Give it a rest!

I’d like to tell you that, after nine months of daily blogging, I decided to take a week off. I’d like to tell you that, but it would be a bare-faced lie! The truth is I’ve felt unmotivated, lacking in oomph, in an inspiration lockdown. 99% is attributable to the third national lockdown. It’s miserable winter, cold, wet and colourless. Our tiny ‘yard’ kept the blues at bay during spring, autumn and summer lockdowns… but, in winter, not so much. Moreover, I can no longer look forward to getting out to a bird reserve, or even people-free countryside.

There are so many people crowded into the seaside and parks that it doesn’t feel like a safe place to be socially distanced and masked as we are, we see loads of people too close and maskless. It brings home how many selfish covidiots there are. It also brings home how inflexibly daft government regulation is. Stay home is not policed and those activities that are risk free are ditched along with the bathwater.

I cannot see the point in riding ten feet on a wave at best… maybe these people need to swap surfboards for sailboards.

The Angling Association have successfully lobbied for pleasure fishing to be allowed… albeit ‘only if you stay local’. But going birdwatching, which, for the average birder encompasses more exercise than sitting by a lake, is only allowed for an hour and not if it’s purely sedentary.

I agree that far too many people are not staying home when they should… but surely a better message would be ‘do not mingle’. As my currently damp and depressing garden doesn’t offer a lot by way of wildlife watching right now I want my soul eased by being with nature. But I live in a town and am incapable these days of walking up hills. The local parks and seashore are thronged by the descendants of Typhoid Mary. So I want to go where I can commune with nature and not see more than a distant handful of people. But that means driving eight miles to a place I can walk on the flat and avoid people… but there is no guideline on what ‘local’ means and, apparently in Derbyshire at least, five miles was too far!

Rant it out!
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