Apparently we’re in ‘Lockdown v3.0’ at the moment. The Blond Potato and his band of merry men changed their minds again. Despite all of the experts telling the Blond Potato and his pals that it was dangerous for the schools to go back after the new year for over a month, he appeared on the funny box thingy that has moving pictures and announced in a rather pompous way “The schools are perfectly safe and will return tomorrow”. The next day he sent millions of children back to school where they mixed with loads of other children, coughed and spluttered like children do, had fights like children do, made up like children do … and then he decided that they weren’t so safe after all. So he sent the millions of children back home to their parents and grand parents so that they could spread a bit more of the virus. Then he announced that schools were not, in fact, safe and that he was placing the whole country in ‘Lockdown v3.0’! Now, I know I’m only a dog but even I can see that that wasn’t exactly the Blond Potato’s finest hour! So, in Lockdown v3.0 we must stay at home. Only go out if it is absolutely necessary for work, to buy food or medicine, or to exercise once a day where we must not meet up with more than 1 person from outside our household and, if we do meet someone, we must maintain social distancing. That’s going well! More about that later.
Matt Hancock – I think he’s the Minister for U turns – next appeared saying “absolutely, we are definitely, without doubt, certainly, not going to continue with free school meals during this lockdown”. Two days later, after a young footballer shamed the government into another U turn, he appeared on the box thingy that has moving pictures and said “how glad I am that we’ve been able to take this affirmative step and continue providing school meals during this lockdown”. I think he suffers with wind because whenever I see him on the funny box thingy he always seems to have a forced grin on his face, a bit like he’s trying to hold in a bottom burp! Michael Gove – I think he’s the minister for U turns about U turns – has gone a bit quiet lately but he’s been a bit busy trying to delete the messages he posted on Parler, the extreme right wing social media platform favoured by supporters of the Orange Tornado, that he joined. I know I’m only a dog but I do find human politics so interesting these days. The current government (surely they can’t last much longer!) has made such a hash of managing the global pandemic, and then there’s the other ‘elephant in the room’ (why do humans use such terms?) of Brexit! That’s gone so well that the government has had to spend millions warning of increased disruption at ports and potential shortages of everything from food to parts for manufacturing.
Probably the most upset about the complete hash they’ve made of Brexit are the fishermen. They were in favour of Brexit until they discovered that under the agreement negotiated by the Blond Potato and his band of merry men, that wasn’t quite so ‘oven ready’ after all, they’ve lost access to their biggest market (i.e. Europe) and EU boats can still fish in UK waters as they could before. They don’t understand all the paperwork that they now have to complete and the older fishermen say it is worse now than before the UK joined the European Community in 1973. Best of all though, is the Fishing Minister, Victoria Prentis. When asked why she had not raised concerns about the agreement that were specifically related to her post, i.e. Fishing Minister, she said that she didn’t actually read the agreement when it was published on Christmas Eve because she was too busy organising a local Nativity Trail (which was against the then rules for social distancing anyway!). The truth is, you couldn’t make this stuff up if you tried! At every possible moment the government shoots itself in the foot and then tries to claim credit for anything good that comes from it!
Anyway, enough of the comedy of errors that is the Blond Potato and his band of merry men, what about real news?! Ah yes, well firstly we should talk weather. It’s been very wet or very cold recently. The other day as I made my way down Bay Pond Path, I noticed that the pond was frozen and the only small area of broken ice was where the swan was swimming. All the other birds were standing on the ice but I guess it wasn’t quite thick enough for the swan because he’s quite a bit bigger than them. Mostly though, it has been flamin’ wet. I’ve had to go out in my rain coat almost every day. The other day we got absolutely drenched on my morning walk. It was strange though because we were the only people out that day. We didn’t see anyone else which is a bit novel nowadays. The roads were like rivers and the verge was so soggy that even I started to sink into them a bit. He was muttering about how wet it was and how the inside of the pockets on his coat were wet and smelling of damp. Daddy Richard doesn’t complain so much but I don’t think he has been enjoying it so much either. Yesterday morning the rain was so hard that we gave up on our usual walk and when we got to the end of Salisbury Road we turned left down Oxted Road and came back through Clayton Mead. It was a shorter walk but, frankly, I was glad of it. The rain was freezing and it was a biting wind!
As the weather was so bad yesterday morning we decided to do our usual walk in the afternoon. We made our way down Salisbury Road and then into Oxted Road where we noticed something unusual. There were loads of people walking up Oxted Road. They weren’t locals but they were all walking in the same direction as us. It was quite difficult for the humans to maintain a good social distance and as for us dogs, there were so many of us it was difficult to choose which bottom to sniff next! Anyway, we made our way into Church Lane where we were met with even more people coming the other way. None of them appeared to be local and I’ve never seen it so busy. We saw Mike who lives in Church Lane who was doing some gardening in the front of his house and he commented that it was really busy. Mike said it had been packed ever since the rain stopped! We carried on but nipped into the churchyard so that we could lose the trail of people behind us. I rather liked that part but I couldn’t find any rabbit droppings to eat (they’re rather a treat … a bit like chocolate buttons for humans!). There weren’t too many people in the churchyard so it was OK. More than you’d usually see but not as many as were in Church Lane.
When we came out of the churchyard and crossed into Bay Pond Path, it became pretty obvious that it is going to have to be renamed ‘Bay Pond Human Superhighway’. It was unbelievable. Large groups of families who had obviously met up for a nice walk. People with bikes, people with scooters, people with pushchairs, loads of dogs. Lockdown v3.0 doesn’t seem to have made it through to these people. With no exaggeration there must have been at least 100 people spread down the length of the path, if not more. None were local … or at least … none were people we would normally see when out walking. There was no social distancing, no respect for others, absolutely unbelievable scenes of large groups of people all chatting, drinking coffees, carrying bags of what looked like food. Judging by the packed car parks when we got to the other end of Bay Pond Path and by the number of cars that were parked on the side of the road, I don’t believe these people were local. It isn’t that I mind people visiting our lovely village and appreciating the beauty we have here with the landscape, the ponds and the wildlife, but I am worried by the fact that these people are meeting in such large groups, not taking any notice of the lockdown rules on either social distancing or socialising. If they want to come and walk in the same places as I walk every day then they should have some respect and maintain a reasonable distance. I certainly don’t want him catching this dreadful disease becuase he’d be worse than he is normally and Daddy Richard is a truly dreadful patient when he’s not well, so I don’t want him catching it either.
Today we took our usual walk of Salisbury Road, Oxted Road, Church Lane and Bay Pond Path. It was quite incredible to see a group of cyclists from a South London cycling club riding together down Flower Lane and then into Church Lane. Which bit of keeping exercise local and only meeting one other person from another household – and maintaining social distancing – did they not understand? OK, I know that the Blond Potato was photographed cycling on the Olympic Park which is 7 miles from Downing Street but throughout this pandemic it has been ‘do as I say, not as I do’, (remember Robert Jenrick, Professor Neil Ferguson, Margaret Ferrier and, of course, Cummings!) so that isn’t an excuse. As we made our way along a somewhat quieter Church Lane, I began to think that things were returning to normal … until we turned into Bay Pond Path. Honestly, it was even worse than yesterday!!! There were hundreds of people on the path. There were groups of two or three families all walking together, people evidently carrying picnics, the usual dogs, children and their associated paraphanalia, it was an absolute mess. I am seriously considering changing my route at weekends. Bay Pond Path is becoming a no-go area!
So, in this strange lockdown that clearly isn’t a proper lockdown, life continues to be very strange. Grandma was 90 years old last week, (which is flamin’ old … not even Uncle Don is that old!) but due to lockdown restrictions we couldn’t go and see her. Instead we had a video call with her which was nice but not the same. She was inside his computer. I don’t know how she got there but she was there. I had to put my paws on his lap to be able to pull myself up so that she could see me. It was nice to see and hear her but it would have been so much nicer to have been able to visit her. She has had her COVID vaccine, so there is some hope but I think it will be a while yet. They have returned to their ‘Saturday Night Takeway’ (Amritsar Chicken Masala last night), so some of their friends are having to suffer his ‘cooking’ again. Otherwise, though, not much happens. They try to follow lockdown rules as best they can. They do still work. Daddy Richard tends to work from home and he goes out to the clients that can’t be done from home. He continues to ruin perfectly good food by ‘cooking’ it, but I have found that if I sit by him in the kitchen with the cutest of smiles I can generally get a few tit bits of the stuff he doesn’t want to use (a couple of rather tasty chicken wings yesterday!). Daddy Richard still likes his afternoon nap at the weekends (it can be quite a long nap sometimes I’ve noticed!) and life continues as ‘normally’ as it can.
There is still no gardeners’ club, or any of the other activities they used to do but maybe one day, just one day, we’ll get back to that. Grandma would dearly love to go to Café Connect when it restarts and I’m sure they’ll arrange it when they can. Auntie Jo has sent me a birthday present but it isn’t my birthday until the 4th February (I’ll be 5!) so he has hidden it until then. I hope all my fans from around the world are keeping safe and healthy. I didn’t do a New Year’s Glog this year because everything was all a bit strange but just for the record Happy New Year, Bonne Année, Feliz Año Nuevo, Feliz Ano Novo, Frohes neues Jahr, Felice anno nuovo and finally नववर्ष की शुभकामना. 2020 was a pretty dreadful year, here’s hoping that 2021 is going to be a vast improvement on that! Crumbs, my paws ache after all that typing. It has been a while since I’ve put paw to keyboard but I’ll try and be a bit more regular if I can find any real news (about me!) to share. In the meantime though, this little cartoon made me smile, but for now, must paws … 🐾
