VE Day and Birthday celebrations

Yesterday was a long day but in a good way starting with a 10 mile mountain bike ride followed by a fair amount of drinking in the front garden as we joined the street party celebrating the 75th anniversary of VE Day. It was a lovely event with lots of neighbours stopping for a chat, many of them very long indeed.

We got the fire pit out and stayed into the late evening so Maria and Joseph could enjoy waving their glowing sticks about.

Covid-19 continues to cast its shadow with the community keeping socially distanced. Very interesting to look back on previous posts already given the way in which the number of lives lost has increased well beyond 30,000 on the official accounts and over 55,000 based on the number of excess deaths over the period of the pandemic. By any measure, this has been an enormous blow to the country and yet the government appear to be convinced that admitting to no errors whatsoever is the right way to go leaving the public with the impression that they are increasingly distant from reality and more vulnerable to criticism when they talk of 'success', a word Johnson used without irony a week and a bit ago, just before the UK achieved the unwelcome distinction of having experienced the worst death toll in Europe with the prospect of more deaths to come.

The daily death toll remains stubbornly high, significantly above the previously worst hit countries, Italy and Spain. It is not long since we were looking at those nations with incredulity, wondering how the crisis could be hitting so hard, convinced it was almost a confirmation of our preconceptions about these nations, well meaning but slightly under-developed nations which lacked our expertise and fortitude. Not sure there are too many people who are now seeing ourselves in the same way. Perhaps it is because it has seemed almost inevitable but in a relatively slow way. It is incredible that the deaths of hundreds of citizens has become the norm and is no longer as shocking as it would have once been.

It will be interesting to see how the crisis is seen in retrospect and whether it leads to resignations (unlikely) and to changes in lifestyle (equally unlikely in the longer term). It does seem there is an opportunity to reset to some extent but maybe it remains a feeling confined to those who were already considering such in light of the climate crisis. We will see.