To mask or not to mask... that is the question.

As part of the 'roadmap' setting out the easing of Coronavirus restrictions, the PM has indicated that the wearing of face masks will no longer be a legal requirement in England - or it won't be a Government 'diktat' as he put it.  It's not quite as simple as that, for despite it being the intention to allow people to take responsibility for their own decision as to whether to wear one or not, a number of businesses have already announced their intention to make them compulsory for customers.  All well and good up to a point: businesses have an implicit right to choose who they do or don't want to serve, as long as it doesn't amount to illegal discrimination, who's going to enforce this?  To have some train companies, for example, requiring them and others not, is a recipe for confusion: how are passengers supposed to know?  And shop assistants have been reporting a massive increase in assaults on staff, so to have something which isn't a legal requirement any more is asking for trouble.  The police aren't going to want to get involved if it's no longer against the law, and you might as well not bother having something that relies on voluntary co-operation if the majority of people don't agree with it.

 I'm very happy to see the back of mine: they're a pain in the backside for those of us who wear glasses, and the evidence is far from cut-and-dried as to how effective they are anyway.  It's unfortunately somewhat symptomatic of a lot of the muddled thinking and make-it-up-as-you-go-along approach which has characterised the govenment's response to Covid all along. 

 So.. that odious smug Matt Hancock may be about to get his come-uppance, I see.  Being caught with the proverbial trousers down was pretty careless to say the least, and a half-baked 'sorry' for being caught in flagrante delicto boesn't quite cut it.  I feel sorry for his wife and kids: being 'exposed' by the gutter press can't be pleasant, even when you're the innocent party.

 The question now is... where's JVT when you need him?  I quote his memorable response from this time last year "In my opinion, the rules are clear and they have always been clear.  In my opinion, they are for the benefit of all, and in my opinion, they apply to all."  Well said, that man!  Pity Boris doesn't appear to agree, but the weight of public opinion may yet force his hand.

The wedding that never was

Dubbed by Good Morning Britain presenter (or ex-presenter, since he fell on his sword and reportedly refused to apologize) Piers Morgan "a two-hour trashathon of our Royal Family", the interview given by Prince Harry and Meghan to Oprah Winfrey continues to be in the news.  I didn't watch it,: the 'edited highlights' were more than enough for me.  I was always brought up to firmly believe that you don't wash your dirty linen in public and to do it in circumstances where those in the firing line are effectively not in a position to respond seems to me to be particularly reprehensible.  Morality aside, though, the question being raised is how much of it was true.

 One thing which is relatively easy to check is the claim that the couple had a 'secret' wedding before the official one, with just the two of them and the Archbishop.  He, wisely, has declined to comment on what in fact took place, but an article in today's Daily Mail makes it fairly clear that he could not legally have married them. The marriage ceremony in England requires the presence of two witnesses and although I don't know what stipulations exist on who you can have (when Carol and I got married we had our respective fathers), they have to sign the entry in the register.  There has been no evidence produced as far as I'm aware to establish that this actually happened, so the obvious inference is that it didn't - or at least, not in the form that the couple have claimed.

Once you expose a hole in someone's account of something, it does of course open the door to the possibility that there may be others: "recollections may vary" as the Palace have said in a statement, is a polite way of putting it.

Damp squib

 Well... the long awaited lockdown-exit "road map" was unveiled yesterday. No great surprises: most of it had been leaked with a fair degree of accuracy in the couple of weeks leading up to it.

 "Buccaneer Boris" he isn't: I can understand his decision to tread carefully, the last thing we want at this stage is yet another panic-reversal of easements, caused by not knowing which of them has caused another spread of infections.  On the other hand, the lives of every man, woman and child in the country have been disrupted - in some cases tragically - for almost a whole year now and Doctors Doom and Gloom need to understand that people will only put up with so much for so long before the proverbial worm starts turning.  

At the present rate of progress it won't be long before half the adult population has been vaccinated and while I'm not suggesting we throw the other half to the wolves and let them take their chances, making everyone wait until 21st June for a complete return to normality is beginning to look increasingly unsustainable as a policy. 

Rumours are emerging, too, of dissent among Sage members who have been apparently publicising to the media their own predictions and conclusions, often conflicting with the official "scientific data" being touted around as the basis for decision making.  Who was it who coined the phrase "Those whom the gods would destroy they first make mad" ?

Schadenfreude

I suspect I'm not the only person who saw a delicious irony in today's news story about our esteemed Health Secretary Matt Hancock being required to self-isolate after apparently coming into close contact with an infected Covid-19 person.  No-one knows who he or she is, nor when or where it happened, but there's been no suggestion as far as I'm aware that the 'alert message' he was sent is a hoax or malicious.  So it rather begs the question as to how he, who passes up no opportunity to drive home the message about social distancing and avoiding close contact with anyone, has apparently come a cropper by letting someone get close enough to him to perhaps pass it on.

Don't get me wrong, I don't wish him any physical harm, but I hope I may be forgiven for making the observation that for him to have gone footballing in a crowded public park at the weekend, thereby possibly passing it on if it turns out he is infected, was hardly setting the shining example to the rest of us.  But then again, since when have politicians bothered particularly about what the rest of us think of them?  (/end cynicism).

Ups and downs

Today has been eerily quiet: I haven't seen a soul all day.  I didn't go out because I didn't need to, but usually I can look out of the window and see the neighbours pottering about, or somebody delivering something, but today... nothing.  Maybe they're all taking the Government's advice or perhaps that latest TV ad has got them all scared s***less.  Talking of which, whose bright idea was that, I wonder.  I haven't bothered with it.  Poor old Chris Whitty earning his nickname of Doctor Doom: he may be a brilliant scientist but a charismatic persuasive presenter he isn't.  I suppose I shouldn't judge too harshly, given the material they gave him to work with, but did it not occur to anyone that if you want to sell a proposition of some sort to millions of people, you've got to make them want to "buy" it?  Evidently not. 

I also contacted the Macmillan Cancer Support people to tell them about Carol's death.  I'd registered with them two years ago when Carol first got the diagnosis and they'd been a veritable treasure trove of information and help.  However to the best of my knowledge I shan't be needing their services any longer - although I don't know what lies ahead for me, of course.  But if I do, then I'll know where to find them. 

Picking up pieces

Prompted today by getting in my inbox an email newsletter from Carers' Trust, I realized that following Carol's death I was no longer going to need their services: I have no surviving relatives apart from distant cousins and have no intention of acting as carer for anyone else.  I never needed or wanted the 'therapy groups' or courses they offered, but during the course of the sixteen years since Carol's stroke in 2005, I'd come to rely on the availability of unbiased help and support in navigating through the bureaucratic maze which being a full-time (unpaid) carer involves, and occasional battling against officialdom.  I don't know what I'd have done without having the occasional drop-in session to call on whenever I needed advice (or even just a friendly ear to bend).  So I sent them an email saying I was 'de-registering' but thanking them for their services, and got a lovely email in return.

I had no inkling, of course, of what lay ahead on that fateful night in February 2005 when Carol had the fall from which she realized she couldn't get up and got whisked off to hospital. We later found out that the first few hours after a stroke has occurred are crucial, and in that respect Carol was lucky.  Ten days in hospital followed by a month in a place called Youell Court (in those days an 'Intermediate Care Centre' - I'd no idea such places even existed).  I remember us sitting waiting eagerly for the transport which was going to be bringing her home, and then full of optimism for the future, as she walked up the stairs with the aid of a pair of crutches.

Fate, however, had other ideas.  The first six months were enough to convince me that to carry on working full-time was not a viable option, and in the September of that year the County Council agreed to let me take early retirement to look after her.  I carried on just doing Sundays for a further three years, but by that time what I suspect was a weakened immune system was resulting in gastric and other infections entailing hospital treatment, and each time she was coming home just a little bit less mobile than when she'd gone in. One particularly bad spell in 2009 ended with a fortnight spent over at Rugby and I remember one Friday coming home on the bus after visiting her, in tears looking through the window as the scenery passed by and I thought back, triggering memories of all the things I imagined she'd never see again.  The following week she decided she'd been there long enough, so I hired a car and brought her home.

It was some time after that, as I remember, that I succumbed to the idea of having care visits to help me look after her.  I'd resisted at first: she was my responsibility and it was my role as her husband to look after her - the good old 'for better and for worse' and all that.  She told me once that she thought I'd got a pretty raw deal out of that contract: we both laughed.  But practicality intervened and I realized she'd fare better if I had some help. In the summer of 2014 we agreed to have daily morning visits - from an agency who turned out to be unreliable to the point of being virtually useless, but we fared much better when I had to have someone to look after Carol while I had my hip replacements done, and those visits continued right up to the morning she died.  Props to Yo, my regular "assistant" for doing everything that was needed with a cheerful can-do which lifted Carol's spirits up more than she'll ever know.

So what now?  An eerie sensation of being at a loose end.  After spending most of the last ten years, certainly all of the last five, looking after Carol as a full-time job it's odd not having that to do anymore.  Don't get me wrong - I never for one second minded doing it, and I'm proud I can look back and boast that I made a good job of it, too.  Just another facet of losing someone close to you, I guess: they're suddenly not there anymore and a number of things - tasks and routines - associated with them are suddenly not there, either.