The Adventure of the Vulpine Encounters

I’m not going to lie to you: this week has been a tough one. Whilst there wasn’t a massive surprise in the government announcing Lockdown 3 (Lockdown: The Last Stand? Lockdown 3: Hell on Earth?) it hit me quite hard and I wasn’t really expecting that to happen. In the first lockdown I was glad for a break from work and happy to have the time spent at home, which was what I needed at the time. But that was nearly a year ago and things have changed. What was good for me then is not good for me now. I wanted to be at work which has been so fulfilling this academic year and instead I found myself alone in my flat.

Perhaps my biggest worry about moving out to live on my own was the potential to feel a bit isolated from the world. When you’re at work it’s not quite the same but suddenly I had the prospect of potentially no work at all. The other issues was that I still don’t have internet access which further adds to the isolated feeling. It was quite stressful waiting for six hours for an engineer to turn up only for him to tell me he couldn’t actually connect the line because he needed another person to come along with a ladder. I mean, why does someone whose job regularly involves going up telephone poles not possess a ladder?

I feels I’ve written endlessly about lockdowns and Covid restrictions but it still remains something we’re having to deal with on a daily basis. I am still uncomfortable with the idea of students not being at school as I know so many suffer when they lose out on the education and social interaction they deserve. After some hard work, I know at least that the school that I work at is going to be able to operate as relatively close to normal and supporting as many students as it possibly can. 

It’s frustrating that we’re back here. On the one hand I of course have issue with the government’s handling of the situation. The decision to go into lockdown is probably not wrong with the way things are, but as ever it was decided upon at the last possible minute. Boris Johnson told parents to send their children to school on Monday but then at 8PM on Monday evening announced that schools would close for six weeks. It’s a continuation of the lack of cohesion and clarity the government has struggled with throughout the pandemic. They then expected teachers to suddenly switch to remote learning with just over twelve hours notice, a hugely challenging task that I know teachers have worked really hard to meet.

As much though as the government is incompetent, you can’t lay it all down completely at their door. Countries in Asia have enacted even more strict lockdown then here and the people listen and do what they’re told: they follow the rules they stop spreading Covid and things return to something resembling normality. It shouldn’t be that difficult but we live in a different culture and don’t strictly follow the rules in the same way. There’s plenty of people protesting about restrictions and refusing to wear masks but there is considerably more who  forget about social distancing after a week and casually hang out at their friend’s houses. A little help from a more contagious strain of Covid and we find ourselves in the worst state yet. You can blame the government all you want but ultimately the spread of the virus is the fault of the general public.

There’s been one little moment of salvation for me come all this misery- that comes in the form of foxes. I was aware that Bournemouth is very special when it came to foxes before I moved here. There are actually more boxes per square mile in Bournemouth than in any other parts of the UK so I was optimistic when I moved into the town but I might occasionally see a fox or two.

It turns out there are foxes everywhere in my neighbourhood. Three times today I’ve had an encounter with a fox. I drove to the supermarket and found there was one casually trotting along side the car, brazen as anything. I happened to glance out of the window in the evening and there was a fox sniffing around the front wall. It’s admittedly less ideal when their ethereal screams are echoing through the night, surely the least pleasant sex noise of any organism, but their presence is worth a bit of disturbed sleep.

There is something so special about the fox as an animal. They so full of character and have a level of intelligence and wile perseverance that makes them so successful, perhaps the only British mammal that has really adapted to the ever-growing urbanisation of the country. Every time I see a fox I find myself not focusing on whatever is going on in my head but admiring the animal as it goes about his business until the thick brush vanishes out of sight. I get the hit of dopamine that I’ve not been getting anywhere else this week.

It is odd how something so small can make such a profound difference to your life. I think at the moment though we really have to just take joy from the little things.