The Adventure of the Long Summer

I'm back on the weekly blogging schedule now having taken a few weeks off over the summer. 

It feels like a lifetime since I was last at work. I feel guilty that I've ended up having such a long holiday whilst still getting paid when so many people have been working hard dealing with the new challenges of the pandemic or find themselves without income and struggling to find a job. I've had to resign myself to the fact it's not my fault and that I did volunteer to work and did everything I was asked to do, even if it turned out not to be a great deal. 

I'm finding myself, perhaps for the first time, keen to return to work. There's only so long you can live without a routine and it's not like this is a summer where you can go and enjoy yourself to the usual extent. Things haven't been open, including cinemas which I've dearly missed, and most activities require booking and taking precautions and generally feel less fun than usual. With far less of the population travelling abroad for the summer holidays, the roads have been awful and it's become fairly common for it to take over an hour just to leave our town. Last week I felt a real sense of being trapped here as every time I tried to leave the town I came across endless traffic or closed roads. My clock even stopped, leaving me with the sensation that I was living in some timeless town from folklore which you can never leave. 

The one-piece of drama that did occur was when one morning I woke up feeling a bit groggy and realised I had developed a cough. Normally this would just be mildly irritating but we're living during a pandemic of a disease that has a cough as one of the main symptoms. My immediate concern was for the people I might have spread it to, including my elderly grandfather. I felt a guilt that I couldn't quite explain, knowing I'd followed every rule and recommendation to the letter yet somehow feeling that I should have done more. 

Within an hour I'd booked a test and driven to the nearest test centre. I pulled into the most desolate place I'd ever been. It was grey and there was a drizzle coming down across a sea of tarmac littered with cones like some dystopian version of a formula one track. I found myself directed to a hut and a fluorescent-clad man held up a laminated piece of paper with a phone number on it. I rang the number and suddenly a man in the hatch of the hut answered it and talked me through what to do. A test pack was literally thrown into the car and I parked up to do the test. I quickly realised that I should have asked if someone could do it for me because doing the test requires quite a lot of dexterity. Swabbing my tonsils without touching any other part of my mouth felt like a Herculean task. The swab up the nose was easier if no more pleasant but then I had to snap off the end of the swab to fit it into a tube. This too was something of a challenge. 

Eventually, I was back home and as I gradually started to feel a little worse throughout the afternoon I became more convinced that I had COVID and the worry that it could get a lot worse began to run around my head. Thankfully the result came through early on Sunday morning and proved to be negative. I was relieved but then baffled how on earth I managed to catch a cold- I'd been social distancing and hand-washing avidly and with most people doing the same, surely it was the least likely time to catch a cold in the entirety of human history! I have to commend the staff at the test site who were helpful and friendly and the whole system was smooth and efficient. The government may be useless but the people fighting the pandemic on the front lines are amazing. 

Speaking of government inadequacy, I've felt enormous anger at the fiasco around exam results. The government were concerned that this year's results would be quite a bit higher than usual, something which is a valid concern and does cause genuine problems, but their solution was an algorithm which used past performances of schools. This meant that if you went to a private school your teacher-predicted results would stand but if you went to a state school, especially one in a poorer area, your results were downgraded regardless of your ability. Thankfully the government eventually made a U-turn and reverted to the teacher-predicted grades but it didn't help the suffering students who have already lived through the worst year to turn eighteen in a century. It's concerning that Gavin Williamson claimed he didn't know about the algorithm until after results had been published, despite being the education secretary. We may not have the corruption of countries like Lebanon, Belarus and Russia or the utter insanity of the US but we certainly have one of the most incompetent governments in the world. 

Back at the start of July, I talked about the trek I'm doing for Alzheimer's Society. Much of my time has been spent walking as I try to be somewhere near ready to walk twenty-six miles in a day. I'm pleased to say that my fitness has improved quite a bit. I'd find five miles tiring back in the spring but now I can do well over twice that comfortably. The full distance still feels extremely daunting though. I'm pleased to be able to say that I've managed to exceed my £300 fundraising target which is great. Thank you so much if you're one of the people who donated and if not, there's still plenty of time to do (see the link to the right). Charities have struggled to raise money during the pandemic and Alzheimer's Society have provided extra support over lockdown so this money will go towards supporting the wonderful work they do. 

I've been sharing things I've been up to lately on Instagram. There's something about the medium of photography that I adore. I was given my first camera at quite a young age,about six or seven I think- it was a Dennis the Menace camera and my parents would always be baffled when the photos were processed that mine would largely come out well whilst theirs often were blurry or had a finger over the lens. As time went by I eventually ended up with my first digital camera which was exciting and then I started to have a phone that could take pictures, although it wasn't really until I was about eighteen that camera phones were good enough to take decent photos. Whilst I am glad I didn't really grow up in the age of social media, I know I would have loved sharing photos on Instagram from a young age. 

If all goes to plan there should now be new posts every Saturday for the foreseeable future so look out for whatever nonsense I end up spouting! See you soon!