The end of May

Whilst paying for refuelling the car, the assistant asked me if I had been OK during the lockdown.

I said we had done better than most. And this I think is true.

I have no family left, and Jools has her brother and sister, but she lost both her parents too. There is Jen and her Mother, but apart from that false alarm, they've been good too.

We have both carried on working, getting paid. Heck, I even got my retention bonus paid.

We did lockdown until the second week of May, then began to visit reserves and woods, and carried on after that. Many others had been doing this anyway. But I did see "friends" policing friends questioning why they had been in the area of a certain reserve. It might have been a joke, but I don't think so.

We have tried making sourdough, baked bread, cooked, baked, listened to the radio, watched a little TV and listened to a lot of radio. And I have continued to write, reporting on things as I see them.

I do know people who have not left the house since the beginning of March, not left their garden, as they are in the "at risk" group. I don't know how they coped, but seeing the madness unfold whilst knowing that if the Government got it wrong, it could have fatal consequences. A very scary situation.

And for at least two weeks there was no leadership of the country. Johnson was infected. Cummings was infected and on his grand tour. The UK's top medical officer was infected. The head of the Civil Service was infected, and Dominic Raab was the defacto Prime Minister. Yesterday he could not answer as a direct questions that, as stand in PM, did he know Cummings was in Durham.

Not a good look.

The pause in infections that the lockdown created should have been the time that the Government prepared for the next stage: test, trace and isolate. They didn't do that, and so are unlocking before the country is ready, in order to distract from the Cummings story. Playing with the nation's health to cover up the elite Cummings claimed not to be a part of.

We are not going to change the way we live, we will stay pretty much isolated, not meet many people, not go to the beach or beauty spots, stay away from towns and cities. I don't trust the Government, not one that hides vital information like the daily totals of people actually tested. A Government that puts economics above human life now, but is happy to trash the economy at the end of year for Brexit.

And yesterday, with no notice or apparent consultation with anyone involved in public health, regulations were changed with little or no explanation as to why. If those in high risk groups were supposed to keep doing so until there was a vaccine, how on earth was the UK at the second highest COVID warning setting, as set up by the Government, but is apparently at the lowest level today; what changed?