The grass seeding man from Sherborne returns to overseed
the bare areas of lawn (actually May 25th) and his appearance marks
the start of another drought, naturally.
It’s patchy. The first Saturday
of the Lords’ Test Match is a washout, but it remains obstinately dry in
Dorset.
The fruits (or rather flowers) of walking in North Dorset - early June 
The perfect elderflowers 
'An English unofficial rose'
Life here for us is almost normal. We visit the Guildhall Tavern for a Saturday
lunch (excellent) and Poole Quay is heaving with people, drinking outside the
pubs, strolling, children crabbing. Golf
activity is normal too. With a partner I
win a golf match against a pair, one of whom I am giving 11 shots to. This player proceeds to shoot near par golf off
a handicap of 28. A sense of indignation
and determination prevails and with help from my partner and three birdies,
only one of which holes we won, we manage to win on the 18th.
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| Distant view. 13th Hole, Parkstone G.C. |
Tuesday June 8th
Our outstanding travel guide from Esplora (Esplora
Travel, q.v.), Damian Croft, visits and we have an Aeolian Islands reunion walk
in Purbeck. Lovely sunny day. One souvenir is a tick removed from Lindsay’s
nether regions. They are very difficult
to spot before they become blood engorged, q.v.
Tea and subsequently Pimms on the terrace.
Chalk pinnacles near Old Harry rocks
Scary cliffs
Ticks can be very small - at first
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| Magnified image of the same tick |
Thursday June 10th
A day out with the Scottish Medical Golfing Society at
the Berkshire Golf Club. This society
was founded in 1934, but our Berkshire meeting is played for a trophy first
donated in the early 1950s. This
extraordinary piece of silverware is known as ‘The Haggis Trophy’ and its first
winner was Sir Lancelot Barrington Ward, thought by some to be the model for
Sir Lancelot Spratt in the ‘Doctor in the House’ series.
10th Hole, Blue Course, Berkshire Golf Club
The remarkable silver Haggis Trophy dating from 1953
Our lighting consultant wants to visit for some night
photographs, and for the first time we can see the beauty of the house when
illuminated. Our late architect and
friend, Richard Horden ( http://www.hcla.co.uk/people/richard-horden-1944-2018-),
would have been delighted.
Our House - built largely during lockdown
Last weekend saw a dramatic conclusion to the Criterium
du Dauphiné, a one week cycling race in the ‘Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes’ region of
France. (Hoardings proclaim ‘La Region’
– in their usual jingoistic way the French locals would have you believe it is
the only region of France). The race was
won by the Tasmanian, Richie Porte, who has had a number of doomed attempts to
win it before. He would probably have
won anyway, but on the dramatic final descent before the climb up to Les Gets,
Geraint Thomas, his leading support rider, fell on a bend. Despite tattered shorts and significant ‘road
rash’, Thomas not only remounted his bike but struggled up to the group
threatening Porte and led him at the fastest pace he could muster all the way
to the top and victory. Naturally,
coverage both by the BBC and the newspapers was either microscopic or
non-existent. The chief interest in the
Dauphiné for cyclists is that it is often a pointer to the main players in the
Tour de France which follows three weeks later.
And Thursday June 10th is notable for another
reason – the builder has visited and removed his temporary toilet (present for
the last 18 months) and his cement mixer.
Surely the end of the project is in sight?
Sunday June 26th
I wish I could report that much has changed, but it has
not. Boris Johnson announced a further
delay in relaxation of Covid rules, and the theatres, restaurants, and pubs are
not amused. The Indian variant, now more
correctly called the ‘Delta’ variant (to avoid any hint of racism) is more
transmissible than previous coronavirus strains, and cases are rising – though
hospitalisation is noticeably much less, and mostly occurring in those who have
eschewed vaccination. There is
unsurprising irritation in those who have conscientiously been vaccinated, and
the excuse given in delaying until July 19th is to give time to get
young people vaccinated.
Sport is everywhere now, at least for the
professionals. Cricket, golf, and the
‘Euros’ football. In an interval I
turned over for the last ten minutes of the programme ‘Springwatch’, a
programme one quite quickly tires of, to find the presenters in rhapsodic mood
as they closed the three week series.
Michaela Strachan set the scene (and unfortunately the tone): ‘A
cacophony of colour sweeps across the land (sic)’. Oh dear.
Presenters in general lack any sense of good English. When I hear the latest lady cricket
commentator saying that ‘He’ll be gutted to have missed out on his 50’, or ‘He
really nailed it’, I can’t help but feel that John Arlott, Brian Johnston, and
Christopher Martin-Jenkins will be turning in their graves. Arlott, the poet of cricket.
The Sun newspaper has been sent a clip from a security
camera which shows the Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, in an embrace with lady
colleague from the Department of Health.
These fringe benefits from the NHS are gone now, he has resigned. She seems to have gone back to her
millionaire husband; Hancock possibly has become a ‘one basket checkout
man’. Sajid Javid, the former
Chancellor, is now the Health Secretary.
Saturday July 3rd
Better start with the pandemic. This was the impetus to start these
ramblings. There has been an upturn in
cases, but by and large without a substantial increase in hospital admissions. Clearly attributable to mass vaccination. For example, in the last week there has been
a 74% increase in positive diagnoses but only a 12% increase in hospital
admissions. Deaths are minimally
increased. The majority of serious cases
are in people who have not been vaccinated.
86% of UK adults have received a first vaccination, and 63% have
received both doses.
The AstraZeneca vaccine has been under something of a
cloud after reports of blood clots (particularly cerebral venous sinuses –
could this be because they are very low flow areas?), and the risk-benefit
ratio is now considered sufficient to recommend that younger adults should only
receive the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines.
But now there are reports to suggest that the mRNA vaccines can be
associated with myocarditis. In the
meantime, the EU (who hate us – particularly the French) have stated that the
AZ vaccine doses manufactured in India have not been passed by their Medicines
Agency and therefore recipients of this will not be allowed to enter
France. Just checked my vaccine passport
and relieved to find mine was a British vaccine.
Sport. Huge
preoccupation with sport at the moment.
England finished top of their group in the Euros – to be faced with
Germany in the first knockout round.
Much national jubilation last Tuesday evening when we won 2-0. Switzerland remarkably put the French out
after a penalty shootout, but themselves went out to Spain last night. Tonight England play Ukraine…
Jon Rahm of Spain won the US Open golf, the first
Spaniard to do so. Because this was at
Torrey Pines on the West coast, unfortunately this happened during the night so
we didn’t see it.
Wimbledon has now started and occupies much TV time…
But our most involved sport at the moment is the Tour de
France. It’s often said that fairytales
don’t happen in sport, but the Tour has really delivered. Starting in Brittany this year, from Brest,
we endure a presentation ceremony of the teams; singing of the Breton national
anthem (the same tune as Land of My Fathers – and similar words apparently);
some remarks from local dignitaries; and a lightning travelogue with stupendous
views of Brittany, before the start gets under way two days later. The first stage is won by Julian Alaphilippe,
the current world champion, with a solo uphill break. The first Frenchman to wear the maillot jaune
on the opening day for many years. The
second stage is won by Mathieu Van der Poel, whose grandfather, the famous
Raymond Poulidor, was always second, and never wore the yellow jersey. Known as Monsieur Deuxième, or more
familiarly as Pou-pou, Poulidor used to ride the ’caravan’ before the race (we
saw him in 2016 on the stage one finish at Utah Beach). Since deceased, his grandson was
understandably emotional after his win and taking of the yellow jersey. But since then it has all been about Mark
Cavendish. Ill with Epstein-Barr virus,
suffering from clinical depression, without a contract for a professional team,
he was taken on by Raymond Lefèvre of the Deceuninck-Quickstep team as reserve
sprinter for Sam Bennett. Bennett was
injured and Cavendish, at the last minute, now aged 34, was drafted in to the
race he calls ‘The Biggest Bike Race in the World’. Having not won a stage in the Tour for five
years, he won on stage four, was emotional and in tears. He was quick to attribute his success to the
fantastic lead out team of Deceuninck-Quickstep, which included Alaphilippe ;
the winner of the Tour of Flanders, Kasper Asgreen; the winner of Om Het
Nieuwsblad, Davide Ballerini; among others.
Michael Mǿrkǿv, the former Danish national champion is currently the
last man to stay in the lead-out before the ‘Manx Missile’ launches.
Since then, Cavendish has won three more stages,
bringing him level, on 34 stage wins, with the greatest cyclist, the Belgian,
Eddy Mercx. Cavendish is the first to
acknowledge that although now officially the greatest sprinter of all time,
Mercx’ record can surely never be equalled, having won in every discipline –
time trials, mountain stages, and sprints.
Not for nothing was he known as ‘The Cannibal’. On the day when the British newspapers
focussed on football and tennis, the French sports newspaper L’Ėquipe had a
full spread picture of Cavendish on the front page, with the headline ‘Le
Cannibale du Sprint’.
'Le Cannibale du Sprint' - L'Equipe's front page
Monday July 19th, 2021
We are in the middle of a brief heatwave. Eating outside, crowded beaches, swimming in
the sea which is almost, nay indeed is, pleasant. I am writing this in the early hours of the
morning, with the final flourish of a weekend’s sport, and what seems to us to
be the end of the summer – the day after the end of the Tour de France. Tadej Pogačar was the winner, and sadly
Cavendish could not quite continue the fairytale onto the Champs Ėlysées,
though he did take the Green jersey, for sprinting points. The Open Golf Championship concluded at
Sandwich yesterday with a win for the young American, Collin Morikawa. England’s cricketers won the second T20
against Pakistan to level the series.
Poole and Bournemouth beaches - not even lunchtime yet
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| Best to give the beaches a miss - Pimms on the terrace |
Today is supposed to be the day which marks ‘Freedom
Day’. Delayed from 21st June,
restrictions on almost everything are meant to be eased. The vituperation for Boris Johnson, buffoon
though he now increasingly appears to be, is extraordinary. Opposition leaders, having shaken their heads
over restrictions and pointed out how damaging they were to the economy now line
up to say exactly the opposite. They
point to increasing cases. They nit-pick
about whether Johnson said that the link between cases and hospitalisations was
‘broken’ when the scientists used the phrase ‘considerably weakened’. The majority of cases are now in young men,
perhaps because of their incessant partying and disregard of any distancing
during the Euro football finals. My last
mention of this was the forthcoming game against Ukraine (we won); then Denmark
(we won – just); then Italy in the final (we lost – just – losing the
inevitable penalty shootout). Incessant
replays of the Skinner and Baddiel anthem ‘Football’s coming home’ and the now
adopted ‘Sweet Caroline’.
More seriously, our penalty shootout was lost because of
misses or saves by Rashford, Sancho, and Saka.
Our successes were from Harry Kane and Harry Maguire. Inevitably, the players who missed (all
black) were the victims of appalling online racist abuse. It’s a measure of how far I feel I have come
(and Lindsay feels the same), that until the next day neither of us were at all
conscious that our penalty scorers were white and our penalty missers were
black. David Olusoga, the black
historian, who clearly has different antennae, said that as soon as the
shootout concluded he quailed at what was to come. Sadly there are a lot of bad people hiding
under stones, just waiting to emerge at times like this.
And there are bad people everywhere. In South Africa, the dream of the rainbow
nation has been sadly shattered, as the venal former president Jacob Zuma, was
jailed for contempt of court, organised violence, destruction, and looting
began, chiefly in Gauteng and Kwa-Zulu Natal (Johannesburg and Durban). Corruption threatens to derail any hopes of a
just and free country.
So it is not surprising that we retreat into a
solipsistic world where we do our best, and appreciate what we have and
enjoy. Nostalgia creeps in again. Swimming in the sea at 7.30 the other
morning, I take a rest from my paddling around to float on my back and look up
into a cloudless, sunny sky. At that
moment, I am transported back to Malta in 1955 where my mother taught my
brother and I to swim. In the cut out
rock pools at Tigne, fed by the sea, she taught us to lie and float on our
backs. ‘You’ll never get into trouble if
you just turn over onto your back and float’, she said. I lay on my back, star shape in the water as
instructed, and I floated. Requiescat in
pace.
Our joint male and female book club meets tomorrow
night. We have read ‘Mr Loverman’, by
Bernardine Evaristo. I really enjoyed
this, and found it more cohesive than her Booker Prize winning ‘Girl, Woman,
Other’. The main protagonists are all
British immigrants from Antigua. I was
intrigued to find that Ms Evaristo’s antecedents are all black African. So her adoption of Caribbean patois and a
novel about a closet gay anti-hero, could be construed as cultural
appropriation. One thing is for sure, if
a white author had written this book, he or she would have been vilified. The literary equivalent of ‘Blacking Up’.
Diary entries get less and less frequent, as we adopt a
more normal life, though the pandemic has not gone away. There is now concern about a beta-variant
which does not seem to respond too well to the Astra-Zeneca vaccine. Cases are rising rapidly, and although the
link between cases, hospitalisations, and deaths is weakened, there is concern
once again about our hospitals. At least
half of the hospital cases and the deaths are in those who have stupidly chosen
not to be vaccinated.
And a delicious irony, the new Health Secretary, Sajid
Javid, has tested positive for Covid and has to isolate. Freedom.
Tuesday 27th July
‘Summer’s lease hath all too short a date’. What was true for Shakespeare 400 years ago is all too true for us now. The early summer activities are substantially in the past. Wimbledon has come and gone in a flash of green and white. Pakistan’s cricketers have come and gone (also in a flash of green and white, their national colours). The Euros have come and gone in a flash of green and whine. A spell of very hot weather ditto. Now rain and thunderstorms. Devastating events which are probably climate-change related – lethal floods in Germany and Belgium and wildfires in western USA – have happened. Even New York’s skies have been affected by ash dust in the atmosphere from fires in Oregon, and sunsets over Poole Harbour have been spectacular.
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| Oregon wildfires produce beautiful sunsets |
Now the Olympics are with us. It is easy to become in thrall to this – the
TV remains on as we watch events we would not normally watch. When it gets to skateboarding I eventually
manage to kick the addiction and hit the off button. The word ‘repechage’ is everywhere. It surfaces roughly every four years,
primarily in the rowing events (French repêchage: second chance).
But the Olympics are a distraction from the serious business
of Covid and the pandemic. A new word
(other than repechage) has come into being – ‘pingdemic’. Everybody has been encouraged to have the NHS
Covid-19 app on our phones. The main
purpose of this is to let us know when we have been close to a Covid positive
person so that we can self-isolate. The
new freedoms mean many more interactions and Big Brother (the Government) has
been ‘pinging’ (texting) thousands of individuals telling them they must
retreat into purdah. ‘Do not pass Go; do
not collect $200’. But the effect of
this ‘ping’ on your phone, warning you that you may have been in contact with a
Covid carrier has been to virtually paralyze industry. Fewer nurses or doctors or paramedical staff
(now exempted by the Government). No
delivery drivers. Supermarket shelves
understocked. Food spoiling. Service industries closing down due to lack
of staff. ‘Dearth of a Salesman’ would probably encapsulate the problem in
four words. Many people are now deleting
the app from their phones to avoid being instructed to self-isolate.
There now seems to be some confusion as to Covid figures. It has been announced that they are coming
down, perhaps because of schools’ summer recess, and perhaps because of
increasing vaccination rates among younger people – those most likely to
indulge in greater social interaction.
Cases peaked at about 43,000 on July 20th and have been
falling. It has emerged that figures for
Covid admissions to hospital are incorrect.
Nearly half are due to admissions for other conditions with Covid
subsequently being diagnosed in hospital.
Deaths show a slight upturn, and hospital admissions show a definite
upturn, but due to the lag in diagnosis to illness to death, it seems likely
that this too will fall. Even the
gloomily morose Professor Neil Fergusson (he of the original worst case
scenario) predicts substantial decline in the problem by September. Today it is announced that 88% of UK adults
have had at least one dose of vaccine. Meanwhile
the situation in Australia and New Zealand is starting to deteriorate, giving
the lie to the strategy of isolation. I
spoke to someone who lives half of the year in New Zealand at an outdoor party
the other evening. ‘Look’, he said, ‘It’s
easy to lock us down. We’re in the
middle of nowhere and it’s easy to close our borders and to let nobody in. But the economy is a disaster, there’s no
tourism, which contributes 16 billion dollars to GDP per year, and very few of
us have been vaccinated. When I go back
I will have to spend two weeks in a quarantine hotel, with testing. The rest of the world thinks that Jacinta
Ardern (Prime Minister) is doing a great job, but the country is
paralysed’. The situation is worse in
Australia, where Covid is on the rise and the vaccination programme is
paltry. The world is watching the UK and
our bold experiment of re-opening.
Highly criticised, of course, by some.
Finally, it seems that super Superyachts are no longer the
ultimate status symbol for billionaires – they have to go into space. First Richard Branson, then Jeff Bezos, and
Elon Musk is not far behind we hear.
Except that NASA have now changed the definition of ‘Space’, so that
neither Branson nor Bezos were officially in ‘Space’. Numerous highly pungent and to the point
tweets, particularly about Bezos. ‘He
was in Space longer than an Amazon employee is allowed a toilet break’ was one. ‘As Bezos was blasting into Space at a cost
of several billion dollars I saw a man combing through a trash can outside an
Amazon packaging centre’, was another.
Time to publish, I think.
