It’s officially summer. It’s Father’s Day too although no one in my household seems to have noticed! It’s also Sunday, which is the day that I traditionally cook a roast supper. Surely I should get a respite today……? No such luck. I have a Wine Society brochure beside me with a front page headline that says “the Perfect Bottle for Drinking Now”. Please show me a bottle that isn’t! Ok, ok, I know that great wines often need to be lain down and forgotten about, but they’re the expensive exception. I fancy a bottle might get cracked sooner rather than later today.
In view of “Black Lives Matter”, I wonder how long it will be before the Government enacts suitable legislation to banish COVID 19? After all is has become apparent that it is clearly racist, with twenty percent more BAMES dying as a result of infection than white people. Lest you know not, BAME is yet another new acronym that means roughly “Black, Asian and Mixed Ethnicity”…..I think. Why they should be more vulnerable I don’t believe anyone really knows as yet, although countless theories abound. Anyway, it’s disgusting that COVID should be allowed to pick on them.
Alison (my wife) has been conducting a Zoom Induction today. If that sounds a little painful, I should explain that normally the incoming Year 9 students would have attended The College in person today to meet each other and the people who will be looking after them next term. It’s a very civilised procedure that’s an innovation since the barbaric days when I attended boarding school. Then, Mother said “goodbye” on Liverpool Street Station at the start of term and “hello” when I got back home three months later. It did of course make us quite resilient and the words ‘mental health’ hadn’t been invented. A stiff upper lip then was a metaphor for the ability to get on with things regardless, not an overdose of Botox. No doubt some suffered terrible pain and torture, but most of us seemed to survive and flourish. Despite all the modern day nurturing and cosseting I get the impression there are more ‘issues’ now than there were then.
Thanks to COVID (that nasty racist bug), attendance in person is still not possible, hence the need for ZOOM. If you are unfamiliar with it, it’s quite a clever way of seeing and talking to lots of people at the same time. However, I was reading this week that it’s massively insecure and those nasty people in the Chinese Communist Party are monitoring it all. We’re having to use it, because those nasty people in the Chinese Communist Party inflicted a pandemic on us with a racist bug that has got everyone in a major paddy and brought education to a grinding halt. Conspiracy theorists could have a field day with this. ……..Oh, they are!
Meanwhile, we’ve had the longest day, it’s all downhill from here and there are only six months left before we totally Brexit. Kerpoof. Done. All in all not a huge amount to be cheerful about. Except for that delicious garlic and rosemary infused leg of lamb that I can, even now, smell reaching an edible state, the bottle of pinot noir that I opened earlier and a wonderful hug from my love and inspiration.
Right, Stonehenge here I come……..
ADayInTheStrifeOf 