30 of 50

As I mentioned last week Covid finally caught up with me and despite feeling a little better and no longer testing positive I don’t feel like I’m completely back to normal yet.

Inevitably someone asked me if this was the worst illness I’d ever had. Too be honest no it wasn’t, although probably would have been a lot worse if we didn’t have the vaccines, but it ranks up there. The first few days were the worst with cough, temperature and a range of other symptoms, the tail of those symptoms lasted the better part of two weeks. The government is telling people (via it’s app) that after six days you can go back out into the world. After six days I was still testing positive, it took 11 days to get a negative result and even then I was feeling unwell.

As a kid I was always ill (or at least it felt that way). I was a martyr to just about every chest infection, cough or cold that was going. Being mildly asthmatic meant that I also ended up sounding like a congested steam train most of the time.

Doctors used to tell me and my Mum that I would “grow out of it” and largely they were right but that took years and required me to reach adulthood. I missed a lot of school, drank lots of hot Ribena (the modern stuff isn’t a patch on what they made 40+ years ago), dosed on Junior Disprin and occasionally nice pink antibiotic medicine. Read a lot and listened to Radio 2.

The sickest I think I’ve ever been was when I was in my late 20’s when I caught tonsillitis. This was a viral version (although we only worked that out when the antibiotics I was initially given didn’t work) and I can remember having had a sore throat for a week or so before waking up one morning unable to swallow and looking down my throat in the mirror and seeing two golf balls where the back of throat should have been. I had to tough it out, and ended up being off work for over 4 weeks, including missing our staff Christmas party. I was pretty miserable and my memory tells me that although I wasn’t any sicker than I’ve just been with Covid the duration of the illness made it feel like it was worse. It too had quite a long tail of post viral symptoms the same as Covid seems to at the moment.

I’ve had a few trips to hospital, a couple for out-patient appointments and three or four times via Accident and Emergency as a result of accidents, but never been admitted.

I have to say my experience with Covid wasn’t pleasant and I can very easily understand why it has taken so many lives. What I don’t understand is why many governments think it’s over. I certainly don’t want to catch it again, and as that is a possibility I will be continuing to take precautions and where a mask when in crowded places or indoors with others. Whilst this maybe didn’t protect me, I’m pretty sure I was asymptomatic for a couple of days before I realised I was infected so wearing a mask will help protect others if this happens to me again. The new bivalent vaccines sound promising, so there’s hope that we can truly make this endemic and not pretend we have as we are currently doing.

Overall I think I’ve been lucky with my health to date and try not to take it for granted, I’ve had no serious illness and although I still have the asthma, nothing that would be classed as chronic. All in all for 50 years I think I’ve done pretty well, and hope the next 50 go as smoothly.

Thanks for reading.

29 of 50

I’ve had a good dose of Covid this last week, so apologies if this post is a little more incoherent than usual.

For the first time in over 15 years I’m starting to get all of my books on shelves rather than in boxes in the attic.

But this story doesn’t begin here, it starts back about 35 or more years ago. Some of the first modern adult novels (no not those sort!) I read were by authors Alistair Maclean and Dick Francis – crime and thriller writers, I’d already been reading a lot of Arthur Conan Doyle, mostly Sherlock Holmes and these three authors became my “go to” writers when I wanted something new to read. Maclean and Francis were both still alive at this point, so new books were coming about once a year from both.

I started to collect books by these authors and in particular with Maclean and Francis look for First Editions and start a proper collection.

As you’ll be able to see from the photograph I also added Stephen King to the shelves too. However he got a bit weird at one point and I stopped collecting him for a while.

None of them are worth particularly much, but I am pleased to own some of my favourites as First Editions. At the time secondhand bookshops got to learn that I was collecting and would hold copies for me. Ringing to see if I had a particular title or that perhaps the one that they had was in better condition that the one that I had and perhaps I might like to ‘trade-up’.

I enjoyed reading these books, and many I’ve not read for a long time and would probably enjoy rereading today. Indeed I have been doing that with some of the Alistair Maclean’s over the last couple of years.

The last time we moved house many of these went into storage in boxes in our loft. The plan was for them to be there temporarily but ultimately it ended up being a lot longer. Now we’re on the move again and I am determined that they will have shelf space in our new home and not be consigned to the loft as before.

I might even start to fill in some of the gaps, although I doubt it. These are a pleasure to me, and I enjoy reading them, but I have no one to leave them to, so there doesn’t seem much point in spending the money on ‘new’ First Editions. At least not at the moment anyways, other priorities like heating and eating seem like they should rightly take precedence. I am pleased that they will have shelf space though and that I’ll be able to look at them, and perhaps share them as a Zoom or Teams background when I’m on a call.

I’m also pleased to be able to have the space to commit to my Tsundoku and not feel guilty about it or keep tripping over them.

Thanks for reading.

28 of 50

By the time you read this hopefully things will be getting cooler here in the UK. This summer has been hot and dry. Records have been set, weather warnings have been issued and comparisons made to previous hot summers. In particular 1976.

I remember that Summer, I remember it being dry, very dry, rather than the heat although one obviously is related to the other. Comparing 1976 and 2022, the heat was earlier in ‘76 coming in June and July rather that the July and August of ‘22 and the more recent heatwave where records were set and in some cases temperature topped 40°C1. At the moment the current spell of hot weather is more comparable to 1976.

The thing I remember the most is a lot of public places – forests, woodland and heathland – were closed due to the risk of fire. The biggest risk of wildfire was often perceived to be the sun shining and being magnified by discarded glass – bottles were all glass, no plastic back then – rather than now where it’s likely to be someone’s disposable bbq. There were public adverts about it, and most were accepting of the situation. I’m not sure that trying to do the same in 2022 would be received in the same manner it seems more likely that the outraged self-entitlement would prevail. If as predicted a drought order is introduced it will be interesting to see the public reaction. Generally things like hosepipe bans are accepted but what if there are more significant interventions. I guess we’ll have to see, but it does feel like it might prompt some considerable grumbling.

Water was at a premium in ‘76, not unlike it is now, but the population was that much smaller. I remember having a small paddling pool that I’d play in, partly I suspect to cool down and when the pool was emptied it was used to water the garden with. (I can remember my Mum filling it with buckets of water from our waterbutts – we didn’t have an outside tap, and remember hosepipe ban).

I also remember being outside a lot unlike this year. In 2022 when the weather has reached its zenith I have mostly been hiding indoors or in the shade. Fans are the order of the day, blowing hot air around, there was no paddling pool.

Is the comparison between the two years valid? For a one off weather event yes, but 2022 is likely to become closer to the norm for summers in the future. Recent years have seen hot summers and the trend is more towards being hot rather than not. Climate change is driving this, climate is of course not weather. Variability in one off events is weather. 1976 was an unusual weather event, 2022 is also an unusual event but marks a continuing trend in hotter and drier summers. Depending on what the autumn and winter are like we might well still be in drought conditions come the summer of next year. Again this wouldn’t be a first, but it would be significant in terms of how next summer may play out. 2022 is definitely worse than 1976.

In 2068, assuming that global collapse doesn’t happen in the meantime, I don’t think that we’ll be looking back at 2022 comparing the weather in the same way. 40°C might well be a mild summer by then, if we don’t get on top of climate change beforehand. Even if we do temperatures will still have risen to a new summer norm and that is certain to be hotter than now. I doubt I’ll be around to see it though.

It’s nice to enjoy the hot weather, but remember to be careful out there.

Thanks for reading.

27 of 50

When I was a kid there was nothing on television before lunchtime. I don’t mean there wasn’t anything worth watching but there was literally nothing on, no programmes, nothing. Maybe a testcard so you could check that your tv was properly tuned but that was about it. There were only three channels, and the only thing that you might find on in the mornings where programmes for schools or Open University lectures.

News was delivered via the Radio until lunchtime and obviously there was no internet so if you wanted to read any news you bought a paper.

As I got older we got more channels on the telly box, and then early satellite TV. News on the early satellite services was essentially the same news bulletin repeated endlessly until something new happened, normally around half-an-hours worth.

Skip forward to today and we have 24/7 news and in my opinion it’s the worse for it. Supplying a constant stream of news means that there isn’t time to properly prepare a story. If the government puts out a press release it is often repeated verbatim with very little checking of the facts until perhaps later in the day. This means that gaslighting, spreading false stories or just downright lying and getting this out to a wide audience is much easier.

When news was restricted to an evening bulletin and perhaps one later on at night, journalists had time to properly research and write their stories, they weren’t beholden to what they were told by one party, they could actually report on the facts. The same for newspaper stories. There wasn’t the rush to get the story up on the internet before the competition, there was time to write the article for the morning edition. Of course they would still want to get the scoop on their colleagues on other papers, but at least what you read was more likely to be true – at least in the serious papers, stories about well known entertainers eating pet rodents notwithstanding, and papers weren’t owned by proprietors who had ulterior motives in their editorial oversight.

After the internet of course came social media, Twitter and Facebook in particular and the option to go ‘viral’ with your news. It wasn’t always like that of course, when Twitter was new it was quite a nice healthy place to be. There were no smartphones, so tweeting on the go was done by SMS. Granted the functionality was simpler but there were less trolls or people happy to leap to the wrong conclusion and start calling you all sorts of things just because they disagreed.

So what’s next? Who knows, neural news interface perhaps, have the latest news beamed directly into your brain?

In the meantime, I spend less and less time reading the news these days, mostly because I’m not sure that I can trust it and because frankly it’s pretty depressing most of the time. The urge to report on the most shocking seems to override the option to tell a ‘good’ news story. The same with social media.

I admire journalists, it’s not an easy gig and can be one that can cost you your life for reporting on the ‘wrong’ story, or reporting from somewhere inhospitable. There are still plenty of good journalists out there and still some sources that are relatively unbiased, but it is a dwindling pool. We’ve had opportunities for reform in this country but it has never really been very successful, so for now at least choose your news with care.

Thanks for reading.

26 of 50

I had a different post planned for today, I’d even written it but something else came into my head and I just had to write about that instead.

As you may or may not know Bernard Cribbins died this week, he was 93, and one of my childhood heroes. I remember him best from Jackanory, and as the voice of The Wombles.

If you’ve read some of my earlier posts you might also recall that one of his songs is on my Middle Age, Middle of the Road playlist.

I had a few childhood heroes. The ones that stuck, Bernard Cribbins, Kenneth Williams, John Noakes, Tony Hart; are all in one way shape or form children’s TV personalities from the 1970’s / 1980’s. All have passed on, some more recently that others.

The thing is as you reach middle age and beyond in my case, you find those people that you used to look up to and admire, pass away. Some, sadly turn out not to be as wholesome as you thought they were. Ultimately though they all slip from your life. It’s inevitable, as you age so do they and of course they were older than you to start with.

When I look around now, I struggle to pick similar heroes in the same way. I guess maybe you don’t need them when you’re older or perhaps those ones from your childhood are so ingrained in your psyche that you just don’t allow the space for anyone new? Maybe you’re better with the nostalgia and the memories rather than looking for replacements? There are many entertainers I admire but none that perhaps I would go out of my way to watch in the same way as I did my heroes of old. When Bernard Cribbins returned to Doctor Who, it made me want to watch it again.

Anyway I think they’re all gone now.

Thanks for reading.