I woke feeling full of energy and raring
to go only to find it was a few minutes before two o’clock. I then lay awake
for much of the rest of the night. Eventually I gave up trying to sleep and got
up to check the news. Had the Prime Minister died overnight?
He hadn’t.
He remained in intensive care. Although
the Foreign Secretary has stepped into the breach for the time being, the
running of the country is all a bit vague at the moment. There is no “official”
chain of command. And there isn’t really any historical precedent. Although
seven British Prime Ministers have died whilst in office, the most recent one
to go was over a hundred and fifty years ago.
I then watched an episode of “The
Good Place” whilst scoffing granola, then had a look at the Internet. I
took a deep breath when I saw I’d been tagged in a post on one of the
geocaching pages. “Here’s a fun project for you to spend your time on”
was the caption… Why is it that I get tagged to work on the fun project for the
benefit of everyone else on that group whilst many others have been posting on
Facebook about how bored they are during the on-going lock-down? In the last
three weeks I’ve created a fifty-cache series and written four wherigos. I’m
planning more cache series whilst I’m still working full time across two rather
busy hospitals. But I still had a look-see to find out what the “fun project”
was. It turned out that the Geocaching Association of Great Britain are running
a competition. They want stories of geocaching adventures. I immediately thought
of an epic trip round the Sussex Downs from two years ago, or the trip to
Cornwall, or our European road trip, or two separate weeks in the New Forest.
I might just write a story or two.
I walked seemingly miles to my car. Last
night I'd had to park it half-way up Bond Road which is (in terms that some
of my loyal readers might understand) three geocaches from home.
As I drove in the general direction of
Tunbridge Wells the pundits on the radio were talking about coronageddon. They
don't talk about much else at the moment really.
A *lot* of concern was expressed
for the Prime Minister's health.
There was talk about if and when the
lock-down might be eased.
It was suggested that shutting schools
might not have achieved much in stopping the spread of the disease.
But what I remembered most about the
morning's news was that in the middle of concern and opinion about the worst
public health crisis to have hit the country in a hundred years and our Prime
Minister in intensive care, they had a ten-minute slot in which Prince Charles
presented some pompous and pretentious drivel about the poet Wordsworth. The
pundits on the radio said that Prince Charles had recorded what he said some
time ago. They should have saved it for another time I *really* think it
should not have been played this morning; it made the heir to the throne seem
to be utterly out of touch with reality. As an ardent monarchist it bothers me
that I listened to the radio this morning thinking of our future king as an
irrelevant idiot. The average person in the street is (at best) utterly
indifferent to poets from two hundred years ago; someone really should have a
word with Charlie.
I got to work; I did my bit. As the day
went on we followed the Prime Minister's progress via Google News. He seemed to
be on the mend. Interestingly with all the excitement of the virus and the
lock-down and Mr Johnson being ill, no one seemed to notice that a secret alien
base has been discovered six kilometres underneath
a volcano in Mexico.
I stopped off at the little shop in
Sissinghurst on my way home. I had this idea that a country village shop might
have some rather good cheese. They did. They also had something of an attitude,
but that goes with the territory of a country village shop.
I got home just as "er indoors TM"
was taking the dogs out. As they went so I watered trees and shrubs in the
garden, gave myself a haircut, and had a ponder. A colleague had nominated me
on one of these Facebook things; to choose ten albums that greatly influenced
my taste in music. I have to post one album per day for ten consecutive days.
No explanations no reviews, just album covers. I eventually came up with a list
(listed alphabetically by album title and only allowing myself one album from
any group); it took some doing…
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