Monday, 30 November 2020

Arthur and Saoirse are over for the weekend

Saoirse in the buggy singing
Jingle Bells

This time last year, Margaret’s biggest worry about Christmas was whether to get a turkey or a goose. This year, we weren’t sure there would be a Christmas.

With typical incompetence, this shower of a government had promised Covid-19 would all be over by Christmas. Well they were wrong! Perhaps if they’d had proper tracking measures in place, decent testing and some kind of sensible policy, it could have been under control, but they didn’t and it isn’t.

Science advisors had suggested a two-week lockdown in September as infection rates climbed with schools and universities back, but they said that wasn’t necessary. By the time they realised they were wrong, we needed a four-week lockdown, which comes to an end this week, but it doesn’t seem to have done a lot of good. Peterborough went into lockdown in tier 1 (the least severe) and we’re coming out of lockdown in tier 2 (worse than when we went in!). I have no idea how the hell that is possible.

This morning, the main news is a survey which says rates are dropping fast and the R-rate (re-infection rate) is down to 0.8, so someone has got their figures wrong or the decimal point in the wrong place.

What we do know is that we’re still under strict restrictions about who can come into the house (no-one basically), but schools are open, you can go to the pub as long as you are having a meal and all shops are open. Oh! You can also go to the gym and there can be up to 2,000 people at a football match.

Restrictions are being lifted over Christmas across the UK, so up to three households can meet together for Christmas. We have all been invited to Sam’s and it now seems clear that we’ll be able to go. Max and Inna were invited too, but their baby will be born any day now and they have decided (quite sensibly) that they’ll have a quiet Christmas at home.

I did go for a walk with Max last week, but it was the first time I’d seen him for a while. We had a cold (perhaps Covid) and then he had to self-isolate because he’s had contact with someone who later tested positive. Anyway, we had a nice walk around Watermead, near Syston, and then a picnic in the rain in the car, breaking another lockdown rule.

There are so many rules that I can’t keep up so, like many people, I’m just doing what seems sensible.

This weekend, we had Arthur and Saoirse staying with us. Apparently, we’re allowed to be designated as a carer and as long as we don’t mix with Sam or Lucy, we can look after the kids. It’s another rule that doesn’t make any sense, but hey-ho! It was nice to see them and I’ve enjoyed spending some time together with Arthur doing a few things. There has been a marked change in him since he started school (he’s grown up a lot). I think it’s been very good for him.

He has a reading book and is doing pretty well with learning his letters. He’s also very keen to learn, so that’s really good news. We did some sawing wood and nailing bits together and also watched Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, which he really enjoyed. On the way back to Soham last night, we had a very philosophical conversation about numbers.

Arthur is an angel in the school
nativity play. His costume is
one of my old shirts adapted
by Auntie. He also has a halo
but no wings (wings are
too distruptive).

He’d been counting cars (I’d heard random numbers being mouthed in the back) and, at March, he declared he’d reached 100. Were there enough numbers to count all the cars in the country? I said there were. Well, Arthur wasn’t sure about that. He’d had a conversation with his mum about the number of stars and she’d told him there weren’t enough numbers to count all the stars.

I said there were certainly a lot of stars, but we did have a number (or at least an estimate for how many there were). He said: how many? I said I couldn’t recall, but I’m sure there was a number available (I can’t drive and Google at the same time). He wasn’t happy with that answer. I then introduced the concept of infinity (which is when numbers run out) and he was very interested in that especially when we talked about infinity +1, but then it’s not infinity, is it? He fell asleep at Witcham Toll contemplating infinity, which is when Saoirse, who I thought was fast asleep because she was so quiet, chipped in with a number of profound statements, which I couldn't hear very well. She wasn’t too bothered about a proper answer, fortunately, and was happy to make her proclamations without hearing a sensible response.

The funniest thing Arthur does is mix up his personal and possessive pronouns. Instead of saying "she always does that" he says "her always does that". It's very cute. I don't think it's right to correct him, but I will say "she does, doesn't she" to which he answers "her does".

Saoirse is now at nursery three days a week and that’s also, clearly, been good for her. She copies Arthur reading and will sit with a book, pointing at letters and making random sounds. She’s also got a desire to learn.

She has new words and phrases, too. She says “OK” quite often. I was reading them a bedtime story and she got out of bed to stand on the landing. Margaret, who was in her bed waiting to put them down when I’d finished the stories, told her to get back into bed. “OK”, said Saoirse, still standing there. She also says “please” and “thank you” and the other thing she says is “help me, please”. Her great joy remains to jump – she’s more than happy to stand and jump, but if she can find something to jump off, she’s especially happy.

Maybe they have been learning Jingle Bells at nursery, because she’s singing extracts from it “jingle, way, bells, jingle” to herself. Margaret took her for a walk in the purple buggy on Saturday (that generally gets her off to sleep) but they walked all around the village for about an hour and a half with Saoirse singing her cover version of “jingle, way, bells”.

Thursday, 26 November 2020

My dad would have been 100 today

On this day, one hundred years ago, on November 26th, 1920, Eric Rayner, my dad, was born. If he were still alive, he would be 100 years old today.

He was the first child of Thomas Leonard Rayner and Ada Mitchell. When he was born, Thomas was 30 and Ada was 24, they had been married for nine months and two weeks. Perhaps my father was a honeymoon baby, although I don’t think they could afford a honeymoon.

Thomas had avoided the First World War by failing a medical when he went to enlist in Kitchener’s army. He was turned down due to hypertension and was pretty dismayed by the diagnosis. I think he expected to drop dead at any time. As it happened, he lived to be 85 and, had he passed the medical, he may well have been killed in the trenches.

He was a boilermaker by trade and during the First World War, he worked at Cammell Laird shipbuilders in Birkenhead. My grandmother lived in Liverpool in Doon Street, Kirkdale. The story is that they met on the Mersey ferry (no tunnel in those days). She was being bothered by a couple of ruffians and Thomas stepped in and shifted them. My grandfather was only a shade above five feet and a very mild-mannered man, but I’ve no idea how big (or how rough) the ruffians were. I’ve no reason to doubt the story because my grandmother told it to me. My grandmother was as hard as nails and I was always surprised she hadn’t been able to sort them out herself.

The completed family in the garden at Robert Street. Pam is
the baby and that will be Vi standing behind Ada.



The First World War would have been a boom time for Cammell Laird, but work soon dried up after the armistice and I believe Thomas came back to Cheshire with his pregnant wife in the hope of finding work and they rented a cottage on School Lane in Hartford, Northwich.

They must have been quite worried about their future, but Thomas managed to get work at Brunner Mond, later ICI. My dad was born at 341 Manchester Road, Lostock, a house built by his grandfather and he was named Eric, possibly after my grandmother’s grandfather who was called Henrick Lemmer, and had come to Liverpool from Germany. Later, the family was able to move into an ICI rented house at 9 Robert Street, Castle on the other side of Northwich to Lostock, but perhaps only two or three miles away.

I reckon they thought they had landed on their feet. They had a nice house and a secure job. ICI offered a pension and the housing would have been subsidised, also very modern for its time.

I remember the house very well. Thomas and Ada still lived there when I was a boy and my mother and I would visit regularly. As you walked through the back door, there was a toilet and a coalhouse, there was a kitchen with storage, a pantry, gas cooker and sink. The bathroom was alongside the kitchen. The living room had an open coal fire and a cast iron range, with an oven alongside the open fire. It always amazed me how grandma could wedge the kettle on top of the coals and iron grate. It always stood by the grate or half on, so the water was almost boiling for a cup of tea. There was a short garden which backed onto the embankment carrying the Chester to Manchester railway across the Weaver valley, first on an embankment and then a series of sandstone arches.

For a child, the surrounding area would have offered a playground and dangers. Just below them were the locks on the river and a wide flood plain. Across the valley was Sir John Dean’s Grammar School (where I went many years later). The west bank of the River Weaver was rolling farmland grazed by cattle and cut by a couple of deep gulleys and a flood plain along the canalised river. There was a small boatyard (Pimlott’s, I think) but it was mainly a rural landscape. My dad’s memories were of playing with a gang of other children, making camps on Twig Island (wherever that was) and, when they had some cash, buying nettle beer from an old lady who lived in one of the houses at the edge of the estate.

He also spent a lot of time in Lostock, where he had a grandmother, great aunt and great uncles, aunts, uncles and cousins in 339 and 341 Manchester Road. Those houses had long gardens (over 150 metres) leading down to Wincham Brook, where there was fishing, also greenhouses and livestock (chickens, geese and a pig). The two gardens were like a little farm. At 339, there was an orchid house and maybe 15 damson trees, plus apples and pears.

Tom and Ada had started a family pretty quickly, but it was another seven years before a second child came along, a girl who was named Joan. When Eric was 12, another sister, Pamela, was born and that completed his family.

Eric went to Castle Boys School. I was told he was smart and had won a place at grammar school, but his parents could not afford to send him. He was musical, playing the violin, also the clarinet and saxophone.

In his teens, he suffered a serious road accident which they feared may have killed him. He was cycling back to Castle after visiting Lostock. It was foggy and when he came to the crossroads at Northwich Station, he was cycling across when a bus went through a red light and hit him. He was carried, unconscious and bleeding, into the Lion and Railway Hotel where an ambulance was called to take him to Northwich infirmary. He recovered, of course, but his jaw had been smashed and he wore false teeth for the rest of his life. My grandma told me the bus company had paid compensation, but it had all gone to replace the carpet in the Lion & Railway, which had been ruined by the blood. I have no idea whether that is true!

Eric (front left) with the Bert Jarvis band


Eric got a job first at the terracotta works off Leicester Street. He said it was hard work and hot. At lunchtimes, the men would sink five pints of beer. My dad said they needed it to replace all the fluids they sweated out during the morning. Oddly, some folk I worked with used to polish off a similar quantity, but they weren’t sweating in a terracotta works. Later, he became an apprentice plumber with Fred Whitehead, a Northwich builder. I think he liked the work and liked his employer. He always spoke fondly of his time there. He talked of having to push a handcart full of tools and materials up Castle Hill, a steep road up from the river. In his leisure time, he played in a dance band – clarinet and violin. It was called the Bert Jarvis dance band.

My dad was a sociable animal. He loved gossip, loved stories and he enjoyed music. I’m guessing as a plumber with workmates, going into different houses and playing in the band at the weekends, his life would have been pretty good.

Then along came the Second World War.

He and a friend from Whitehead’s immediately went to enlist in the RAF. It must have seemed like the glamorous option. Eric’s friend was a painter and they took him, but told my dad there was no call for plumbers … sorry. He joined the Local Defence Volunteers, the Home Guard, and they exercised with broom handles because they had no rifles. By the time we were a year into the war, they had rifles and, after the fall of France, they were on invasion alert. They manned a sandbagged redoubt overnight at the junction of Moss Road and Castle Street. They had a Boys anti-tank rifle which was pointed up Chester Road (because that’s the way they expected the Germans to come) and my dad said they were very confident that they’d stop anything.

The Boys rifle fired a large steel bullet which could pierce 22mm of steel plate. It had a long barrel (36in) and had a magazine with five bullets and a bolt-action firing mechanism. Its kick was fearsome and I guess it was a pretty effective weapon against lightly armoured vehicles.

Eric was called up when he hit 21. It’s one of the things on my list to properly research his wartime experiences. I know that he spent some time in Northern Ireland and that, at some stage, he volunteered to be a glider pilot. “Why the hell did you do that?” I asked him. He said because everyone volunteered. Luckily, he wasn’t selected.

Military service and warfare was the reason most men travelled anywhere. Until then, Eric would have gone as far as his bike or a bus would take him. He had family in Manchester and Liverpool, but foreign travel was unheard of and, anyway, foreigners were not to be trusted. So Northern Ireland must have seemed quite exotic to my dad. To him, the fight for Irish independence would be seen through the imperialist lenses he was offered. Like many of his generation, he considered the Irish to be troublemakers.

He was infantry (not a good place to be) but at 5ft 3in at least he’d find it easier to keep his head down. Normandy was his first taste of action. He was in the Northumberland Fusiliers and I believe he landed on Gold Beach (Arromanches) on D+3 (June 9, 1944). I know that he drove a bren gun carrier and was armed with mortar and Vickers machine gun. At some stage, he was transferred (I may be wrong) to the 2nd Battalion, Middlesex Regiment. He fought in the bitter battle for Normandy and then through a freezing winter in Belgium, was pulled in to reinforce during the Ardennes battle and then crossed the Rhine in a Buffalo. He ended the war in Hamburg, a city in ruins. He was shocked by the devastation and staggered to see a Woolworth’s sign still intact on the front of a ruined store. After VE Day, he was sent to Palestine as a peacekeeper and added Jews and Arabs to the list of foreigners not to be trusted. I’d call him a xenophobe these days, but the only foreigners he’d ever met were trying to kill him, so I guess we need to cut him some slack. He did get leave in Cairo and got to see the Pyramids.

After the war and Palestine, he returned to Cheshire and never set foot abroad again. I would have liked to have taken him to France one summer, I should have made the time to do so.

Eric returned to his job with Whitehead’s and to his weekend band. It was on a plumbing job that he met his wife, my mother, Nellie Little. She had been in the WRNS during the war and had managed to get work as a cook at Dutton hospital, an old TB isolation hospital, after being demobbed. My dad was called to do some work and I guess he made straight for the kitchen and a cup of tea. They were married at Adwick le Street, just north of Doncaster (the village where my mother had lived before going to the orphanage) on April 16, 1948 and honeymooned in Scarborough. Eric was 27 years old.

They rented a house on Manchester Road and, on November 7 1949, his daughter and first child Margaret was born. Around this time, Eric decided to go it alone. He left Whitehead’s and started out as a self-employed plumber. It must have been a bit of a gamble, but my dad was a good networker and was able to get enough work. There was something of a building boom going on with council houses being built in Weaverham, Lostock Gralam, Leftwich and Rudheath.

I was born on July 18, 1953, named Eric Thomas after my father and grandfather, and the same year, they had moved from rented housing to 339 Manchester Road, the former home of his great uncle Tom Rayner. I was born in the back bedroom of the house, that was where I took my first breath.

As I grew up, my memories were of breakfast at the kitchen table, making toast through the grille of the Rayburn range, family Sunday lunches and my dad’s overalls hanging behind the door. They always smelled of putty.

I know now that my parents’ marriage wasn’t perfect. My dad had a string of girlfriends and my mother certainly knew of at least one widow that he kept comforted. He played in his band (called the Meltones) on Saturday nights and, on Sundays, had a regular gig at Lostock Club playing with a pianist and drummer for dancing and backing to club singers.

He had a number of cars, which would have been essential for his work. There was a Hillman convertible, which I can remember only for it boiling over between Macclesfield and Buxton when we were going to visit his cousin (my Aunt Eileen). There was also an Austin pick-up, a Morris 1000 van (with the floor falling out), a Ford Anglia van (36 TU) which was bought new, a Ford Anglia Estate, a Minivan and a Morris 1100 estate. They were all, always filled with tools and bits of pipe.

We had a telephone early (a line shared with another house a little way down the road). The number was Northwich 3352 and I often had to answer the phone and take messages. Where was he? He’d promised to come that day but hadn’t turned up – that was a typical inquiry. There were always burst pipes, especially in winter.

In 1963, a particularly hard winter, almost all the pipes in all the houses of the street were frozen. When they thawed, he was rushed off his feet fixing bursts. Another winter, when I was about 14, there was a heavy snowfall and a quick thaw which brought down almost all the cast iron spouts in the road. I was able to help replacing them with grey plastic ones.

That was one occasion where I was quite useful, but other times when I went out on jobs with him, I was less helpful. There was the time I was tasked with sawing through floorboards to lay some pipes and I sawed through the floorboards and the plaster lathes of the ceiling. That was embarrassing! Another time, I was given the job of digging a trench on Bates’ Caravan Park at Goostrey to lay mains sewage to a static caravan. I was digging alongside a hedge and thought I’d come to a thick root. I gave it a couple of good chops, only to create a geyser of water. I’d cut through the mains water pipe to one side of the site. I was like a Texan oil driller (only it was water, not oil). It was a quick job the join the two bits of pipe, but we had to turn off the water for the whole site and everyone was moaning.

Eric’s wife, my mother, died on February 6, 1965 from breast cancer. She’d had a mastectomy a couple of years before and, like the child I was, I’d thought “that’s it, sorted.” I hadn’t known she was going to die until a couple of weeks beforehand. It was so devastating for me that I didn’t really observe my dad and its effect on him.

The usual people were helping out. The great aunts next door, the same aunts that had looked after my dad as a child, were still helping out, sisters, mother, his brother-in-law Dick, many friends … They rallied around at the time and they did so for years afterwards. His sisters Joan and Pam did washing and cleaning, his mother came with Joan while she was still fit enough. My sister and I also had jobs (I was firelighter and keeper).

Our reduced family - me, my dad and
sister at the wedding of dad's
cousin Rae at Lostock Gralam.
Dad carried on with his work, of course, he had to; also continued to play in his band (now called The Chordials). What was a shock to me was the number of women who started showing up. Some of them were around pretty quickly, others nosed in more carefully. There were awkward moments when they encountered another. I remember being told not to say anything about Auntie Rita to Auntie Sybil. I did not consider these women to be my aunts. I was sometimes angry at the time but, later, I was sorry for them. They all wanted to be married, but my dad was not really the marrying kind, even when one of them (Sybil Haskins) had a child, Stephen, my half-brother, in September 1969 when Eric was 48.

Rita Lamb, who came for baths a couple of times a week, was willing to cook as well as bathe and clearly saw me as a door to gain access. She asked what my favourite dinner was. I’d always enjoyed liver when my mum cooked it, but Rita Lamb’s liver was nothing like my mum’s. She shocked me by saying I’d have to move my bedroom when she and my dad were married because they’d have that room. I asked my dad if he was getting married. He said he wasn’t (I don’t think it has crossed his mind) and I didn’t see Rita in the house after that … perhaps she’d been told marriage was out of the question. A few years later, she married Harry Hulse, another widower, who lived next-door-but-one to us and I often stopped for a chat with her.

We saw a lot of Sybil and there were a couple of Margarets and an Audrey as well. These were the ones we knew about and there were others. It came to a head at his funeral when Sybil and the two Margarets were all in the same room. There were no fireworks, just smouldering resentment. Margaret Ditchburn was quite cross with me a few days later. She wanted to know why I hadn’t told her about the others and I said it wasn’t my job to sort out my dad’s complicated love life. For all I knew, they were aware of the others and happy with the shared arrangement. She clearly wasn’t and wasn’t, but I gave her a heavy chest of drawers and some crystal door knobs that were in the wash-house and she went away never to be seen again.

Sybil and Stephen were more trouble. They wanted to be involved in sorting things out, but didn’t want to be cleaning and clearing – that fell largely to Margaret (my wife). Eric’s will, witnessed by Rita Lamb a few days before he died, provided enough cash to pay Sybil’s mortgage so her house was hers and the rest was divided between my sister and I. Sybil and Stephen started a legal challenge to the will, thinking he should have a third share. I could see my dad’s thinking. He thought that Stephen would have to wait until Sybil died when her house would be his. As executor, I said it was my job to carry out the clear instructions in the will and I stood firm. I insisted the legal challenge be heard in Peterborough to make it harder for them to travel from Macclesfield and they didn’t bother to show up. Their case was weak, but it was a nuisance and did allow me to draw a line under Sybil and Stephen. I’ve not seen or heard of them since.

Before my mother died, dad didn’t come on holiday with us. There were a couple of holidays at Middleton Towers, but I was too young to remember much about them. It was mam who took us on holiday (to relatives in Yorkshire, or to Blackpool or to the Isle of Man) and it was her who took us on days out – Manchester, Chester, Liverpool, Sunday School trips to Rhyl, Llandudno or Southport. After she died, I did have holidays in London (with dad, Aunt Joan and Uncle Don) and also Blackpool (with Sybil). We had always been told dad was too busy to come …

Three generations of Rayners - me, my dad and my children
- Sam, Max and Tom - at 339 Manchester Road.


When I started work, when I married and started a business, when we had children, dad was clearly proud and very interested. He was massively supportive in helping with things like some cash for a car, buying me a typewriter. I was pleased that he could come down to Peterborough to spend a couple of holidays with us and I was pleased that he could come to see our offices in London when I was managing director of Central Press Features.

Eric died of a heart attack on April 15, 1992. He was 71. He died in his bed, hopefully without too much pain and discomfort. When my Aunt Joan didn’t see him that day and got no response from the phone, they called the police. They broke in through the back door and found him in bed. I had a call that day in London and my sister and I headed up that evening. I was out on a sales call and got a message to call Margaret urgently. I feared something had happened to one of my children and my first thought upon hearing that dad was dead was one of relief – it’s strange how life can play tricks on you like that.

I still miss my dad and I wish he was around today to wish happy birthday and see how things worked out. People do live to be 100 don’t they?

Eric at around two or three years old

With his first grandchild, Becky

At 339 Manchester Road probably around
1974 - my sister Margaret, wife Margaret
and my dad.


Tuesday, 17 November 2020

One crisis after another, but we do have edible celeriac!

At least we have celeriac!
Lockdown 2.0 is in its second week, the Prime Minister of this rotten government is having to self-isolate, his chief advisor and his press secretary have been fired, there is still no post-Brexit deal with the EU but, on the bright side, I have grown a very good celeriac.

Covid-19 continues to dominate the news and we’ve now passed the milestone of 50,000 deaths due to the pandemic. That’s the highest in Europe. Boris Johnson is in self-isolation having had a meeting in Downing Street with a Conservative MP who later tested positive. He was told via his NHS app on his phone, which tracks who you have been in close contact with and notifies you to isolate if any of your contacts tests positive for Covid. Max has to do the same when someone at the AA meeting he chairs tested positive. The good news on Covid is that there are two vaccines which have shown to be very effective in testing. We’re now waiting for them to be approved and for a vaccination programme to be rolled out. It will be given to health workers and care home residents first, then to different tiers (oldest first). They may run out before they get to the 60-70 group because they only have limited supplies of the first vaccine.

Meanwhile, we are wondering whether we’ll be able to see anyone at Christmas. Lockdown should end on December 2, but the numbers are still showing 30,000 new cases a day and a death rate of 400.

There’s been a huge bust-up in the Prime Minister’s advisory team resulting in the firing of Dominic Cummings, his chief advisor; and Lee Cain, his head of communications. Both are prominent Brexiteers and played leading roles in the dishonest, dirty Vote Leave campaign. I’m glad to see them go, but I won’t be happy until the whole, useless government is voted out.

Negotiations to try to secure a trade deal with the EU continue, with a deadline looming this week. No deal will be disastrous for the UK economy. I guess we’ll see who is bluffing by the end of the week.

So, the good news is that I have grown a very tasty, fairly large celeriac at the allotment. I grew about 20 plants from seed and bought a dozen more as seedlings from the garden centre. Both seem to have thrived. Margaret baked the first one whole in the oven and we sliced it into four and ate it like a jacked potato (skin and all). It was quite tasty and I used the left-overs up in a fry-up for dinner last night. With our low-carb diet looking long-term, I’ll grow more next year – perhaps two packets, so I can share with Sam.


Tom is back in Ecuador. I ran him to Heathrow last Tuesday and he was able to attend his citizenship ceremony (left). We were in the middle of this process last year, so it was good to see it concluded. He’ll now be able to get an Ecuadorean passport and will have the right to live and work in the country.

I’m seeing Max for a walk later this week. He says that Inna had her latest pre-natal appointment and was told the baby (Ling) is in position, bigger than expected for her age and could come any time. Due date was early December, so we’re not far away.

Sunday, 1 November 2020

We're heading for a new lockdown

 

Covid-19 is still with us and it seems to be winning its battle to infect the whole country. As I write, we are about to go into a second full lockdown (on November 5) in four days’ time.

Back in March, we locked down too late and made a complete mess of handling the pandemic, which cost many more lives. Then, the government was desperate to get back to normal – people were told to go to work, go on holiday and were even paid to dine out (the ill-fated Eat-out to Help-out) government scheme which cost £60 million.

Well, it turns out this extra social interaction was keeping the virus simmering nicely, holidaymakers from Spain brought a mutated version back home with them and when schools and universities went back in September, it spread like wildfire.

We now have 20,000 new positive tests per day and 300 deaths per day, and if we don’t get the numbers down, our hospitals will be overwhelmed by the end of the month.

The government plan was to control local outbreaks, through its Test, Trace and Isolate system but this has been a complete disaster, with the privatised service failing to trace a huge number of contacts. No-one has any confidence in it. Basically, it’s a waste of £12 billion (unless you’re a shareholder in Serco, the firm contracted to run it).

Next, the government tried regional lockdowns, with tougher sanctions on areas with higher infections (basically the north of England). The scientific advisors said it wouldn’t work and wanted a two-week lockdown to halt the rise in infections. What did the government do? It continued with a tiered system of regional lockdowns (we’ve been in tier 1, the lowest) and it supressed the scientific advice. Of course, the report was leaked, so we’ve known for some weeks what was needed and the opposition has been calling for a lockdown.

Now it’s happened (late again) and now it has to be for four weeks, not two. Who knows if that will be enough?

Frankly, our handling of this emergency has been a shambles and, on top of all this, it now seems there’s a good chance of us leaving the EU without a trade deal with our major trading partner.

Can it get any worse?

Poor old Tom had stayed behind in England when Lucy and the children flew back to Ecuador. He had been building up his work quite steadily and was getting a decent income stream building up. That now looks as if it’s wrecked. Will he be able to work in lockdown? Will anyone want to set up stories? I’m not sure what he’ll do but, probably, he’ll head for Ecuador and try again in the new year. It’s very frustrating.