CORONA DIARY CHAPTER 21 - MAY 13TH TO JUNE 3RD 2021

 

May 13^th, 2021

A friend's daughter practises her yoga in front of Mt. Agung, Bali

 

A period of wetter, slightly warmer weather, interspersed with some lovely sunny periods.  The wind is rarely light though, and sitting outside is usually only feasible when well wrapped up.

 

Interesting elections last week.  In Dorset, the only person on the ballot list was the police and crime commissioner.  Both of our electricians have recently had their vans broken into and tools worth many hundreds of pounds stolen.  Both with complete police inaction.  So one doesn’t feel terribly enthusiastic about this vote, irrespective of the candidate’s political affiliations.

 

In Scotland however, MSPs have been up for re-election (Member of Scottish Parliament).  Nicola Sturgeon, the Scotweiler, has claimed her substantial number of seats is an endorsement for what they call IndyRef2, another referendum on Scottish Independence.  Having lived in Scotland, it is hard for people down here in England to realise just how significant is the antipathy for England felt by Scots.  800 years of history doesn’t help.  Not for nothing was Edward the First nicknamed ‘The Hammer of the Scots’.  Unfortunately, the Scots are not well-informed as to how lucky they really are.  The so-called Barnett formula gives Scotland a substantial benefit in public services allocation compared with England.  In the Health Service, it has been recognised for a very long time that monies have been more freely available for Scottish patients than English patients.  It is how Nicola Sturgeon chooses to spend this allocation that gives many Scots the impression that they are hard done by.  Cycling the North Coast 500 a few years ago, it was very clear that the only good roads in rural Scotland were the ones that had large sign boards beside them saying ‘Built with assistance from the European Union’.  In the distant past, with the focus on the oil industry based in Aberdeen, the Scots were able to accuse the English of ‘appropriating our North Sea oil’, but this is a contracting sector of the economy, and apart from tourism and whisky, and perhaps some fish it is hard to see how Scotland can maintain its prosperity as an independent nation.  The majority of Scottish exports are indeed consumed in the rest of the UK, whether those exports be technical or otherwise.  Finally, Sturgeon has indicated that when Scotland gains independence, the British nuclear deterrent submarine services will be pushed out of the Gareloch and Loch Long (both deepwater lochs), giving us a real problem in maintaining this service, as well as losing many Scottish jobs.

 

Further south, a by-election in Hartlepool has resulted in a significant conservative majority, in what is regarded as ‘Old-Labour’ heartland.  Even Laura Kuenssberg, BBC political editor, a ‘pink’ intellectual, has pointed out that the old demographic of highly unionised solid Labour voters has changed and gone.  The fallout in the Labour party has been bitter indeed.  An old hard-line Jeremy Corbin tail of left wingers is still trying to wag the dog, and the centrist Labour of Tony Blair is in disarray under Sir Keir Starmer.  It is remarkable that despite all the renewal of ‘Tory sleaze’ allegations, that Boris Johnson, a man who certainly made mistakes in his management of the pandemic, remains extraordinarily popular.  The success of the vaccination campaign is the equivalent for Boris of Margaret Thatcher’s Falklands success in 1982 in persuading the public to keep on ‘steady as we go’.

 

Un bout de nostalgie.  Now that I have a record player again, I have enjoyed playing some old favourites, at random.  One such was Judy Collins’ ‘Colors of the Day’ compilation.  As well of some of her own songs, her covers of many great songs are surely some of the finest around.  Her version of Leonard Cohen’s Suzanne is fantastic; the Beatles’ In My Life’ is wonderful.  The same applies to ‘Both Sides Now’ (Joni Mitchell), ‘Who knows where the time goes’ (Sandy Denny), ‘Sons of’ (Jacques Brel), ‘Amazing Grace’, and the folk standard ‘Farewell to Tarwathie’.  This latter song, dating from the mid-19^th century, about the Greenland whale fishery, has a haunting soundtrack of whale noises.  In 1972, when I bought this album, it seemed gimmicky.  Now I find it plaintive and appropriate.

 

Another parenthesis.  When sailing, many years ago, on what was at once the most enjoyable and also horrible voyage, from Tromso to Spitsbergen, I asked our skipper why it was that all of the whaling songs mentioned Greenland and dated from the 1800s.  I knew that whaling had been a part of the Spitsbergen (Svalbard) voyages.  His answer was simple: whaling started on the Svalbard route in the early 1600s, the prey being the bowhead whale.  By the 1700s they had killed them all…  The initial targets were bowhead, gray, Northern humpback, and right whales.  As these were rendered nearly extinct, other species of whale were sought.  The remnant of the Gulf Stream runs up towards Spitsbergen, rendering the North sea, the Norwegian sea, and even the Barents sea mostly ice free.  Later whaling focussed on the Davis Strait, between Western Greenland and Baffin Island, north of the Labrador Sea – a more dangerous and challenging environment.

 

Football, as well as being the ‘beautiful game’ (rarely so), is a hugely moneyed irritation.  Almost three quarters of most sports coverage in any newspaper sport supplement in Britain is filled with football.  So when Geraint Thomas, the Welsh cycling hero and winner of the Tour de France, won a significant UCI tour event recently, the Tour de Romandie, there was zero coverage, and nothing from the BBC, which focussed on the riot at Manchester United football ground against the club’s American owners.  It is very difficult to get true facts about participatory sport.  Running appears to be very high, though it is possible that swimming exceeds it – over 2.5 million participate every week.  But cycling weighs in at nearly two million a week.  In the past it used to be said that angling was the most popular sport, though recent data don’t confirm this.  Football, tennis, and golf are high on the list, after athletics, swimming, and cycling, and perhaps surprisingly, equestrianism.  My point is that football is grossly over-represented in the press.  A reader might be tempted to observe that riding hobby-horses must be up there too.

 

Sunday 16^th May

 

The showery, and still not especially warm, weather continues.  An excellent walk with a friend the other day in Wareham Forest was lovely – wildlife and bluebells.  As we circumnavigated a puddle on one of the gravel tracks Lindsay spotted a newt.  This encouraged me to post the picture on Instagram.  I used a quotation, which I think must have come from Brian Redhead or John Timpson on the Today programme many years ago.  After an interview with a naturalist who waxed lyrical about newts and lamented their loss of habitat, we cut back to the studio where Brian (or John) intoned solemnly, ‘Well I do hope that they can do something to help these little guys, because I always say, when they’re gone, there’ll be nothing so missed as a newt’.  (Transatlantic readers may not understand this).

 

The Wareham Forest newt

Wildlife.  We have had several visits from a Sika deer (very common in Dorset), which seems to enjoy tasting our new grass, and indeed any new shooting shrub.  It chews the grass down to where I’ve attempted to cut it with a strimmer.  I don’t think it is as careful as I am not to damage the seedlings.

 

In a week where two friends have died, well before their time, from malignancy, it was an uplifting experience to take the open road north to Blandford Forum and see the new lime-green colouration of the trees in spring.  One huge oak in particular, had leaves which were almost lemon-yellow.

 

Much depressing correspondence in the newspapers about the difficulty of seeing a General Practitioner.  A trenchant article by Meirion Thomas, a cancer surgeon, states that the whole system needs reform, but that there is huge opposition from our union, the BMA.  This is true.  The BMA, for all its claim to represent all doctors, was founded by General Practitioners, and remains a union with a strong protectionist stance (personal view).  The Royal College of General Practitioners is another bastion of the status quo – or at least almost so.  Unfortunately, changing from a capitation fee system (with top-ups for meeting ‘targets’) to a fee for service system) risks even more abuses.  Many years ago, a friend returned from a Canadian emergency room with about double the number of stitches (sutures) that were needed in a skin wound.  The explanation?  Doctors paid on a ‘per suture’ basis!  To end this depressing scenario, we’ve seen this week the Department of Health state that advice for the future should be for GPs to undertake online or video or telephone triage before agreeing to see a patient in person.  Such was the outcry that this advice was quickly withdrawn within 24 hours, and an acceptance that the norm should be that the GP should see the patient.

 

As a doctor, it is important to remain humble (unless you are a surgeon).  Sir Thomas Lewis, doyen of early 20^th Century cardiology, was a remarkable clinical investigator.  He was on the staff of University College Hospital, where I trained.  In forgotten nooks of the UCH system, such as the Temperance Hospital and St Pancras (North wing), it was still possible to find patients’ notes in which the Great Man had written.  Early on, I was deputed to see a lady in St Pancras’ Hospital, who was elderly and now dementing.  I was awe-struck to find Sir Thomas’s outpatient notes.  The lady’s name I still remember: it was a Miss Ivy K.  Written in Sir Thomas’ neat, small handwriting in the early 1940s, her occupation was given as ‘Christmas Card Ribboner’.  The diagnosis was rheumatic heart disease.  The first clinical observation was ‘Obvious capillary pulsation of the face’.  Lewis diagnosed triple valve regurgitation.  At the end his summary was: Prognosis – poor; triple valve incompetence.  I found it instructive and humbling that Ivy K had outlived Sir Thomas by a minimum of 25 years…

 

With regard to the General Practitioner, I will close this homily with the words of Sir James Mackenzie (1853 – 1925).  Let us hope that some GP may someday read them.  Sir James Mackenzie (born Scone, Scotland) was the first true cardiologist in Britain, but he started his practice life as a GP in Burnley, Lancashire.  Mackenzie is beloved by the Royal College of General Practitioners because of this fact.  In his ‘Diseases of the Heart’, first published in 1908, he wrote, with regards to the history of the complaint and the patient’s symptoms:

 

“In order to determine the value of any given symptom in affections of the heart, a long and patient inquiry is needed…”  He goes on to say that “Observations must be made at various periods of the individual’s life…”

 

“It is evident that such observations can only be undertaken by a physician who is likely to see individual patients during all these circumstances, and that can only be done by the general practitioner.  Such a line of observation I have attempted, and I warn those who would follow this line of research that it is no primrose path.  The investigators in hospital wards and laboratories have little idea of the difficulties the general practitioner has to encounter.  He must ever be on the alert, prepared to make an observation at any hour of the day or night, and may have to spend many hours in a wretched hovel watching the changes in a woman in labour.  Attacks of illness, which may arise suddenly during day and night, must find him prepared to take advantage of his opportunities.”

 

Amen to that.  A different world of medicine.

 

And before leaving the medical world; an anecdote.

 

As a medical student, at lunchtime, we dutifully trooped up the back stairs to the observation area of the post-mortem room.  Above us as we walked, in gold lettering: ‘Mors Ipsa Docet Succurere Vitae’.  ‘Death Itself Teaches Us To Sustain Life’.  The other side of the barrier was reserved for the pathologists, senior doctors, and visiting firemen.  On one occasion, we were confronted with the body of a lady of relatively young years – perhaps in her 40s.  She had suffered from severe SLE (autoimmune disease).  The only treatment at the time was high dose steroids, but despite this she had developed diabetes and end-stage kidney failure.  A few months before her death she complained of difficulty with vision.  This had progressed.  She had become completely blind.  It was an inexorable process.  At that time there was no CT, no imaging of any kind except X-ray.  There was a visitor from the United States.  The pathologist exposed the skull, the brain and nasal sinuses.  An indeterminately grey mass of tissue extended from the nose up into the brain, completely enveloping the optic nerves and indeed the orbits.  The American pathologist told us that preliminary microscopy and culture had established that this was mucor mycosis, a very rare fungal disease, spreading up from the sinuses into the skull and the brain.  It had generally only been described in seriously uncontrolled diabetes and severe immunosuppression.  I tell this story because the spectre of this rare disease has arisen again, in India.  Many of the fatalities from Covid-19 have been found to be due to mucormycosis, generally of the lungs.  This is probably due to the steroid immunosuppression, which is used in India, without the advantages of intensive care management.  In India it is known as ‘black lung’.

 

Finally today, a complete non-sequitur.  We have been following and enjoying the Giro d’Italia, the three week grand tour cycle race.  Feelings of longing for the spectacular destinations.  The other day a French team raced into the overall lead.  In the Tour de France, the leader wears the coveted ‘yellow jersey’.  In Italy it is the ‘Maglia Rosa’, the pink jersey.  Shots of the jubilant French team bus with the team toasting in champagne and in the background – yes, the song was ‘La Vie en Rose’.

 

Monday May 24^th

 

Very ‘iffy’ weather.  Friday blew a gale and rained.  We had a golf exchange day I could not get out of.  We survived but the golf was fragmentary.  The course, Hindhead in Surrey, is an attractive mix of heathland and downland valleys.  Wikipaedia says that it is the highest village in Surrey.  During lunch I noted a picture of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle playing golf.  He was the club’s first President, in 1904.  He seems to have had a good shoulder turn judging by the photograph.  The 9^th green is spectacularly surrounded by specimen rhododendrons and azaleas.  Some conversation about how Parkstone G.C. could be made more attractive.  Apparently some of the more traditional members have been heard to mutter that it is ‘A Golf Club, not a Garden Centre’.

The 9th green at Hindhead G.C. (in the rain).  Note the river running down the middle of the green.

Nationally and Internationally there is great concern about ‘The Indian Variant’.  Of course, the reader will immediately realise that I am talking about coronavirus.  In a pre-pandemic world he or she might have thought that I would be about to discuss the game of chess.  Another faux pas by the government was the announcement that flights to the UK from India would not be allowed but failing to implement this with immediate effect.  Many Indians who can afford to have of course flown to the UK, if only to escape the risk and devastation in India, where the pandemic is out of control.  Evidence this week that our current vaccines have reasonable protective effect against the Indian variant.

 

There is also virtual war in Israel/Palestine.  Rocket attacks by Hamas from Gaza on Northern Israel.  Retaliatory strikes into Gaza City.  Many more Palestinians than Israeli dead.  Joe Biden is seen as a weak President, and has given both sides the equivalent of a slap on the wrist; but at last there seems to be a ceasefire.

 

Major news this week is the new report into the Martin Bashir affair, which finds the BBC culpable in not realising his crooked ploys to gain the attention of Earl Spencer and Lady Diana in the 1990s.  The then DG of the BBC, Tony Hall, clearly got it completely wrong, but so far has not been called to account.  Prince William has stated that the BBC’s actions fostered the paranoia and press frenzy which ultimately led to his mother’s death.  It would seem that there is only a minor grain of truth in this.  A well presented interview with the official personal protection officer for Diana points out that her fatal mistake was to reject official protection and to rely on the dreadful (my word) Fayed family’s personal protection system, which unfortunately included a drunk chauffeur.

 

Alternating sunshine and heavy showers today.  Still rather unseasonable late May weather.  We are promised warmer weather for the late May Bank Holiday weekend.  Two friends have died in their 60s from malignancy this last week – one not affected by the pandemic, but the other presenting late, and possibly not investigated due to the barbed wire fence which surrounds our GP surgeries.  Carpe diem.

 

The weather relented sufficiently for a small group of us to join our Sicily tour guide on a walk from Lymington to Brockenhurst.  Although we have walked this area before, it was fun to meet up with him again, and one of his team.  On the way we re-explored Boldre church, and saw the memorial to HMS Hood, sunk by the Bismarck almost exactly 80 years ago.  A devastating loss for the Royal Navy and a significant effect on national morale at the time, the explosion of the aft magazine triggered an immediate sinking and the loss of all but three of her 1418 personnel.

 

HMS Hood memorial, Boldre church

Arriving back in Brockenhurst we also explored the little church to the south of the main village.  A sign stating ‘Commonwealth War Graves’ directed us into the churchyard.  An unusually large number of the classic WWI headstones surprised us.  These turned out to be almost all New Zealanders.  A substantial ‘tin city’ existed south of the village from 1916 primarily to rehabilitate New Zealand soldiers wounded in battle.  One can only wonder at the mental drive or stimulus that took young men in their early 20s from New Zealand to fight in a meaningless war on the other side of the world.

 

Commonwealth War Graves, Brockenhurst churchyard

Final link to World Wars: a recent review of an excruciating play in the paper recalled a famous story which I hadn’t seen for many years about a production for the stage of the ‘Diary of Anne Frank’.  The actress (a loose term here), Pia Zadora, played Anne.  The play was so bad and her acting so poor that early in the second half, as the Gestapo entered the house, one wag in the audience yelled out ‘She’s in the attic!’

 

Wednesday 2^nd June

A beautiful day, as it has been now for a week.  Last night we re-established our (all male) book club, sitting outside in a friend’s garden to the north of Wimborne and discussing Nevil Shute.  Life seemed almost normal.  Two joined by Zoom from the Shetland Islands (new trendy destination for staycationers), one from London and one from his boat.  This latter was wearing rather curious braces, which could have been deep sea yachting trousers, could have been a cookery apron, but turned out to be genuine braces, having just emerged from court (he’s a barrister), and obviously the uniform still includes the ‘Masters of the Universe’ attire.  Nevil Shute was a rollicking good read.  Next time we have a joint meeting with a ladies’ book club – the choice – Bernardine Evaristo’s Mr Loverman, which is likely to be a bit different.

 

Last week saw a brief, 24 hour, visit to Bridport to stay with friends (now allowed), and the start of this good weather.  Lovely to walk the Jurassic Coast again.  Impossible to get into the Anchor Inn at Seatown – even on a Wednesday, such is the pressure from stay at home holidays.

Jurassic coast, looking west towards Lyme Bay

 

Morag and Lindsay, looking east towards West Bay

Colmer's Hill, aka 'Tufty'

Having woken at 6am this morning (broad daylight), it seemed appropriate to write something today – yesterday was the first day since the pandemic began that there were no Covid-related deaths in England and Wales.  There has been a recent surge in Bolton, related to the importation of the ‘Indian Variant’.  Possibly due to the lamentably low vaccination uptake in ethnic minorities.  It remains surprising that so many hospital employees in some areas of the country have not been vaccinated, and the government is toying again with the idea of making vaccination of health workers compulsory.

 

A frightening episode the other day, with the aligned Western nations, and the EU, powerless to do anything about it.  A Ryanair flight en route Athens-Vilnius was diverted to Minsk after the pilots were informed there was a possible bomb on board.  A jet fighter from Belarus shadowed it.  Once on the ground, a Belarus dissident and critic of the strongman leader (dictator) of Belarus was arrested together with his girlfriend.  A state-sponsored hijack.

 

And the theory that Covid-19 may have been synthesised in the Wuhan virus research institute has re-emerged.  Sir Richard Dearlove (ex-MI5) says that one can be sure any evidence that this is the case will have been expunged by China long ago.

 

Finally, Boris Johnson married Carrie Symonds in a secret wedding ceremony at Westminster Cathedral the other day.  This has helped to defuse the fallout from yet another Dominic Cummings effusion of vitriol about his time as special adviser in Downing Street.  Highly critical of the PM (unfit for office), and the health secretary (Matt Hancock), ‘He should have been fired at least 15 to 20 times’, his splenetic outpourings have probably damaged his hopes of a revelationary book because everything that might have been a surprise has now been revealed.  His main point about Hancock is the disastrous events early in the pandemic where hospitalised Covid patients were sent back to care homes to lethal and devastating effect.  In his defence, Hancock’s team have indicated that our testing capacity at that time was so poor that this would not have been feasible.  Nonetheless it remains a disaster, but Cummings of course is blessed with 20-20 hindsight; curious in view of his need to drive to Barnard Castle to test his eyesight.

 

It was noted that Boris and Carrie married in a Catholic cathedral.  A Telegraph letter writer (always plenty of good material in these) notes that Oscar Wilde’s late conversion to Catholicism was explained by the writer as joining a church where ‘Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future’.

 

Last week we visited a friend who has been treated for bowel cancer, and were asked to do the Covid rapid tests (known as lateral flow tests) before visiting.  The little testing strip is rather like a pregnancy test.  After a throat and nasal swab, the cotton bud is dipped in a special buffer solution and then two drops are placed in the testing well.  The result is read after 30 minutes.  Negative.  We were also visited by my daughter and her partner who routinely did the tests at home in London before coming down to stay with us.  The new normal.

 

Another sign of a different normality.  Cricket (Test Match Cricket that is) starts today with England vs New Zealand.

Thursday June 3^rd

A day off from house problems.  Walk over in Purbeck.  Lucky to see the ‘endangered’ sand lizard on Godlingston Heath.  Lovely views: Swanage bay, the Isle of Wight, Poole harbour.

 

The chalk stacks, near 'Old Harry'

Ballard Down and Poole Harbour

Sand Lizard, Godlingston Heath

Yesterday evening a lovely session with friends.  Richard and I played guitar duets together (Carulli; nothing too challenging).  It’s so long since we have been able to play together that we were virtually sight reading the piece.  I remember the sleeve notes to the John Williams and Julian Bream ‘Together’ album.  Chopin is reported as saying once that there was no sound more beautiful than the guitar, save perhaps two guitars.  Anybody who does not remember vinyl or does not possess 12” LPs will not know what ‘sleeve notes’ are.

 

A mysterious acronym was reported the other day.  A woman journalist, divorced, has entered the fray of online dating.  She reports that one man, seemingly quite pleasant and a possible match, stated that he was ‘Not interested in ONS’.  She was surprised that somebody should be so upfront about his lack of interest in the Office for National Statistics.  Admittedly they have been in the news quite a lot lately, what with their gatherings of data on Covid deaths, spread of variants, etc.  Further enquiry revealed that in this context, ‘ONS’ is an acronym for ‘One Night Stands’.

 

And a nice cartoon from the Literary Review shows a celebrity author, dark glasses on, sitting on a tropical beach in his swimming costume.  He’s typing away:  ‘It was a dark and stormy night…’ 

CORONA DIARY CHAPTER 20 - Spring 2021 - February 25th to May 4th

Tuesday March 2^nd

Brisk kite surfing conditions in Poole Harbour

 

The discerning reader may judge that nothing happened between February 25^th and March 2^nd.  In a sense, that is true, but of course the reality, even if mundane, is different.  The weather continues dry with a cold easterly wind.  Anti-cyclonic conditions.  Warm enough at times to sit outside, if out of the wind.  February 2020 was the wettest on record, I remember.  The storm before the calm – or the doldrums of Covid-19.  On my walk today I heard a woodpecker drumming for the first time this year, and yesterday I saw a goldcrest flitting around in an adjacent pine tree.  Daffodils are out, and remind me of my primary school in Fishguard, Pembrokeshire, at the age of 10.  Transplanted rudely from Malta, and following my father’s occupation as an Admiralty Supply Officer, we were sent to the depths of West Wales, to a remote and forgotten valley where ordnance for the naval base at Milford Haven was stored.  Lessons and morning service were in Welsh on an alternate daily basis.  The discipline was strict and rarely relaxed.  The cane was used from time to time, though I cannot remember receiving anything other than severe reprimands.  The headmaster, named as so many children were in the era in which he had been born, for William Ewart Gladstone (those were his forenames) referred to the canes as ‘medicine’.  The severity of his discipline contrasted with a genuine wish to help his pupils, many of whom were regarded as ‘twp’ (a Welsh epithet virtually synonymous with mental retardation).  When I was unable to learn a poem in Welsh, I was kept behind in detention.  But he stayed too, helping me word by word to pronounce and learn this poem.  All I can remember was that it was about daffodils and the word ‘felyn’ had to be pronounced correctly.  The ‘f’ is soft, as a ‘v’, and the word means yellow – which I guess is appropriate.  On St David’s Day – 1^st March – rules were relaxed to the extent that every pupil was allowed to wear a leek or a daffodil as a buttonhole.  Most of the girls wore daffodils, most of the boys wore leeks.  The leeks were gradually nibbled (raw) in class until by lunchtime they had mostly gone.  I don’t think I had ever seen a leek up to this time, and the thought of eating one raw made me chicken out and join the girls, proudly (but nervously) wearing my daffodil.

 

Friday March 12^th

 

The intervals between diary entries get longer.  Little to report as regards any changes in the daily routine.  The builders are here less often, and less gets done in consequence.

 

Winston Churchill – “Some people’s idea of free speech is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone says anything back, that is an outrage”.  Thus Piers Morgan in a Tweet after storming out of the morning TV programme Good Morning Britain, when attacked by a weather presenter after some robust comments about the latest in the Duke and Duchess of Sussex saga.  The background to this is that the two of them appeared on the Oprah Winfrey interview programme in the U.S. and fairly comprehensively dissed the Royal family.  Meghan alleged that somebody had expressed concerns about the colour of her forthcoming baby, and also that she had felt depressed and suicidal and been denied help within the Royal establishment.  Piers was castigated for saying ‘I don’t believe a word of it.’  As many have pointed out, including author Frederick Forsyth, these were unsubstantiated allegations.  One letter said ‘Darling… she’s an actress!’.  Meghan also complained that son Archie had been denied the title of Prince.  As one columnist said, Oprah, who admits that most of her information about the Royal family comes from the TV series, ‘The Crown’, could not be expected to know that only those in direct line to the Crown get this title, e.g. the children of William and Kate.  Subsequent research suggests that there is a lot of sympathy for the Sussexes in the USA, and some sympathy in younger people in the UK, but little if any in older adults.  But as someone also said – to say you want to get away to Canada and then the U.S. for privacy and then to appear with the two highest profile presenters in the world, namely James Corden and Oprah Winfrey, is a funny way of going about it.  Enough.  It would not surprise me if the Palace saw it fit to withdraw the honorary Duchy from the couple.

 

Days are lengthening and the times when the builders arrived in the dark and then left at four because it was too dark to see are gone.

 

Easter Monday 5^th April

 

A long hiatus.  The office has been rebuilt and my computer has been parked in a near inaccessible spot for several weeks.  What has happened?  A lot, or not much, depending on your point of view.  Let’s take the vital topics in order:

 

The Pandemic.  Now dignified with a capital letter.  Due to the highly successful UK vaccination programme, cases have fallen dramatically, and hospital admissions and deaths have declined very substantially in consequence.

 

Vaccinations.  Over 31 million people have had a first vaccination dose.  Cases of Covid-19 have dropped dramatically but have plateaued slightly following reopening of schools.  Deaths however have continued to fall dramatically and are still falling.  The majority of these are now occurring in hospital, and there is a hangover effect of people who were infected some weeks ago.

 

Rules and Regulations.  As of Monday March 29^th, up to six people have been able to meet outdoors, and therefore outdoor sports such as tennis and golf have recommenced.  It was good to be on a golf course again.

Parkstone Golf Club

Now legal - drinks and food outside

 

Weather.  The clocks have gone forward.  A spell of warm weather has now been replaced by arctic air with strong northerly winds.

 

Social unrest.  The murder of a young woman who was walking home across Clapham Common sparked huge demonstrations by women who have finally ‘had enough’.  Safety for women out alone at night is poor.  The news that a serving police officer had been charged in connection with the crime was extraordinarily dismaying.  Subsequent ‘Kill Bill’ copycat demonstrations, particularly focussed on Bristol, have been a disaster for all of us, not least the police.  A motley crew of anarchists and professional social disorder specialists has risen from under its usual stone.  The George Floyd trial has commenced in the USA, sparking further unrest and disorder.  Julie Burchill (who else?) had to laugh at the Bristol riots; ‘the last time I saw their kind was at the Extinction Rebellion protests, bunking off from skiing trips to prevent the proles from getting to work.  Middle-class youth rebel into toy-town insurrection – but working class youth rebel into ambition.’  It’s a point she makes in an article entitled ‘Lefties who say they hate billionaires are just jealous’.

 

Elsewhere in the world, the military coup in Myanmar has led to protests and deaths among the civilian protesters, from an army who seemingly do not mind using live ammunition.

 

And again, concerning riots, I am reminded of a quotation which is definitely correctly attributed to a certain white South African chief of police.  With regard to the recent London and Bristol protests, the police have been caught between a ‘rock and a hard place’.  Charged with keeping the peace, but also with the requirement to maintain social distancing and forbid close assembly, they have acted with what seems reasonable restraint.  For example, we have not seen any water cannons, and certainly no tear gas nor rubber bullets – they seem to have really gone out of fashion in British policing.  During some of the riots in pre-democratic South Africa, the police were remonstrated with by the International Press for using live bullets in mob control.  Naturally, a number of deaths resulted.  Faced with such criticism, the police officer responsible, interrogated as to why his men were not using rubber bullets, and stung to a riposte, said: ‘Listen man; when those bl..ks start throwing rubber rocks, then we’ll start using rubber bullets’.

 

A very enjoyable virtual alumni session from my Cambridge college.  Abigail Brundin, Professor of Modern and Medieval languages gave a talk on the impact of printed books on ordinary people in Renaissance Italy.  As she pointed out, if you were famous or important, the documentary record is good, but if you were an ordinary person it is hard to divine what the common experience was.  This is the subject that interests her most.  Much of her talk focussed on the Inquisition trials of ordinary Italians, for which, almost uniquely there is ample documentary evidence.  In the mid-16^th century, there was much paranoia from the authorities, particularly the church, about the circulation of the printed word, following the introduction of the printing press.  Citizens could be denounced for possessing a bible, or indeed small pamphlets with protective prayers or ‘charms’.  Under torture, virtually everybody the person knew could be incriminated or accused.  A horrible period of history.

 

In a milder fashion, I was amused to hear of some present-day friends being denounced.  A friend of ours recently died in hospital from Covid-19, acquired during treatment for cellulitis.  After his funeral, another family attending at the crematorium in the slot after our friend accused them of not observing social distancing and telephoned the police.  The grieving widow was then approached, in somewhat apologetic fashion, both by the undertaker and by the police.  No action was taken.  Wry amusement from friends of the deceased who observed that he would have been delighted to have caused trouble, even after his death, in view of a personality which in Yorkshire would have been described as ‘bluff’, but might be also construed as ‘difficult’ or ‘obstreperous’.

 

Back to Cambridge.  Another lecture, a succinct summary of current relations between the USA and China under the heading ‘A New Cold War?’  His conclusion was that there were many differences between the old Cold War and the stand-off between the USA and China.  But it would be hard to predict how the U.S. will play it.  He ended with the reassuring bon mot which is attributed to Churchill: ‘America – will always do the right thing - after exhausting all the alternatives’.  This is probably not by Churchill; see quoteinvestigator.com.

 

 

Green Issues and Rare Metals.

 

It has long worried me that the so-called ‘Green’ electric cars, although not burning fossil fuel, contain precious metals and materials which are mined in anything but ‘green’ way, and are not inexhaustible.  A review of a book by Guillaume Pitron, ‘The Rare Metals War’ confirms my fears.  The reviewer avers that these elements sound like second-rate British Roman towns; erbium, thulium, lutetium, yttrium.  The toxic waste generated by the mining of these compounds is huge, and is found in remote parts of Mongolia and China.  Mining conditions for workers in the Democratic Republic of Congo are ‘straight out of the Middle Ages’.  In the modern electric car, cerium is used in the windscreen, neodymium in the headlights, yttrium in the electric sensors, and so on.  Lutetium extracted, crushed, and refined from rock emerges in a ratio of 1.2 million kilograms to 1.  No wonder a U.S. study suggests that electric vehicles are three to four times as energy requiring as conventional vehicles.  Solar power and hydrogen could be the future, and the smart hybrids, plug-in hybrids, and electric cars that we are being urged to buy must surely be a temporary measure.  50 years perhaps?  A subsequent review points out that both M. Pitron and the above review should more correctly have described these compounds as ‘rare earth metals’, or just ‘rare earths’.  The Periodic Table classification is as ‘Lanthanides’. 

 

April 12^th, Monday

 

Easter has come and gone.  The weather warmed, and now it is cold again.  The home nations rugby tournament has come and gone, with some high-scoring, free running rugby to the fore.  The final event of the season saw Scotland drag victory against France from the jaw of defeat, in injury time.

 

A few weeks ago, an enormous load carrier vessel was caught by a gust of wind in the Suez Canal, and blocked it for a couple of weeks.  An ex-tanker captain wrote to lament the lack of directional control in these large container ships, the emphasis being on the building of single-screw craft.  I remember, when living in Scotland in the late 1960s, and due to the blockade of the Suez Canal at that time, tankers from the Gulf became larger in order to transport vast quantities of oil to Europe, voyaging around Southern Africa.  Their draft was so enormous that they were forced to dock and unload oil in Finnart on Loch Long, passing the front of our house on the way.  An unforgettable sight.  The vessels were so long that they had to undertake a three-point turn into Loch Goil.  Loch Long was chosen for the oil terminal, as indeed also for Polaris submarines because just a few metres out from the shore the depth plunges to 200 feet, due to ice-age glaciation.  Fortunately, the Suez vessel was eventually refloated.

 

I have enjoyed reading some extracts from the now unredacted edition of Sir Henry ‘Chips’ Channon’s diaries.  Simon Heffer, the historian has updated the diaries, published in 1967, and virtually everything defamatory has now been restored to the new edition.  Channon, hugely wealthy, and bisexual, was an ardent friend and admirer of the Duke of Windsor, and horrified by the abdication and subsequent coronation of that ‘well-meaning bore’, George VI.  A Guardian writer states (correctly) that his chief virtue as a diarist is ‘an abiding awareness that dullness is the worst sin of all’.  Channon’s admiration and hero worship of Hitler is literally jaw-dropping.  Meanwhile, he was the lover (almost certainly) of Cocteau and Proust, Prince Paul of Yugoslavia, and Terence Rattigan.  However, he did not seem to mind being seduced by Tallulah Bankhead in her dressing room at the theatre.  An awaited edition from WWII onward has yet more indiscretions.

 

Nearly a year ago, I wrote of the ‘what if’ scenario about the possibility of Prince Charles going to Benenden School and Princess Anne going to Gordonstoun.  The memory returned this week with the announcement of the death of the Duke of Edinburgh, a little short of his 100^th Birthday.  The press, who rarely had a good word to say of him in times gone by have gone overboard in adulation, searching high and low for virtually anybody who ever met him to have their few minutes of vox pop fame.  I count myself as a vaguely pink Royalist, and have always admired somebody who says what he thinks.  The coverage however has been wall to wall and suffocating.  It seemed extraordinary that both of the BBC’s two main TV channels were given over to coverage of his passing.  Philip of course, almost went to school in Germany, but fortunately went to Gordonstoun, to which his character was obviously suited.  Little has been made of the fact that he set his cap at Princess Elizabeth during a visit to Dartmouth Naval College when she was only 13, but perhaps we should gloss over that (and indeed perhaps it was the other way round).  There was, of course, no suggestion of impropriety, and it was a love match, with their first few years spent happily on service with the Royal Navy, living at Villa Gwardamangia in Malta.  The villa has been neglected in recent years, and belatedly the Maltese government are thinking of restoring it…  The relationship of the Duke and Princess Elizabeth was of course, heavily fostered and encouraged by his uncle Louis Mountbatten, the snake in the grass.  In parenthesis, the Villa Gwardamangia in Malta was recommended to Philip by Mountbatten because of its proximity to the Marsa polo club, where I used to watch the occasional ‘chukka’ as a child, understanding nothing of it.

 

Sunday April 18^th

 

The funeral of HRH The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, has come and gone.  A very moving ceremony at Windsor Castle yesterday.  The reported rift between William and Harry was solved by the expedient of placing Peter Phillips, the other grandson, between them.  Beautiful music sung by a limited choir of only four voices.  All of the Royal Family wore masks.  A strange and sad occasion.

 

Life for ordinary mortals goes on.

 

A week ago, our walking group reconvened at Tarrant Monkton, Dorset.  A popular group, so we were divided into three groups to avoid breaking the law, which now allows six people to be together outside.  We were able to keep a reasonable distance from the group in front so as not to lose the way.  The sun shone, the hedgerows were white with blackthorn blossom.  Wood anemones and lesser celandine carpeted the woods.  During a coffee stop I pillaged the woods for wild garlic leaves and now have to deodorise my rucksack.  Much of the woodland we walked through was managed and planted by Commander Marten, of Long Crichel, and we passed the spot where his ashes were scattered.  The pub back at the village was not open, but I was able to call in at the farm shop in Tarrant Rawston, as I drove back with the roof down on the car.

Blackthorn blossom in the Tarrants

 

Wood anemone - anemone nemorosa

Daffodils in a friend's garden

We seem to be fated to have seeded our putative lawns during one of the driest Spring periods on record, but with some watering, and assistance from a bizarre hailstorm the other day, there is some germination.

 

I do some mock interviewing for a young colleague who is applying for a consultant anaesthetist’s post and am pleased when I hear she has got the job.  She tells me that the questions at interview were not as difficult as mine…

 

My second vaccination causes minor side effects compared to the first.  There is however now some fair evidence that a very rare side effect is a prothrombotic tendency – cerebral venous sinus, splanchnic, etc.  This appears to be an immune-mediated consumption coagulopathy.  Treatment is apparently by infusion of anti-platelet factor IV antibodies.  It reminds me of a patient I treated in 1978, whose aortic dissection some weeks before had not been recognised (despite her telling her doctor about the pain; ‘Doctor, it felt like something was tearing inside of me’).  This is of course an absolutely textbook description of a tear or rupture of a major artery.  A stoical elderly lady from Devon, she came to convalesce from her alleged ‘gall stones’ with her sister in Woolwich, and working at the Brook Hospital (late, lamented), I met her in the emergency ward whence she had come with haematuria and severe anaemia.  A chest X-ray was diagnostic of giant aortic aneurysm or dissection and she proved to have disseminated intravascular coagulation because of it.  Heparin was started and she improved dramatically.  But later she developed signs of superficial venous thrombosis due to the heparin.  She remains immortalised in the European Heart Journal, where we published her story.  Strange how after 43 years I remember her so well, and her alliterative names.

 

Ironically, I understand that Angela Merkel has now had the AstraZeneca vaccine without demur or problem.

 

Our book club reconvened.  We discussed Michel Houellebecq’s ‘Submission’.  A book which I rather flippantly characterised as ‘another dystopian novel, but with French locations, better sex, better food, and better wines’.  The somewhat insular, misogynistic, and vigorously heterosexual protagonist is a lecturer at the Sorbonne.  Hopefully, not all Parisian lecturers are similar.  There is an obvious tie to the university lecturer character in ‘Disgrace’.  The homophony between lecturer and lecherer is noted.  Our next book, fortunately, is a little known novel by Nevil Shute.  A further meeting with a women’s book club group is mooted.  It would seem wise to allow them to choose the book.

 

The production of Travel Sections of weekend newspapers continues apace, though surely one can have little enthusiasm for foreign travel when recurrences and increases of Covid are everywhere.  This weekend sees a multi-page feature about the Mediterranean – with promises of less-travelled destinations.  Some of these I can understand – see the coastal resorts of Turkey – but by boat.  Sensible.  Others perhaps less so.  Malta for instance.  I would strongly recommend Malta, but only if one has the supernatural capability of time travel.  About 1955 would be the best, I think…  I enjoy writing about our travels, but a recent Literary Review author avers that there are two kinds of travel writers, ‘Travellers who write, and writers who travel’.  Discuss…

 

An Italian friend, who works for Esplora, the company that gave us such a wonderful trip to the Aeolian Islands, published an Instagram picture of Lago di Piediluco the other day.  I was astonished.  This tiny lake, in the middle of Italy, was where we camped in 1958, as my parents indulged their whim of seeing Europe on the way home from Malta.  I can still remember the July heat, the kindly farmer on whose land we camped who let us play around in his little rowing boat; watching the fireflies in the woods after supper.  My friend reports that it is still an unspoilt place.

 

Monday April 26^th

 

I should be doing my tax details for my income tax return, but most things are preferable to this, so I am filling in time on this bright bitterly cold day by returning to my diary (or blog if you will).  A dreadful sense of ennui prevails.  Readers might wish it were permanent.  The last few weeks have been exactly like this.  Of course, it seems to be just our luck to have had grass seed put down at the start of the dry spell.  Watering freshly laid grass seed has to be done with a very fine spray, otherwise the seed gets carried in little rivulets of water and agglomerates.  We’ve managed some germination and the turf company rep appeared again last week and was upbeat about it, saying it was the best germination he had seen all spring.

 

Holding off reading the Nevil Shute until shortly before the next book club date.  Senescence means it very likely that most of us will have forgotten the story before we get to discuss it.  Not all past memories are so reliable either.  My former colleague, a chest physician of gentle humour, recalls a crowded refreshments room in the hospital after he had given a lecture.  This was before alcohol was banned in the hospital.  A GP who had attended, after several glasses of wine, sidled up to my colleague, and said, ‘You see that woman over there, she looks vaguely familiar.  Do you know who she is?’  After a surreptitious glance my colleague said, ‘Yes, Dr …, I do believe you used to be married to her.’

 

In the meantime, a friend has loaned me another book by Michel Houellebecq, called ‘Whatever’.  Described by the novelist Tibor Fischer as ‘A L’Ėtranger for the info generation,’ it features yet another alienated Frenchman.  It’s easy to read, and yet also, depressing.  Those trivialities of daily life, if viewed from such a pessimistic point of view, can certainly get one down.  As a break from the book, I venture through to the kitchen, where I decide to clean out my Bialetti (Moka) coffee maker.  After my morning fix, the pot is too hot to clean immediately, so I plunge the device in cold water and return to it later.  Separating the sections, I methodically tip the grounds into the waste bin, and then turn on the tap to rinse out the filter.  The tap responds energetically and coffee grounds splash up onto Lindsay’s recently cleaned work top and even as far as the window sill.  This results in another five minutes of cleaning and wiping, and I sense that I am a character in a Michel Houellebecq novel, depressed by the minor and trivial vicissitudes of daily life.  His characters seem to be about five standard deviations away from the norm, or am I imagining myself as normal?  Perhaps the neatest description, if you are thinking of reading Houellebecq, is from The Guardian: ‘The book slips down easily, like a bad oyster’.

 

The high pressure, brilliant sunshine, and strong easterly winds have brought some benefits.  The house uses almost no external power, the solar panels being sufficient for nearly everything.  We have been able to plan walks and bike rides without any fear of rain.  Bike rides is an exaggeration.  We did one ride.  Last Friday.  Over in Purbeck, down trails, sandy paths, and small roads.  We met friends for lunch outside at the Bankes Arms.  We drank and we ate.  Life seemed normal, almost.  We did 25 miles, and basked in a sensation of achievement.  Begone, M. Houellebecq!

 

Selfie in front of Corfe Castle

Awaiting the chain ferry

But what of the pandemic?  The UK is almost free of it.  Only 6% of ICU beds are now occupied by Covid patients.  But elsewhere, particularly in India, there is disaster.  People dying on trolleys outside hospital with no beds and no oxygen.  The scenes are distressing.  From a selfish point of view, the failure to control Covid elsewhere is highly likely to lead to variants, possibly resistant.  It seems strange to watch, every afternoon at 3pm, the IPL (Indian Premier League), cricket, which seems to continue untouched by disaster all around.  Once again, the government’s failure to impose draconian restrictions on immigrants from India is worrying.  Three full aeroplanes managed to make it through to Heathrow before the deadline for a blockade.  The ban should of course have had immediate effect…  We have a drink with a GP friend who has been vigorously involved in the national vaccination programme.  She is imbued with a feeling of despair and frustration that all of her (and our) efforts may be wasted because of pussyfooting around by the Government.

Madness - swimming in the sea - a challenge from one of those pictured:

I will close this entry with yet another manifestation of the wokeness of our current world.  Jane Austen, the early 19^th century author of such classic novels as Emma and Pride and Prejudice is the latest victim of the pillory of political correctness.  She was fond of (and in her novels regularly described), drinking tea.  Teatime is a frequent ploy for Austen’s characters to talk and to reveal their own ignorance or misplaced affections.  Tea, and especially the sugar served with it, carries the hallmark of slavery, and poor Jane is now subject to cancel culture.  To victimise a meek spinster who never had very much money and died nearly 200 years ago is overstepping the woke mark, but she remains fair game to those who never really bother to engage with their subject.  Austen was liberal and had a social conscience, especially by the standards of the times, and had contact with abolitionists…  I really should not waste so much time on the subject were it not for the vehemence which attends the protests.  Even this last weekend, the landowner (and Tory MP) Richard Drax had his Charborough Park estate invaded by public access campaigners, including some from Extinction Rebellion.  The protesters stated that they were celebrating the famous Kinder Scout trespass in 1932 and requiring a right to roam.  Drax was targeted because he has the largest estate in Dorset.  The politics of envy.  An invasion of Mustique or Necker Island on the same grounds seems unlikely.

 

Tuesday April 27^th, 2021

 

Another good day for the building trade.  I.e. a beautiful, dry, sunny day.  The very strong easterly wind which had been blowing for days seems to have dropped.  The news varies but is always the same.  Accusations of government sleaze: the sacked Dominic Cummings has alleged that the Prime Minister considered using wealthy Tory donors to do up his and Carrie’s love nest, and made crass remarks about ‘piling bodies high but avoiding another lockdown at all costs.’  Labour have jumped on this of course.  As a BBC 4 presenter said to the labour deputy leader – ‘Is this all you can do?  You’re behind in the polls, Starmer is unpopular, Boris Johnson’s popularity remains high, and the vaccination programme has been a huge success in virtually eliminating Covid in the UK, so you have to jump on this, don’t you!’

 

I really shouldn’t write about politics.  It is a huge turn off for most people.

 

We have been invited for a drink by somebody whose garden is so beautiful it has been opened in the National Gardens’ Scheme.  I told him we have a row of boring griselinia bushes, and five plants, all of which we have been given.  Two camellias, an apple tree, a geranium and a cineraria.  And some barely grown grass seed.

 

Some discussion recently about the teaching of English grammar and spelling.  A recent diktat from at least one of the examination boards has said that markers should avoid marking down for spelling mistakes.  The thin end of the wedge, I’m afraid.  Walking with a friend in the New Forest the other day, I sense I am pushing at an open door when we discuss this.  He tells me that in his small surveying firm, he and his partner would regularly receive job applications, and their first cull was all that were misspelt or used poor English.  ‘Straight in the bin’, he says.  Of course, there are people who are dyslexic who do have significant problems in this regard, but their skills probably lie elsewhere.  Imprecision is a slow slide on a slippery slope in medicine.  When I qualified, two drugs were in common use as anti-cancer treatments – vincristine and vinblastine – rather similar names, I think you may agree.  One could be reasonably safely used as intrathecal treatment (into the spinal fluid), the other caused peripheral neuropathy and spinal paralysis if so used.  I leave you to judge.

A digression - New Forest Walk, Sunday 30th April

Boldre church, engraved window

Boldre church

New Forest deer

Pastoral walk near Boldre

 

Some discriminatory practices at interview are perhaps a little old fashioned.  My former chief of cardiology was on the interview panel for a consultant in Hastings in about 1977.  A very old fashioned martinet of a consultant (known to me) was also on the panel.  Pinstripe or grey suits, and black shoes were the order of the day.  The martinet leaned confidentially over to my chief after all the candidates had been in and observed, ‘You can always tell if a candidate really wants the job if he has shined the heels of his shoes.’  Even in the 1970s this seemed a slightly old-fashioned method of discrimination.  Also, note the ‘He’.  Even this is not so extreme as what was described to me by the great neurologist, Gerald Stern, who was a consultant at UCH where I trained.  He was telling us that we should dress smartly because our patients expected it and appreciated it.  But he admitted that some standards of the past were too severe.  He told us that he attended the Middlesex Hospital as a medical student in the 1950s.  On his first day, his small group of students awaited the arrival of the consultant for the ward round.  The consultant, who had presumably been on the staff for many years, observed them with distaste.  Stern was wearing sober clothes – suit, white shirt, tie, black shoes.  Suddenly, without warning, the consultant flung himself full length on the floor and grasped one of Stern’s shoes.  Looking up at the group with venom, he hissed ‘Rubber soled shoes!’  And that was it.  Without a further word they followed him into the ward.

 

A pedantic final word on precision.  A recent Telegraph article by a respected journalist used the word ‘accreditation’.  Fine.  But then went on to say that people should be ‘accreditated’, which is not a past participle of the verb.  ‘Accredited’ is correct.

 

Tuesday May 4^th

 

This follows the Bank Holiday weekend.  A severe storm yesterday evening, but sunny and very windy today.  The Indian IPL cricket has been suspended today after several players tested positive for coronavirus.  Although this is disappointing for daily afternoon viewing, there is a slight sense of relief that the hypocrisy of professionals enjoying playing cricket for thousands of rupees, while millions of Indians are suffering Covid-19 is over for the time being.

Camellia williamsii 'Debbie'

 

So I end with a cartoon, a picture of ‘First professional footballer gets the vaccine’.  Sorry, not sure of copyright or attribution: