You’ll remember Lockdown. If you’re a Brit, you’ll remember the Dominic Cummings Scandal, when Boris Johnson’s senior adviser famously made a more than 50 mile round trip with his family to have an eye test. Dominic Cummings should NOT have gone to Specsavers …
He was widely ridiculed, and here’s just one example from Redmire in Wensleydale, spotted on a walk in that early period after Lockdown, when the world was slowly opening up again.
For Jude’s Bench Challenge.
Browsing through my photos of five years ago, it was soon clear that they were all local views. Scenes taken during my solo Covid Lockdown wanderings exploring every local path that I knew, and some that I didn’t. We’re limited by having a river near our house, with no local bridge. So instead of having a whole circle of walks at our disposal, it’s only a semi-circle. That didn’t stop me discovering woodland I hadn’t explored, hitherto uninvestigated quarries and farmland, secret tracks near the river. I didn’t always take my camera, because I preferred being ‘in the moment’ as I tried to identify birdsong, enjoying clouds, grasses, emerging blossoms and flowers.
And just one from our village, where families got busy confecting scarecrows celebrating all the keyworkers who kept on working while we all stayed at home.
For Leanne’s Monochrome Madness.
Two of my three children and their families are down with Covid and their Christmas plans are in disarray. Our third child’s partner is newly arrived from Spain with some horrible lurgie that’s not Covid. The car is hors de combat in a public-transport-lite village. In some ways, this Christmas is more taxing than last. But on the bright side, each branch of the family is together with their own part of the clan, and on the way up from their illnesses: the car – unexpectedly -comes back today: and we’ve had so much practical and unasked for help from thoughtful friends. We’re all going to hunker down and jolly well enjoy ourselves anyway.
And I hope you can too, whether you’re having the Christmas you’d planned for or not. Thank you, all of you, for taking the time to read my posts, and for so often commenting. You are what makes blogging an enjoyable part of my daily round.
With apologies to Robert Browning and his celebration of an English springtime: ‘Home thoughts from abroad‘
Oh to be in England,
Now that Covid’s here.
And whoever comes to England
Will find people unaware
That masks are meant to hold germs in
Not languish, limp, beneath the chin.
We’ve got to keep the rules somehow – in England, now.
Autumn’s gone, let winter follow:
‘Our Christmas spoilt! How grim the morrow!’.
Ah! Where once our weeks were crammed quite full
Of work and friends and all that kind of biz,
Our new life’s this, it’s really rather dull.
Get used to it, ‘cos that is all there is.
Our freedom’s lost and with it all recapture
Of any carefree sense of rapture.
But though our lives look rough, with pleasures few
All will be fine when once the vaccine’s due.
The hugs and handshakes all will start again
And this past year will all feel quite insane.
MTL: November 2020
The featured image shows a socially distanced Masham Market during the first lockdown.
From Pyrenees to Pennines 
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