June 1st

It's the start of a new month taking us into week 9, I think, of lockdown, though restrictions have been eased to a large degree in light of the improved figures showing a decline in deaths, rate of infections and hospitalisation. However, there is huge disquiet amongst large sections of the population due to the fact that the R remains close to one, the number of infections and deaths, in decline, remain high and well above the numbers for other countries including Italy and Spain and social distancing appears to have broken down.

That could reflect the Dominic Cummings debacle as people see him flouting the rules, or at the very least, the spirit of those rules. His laughable defence about the drive to check his eyesight will go down in history as the moment people lost faith in the government which is reflected in the polling figures. I think there was a growing lack of compliance already, in part due to the incompetent manner in which the initial restrictions were handled. That was another massively confused failure of messaging and one can't help but feel the talents of the government are being cruelly exposed. They are in post for their beliefs rather than their abilities.

We have enjoyed half term but return to home schooling today. I'll post photos from last week below. It's been fantastic weather and I've ended up cycling almost 200 miles in May and running 90 miles. Feeling healthy apart from hitting my head on a low hanging branch and scratching my legs to bits walking through some woods and fields trying to make my way to Edmonsham in an off road ride. I had to turn back.

Plenty of time at the allotment and in the garden, watering, sowing and making things out of logs.

We have been out on the bikes as a family too and enjoyed having Evie and Amelia over. We have been having lots of fires too and the children have been throwing sawdust down the chimnea to spectacluar effect. Supervised of course.