following a hand-held GPS) on one side versus Herself (spectacles flecked with dirt and relying on memory) on the other; I, of course, was Wrong and she was Right.  We did reach the correct stile using my route, for which I claimed a victory; unfortunately it was inaccessible, being surrounded by a lake about a foot deep, and so she claimed a late triumph based on hindsight.  Re-routeing and trespassing took us through yet another bramble and hawthorn hedge, across an electrified fence and over a five-bar gate, Jane scaling this final obstacle with an effort similar to Edmund Hilary and Sherpa Tensing ascending Everest.  We eventually made the road and trooped back home fagged out and filthy after only about three miles.  Why do we do these things?

Christmas luncheon, with the Waitrose “De-boned Easy-to-Carve Duck with Rum, Pear, Chestnut and Prune Stuffing” was…different, mainly because of the addition of a Port and Redcurrant Sauce, formulated from our son’s recipe but allowed to over-mature while Jane had a sherry. In fact this year’s luncheon experience was so different that the Editor-in-Chief has imposed a D-Notice on the whole episode and I am banned from describing it to you: a shame, as there is probably a whole chapter of a blog in there; alas, it is now sealed in the National Archives for the next twenty five years. Let us just say that, next year, we will be returning to our traditional rib of beef (provided the Climate Change lobby has not banned cows from the face of the earth). After luncheon we enjoyed the opening of our presents and were very flattered by the thought that people had put into them: as ever, they were very well received.

On Boxing Day the weather returned to its more traditional English setting: it drizzled with rain all day.  We found that very reassuring, for it was what we were used to.  Stimulated by our walking adventures on Christmas Day, we parked ourselves in the drawing room, switched on the lights, put up our feet, lit the fire, and read our new books as the daylight advanced from dark grey to feeble light grey, then descended to night again.  You can only pack so much excitement into one seasonal festival. 

The hiatus between Christmas Day and New Year is always a peculiar time as one recovers from the anticlimax of one annual celebration and then tries to work up enthusiasm for the next, the week being overlaid with indigestion, guilt about the expanding waistline, a hangover and a diet of leftovers.  This year the week has not been much different from previous years for the Shacklepins, despite the fact that we did not over-indulge with alcohol.  Fortunately, Jane has been gainfully employed in making marmalade in the manner of Paddington Bear: an annual ritual.  The kitchen is full of steam, the gash bin is full of orange peel, the extractor fans are throbbing like the engine room of a destroyer at full power, and my contribution has been limited to tying a reef knot in the Soaking Bag.  I like marmalade time, for when Jane is chopping or squeezing oranges she is not casting an eye on me to ensure that I am not loafing.  Also, I enjoy the marmalade.

We do not not normally celebrate New Year, which is just as well as all socialising and pleasure is banned (unless you want to stand in the cold in the back garden).  We just cannot wait to get this awful year over with, and plunge into the hell that is January: possibly the worst month of the year because of its foul weather and its curb on outdoor activity.  At least January 2021 may feature a glimmer of hope in the form of a Covid 19 vaccination for us both, who knows? 

Whatever happened to First Footing? Is it, or was it, just a Northumbrian or Scottish thing? On New Year’s Eve when not at sea, my father would be sent out into the cold just before midnight clutching a piece of coal, which he would then present to a neighbour after knocking on their door after midnight had passed. He would be given a tot of spirits in gratitude. I never did work out the significance of the coal or the fact that the bearer was supposed to be a tall dark stranger. Midnight would be announced by the sounding of ships’ sirens on the River Tyne and a field gun fired by the army at Tynemouth. In the Royal Navy, sixteen bells would be sounded on the ship’s bell, rung by the youngest rating onboard. I wonder if these traditions continue? I would imagine that the sirens would still be sounded in seaports, and the striking of the bell in warships would continue, but as to the coal and the First Footing, who knows? Perhaps it has gone the way of “penny for the guy” during the run up to Guy Fawkes Night. For the benefit of younger readers (if any) or those not British, Guy Fawkes Night celebrates the successful foiling of a plot by a traitor called Guy Fawkes to blow up King James I and his parliament in 1605. The unfortunate Fawkes was one of several traitors in the plot, but the one always remembered. He was hung, drawn and quartered for his crime and the occasion has been commemorated ever since by fireworks and public bonfires on 5 November. In my youth, the “guy” was a stuffed dummy that children created and used as a focus for a begging campaign to obtain money to buy fireworks; it would be burnt on the bonfire on The Night. “Penny for the guy, mister”, was a common request on the streets in the early Novembers of my childhood; the more realistic the guy, the better the contribution. One friend tried using his brother instead of a dummy as the guy, but the public caught on to that quite early on. I don’t know when the tradition died away; perhaps it went out when “trick or treat” came in. It was not until I was well into my thirties that I discovered that the Gunpowder Plot (as it became known) was, in fact, a Roman Catholic conspiracy against Protestant England and the “guy” is supposed to represent the Pope, not Guy Fawkes. I must have been asleep during my history lessons of that period. It is curious: none of us children (including Roman Catholics) thought we were burning an effigy of the Pope; Guy Fawkes Night was (and still is) just a jolly occasion when one can watch fireworks, wave sparklers and stand around a bonfire on a cold winter’s night in the rain. We British really know how to party.

Now this is interesting. The punishment of being hung, drawn and quartered was a particularly brutal one reserved for traitors.  The miscreant was hanged slowly by the neck until almost dead from asphyxia (‘hung’).  He was then cut down, his genitalia were cut off, his torso cut open and his intestines removed, sometimes to be burnt in front of him while still alive (‘drawn’).  Finally, his heart would be torn out, his head cut off, and his body cut into four parts (‘quartered’).  The head would be displayed on London Bridge as an example to all traitors; the four quarters of his body would also be displayed or sometimes distributed throughout England as a similar deterrent.  No one could say that those early English monarchs were soft on crime.  Interestingly, hanging, drawing and quartering was not removed from the English statute books until 1870, and beheading remained on the books until 1973, though both punishments had become obsolete long before those dates.  The death penalty for treason in the UK was not officially abolished until 1998; the last execution for this crime took place after WW2 in 1946.   The death penalty was retained in Britain for arson in Her Majesty’s Dockyards until 1971.  When you think about it, the term ‘hung’ as used in ‘hung, drawn and quartered’ must be the only instance in English when it is acceptable to use the term to describe killing someone by hanging them by the neck, the correct word for this method of execution is, of course, ‘hanged’ not ‘hung’.  I always remember my old English master pronouncing that only meat and portraits are ‘hung’; people are ‘hanged’.  For the benefit of any non-native English speakers reading this, incidentally, I should point out that to say that a man is well hung has a different meaning entirely.

Matters grisly have a certain fascination for boys (as you will have gathered from the previous paragraph) and I have read several books on the topic of forensic pathology as they are the perfect antidote to being overly cheerful.  One particular true story took my fancy as being more bizarre than most. This from Dr Iain West’s Casebook by Chester Stern.  In 1986 a chap was digging over his garden in his newly-bought house in Abingdon when he unearthed a human head wrapped in a plastic bag; not a skull, a complete head, with hair and flesh, and apparently not long dead.  Naturally, this triggered much tumult and shouting and he called the police, who launched a full-scale murder enquiry.  When the pathologist cleaned up the head and examined it, it proved to be something of an enigma.  First of all, the lower jaw bone did not seem to match the skull.  Secondly, the wear on the teeth indicated that, in life, the owner had been eating bread made from stoneground flour that contained grit – a commodity that had ceased to have traces of grit in it by the end of the 19th century.  The pathologist concluded that the head was clearly that of an old woman with grey hair, and it appeared from the teeth and radiological tests that she had died, not recently, but in the Victorian era. 
While this analysis progressed, the boys in blue had not been idle.  They traced the previous owners of the house, who had moved to the West Country, and sought an explanation.  The previous owners admitted that they had found the head in a shoebox in the house shortly before they moved out and after their troubled son had left home.  Not being sure of what to do with the head, they decided simply to bury it in the back garden, as you do.  The investigation moved on to trace the son who, it transpired, had moved to London but was no longer a man: he had had a sex operation to become a woman (are you still with me?).  The story that then unfolded was that the son had been interested in the occult and wanted to perform certain mystic rites, using a human head, to turn him into a woman.  Accordingly, he had raided a Victorian tomb in London, found the the corpse of a woman, well-preserved, and ripped the head off to use in his ceremony.  Disappointingly, the occult ceremony had not worked, so he had dumped the head in a shoebox in his parents’ home and the NHS had completed his transition from man to woman for him/her instead.  The apparent mismatch of the lower jawbone with the rest of the skull remains unexplained to this day, as the miscreant was adamant that she/he had removed just one head.  As they say in Yorkshire, there’s nowt as queer as folk.

Well, I have read through the details of the Brexit free trade agreement with the EU (that is to say, I skimmed through an article on the subject in the Daily Telegraph) and, as far as I can see, it can be claimed to be a success far beyond what I thought could be achieved.  That, of course, would not be difficult seeing as how I reckoned no deal would be agreed at such a late stage.  The only bit that the UK did not achieve was reclaiming full control of  its territorial waters for fishing rights, that area being the subject of a transition period of 5½ years.  It is rather odd that a sovereign country is only entitled to 25% of the fish in its own waters (as at present), but this quota will increase over the transition period.  It is time to start building those trawlers.  The remainder of the agreement looks good to me: the UK gets to trade with whichever country it wishes; there will be free trade with the EU; the country no longer will come under the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice; we will be independent once more from midnight on 31 December 2020.  Parliament passed the bill on 30 December 2020.

“Don’t forget your pill”.
Jane gestured at the small anonymous white pill next to my breakfast plate and I dutifully popped it into my mouth and swallowed it.  It occurred to me afterwards that if my wife ever wanted to rid herself of this troublesome pest, all she would have to do is leave a cyanide pill in the same place, then tell me to take it; I would swallow it without a murmur.  We do trust our spouses or partners so much in these things.  The pill was a Vitamin D tablet: a supplement introduced by Jane every winter to make up for the lack of sunshine and to keep my bones in tip top condition. Entirely fortuitously, it turns out that the vitamin also enhances one’s resistance to Covid 19. Other than that, I take no regular medication: a situation that I hope to maintain for as long as I can, though the occasional Valium would be welcome, especially when I listen to the news in the morning.  

Talk of pills reminds me of a true story of a female university lecturer in London who was still working despite being in her late 70s.  She was very keen on opera and had attended a performance at Covent Garden with, what I suppose might be called, a date: a gentleman companion of a similar age as her. After the show, they shared a taxi back to her flat in Chelsea where she thanked him for his company and gave him a peck on the cheek.
“Aren’t you going to ask me in for a coffee?”, he asked.
“No, not tonight.  I’m rather tired and I have to give lectures tomorrow”
“But I’ve just taken my viagra pill!”, he lamented.

So I suppose there are pills, and then there are other pills.   Mine is just to keep the rickets away.

A very happy New Year to all my readers.  Heaven knows, surely 2021 cannot be worse than this one? 

30 December 2020

Blog 73. …For Mighty Dread Had Seized Their Troubled Minds…

Merry Christmas one and all. It is now Christmas Eve and, if our Christmas is not turning out quite as jolly as we are used to, then let us make the most of what we have. Reasons to be cheerful: vaccines against Covid 19 have been found and a programme of immunisation is under way; we have avoided the office party; we have saved masses of money on dining out, holidays and commuting; we have learned to appreciate our friends and their company more than ever; our houses are the cleanest they have ever been; those of us who hate the enforced company and bonhomie of Christmas have had their wishes fulfilled; a whole new genre of computer-borne humour has emerged; and, last but not least, the winter solstice has passed and so our days (in the northern hemisphere) are getting longer and it will soon be summer. We are not over the hump by any means, but there is a glimmer of light on the horizon, so let us make the most of the situation and try to celebrate Christmas in a special way.  Jane and I will still be setting the polished Queen Anne table in the dining room with the traditional place settings, the candles and the best silver, and we will be dressing smartly, as we always do on Christmas Day; Jane may even forego her plimsolls for twelve hours and wear a smart pair of high heels.  There may only be two of us, but our friends will be with us mind and in spirit.  I include my modest readership among our friends and so we will drink a toast to both of you too, wherever you may be, on the day.  

There will just be the two of us for Christmas this year, of course, because the UK government has been forced to withdraw its relaxation of a five-day window, free of Covid restrictions, when families could meet.  I knew it was all too good to be true.  As it happens, we had no social plans for Christmas Day, but we had hoped to entertain friends for luncheon just before Christmas, and to have drinks with neighbours on Christmas Eve.  That has all gone by the board and the country has been plunged into a fresh series of restrictions by the latest developments.

Last Saturday, 19 December, the Prime Minister announced that Christmas was now going to be (more or less) cancelled in the UK because of a “mutant strain” of covid in London and the South East that is “out of control” and 70% more contagious than the existing virus. Fortunately, the new mutation is no more dangerous than the existing strain, but it does spread more rapidly. Predictably, after the announcement on Saturday night there erupted a Gadarene Swine evacuation of the capital, with queues at railway stations and roads crowded, as people tried to leave before midnight. Heaven knows where they went, for in many counties the hotels are shut. As of midnight on 19 December, London and the Home Counties were plunged into a new, stricter, Tier 4: essentially, a complete lockdown. They must not leave home; they must not leave the region; they can entertain no-one. Of course, they can exercise and buy food, but that is about it: forget the five-day Christmas relaxation. The remaining tiers in England can now meet only two other households on Christmas Day only and guests cannot stay overnight. The situation is broadly the same in the rest of the UK, as Scotland, Wales and Northern Island have – for once – followed suit. It was further announced on 23 December that, immediately after midnight on Christmas Day, several other regions in southern England will also be placed into the new Tier 4 and some other regions increased in readiness. The regions currently in Tier 1 will move into Tier 2 or 3.

The method of announcing the changes on Saturday, with its alarmist talk of “mutant” and “out of control” could, perhaps, have been less histrionic. There was a knock-on effect, which I rather suspect the British government did not anticipate: mainland Europe immediately closed its borders to all forms of traffic and freight from Britain, with several other countries following suit. Eire even refused to receive British post. Lorries, the majority driven by continental European drivers, were stuck in the Channel ports or the approach roads pending drivers obtaining a negative virus test result. It was a bit of a knee-jerk reaction (lifted 48 hours later) from our continental cousins as, in fact, the new strain of virus first came to light in October and will not be unique to Britain: there have been reports of it from Australia, Denmark and Brazil. Only the British government was rash enough to declare a sort of ownership and flag the thing up as a new hazard: a new bogie to be terrified by. Just to add to this sorry state of affairs, a third strain of Covid has also been detected in South Africa and one case has been found in Britain. Anyone arriving from South Africa recently is required to quarantine.

When I had viral pneumonia back in the year 1979, I was seriously ill in hospital for a while and unable to take up my next appointment to HMS CAROUSEL. I remember telephoning the Officers’ Appointer to tell him the bad news that I would be unable to fly out to Malta to join the ship as planned, and mentioned what the ward Sister had told me, very soberly, that morning: that the virus I had was ‘plasma toxic’.
“Whooa..”, he said. There was a pause.
“Er, what does that mean?”
“I don’t know, but it sounds terrifying”.
“Quite”.
I was thinking of that conversation as I listened to the Prime Minister describe the new mutant strain of Covid. “Mutant”: disfigured gargoyle-like creatures with three arms; fluorescent rabbits with glowing eyes; bizarre Japanese tortoises with superhuman powers. Whooa. Bad choice of words, Prime Minister, accurate though they may have been. By the way, I still don’t know what ‘plasma toxic’ means, but I know an unarguable technical phrase when I hear one.

Ever the pessimists, Britons had anticipated an increase in Covid restrictions after Christmas, but the government having to advance their implementation, after the promise of a five-day respite over the festive season, has confounded many. Those who did intend to take advantage of the easing of the rules had bought in extra food or made travel arrangements.  There are now many families throughout the land with enormous turkeys, several hams, bushels of assorted winter vegetables and several Marks & Spencer Deluxe Puddings with only two people to eat it all.  It may be that not many people were going to have visitors at Christmas anyway after the previous dire warnings, but that is not the point; for those who did plan to meet, the news has been a logistical  disaster.  At least they will have plenty to eat for the next few months.

The number of positive outcomes to tests has, indeed, increased rapidly in the south east of England, and daily deaths for the UK as a whole have started to rise slowly, currently standing at 744 in the last 24 hours. We are clearly heading for a third peak of infections – all aboard for the rollercoaster. Lockdowns seem to be the only response to this epidemic until enough people have been immunised, but they are – at best – a palliative. At the beginning of this epidemic in March, Germany was praised mightily for its efficient and rapid Teutonic response to the virus, and its approach was held up by the British press as the model that we should all have followed. The Czech Republic was similarly praised for its very strict early lockdown in March. This time around, both of those countries have suffered far more deaths in the second peak than in the first. At the end of the day, no country has produced what might be regarded as the perfect response to Covid 19. Might there be an argument that we will never achieve herd immunity if we keep locking ourselves away? Perhaps some of us should let ourselves catch the virus to build up a resistance in the community. You go first.

In the UK we have heard little about the seven emergency temporary hospitals set up to cope with Covid victims: the so-called “Nightingale Hospitals”.  The whole idea of the initial lockdown in March was to buy time while the authorities built up PPE and an infrastructure to cope with the anticipated influx of Covid patients.  That has been achieved, but only Exeter Nightingale hospital is currently being used as intended, with Manchester used for non-Covid patients.  The five others are still vacant.  I suspect the problem is that there may be insufficient staff to man the temporary hospitals, but at least the beds are there if the worst comes to the worst.  

On a more positive note, my sister-in-law (aged 89) has had her first vaccination with no serious side effects, and two elderly friends here in Melbury received their injections earlier this week.  As of 21 December, half a million people in the UK had received their first vaccinations.  The other type of vaccine, the Oxford/Astra/Zeneca version, has been submitted for approval for use and we await the outcome: being easier to store, and being produced separately, that vaccine should enhance the immunisation programme significantly if approved.

The armed forces took charge of the creation of the Nightingale hospitals and they were praised for their efficiency.  They are also increasingly being utilised for other aspects of tackling the pandemic, and some 14,000 personnel are on standby to assist local authorities as required.  When all else fails and the rest of the country cannot cope or is hobbled by strikes, the armed forces are always there to pick up the pieces.  I always remember that, in the late 1970s and – again – at the start of this century, there were national firemen’s strikes and the armed forces were called in to provide emergency cover as best they could.  Forces personnel were not allowed to drive the existing modern fire appliances; instead they had to use ancient fire engines called Green Goddesses, mothballed from the 1950s from the days when the country had a Civil Defence Force to cope with nuclear attack.  The vehicles (green in colour, hence the name) had manual gearboxes without synchromesh and no modern equipment; you could tell when they were coming by the grinding of gear changes, the stuttering engines, the stop-start progress, and the pitiful ringing of a handbell (no EYORE siren).  Watching a Green Goddess go past was like watching a film of the Keystone Cops.  I recall that, in 1977,  one naval-manned Green Goddess was called out by an old lady whose cat had become stuck up a tree.  After a fraught journey, the team arrived on scene and the matelots duly managed to rescue kitty and restore the animal to the old lady.  Delighted, the old dear invited the fire engine crew into her house for a cup of tea and a piece of cake which, they accepted with alacrity.  Suitably refreshed, and basking in wholesome praise, they returned to their fire engine, waved a fond farewell to the grateful old lady, and promptly drove over her cat as they departed down the drive.

Talk of illness and epidemics reminds me that, in the early days of my career, having an accident or becoming ill while on leave away from a naval port required the implementation of a complicated procedure.  You could not simply pop into the local GP surgery or hospital to be treated, given a Sick Note or (heaven forfend!) self-certify your illness.  Instead, you had to visit the local Admiralty Surgeon & Agent (found from the telephone directory) for treatment.  If the problem was so bad that you were laid low, then the doctor had to give you a note stating that you were not fit to travel.  Note the last two words in italics, as they are important.  Fundamentally, the Service did not trust civilian doctors: only a naval doctor was qualified to say whether you were fit to do your duty or not.  Presumably it considered the civilian medical profession to be a bunch of charlatans and quacksalvers, though – of course – that was the very pool from which naval doctors were recruited. As an example of this, a chap I knew broke a leg in a climbing accident in Snowdonia and was laid up at a friend’s house in a small town in Wales to convalesce. Apart from having his leg in plaster he was quite comfortable and being well looked after by the females in his friend’s family. The Navy wasn’t having any of that, however: they sent a naval ambulance all the way into deepest Wales to bring him back and put him in a proper naval hospital, and he had a very uncomfortable and painful journey back.  Can’t trust these civvies. Nowadays, the Admiralty Surgeon & Agent scheme is long gone, but I would guess that the sickness certification criterion is exactly the same.

A further example of the peculiarities of the naval medical system may be found from my days when I was studying engineering for four years at the Naval Engineering College in Plymouth. We worked an odd quasi-university routine: although lectures were compulsory, we wore uniform, lived in the wardroom, had naval duties, and worked on Saturday mornings, we also occasionally had free periods or tutorials in the afternoons and played sport on Wednesday afternoons.  It was delightfully relaxed and laid back provided you were academically inclined and could cope accordingly.   As I have mentioned in earlier blogs, this could lead you to forget that you were still, fundamentally, part of a disciplined service.  I remember a chum of mine at college who was married and lived in a naval married quarter in Plymouth.  He woke up one morning feeling a little fragile and decided that he would not go into college that day, so he telephoned the wardroom hall porter and ‘called in sick’.  About two hours later he was sitting in his living room, reading the newspaper with his feet up and a cup of coffee by his side, when the room grew a little darker.  He looked out of the window and saw, just pulling up outside, a large white ambulance with a big red cross and “ROYAL NAVY” on the side.  Out of one door stepped a naval Surgeon Lieutenant in full dress uniform, and out of the other stepped the driver, a Medical Assistant in full ‘square rig’, carrying the medical bag.  They had come to see my chum.  He immediately tossed the paper to one side, shot upstairs, stripped off his clothes, and threw himself into bed just in time to receive the visitors.  I imagine they found him to be a little hot and feverish.

The hot news is that, just as the drawbridge was about to be pulled up, a breakthrough has been made in Brexit negotiations and a trade deal has finally been agreed with the European Union. Cynical soul that I am, I wonder what part of my birthright has been sold to achieve this goal, but I withhold judgement for now. Whatever, the discussions have been a long drawn out battle and all credit to the negotiators for their tremendous efforts. More details later, I dare say.

After Christmas, brace yourselves for the next hot topic in Britain: the Queen’s New Year’s Honours List. Lists of those elevated to the peerage, knighted or otherwise honoured will be published and – throughout the land – we will be grumbling over our breakfast toast and marmalade as to which buffoon, actor, footballer, guitar player or other perceived undeserving character has acquired the title “Lord”, “Sir” or “Dame”. Next blog, perhaps.

Christmas is a time for The Ghost Story.  I have never seen a ghost myself, but several warships in my career were reputed to be haunted, sometimes by a figure related to previous war service (in an old ship), or a suicide onboard.  A very good friend of mine, who was a submariner, did see one in a modern warship.  He was not one for making up stories, so I have no reason to doubt the veracity of his account.  He was serving in a nuclear submarine and the boat was dived somewhere under the Arctic Ocean, on patrol during the Cold War.  It was in the middle of the night and he was the Engineer Officer of the Watch in the Machinery Control Room with about six other men, keeping watch over the nuclear reactor and monitoring the propulsion machinery.  When a ship or submarine is on passage, there are no changes in speed to cope with and it can all become rather mundane just sitting there with little to do except look at the machinery gauges (and you usually hope it stays that way).  The Machinery Control Room crew were chatting away amiably and monitoring the reactor control panel automatically, when a figure in green overalls walked past the door and on into the main turbine room.  They all saw the figure, and they each looked askance at each other.  You see, in the Royal Navy, engineer officers wear white overalls and all ratings wear blue overalls.  Only dockyard maties wear green overalls, and the nearest dockyard was some 2,000 miles away.  A mechanic was immediately despatched into the turbine room to track down the intruder but, although he searched the entire compartment, no-one was found; there was no other way out except past the Machinery Control Room.  The crew was somewhat nonplussed as to what to do.  Nuclear watchkeepers are highly trained and monitored carefully for obvious reasons: a report to the Captain or the authorities that seven of them had seen a ghost would likely have resulted in them being led, very gently, ashore to a safe hospital with bars on the windows.  At the very least they would have been relieved of their duties and, heaven forbid,  lost their Submarine Pay (a supplement to the standard naval pay).  So they decided to say nothing to anyone.  Later, after the boat had returned to base, my friend made a few enquiries about the submarine’s history.  He discovered that, during a previous refit, the watertight compartment where the sighting took place was being pressure tested, but a heavy watertight door was not clipped shut properly.  As the test pressure was increased the securing clip gave way and the watertight door flipped violently open, hitting a dockyard worker and crushing his head against the boat’s side.  He was killed.  Was the mysterious figure in green overalls the ghost of the unfortunate dockyard worker?  Who can say?

It is a short blog this week as I have to polish the silver and trim the candle wicks for Christmas Day.  There has also been talk of me blackening the range and scrubbing the kitchen floor for the festivities.  So, I leave you with the words of Tiny Tim:

“God bless us, every one”

24 December 2020

Blog 72. Keep Your Bottom Clean.

I knew I was getting old when I was in HMS NONSUCH and responding to one of the many machinery breakdowns that characterised my time onboard.  I was sliding down one of the near-vertical ladders onboard, gripping just the side rails, with my feet off the treads like you see in those American films, when I landed in an undignified heap on the deck below.  I lay there for a bit, winded, waiting for someone to appear from a nearby compartment and say, 
“Are you all right there, sir?” or, 
“Are you hurt, old boy?”.  
No one came. 
So, philosophically, I just got up and continued my rapid descent down the remaining ladders, thinking to myself, 
“You’re getting too old for this sort of thing”.  
I was 41 at the time.  As if I needed further corroboration of my impending senility, at home ashore I later found myself sighing audibly as I sat down in an armchair to rest my weary bones.  Oh dear.  I looked in the mirror the next morning and saw this old man with grey hair, thick eyebrows and bags under his eyes looking back at me.  I had already found a hundred billion brain cells on my pillow when I got up, which surprised me as I never had that many to start with.  When Young Lochinvar, aka Rupert our son, approached 40 I warned him that these signs were coming, but he dismissed my fatherly wisdom and made some suitably derogatory remark to me about the hair in my ears.  I thought I would get my own back on that one: on his 40th birthday I sent him a box containing a photograph album recording each birthday, a cardigan, a pair of carpet slippers, a tube of Ibuprofen joint cream, and an electric nose hair trimmer.  He later admitted that he particularly appreciated the last, which also worked well on ears and eyebrows.  In a previous life I specialised in Reliability Engineering, a fascinating branch of engineering that you will be pleased to know I won’t burden you with, but one aspect is relevant to my theme here.  In terms of reliability, many machines are said to follow the so-called bathtub curve [the cross-sectional shape of a bath tub cut across] , with a high failure rate in early days of service, dropping to a reasonably flat period of random failure (the bottom of the bathtub) during working life, then – over time – a rising failure rate as the machine wears out.  For a lecture, I once extracted the failure rates for human beings in the UK (deaths per thousand population) from the Office of National Statistics and plotted the result on a graph, with age along the x-axis.  The graph followed the bathtub curve:  there was a high failure (death) rate in early years, corresponding to such conditions as cot death and so on; then a reasonably flat, random failure period (knocked over by a bus, murdered by wife for commenting on her shower cap); then a wear-out period leading to death in old age.  At what age do you think the wear-out phase started?  Well, I will tell you: at about 45, with a more marked point of inflexion at the age of 62.  That’s it then.
“Do I get another chance, God?”
“No, sorry, mate, that was it”
Ho hum.

Thinking of Rupert, he did once buy me a mug for my birthday, which was very kind of him.  It bore the logo,
“The Floggings Will Continue Until the Crew’s Morale Improves”.
I still have it, and use it regularly.  It is obviously a tribute to my strong leadership skills and firm patriarchal presence.  Or, at least, I think it is.

“There seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today”.
So commented Admiral Beatty at the Battle of Jutland after two British battleships blew up in short time during the battle.  The comment is relevant today in a different context and could be amplified by the aphorism,
“None can abide an ugly ship”,
a maxim apparently no longer followed by naval architects.  Why are ships today so ugly?  The worst of the lot must surely be the cruise ships, with high slab sides, and deck after deck of outside passenger cabins like the layers of a wedding cake.  Some cruise lines even have the bows of their ships decorated with painted smiles or symbols, like a tart touting for business on a street corner.  Yuk.  The ships may meet the IMO stability criteria, but aesthetically they are top heavy, look hideous, and dominate a port by their towering imposing presence.  Cargo carriers are little better, with containers piled so high on deck that the bridge windows can only just see over them; the superstructure and funnel are square and totally lacking in any grace.  Ferries are chunky and ugly.  It was not always this way: CUTTY SARK manages to look beautiful despite being a very successful tea clipper in her day; more recently, QUEEN ELIZABETH 2, now a floating hotel in Dubai, was a fine example of combining function with form.  Now, there are very few cruise ships that do not make a true seaman wince.  And as to warships, why, they can still look menacing and be highly capable without having to look simply ugly.  The German battleship BISMARK, for example, managed to look domineering yet magnificent.  More recently, the Royal Navy’s Type 21 frigates of the AMAZON Class (now sold) were sleek, attractive, functional and inspired pride in those who served in them.  Today, the Royal Navy has the DARING Class destroyer: no doubt very capable, but angular, boxy and dull, with few (if any) aesthetic qualities.  Of course, the answer to all these criticisms is that the ships are there for a commercial (or warlike) purpose; in the case of merchant ships, they are there to make money, pure and simple.  But then, that was always the case and you never saw a more hard-nosed bunch of coves than shipowners in the late 19th and early 20th century; yet they took pride in their ships and so did the crews who manned them.  A ship can be made to look reasonably pleasing to the eye without necessarily incurring extra costs: a rake of the mast here, a cap on the funnel there; even a change of paint scheme can make a huge difference.  Such a shame that few naval architects or ship owners seem to have any taste or pride in their ships.

An example of a ship owner’s pride may be found in a little story that my father once told me.  Immediately after WW2 he served in the coastal trade for a while – the trade being blessed with short periods away from home and – hence – a pleasant domestic routine.  His company carried coal from the north east of England to London for conversion to gas: not the most exotic of trades (it could have been worse; it could have involved transporting sewage) yet the ships were well-looked after, were kept clean inside and out, and the officers dressed in uniform for meals.   In the late 1940s, the company decided to invest in a fine new vessel, powered by a diesel engine, to replace existing coal-fired steam ships.  The order was placed, the vessel built, and the new ship, sparklingly clean and trim in her livery, completed her maiden voyage reasonably successfully.  Her main engine had, however,  developed the odd problem and, as a temporary measure, the engineers had disconnected two pistons and had hung them up on chain blocks, the engine operating adequately on the remaining six cylinders.  This is perfectly possible with big marine engines and is a not uncommon practice.  Such was the pride in this humble, but new generation, ship that she entered port to a grand reception, with the company Board of Directors, in their best suits and bowler hats, lined up on the jetty and the ship’s officers, in their best uniforms, on the bridge, fo’c’sle and poop.  I am not sure if there was a band playing, but there might as well have been.  The Captain was conscious of every eye upon him as he conned the ship alongside.  All went smoothly and the heaving lines were thrown.  The Captain rang down “Full Astern” on the telegraph to take the last bit of way off the ship and complete the perfect alongside manoeuvre.  The engine kicked into reverse with a puff of blue smoke, the propeller thrashed and the hull throbbed. 
Suddenly, there was an enormous BANG and a sound as if an entire scrap yard had suddenly been scooped up into the air, then dropped onto concrete.  The ship stopped and there was total silence, a settling cloud of dust, and a pervading smell of burnt oil.  It transpired that the vibration of running at “Full Astern” had dislodged the two disconnected pistons and their connecting rods from their securing chain blocks, and they had dropped into the rotating engine.  The noise was the components being mangled by the crankshaft.  In terms of sea trials it was all a fine example of defeat being snatched from the jaws of victory.  Apparently, the Chief Engineer was quite literally in tears.  I do not know if he kept his job or if the champagne reception party went ahead.  I would think not.

My little ship, The Boat, is still high and dry on blocks in the marina.  The antifouling was sanded off a few weeks ago, a few cracks identified and repaired, and the fibreglass hull is currently drying out after its prolonged period in the water.  In the spring a new coat of antifouling will be applied and, when the new pontoons are ready, APPLETON RUM will go back into the water with a smile on her face.  The subject of antifouling is an interesting one (entering lecture mode again: pay attention).  The coating is applied to the underwater area of ships and boats to inhibit marine growth like barnacles and weed, because such encumbrances reduce a vessel’s speed and increase fuel consumption.  It is not a new thing: the bottoms of the old sailing ships were sheathed with copper to overcome this problem and that of the nasty teredo worm, that bored into the wooden hulls and weakened the structure.  Nowadays the antifouling coating is applied just like paint and, at the expensive end of the product range, can be highly effective and save millions of pounds on a ship’s operating cost.  As an example of the importance of antifouling, the aircraft carrier HMS ILLUSTRIOUS was in the final stages of building during the Falklands Conflict of 1982, but was rushed into service early and sent down to the South Atlantic without any antifouling having been applied to her bottom.  After five months afloat in the River Tyne (at the time, so polluted that it would not support life) and a further nine months at sea the surface resistance of the hull was 2½ times that of a clean ship and it reduced her speed by 3 knots from her maximum of 28 knots.  On ILLUSTRIOUS’  return to the UK, her bottom was cleaned and antifouled.  After that, with a clean bottom, the power required to achieve lower speeds was reduced by 80%, and to achieve full speed, by 56%.  Yes, those pesky barnacles have a lot to answer for.  So there you are, you read it here first: keep your bottom clean.

Well, there is not much to report this week as Jane’s leg is still playing up and we dare not take even a little exercise because of the discomfort that follows.  We did try a six-mile walk with friends on level ground around a nearby village at the weekend, taking a flask of coffee and biscuits for a break while sitting in the cold churchyard (socially distanced, naturally).  It was actually very liberating, and she had very little pain at the time, but we did not sleep well for the next two nights: Jane because of her leg muscle going into spasm, and me because she kept kicking me as a result.  What was that I said earlier about getting old?

The television is awash with pleas from charities at the moment.  Regular readers will know from Blog 45 that I hate all television advertisement breaks and invariably mute the sound while seeking alternative viewing when they appear, but the televised pleas are so frequent and so strident that even I have been unable to avoid seeing them.  So far I have noted pleas for cash to support: water wells, tigers, leopards, monkeys, whales, penguins, rhinoceroses, children, cats, dogs, old people, blind people, cancer research, heart disease research, the homeless, the disabled, the Salvation Army, Africans, Indians (spot, not feather), soldiers, sailors, aviators and the mentally ill.  It is overwhelming for, like most people, I would love to support all of them, but I cannot.  One must, perforce, apply some sort of filtering system to the charities seeking funds if one is not to be emotionally overcome or bankrupt. To some extent one’s initial choice of a charity can be reasonably simple, as one inevitably will have favourites based on belief or strong feeling: giving to the Church, the dogs’ home, or a Service charity if serving in the armed forces for example.  For the other choices I pose yet another moral dilemma for you to consider: should we be giving to a charity that pays the Chief Executive and a Board of Directors a vast salary?  This was the subject of an in-depth discussion with a friend of ours some years ago:  she said that a big charity needed to reward its management board generously, under the principle of “pay peanuts and you get monkeys”; I said it was iniquitous that a charity should have huge remuneration packages and costly overheads, particularly if the charity relied heavily on altruistically motivated volunteers at the working level.  A friend once told me that he attended a meeting that involved various charity representatives at middle and higher management levels, and he was struck by the fact that every single attendee arrived in a brand new BMW.  Is that morally right? Only 52% of UK charities reveal the salaries of their CEOs and only 10% of those publish the information on their website for all to see.  In 2015 the CEO of Cancer Research UK received £240,000 in annual salary; the CEO of The Salvation Army received £15,500.  There is a bit of a disparity there (though, to be fair, the Salvation Army does have some senior staff on £160,000).  The Director General of the National Trust received £195,700 last year despite the trust relying a great deal on 53,000 volunteer guides and gardeners who receive nothing in the way of perks, other than free membership and a discount on catering.  For once I am coming off the fence on this one: charity is big business, expensive real estate and a lucrative job for some; the first may be unavoidable but the others are not.  My money is going to the charities that have the lowest overheads, the most relevance to me and the most visible outcomes.  You are allowed to disagree.

On the Covid 19 front, the number of daily deaths in the UK is still falling, albeit more slowly, and currently stands at 532. The alert levels in England were reviewed on 16 December, with the result that London and several other regions have moved into the highest level, Tier 3 (roughly, no hospitality or accommodation venue open, no indoor mixing, no outdoor groups more than six). Other regions were also reviewed and it was hoped that rural areas might move into a less stringent tier instead of being lumped with large cities and conurbations.  With a few minor exceptions, this has not happened, so we in Barsetshire are still stuck in Tier 2.  A relaxation that allows three households to mix indoors over Christmas for five days is still going ahead, relying (for once) on people using their common sense and making a decision for themselves.  Some parts of the Press and the medicos are up in arms about the relaxation, but the government is holding fast to its decision on the basis that the boost to morale offsets any potential increase in infection. Those who object to the brief relaxation seem to have missed the point that they, themselves, do not have to mix with anyone if they don’t want to – there is nothing stopping them from locking themselves up for the remainder of December if they wish.  Having declared the relaxation, the government advises strongly that we use it sensibly and minimise the number of households mixing, along with the time spent together: the Covid 19 equivalent of the instruction, “Eat what you like but don’t swallow”.  Vaccinations have started and about 138,000 have been immunised in the first week.

Our minds being so totally focussed on the nasty virus that is infecting the world, we have – quite understandably – taken our eyes off the ball being played in the great game of Brexit.  The UK comes to the end of its transition period at midnight on 31 December 2020 and, after some fairly encouraging progress on negotiating a trade deal with the European Union (EU) that would replace the privileges of membership, the whole situation is up in the air again.  As far as I can gather, the EU has walked back on some of the points tentatively agreed upon earlier.  The sticking points are Fishing in British Territorial Waters (who can fish there and what they can catch) and Unfair Competition (no longer encumbered by EU regulation, the UK may be able to undercut EU producers).  After all this time it would appear that the EU still cannot grasp the concept of sovereignty and why the UK voted to leave the EU.  No side wishes to be the first to admit that it is withdrawing from negotiation so, theoretically, talks will continue up to midnight on New Year’s Eve.  However it seems highly unlikely that an agreement will now be reached and, over four years after the UK population voted for it, the country will finally leave the EU and be independent again in fourteen days’ time –  provided Boris Johnson does not renege on his election promise.  This topic remains a highly controversial one in the UK and invariably invokes strong sentiments comparable with those held by the Royalists against the Parliamentarians in the English Civil War or Biden supporters against Trump supporters in the USA of 2020: friend against friend, brother against brother, wife against husband, father against son.  After the Brexit referendum in 2016, one correspondent to The Times reported that he had been un-invited to a barbecue hosted by friends because he had voted ‘Leave’.  I do not wish to fan the flames on the issue other than to observe that the UK has a difficult time ahead, but one that the country will overcome, just as it has in the past.  One door closes, and another one opens: every problem is an opportunity.

“Don’t mention the War”.
So went the main theme of an episode called The Germans in the very successful comedy series Fawlty Towers, produced 45 years ago yet still popular and funny.  There was an attempt in June to have the episode banned because the “snowflakes” of our modern society thought it was racist.  I was reminded of that old song by Noel Coward, “Let’s Not Be Beastly To The Germans”. Fortunately, commons sense (for once) reigned supreme and the episode was reinstated, a decision vindicated  by the revelation that John Cleese (the leading actor in the series) was once accosted in a restaurant in Germany by a fellow customer:
“John!”, the customer shouted across the restaurant.  He looked round.
“Don’t mention zer var!”.  
Everyone who spoke English laughed uproariously.  And who said the Germans don’t have a sense of humour? 
I was once told a joke by a colonel in the German airforce which would probably be banned by the sensitive flowers in our society who take pride in being able to take offence about just about everything these days.  In Germany, apparently, the people of the region of Frisia in north western Germany are considered to be somewhat – how can I put it – lacking in sophistication and intelligence because of their strong accent.  There was a man from Frisia who was an aspiring social climber, but grew tired of being challenged, whenever he met someone in Germany, with “Are you from Frisia?”; there would then follow a series of hurtful comments or jokes suggesting that he was not quite the full shilling.  Determined to overcome his accent, he took extensive elocution lessons over a period of several months and, eventually, managed to speak perfect German, free of any accent: the German equivalent of the Queen’s English.  Clutching his diploma, and determined to try out his polished speech, he went into a shop in Berlin.
“Good morning”, he said in perfect clear-cut German, “I would like two kilos of potatoes and half a kilo of carrots please”
“Good morning”, said the proprietor with a smile.”Tell me, are you from Frisia?”
“Yes”, said the man with great dismay.  “But how can you tell?”
“Because this is a furniture shop”, said the proprietor.

I suppose the “Don’t Mention the War” theme is an example of a Freudian Slip.  I was thinking about it when I read an account of the the play, Hobson’s Choice, which featured in a provincial theatre starring Julia McKenzie and Ronald Pickup some years ago.  If you are not familiar with the play, it is about a Victorian boot maker called Hobson, whose daughter Maggie (played by McKenzie) is in love with the apprentice Willy Mossop (Pickup) and has great ambitions for his future as a craftsman.  In the play, Maggie was required to summon Willy from the cellar. On his appearance, she was to say,
“Willy, show me your hands!”, and then to go on to convince him of the skills he had in his hands and the great future that could await him.
The little Freudian Gremlins got to work one night in the theatre, however, and when Willy appeared at the top of the cellar steps, what Maggie actually said was,
“Hans, show me your Willie!”.
Apparently Willy returned hastily back down to the cellar and Maggie directed her attention to a little impromptu dusting of the mantlepiece.
A faux pas worthy of myself, I feel.

As I write these concluding words, Jane has a mega-toot on about Covid (for not going away); the UK Government (for Everything); the Chancellor of the Exchequer (for extending the furlough scheme); the Royal Mail (for not delivering any post or Christmas cards for three days); teachers on quiz shows (for being ignorant); and teachers generally (for wanting more time off). Boy, was she going some and I was glad I was not in her direct line of sight. It was like sitting next to a spitting cobra. Only the arrival of an e-card and some snow scenes from a friend in New England managed to perk her up; that, and a glass of Rochester Extra Strong Dickensian Recipe Ginger Wine that I pressed into her hand. As the (non alcoholic) wine hit the back of her throat she spluttered and lost her voice completely, a fine example of using one fire to put out another. All is now calm; all is bright (especially her cheeks).

Never let it be said that the Shacklepin family is staid and out of touch. We have, this week, purchased and fitted the very latest item of technology, no expense spared. We have upgraded our house to include one of those vital aids to a gentleman’s comfort: a self-closing lavatory seat. This exciting acquisition came about as a result of Jane complaining that the existing item was somewhat tawdry and becoming difficult to clean. The self-closing feature was my own little addition, as a seat that falls down during full flow, so to speak, can be rather distracting to a gentleman. Kneepads squared off, and toolbox at the ready, I laboured away in the place of ease, fitting the new addition while Jane baked yet more minced pies. I called her in when I was finished, and – with a flourish – demonstrated the smooth action and many other features. She just looked at me.
“You’ve fitted it in the wrong lavatory, bozo. I wanted it in our en-suite bathroom, not here. Honestly…[she sighed]… you just don’t listen”.
She returned to the kitchen, shaking her head.

Bozo?

18 December 2020

Blog 71. I Don’t Like Sundays

“Deck the halls with leaves and holly”.  As I quote these words, with just a touch of irony, I bet most husbands know what I am alluding to: the annual grumble associated with extracting the boxes of Christmas decorations from their obscure stowage in the loft, the acquisition of a suitably shaped Christmas tree, mounting the tree, and decorating it; for it is usually (though by no means always) the women who want the decorations and the men who are pressed into service.  This year being peculiar in more ways than one, we decided to try a small pot-grown tree instead of the usual two-metre cut variety, the aims being to be kinder to the environment, the vacuum cleaner and the husband, in that order.  Initially, the tree was left outside in the freezing cold and wet (well, it is a fir tree from Scotland), but it was later moved into the garden shed to acclimatise it to its forthcoming holiday home in tropicana.  On Tuesday, the weather being dry, it was decided that the time had come for the tree to grace our drawing room and to start earning its keep.  There was some reluctance by the Head Gardener to do this at first, her concern being that it might die in the simulated Caribbean climate of our house.  However, I pointed out to her that her stance was similar to the one currently being practised by the UK government, namely that, in order to protect the NHS, we should not get ill.  Just as the NHS is meant to protect us, not the other way round, so we should not be nurturing a Christmas tree outside in order to protect it: it was purchased to decorate our drawing room, not the garden.  This firm patriarchal response seemed to find favour and she acquiesced.  Furniture was duly rearranged in the drawing room, as was custom, and my tray of single malt whiskies was transferred onto another occasional table that already contained a table lamp, four photographs, an Amazon Echo, a little owl, several home-made wooden bowls, and a box of matches left over from Christmas 2019.  I was not comfortable with this arrangement as it did not present an image of being secure for sea nor, indeed, shipshape in any sense, and I voiced my opinion accordingly.  My comment that the whole setup was in urgent need of being squared off, with spare whisky bottles emptied into near-empty decanters, and the tarnished tray and the decanter labels re-polished, was met with a somewhat tart response,
“Don’t start! You do this every year!  It’s only for a few weeks.  Leave it alone”.
When she was out of the room I consolidated the dregs of whisky in the near-empty decanters by the simple expedient of drinking them, topped them up from the bottles, removed and hid three photographs that portrayed me in an unfavourable light, and gave her a beaming (if mildly inebriated) smile as she re-entered the room.  She looked at me suspiciously.
“Right, we need to get the tree in.  Would you be able to manage it on your own?  I don’t want to get my new shoes dirty outside, you see”. 
She was still wearing those awful plimsolls, those “trainers” with the white soles, the ones with the quick release mechanism like granny’s zipped slippers.  I held up my poor injured right hand, the finger still swollen, the scar still vivid, and mewed pitifully.
“Oh, you’ll be all right.  It’s only a little tree.  Put a leather glove on”.  Clearly, Mrs Shacklepin’s sympathy bucket was finally empty.  Whimpering quietly, I went out to the shed, donned a pair of leather gauntlets, seized the tree as best I could with six fingers and two thumbs, demolished part of the shed interior and, doubled over, hobbled back to the drawing room French windows.  Naturally,  these were still shut and I sank a little lower with my burden while I waited.  Finally I was granted access and I staggered in, depositing the tree on its table in the corner with a great heave.  She began to arrange it tastefully while I looked on, mystified: how do you rearrange a tree?  She looked down at the cream carpet.
“Did you come in with your shoes on?”, she asked accusingly.
Resisting the urge to reply that, no, I was wafted in on the wings of an angel, I replied that yes, I had indeed been shod when I returned, heavily burdened, with the tree.
“You’ve left marks on the carpet”.
I looked at her incredulously.
“But it’s all right, I’ll clean them off”, she went on magnanimously.
She started rummaging in the many boxes of decorations, unearthing baubles and trinkets dating back sixty years, two remote controls for lights we no longer had, and a battery that had expired in 1996.  When she seized a large coil of Christmas lights that must have been at least ten fathoms long and advanced purposefully to the tree, I stopped her.
“Surely you aren’t going to use those lights.  You do realise that the tree is only one metre tall, do you?”
“I like lots of lights”, she said stubbornly. 
“Shall we have our traditional glass of sherry?”, she went on illogically.
I glanced at the ship’s clock on the wall: not quite six bells in the forenoon watch (11.00 am – do try to keep up) and the sun not yet over the yardarm.  The woman had clearly gone mad, but who was I to argue?  So, sipping Harveys’ best, we bound the tree with so much wire and lights that it stood no chance of ever escaping back to Scotland no matter how much it struggled.  The baubles followed.  If that tree survives to Twelfth Night it will be a miracle. As we packed up the boxes for temporary storage until January, Jane suddenly said,
“Where has that dirty whisky glass come from?”
I looked as innocent as that angel on the top of the tree.

I hate Sundays.  Don’t ask me why. I have never liked them.  When I was little boy Sunday was the day when my parents (if my father was not at sea) turned to as a team to cook the Sunday dinner starting at 0900 for a meal served at 1400.  For five hours the house was filled with steam and the smell of boiling cauliflower, cabbage and potatoes, the cooker was overflowing with pots and pans, and vegetables were not only being murdered, their bodies were being mutilated as well.  And as for the joint, well, I never did discover what sort of meat was being prepared, but I would hazard a guess that, whatever it was, it was a cheap cut. I recently asked my older brother if he knew what the meat had been and he said that he had no idea either.   It was not until many years later, when well into adulthood, that I could differentiate between beef, lamb and pork.  My mother, bless her, was not a brilliant cook and my parents were not well off: they struggled to feed and clothe my brother and me on a Second Mate’s wage and it is only now that I recognise the fact and appreciate it.  It’s a bit late to say ‘thank you’ really.  I rather suspect that that is the case for many of us: we take or took our parents for granted.  At the time, I did not realise that my mother’s cooking was not the best, for I had never had anything different.  In those days people of our social class did not host or go to other people’s houses for dinner parties, and we did not go to restaurants, unless you count the fish and chip café in Tynemouth next to the outdoor swimming pool, where – once every five years – we partook of cod and chips, with bread and butter and a pot of tea on the side.  Wine came from a vintners, but we did not drink it anyway, with the exception of the Asti Spumante that we had on Christmas Day.  Olive oil came from the chemist’s and you put it in your ear.   Probably because of my mother’s cooking, I hated meat and would not eat it: an early example of vegetarianism, though the word did not feature in the Tyneside vocabulary of the 1950s and 1960s.  I survived on chips and suet puddings, supplemented by baked beans (I didn’t like my mother’s vegetables either).  Of course, that changed when I joined the Navy, for it was a case of ‘eat what you are given or starve’ (there were none of these Halal, Kosher, Vegetarian or Vegan choices that they have today).  I mention all this, not to wallow in nostalgia, to sneer at today’s generation or to excuse my peculiar personality, but to make the point that we should appreciate the hardship that our parents and forefathers had to endure, and recognise the circumstances that they lived in, rather than condemn their actions by applying the standards of today to the past; we should be celebrating just how far society has come on over the years and the social mobility that goes with it.   Most of my male ancestors were coal miners, labourers or seamen and my father started life as a cabin boy before retiring as a Master Mariner;  but look at me now, writing to you good people on a device the size of a large notebook called a computer, in a nice warm centrally-heated house with a garden, with a car in the garage, and a glass of sherry at my right hand, waiting for Sunday luncheon (not dinner) that includes celeriac. The past is history; it is what we do today and in the future that matters.

Having written last week about my dislike of overfamiliarity by strangers using my first name (Blog 70), imagine my surprise last Sunday when I opened my copy of The Spectator magazine and found an article saying exactly the same thing, even quoting my examples of ‘vous’ and ‘tu’ in French.  My gob was well and truly smacked.  I would just like to make the point that this was emphatically not a case of plagiarism on my part, but rather an example of the fact that coincidences do happen and great minds think alike.  Although the The Spectator is published on a Thursday, I do not start to read it until Sunday morning: it is my Sunday treat to counteract the fact that I hate Sundays.  Did I mention that?

One of the less welcome aspects of living in the early 21st century is that we seem to live in a risk-averse society.  Some people, particularly those in authority, are increasingly unwilling to risk doing anything – even if the action may be to save lives.  Thirteen years ago, two Police Community Support Officers stood by and watched a child drown in a pond because they had not completed the appropriate training to rescue small children drowning in a pond; the local Police Authority supported their inaction.  When I was a volunteer lock-keeper on the River Thames a few years ago, a woman on a narrowboat fell into the lock and was badly injured by the boat’s spinning propeller; the lock-keeper dived in to rescue her, but was later reprimanded by the river authority for doing so (she died from her injuries nevertheless).  More recently, in Bristol, police officers stood by while a statue was pulled down by a mob, casually rolled along the street, and thrown into the River Avon; it was deemed ‘too risky’ to stop the vandalism.  I find these examples appalling.  Life itself is a risk.  As I said in Blog 45, there is, in the UK, a 4.1% chance of you having an accident in the home requiring hospital treatment; there is a 0.24% chance of you having a road accident.  I am even taking a risk in expressing my views in this blog.  The important thing, surely, is to make a personal assessment of the risk and make a decision accordingly: it is what humans have done, without knowing it, since the beginning of time.  And the risk you take depends on the circumstances at the time.  Emergencies and potential loss of life demand a high risk on your part; your job may also demand a high risk – it may be what society pays you to do, such as if you serve in the emergency services or the armed forces. 
I was thinking of all this while watching an excellent documentary series called Saving Lives at Sea on BBC television.  It covers actual incidents encountered by the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) in the waters around the British Isles (ie including Eire).  The action is recorded on head cameras and is put together with a narrative to form a very watchable programme (one of the BBC’s successes).  The RNLI is funded entirely by charitable donations and the service is free.  All those lifeboatmen (I use the term generically for simplicity; many are women) are volunteers who give up their time – and sometimes their lives – to rescue people in distress in the seas around our shores, and the footage shown in the programme is both inspiring and humbling.  But some incidents that the lifeboats attend are entirely preventable and watching them can be annoying or puzzling.  In one case, a surfer in Hastings, East Sussex thought it would be a good idea to take advantage of the Force 8 gale that was blowing one winter and promptly launched himself into the sea from the pier.  He just as promptly lost his surfboard and was swept out to sea.  Someone must have raised the alarm because the lifeboat was called out to search for him.  The filmed footage was terrifying: visibility from the lifeboat was obscured by heavy spray and the crests of waves, so it was very difficult for the crew to execute the box search pattern.  After hours of fruitless searching it transpired that the surfer, amazingly, had been swept ashore and was safe, and the lifeboat was ordered to return to harbour.  Unfortunately, the sea state was so bad that the lifeboat could not get back in; at one point it was swamped by a wave and rolled right over before recovering (as it was designed to do), though with the engine room flooded and several systems off the board.  It was forced to make its way to an alternative harbour, Eastbourne, involving a very difficult two hour passage against heavy seas.  Interviewed later for the programme, the surfer who had caused the call-out virtually laughed off the incident and thanked the crew on the programme: it would appear that he had not even bothered to call in to the lifeboat station personally to give his thanks.  I don’t suppose he gave a donation to the RNLI either: what price his life? £1,000? £5,000?  The men and women of that lifeboat knew the risk they were taking, but they went out anyway.  On the other hand, at the opposite extreme of incidents attended, lifeboats are often called out to rescue dogs, sheep or other animals that have become stranded on beaches or on cliffs; in this risk conscious society I am amazed that the RNLI considers it acceptable to risk human life to rescue an animal.  I am also amazed that the charity insists on the crews wearing face masks (because of COVID 19) despite the adverse conditions at sea: measured against the risk of death by drowning or being unable to breathe through a soggy face mask I would have thought that the risk of passing on COVID among the crew would be negligible.  But there you go: apparently even the RNLI has a fickle approach to risk.

“Invite.  Verb.  Request the company of; ask courteously; attract, call forth.  Invitation, Noun”.  So defines Collins English Dictionary stating that “Invite” is a verb: a doing word, as my primary school teacher used to say.  It is not a noun; the noun is “Invitation”.  Why, then, do I often receive communications that say that someone is sending me an “invite” when the word is invitation?  Why, also, do I receive requests from charities for me to “gift” them a donation?  “Gift” is a noun, not a verb: the word they are looking for is give.  Did these people never go to school?  In business, do their superiors not check the correspondence sent out in the company’s or charity’s name?  It is all very poor. I daresay that, in defence of this practice, the intelligentsia of the 21st century will argue that English is a constantly evolving language and that these colloquialisms do not matter; the fact is, however, that they do: bad grammar is sloppy and indicates a lack of education that reflects badly on the competence and credibility of the parent organisation as a whole.  Buck up.

Coincidentally, I have just seen a television quiz show in which a graduate who had just completed her degree, was not sure if “lone” was a proper word.  I despair for my country and its education system.  She graduated in History of Art, so I suppose words were not her strong point; I expect she preferred picture books.

It was the week before Christmas and my friend and I had only just been appointed to a ship in Plymouth. After dinner in the mess, we decided to go for a spin and explore Dartmoor, perhaps stopping for a drink in a little village pub. We duly set off with a blank agenda though – foolishly – no map, and soon we were driving in total darkness along a tiny lane on Dartmoor. A freezing fog came down, our speed was reduced to a crawl and it it was like driving through cotton wool: our headlights were useless. We had no idea where we were and the fuel gauge was hovering near ‘Empty’. All around was silent, though I could have sworn I heard the howling of a hound or wolf out there in the desolation. We went over hill and down dale, through fords and across cattle grids, and soon it became clear that we were totally lost. Then a glimmer of light appeared in the gloom, and materialised as a warm and welcoming pub in a tiny hamlet. Relieved, we parked the car and went in. The place was heaving with locals, but we managed to get to the bar to find out where we were and get directions for Plymouth. We ordered two pints and looked around for somewhere to sit. All the seats and benches were taken except at one small table where there were two chairs; one seat was free, but a small dog occupied the other.
“There will do”, said my friend. We went over.
“Get out of it!”, he said to the dog and kicked it off the chair. It ran off.
“Blimey”, I said to him as we sat down,”You’re taking a bit of a risk there, aren’t you: kicking the blacksmith’s dog? You know what these little country places are like: the blacksmith will be a big bloke”
My friend was baffled.
“What do you mean, ‘the blacksmith’s dog’? How do you know that? We’ve never been here before.”
Well”, I said, “it’s obvious: when you kicked it, it made a bolt for the door”

“You’ve been a long time up there.  Have you been writing your blog?”
“Yes, I’ve just written a page and a half on us decorating the Christmas tree”
“Good grief!  I hope your account isn’t putting me down again and that you aren’t still portraying me as some sort of dominatrix”.
“Good heavens no, my dear.  I praise you to the hilt, especially your cooking and your loving nature.  I may occasionally mention your strong leadership qualities, of course”.
She harrumphed.
Jane does not read these blogs, you see.  She prefers romantic and detective fiction to conjugal fiction, and that gives me perfect freedom of action.  Her comments have made me pause for thought, however, and I should make it clear that she is a demure little flower, ever ready to be at her husband’s bidding and to satisfy his every whim.  Also, one should never let the facts get in the way of a good story.  If Jane did have any strong leadership characteristics, incidentally, then it would be genetic on account of her being a distant cousin of William the Conqueror and the Duke of Wellington (this is a fact, by the way – she has a very classy pedigree).  The Duke of Wellington who, of course, led the British and Prussian victory against the French at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, went on to become the Prime Minister of Great Britain in 1828.  After his first cabinet meeting he is said to have emerged from the Cabinet Room and remarked, with some puzzlement,
“An extraordinary affair.  I gave them their orders and they wanted to stay and discuss them”. Sounds like a good man.

I doubt if William the Conqueror would have approved the current trend in Britain for men to cry about everything in public.  We have just been treated to the spectacle of the Secretary of State for Health weeping on television on the news that a 90-year old woman has become the first person in Britain to receive the COVID vaccine.  On another front, we are very fond of a BBC television programme called The Repair Shop, which invites people to bring in damaged heirlooms for repair by experts.  Recently, however, it seems to have become the policy of the producers of the programme to favour projects in which the male owner of the heirloom breaks down when describing the ditty box once owned by Great Uncle Charlie (whom he never met) at the Battle of Jutland in World War 1.  Where did this mawkishness come from?  Whatever happened to the British stiff upper lip?  Get a grip, for heaven’s sake.

I think you deserve a break from my moaning about COVID 19 and face masks this week, it being the season of goodwill.  So I will stick to the facts.  The fall in daily positive test results in the UK appears to have been arrested after a fairly dramatic drop, and the trend is not yet clear.  Daily deaths from CV19 in the UK are still falling, and currently stand at 516.  Immunisation has started and a 90-year-old woman in Coventry has become the first recipient of the vaccine, followed (ironically) by a gentleman called William Shakespeare, but full scale immunisation is not likely to be under way until well into 2021.  A scientist has said that we may still be wearing masks in the winter of 2021.  Excellent.

Our town of Melbury has some absolutely splendid Christmas lights, funded by charitable donations and rigged entirely by volunteers.  They are the best in Barsetshire and put other towns and, indeed some cities, to shame. On the domestic front, however, I do wonder if we should consider having a British Standard or, indeed, an ISO standard for household Christmas lights?  Not a technical standard, but one of taste: the illuminated reindeer and sleigh on the roof; the brightly lit house frontage courtesy of Hinckley Point Nuclear Power Station; the flashing gold stars belting out  energy like the Eddystone Lighthouse…  I believe these displays started in the USA, an established extrovert nation, but do they really fit in with we subdued British?    Think of the environment and all that carbon dioxide; the trees, the newts… On the other hand, I see that, in Staffordshire, the police have threatened a household with a £1,000 fine if they switch on their vast illuminated display in the aid of a local charity as, “it will encourage spectators to flout COVID social distancing rules”.  And you thought I was Mr Humbug.  Here in Chez Shacklepin we have modest, understated, white LED nets on the two shrubs in our front garden that do not twinkle and simply imply a gentle discreet nod to celebrating Christmas.  However, we have just discovered that, around the corner, our neighbour two doors down has – wait for it – a large inflatable Father Christmas in front of his house.  Dear, oh dear, oh dear.  I think we should establish a Committee of Taste to consider this important issue.  Any volunteers to join?

I leave you with a cracker.
Two bits of string slid into a pub and went up to the bar:
“Two pints of bitter please, barman”, one of them said.
“Out!”, said the publican, “I’m not having bits of string coming in here. This is a decent establishment. Damned cheek. Who do you think you are?”.
They slid back outside and had a discussion in the forecourt.
“Maybe we don’t sound respectable enough, though it looks like an ordinary pub to me. Let’s try a different approach”, said one.
They re-entered by the Lounge Bar entrance and sidled up to the bar.
“Good Evening”, one of them said in his best cultured voice, “Could we have two gins and tonic please, with ice and lemon”.
The barman looked at them.
“It’s you again, isn’t it? The bits of string. Hop it, you’re banned!”
They left hastily and had another conference.
“You need to disguise yourself and go in alone”, said one, “That’s the only way we’ll get a drink. Tell you what, you tie a knot in your head and fluff the ends up: he’ll think you’re one of those punks. Order the drinks, and bring them outside”
He disguised himself as suggested and went back into the pub via the Public Bar entrance.
“Two pints of bitter please, mate”, said the bit of string.
“Certainly, sir”, said the barman and started pulling the pints. He paused and looked up.
“Hang on a minute”, he said, “Aren’t you one of those bits of string who I’ve just banned?”
“No”, said the bit of string,”I’m afraid not”

Ho, ho, ho.

11 December 2020