29th January 2021

Back again after a recovery blip. It seems that that is the way of the virus that just as you think you are doing really well it pops up again, this time just for an afternoon and evening, but it is draining. My recovery method is lying on the couch with tea and Motown music, plus some basic TV. Somehow the brain doesn’t seem up to anything more intellectual. So sort of missed Holocaust Memorial Day which is probably one of the most important days of the civic year. Worthy events like this often fail to grab the nation as a whole but it is important they are there both to remember the holocaust in the 1940s that most of link with it but also those that are happening now as in northwest China with the Uigurs, and I think probably the Rohingas in Burma/Myanmar qualify too. Certainly the Coronavirus that is rife in the refugee camps in Bangladesh are just making it worse for them. I find our policy towards China on ethical matters strange. We are apparently going to disobey the Chinese government and let up to 300,000 Hong Kong Chinese into the country, which I think is a good thing, but not challenge the Chinese so strongly on genocide. I accept we have a link with Hong Kong but there seems to be a lack of logic here. Meanwhile in the far less serious issue of daily life here, the doorbell went on Tuesday evening at about 8.30 and I went ready to do battle with one of our inebriated brethren, but it was a priest who needed a lift to Windermere. Now out of isolation off we went in the fog peering into mirky dark. After finding the place in Windermere back I came only to have gremlins in the steering (failure of the power-steering it turns out), fortunately just as I was getting back to the house. Apparently a result of the cold and a low battery after standing outside used for over two weeks. One of the few times when I wished it had been one of our regular customers after all.