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.

Learning to live with Covid-19

The number of people who have died from the coronavirus Covid-19 is now 44,000. Those are the official figures, but any figures from this government are not to be trusted. The number of deaths above the five-year mean is running at over 60,000 and that’s certainly a better guide. The truth is that testing has been so bad that many people have died of Covid-19 without that being put on the death certificate.

The death rate has also been worryingly high. You’d have around 1 in 20 chance of death, if you catch it, although that figure is distorted by the fact that this is a disease which strikes the elderly. If you’re under 30, you’re basically fine (there’s more risk of being killed in a road accident) but the risk increases steadily the older you are, or if you have an “underlying medical condition” such as diabetes, bad heart or respiratory disease. Obesity is also a major risk-factor

More than 20,000 of the official deaths (so around half) have been in care homes. When news of the virus first emerged, we were told by government that there was nothing to worry about; when it was clear that it was coming to the UK, the government wanted to adopt a herd-immunity policy, allow it to spread through the population and then die out. It was only when scientists modelled the effects – half a million dead and the NHS in meltdown – that they acted.

A full lock-down was implemented, people were not allowed out of home, except for an hour’s exercise each day and for essential food shopping. The government, fearing hospitals would be hit by a wave of seriously ill people, ordered that everyone who could be should be discharged and all routine work was put on hold. With no testing in place, thousands of old people were discharged into care homes, some of them carrying Covid-19, hence the dreadful toll on the most vulnerable section of society.

The NHS has survived. Massive emergency hospitals bult in exhibition centres were never needed and the number of intensive-care beds was sufficient. Basically, anyone over 70 wasn’t put into intensive care and the UK developed a system of treating the disease using a mask feeding pressurised oxygen, rather than full intubation.

Supermarket shelves were emptied by panic buying – toilet rolls, hand wash, baked beans, pasta, flour and rice could not be found. The roads were empty, there were no planes visible in the sky and people avoided each other in the street. Only this week, a couple of old people (clearly very frightened) shouted at me to get away. I was 30 yards away, but they didn’t want me any nearer!

When cases were first reported in Europe (in Italy), we were due to go skiing in France, where there were very few cases, seemingly nothing to worry about and the government advice remained to wash your hands frequently and carry on as normal. We arrived at La Plagne on Saturday night at 7pm and at 9pm, we heard the resort had been closed. We decided to sit tight and see what happened. On Monday, all of France was locked down. You were not to leave your house without good reason.

We decided to cut and run. Sam and Lucy, who were holidaying with us, could not get back to Jersey and so came to Thorney. The run of an almost deserted autoroute back to Calais was quite stressful. Would we be turned back? Were we allowed to travel home? Margaret was very anxious, but it wouldn’t be logical to prevent us from getting back to England. Surely, they’d be glad to see the back of us. “Unprecedented” became a common word in almost every news report.

Sam had to get back to Jersey to finish his notice (they were in the final stages of moving back to the UK) but with the house to be sold in a few weeks, nurseries closed and a compulsory quarantine in force, it was decided it was best for Lucy, Arthur and Saoirse to stay with us. Sam booked an easyJet flight from Luton, but when we got there, no aircraft were flying. I ran him to the station and he managed to get a train to Gatwick, book and hotel and a BA flight the next day! easyJet later claimed that no flights had been cancelled and wouldn’t offer a refund, so Sam was one of many people who have been unable to get money/deposits back from holiday companies.

The house sale was stressful. Getting all the paperwork together was a problem. Lucy couldn’t be there to sign documents and the UK government ordered a full lockdown the night before she was to go to a solicitor in Peterborough to have a document notarised. Would she have to go to Jersey? Could she get to Jersey? Even if we could get the documents signed, would the Jersey courts be open to allow the sale to be finalised?

Eventually, it all worked out. We managed to find a retired JP in Thorney, who was able to sign the documents as a witness and we maintained social-distancing rules by handing them through his lounge window for signature. The courts stayed open and the sale went through.

Sam managed to get a flight out of Jersey (to Southampton) and a taxi back to Thorney and a locked-down UK.

Selling the house was done, the next challenge was buying a house in locked-down Britain. They had agreed to buy a house in Soham and had agreed a date at the end of April to complete. This was almost as stressful as selling in Jersey. Eventually, the sale was renegotiated and went through at the end of May and they were able to move in a week later in June.

Deaths in the UK have been far higher than other European countries. Our government has made a complete hash of it. We locked down two weeks too late. Despite knowing what was happening in other European countries (especially Italy and Spain), we stayed open and major events such as Cheltenham Festival, an England Six-Nations game and a Liverpool-Madrid European Cup match were all allowed to go ahead. We ignored our early warning and didn’t act until the disease was rife throughout the country.

This is what happens when you have government based on an old-boys’ network, when who you know or who has done you favours matters more than being the best person for the job.

Sometimes, life has seemed like a bad dream; although it has (in truth) affected us little. Apart from some minor irritations such as queuing to get into shops, no pubs, no cafes, no football, no bike racing, we have been perfectly happy. I don’t know if that will last. There are going to be massive job losses and the economy shrank by more than 20 per cent in March, when we were only partially locked down.

For the past two weeks, we have been staying in Joyce Jones’ second home in Norfolk (Upper Sheringham) while Tom, Lucy, Julia, Aureliano and Florencia live in our house. They’ve just finished a two-week quarantine having managed to get a flight home from Quito.

Ecuador has been hard hit by the pandemic, with airports closed, a curfew in place and strict, stay-at-home policies applied. Lucy’s dad, Carlos, has been hard at work in the hospital in Ambato and has also lost his elder sister to Covid-19. We’re used to flu epidemics and the threat of something worse, but this wasn’t on our radar at all. It isn’t unprecedented, of course, despite what the politicians say. Spanish Flu killed millions 100 years ago and we’ve suffered pandemics of the Black Death (bubonic plague) and something called ‘The Sweat’ in Tudor Times.

Will there be a vaccine developed later in the year? Will we have to establish herd immunity? Will we be able to catch Covid-19 more than once? At the moment, we don’t know the answer to any of those questions and in an age where we expect our science and knowledge to be greater than the power of nature, it’s not a comfortable position.

Grandchild No 6 is on the way

Very happy news amid the doom and gloom of Covid-19 – Max and Inna are going to be parents. The baby, we don’t know if it’s a boy or girl at this stage, is due the first week in December.

This means that, after waiting years for our first grandchild, we will have welcomed one every year for the past six years.

I have two grandsons and three granddaughters, so a third grandson would be nice to keep the numbers up, but I really don’t mind. Anyway, I’ll find out in a couple of weeks when Inna has a 20-week scan.

Many people predicted a baby boom following Covid-19 lock-down, but so far (with the exception of Max and Inna) that hasn’t materialised. I think many people are too worried about losing their jobs or their homes and figure that this is not the time to be adding to their expenses.

Inna’s job with Dunelm seems quite secure and she has been working from home during Covid-19 lock-down. Max has another year or so to finish his PhD and so he will probably look after the baby once Inna returns to work following maternity leave.

Postscript: We have now heard it's a girl - four granddaughters and two grandsons. Frankly, it doesn't matter to me what I get, they're all a joy.

20,0000 dead and counting

More than 20,000 people have now died from Covid-19 in the UK (probably another 40-50% that when home and care home deaths are taken into consideration), We only get figures from those who have died in hospital and the health service will not admit some people to hospital. What’s the point in putting and 85-year-old on a ventilator?

There’s obviously lot more deaths caused by Covid-19 – people whose cancer treatment has been delayed and important operations postponed due to lack of capacity in hospitals.

This isn’t a good time to be old or ill.

The news on radio, TV and newspapers is universally depressing, so much so that I have turned the radio off this morning and I’m playing my “Driving Music” playlist on iTunes - Hetty and the Jazzato Band are cheering me up a little.

We have been in lockdown for a month, allowed out of the house only for an hour’s exercise each day or to buy essentials (such as food). It could be a lot tougher – I’m allowed to go to the allotment to work, we have a large garden and the weather has been pretty good. However, I can’t shake off a weird feeling about everything and a low-level anxiety which is always in the background.

Lucy, Arthur and Saoirse are staying with us at present. When France went into lockdown and we had to abandon our ski holiday in mid-March, they couldn’t get a ferry back to Jersey until later in the week, so they came back to Thorney. Sam flew to Jersey later in the week and then had to self-isolate at home while seeing patients by video or telephone consultation.

We don’t really know what is happening about anything in our lives from one day to another and it’s been even worse for Sam and Lucy. They were supposed to move back to the UK in the middle of April and have had to negotiate the stress that the crisis would prevent them selling their house, buying a new one or even getting off the island.

The sale was completed to schedule, but Lucy and Sam had to sign power-of-attorney documents for it to go ahead. Sam drove to the solicitor and they watch him sign through the window of his car. Lucy had arranged to go to Greenwood’s in Peterborough to get her document notarised, but then the government closed everything down with three hours’ notice from midnight the day before.

It seemed there was no alternative but for Lucy to fly back to Jersey, sign the documents and then fly back. We arranged an early-morning flight from Gatwick and a flight back on Friday evening. We’d look after the children. Then Sam discovered that if she flew back, she’d have to stay in Jersey for two weeks. What now? It looked as if she might have to go back with the children because she wouldn’t want to leave them with us for two weeks, but then a lawyer friend of Sam’s suggested that the document could be witnessed by a range of other people – a judge, a solicitor, JP, magistrate …

I called Ken Sheraton, a judge I know who lives in the village, but he was stranded in Wales at their holiday cottage. He did suggest a JP who lived in the village, so we managed to get it signed by handing it through the top window of his front room – very strange, but very welcome. It was sent to the solicitor yesterday and the courts in Jersey remained open for business and for the sale to go through.

We then heard that Condor had ceased all passenger services on its ferries, so Sam was not be able to leave Jersey with his car, which had been the plan. He flew back to Southampton (the only route left to get between Jersey and the UK) and the NHS paid for a taxi back to Thorney.

Their house purchase in Soham has been delayed by the lockdown and some feet dragging by the vendors. It’s a tough call, they would like somewhere settled to live, but it might be better to rent for a year and see what happens to house prices. If we get a 20 per cent hit to the economy (which some are predicting is the best we can hope for) then house prices are bound to fall … probably … maybe.

Anyway, they now have a completion date for the end of May, which will be something of an achievement considering the circumstances. Sam is due to start work the following Monday, so it will be a pretty frantic few days for them.

Living with Saoirse

With Sam, Lucy, Arthur and Saoirse living with us, we have quite a busy house.

It has been nice to be able to spend time with Saoirse at such a special age. She’s 16 months old but, because she’s a second child, she’s so much more competitive and so much more advanced.

She’s been walking since she was one and is now desperate to jump, run, go up and down stairs and to climb.

She escaped surveillance at Nirvana in Jersey before our no-ski ski holiday, climbed up the stairs and fell down them; then, while she was here (thankfully not on my watch) she climbed out of her high chair and fell onto the floor. We had to take her to a locked-down casualty department at Peterborough hospital, where she had a CT scan – no bleeding on the brain, but she did have concussion, which explained the vomiting and sudden crying.

That was a few weeks ago and she’s fine now.

She would love to climb our stairs, the high-chair has been taken out of service and used as a block to prevent her getting into the glasses cupboard.

Cupboards are a big attraction, especially the snacks cupboard, the one where the biscuit barrel is and the blocked off glasses. Holly’s water bowl had to be moved outside on the first day she arrived because it was great fun to splash in it.

One of her joys is going up and down steps. There are steps from the patio up to the lawn level and from the lawn up to the decking by the summerhouse. All of these are wonderful things and she will hold your hand and pad round and round her little circuit going up one lot of steps and then down another, saying “step” every time she comes to one. I’d reached the stage where I’m happy for her to go up on her own but, a couple of days ago, she made a dash to go down the steps from the lawn to the patio and (thankfully) managed to stay on her feet. She was so happy that she did it again, and again, and again.

She has been trying to jump for some time now. She will squat down and straighten herself up, convinced that she’s jumping. I remember Julia being desperate to learn to jump and Saoirse is the same. She’s now at the stage when she straightens up quickly, she also lifts one foot off the ground. So much effort goes in, it’s really funny to watch.

Her toddle speed has increased at an alarming rate. If you take your eyes off her for a minute, she can be at the other end of the garden about to do something hazardous. Sometimes, when you shout “no” she stops; at other times, she takes no notice.

Her two favourite games (apart from the steps) are to run round and round things. It could be your chair, the patio table, the playhouse, the slide – as long as she can toddle around something and have a little chuckle every time she passes you. The other favourite is to play with stones, Often, these are dropped into the watering can or Holly’s outside water bowl; or she just likes to pick them up and throw them. She isn’t very accurate or consistent with her throws, but she often gets one just right and chuckles with satisfaction.

When she’s particularly pleased with herself, she does her “happy dance” which is hard to describe. It involves head movements, arm movements and bouncing up and down. Her other happy signal is to put her arms behind her and lean forwards.

Saoirse will copy any sound and now has enough words for a conversation. She can let you know what she wants, and you can ask her questions. Being a toddler, she’s also more than happy to have the screaming abdabs if she gets porridge and she wanted an oaty bar. She attended baby signing classes in Jersey and she has a few sign-language messages. She can do “poo” and “dog”, although she prefers to talk rather than sign. Here are some of her words:

Uff-uff – that’s a dog. Often she’ll sign that as well.

Ess – yes

No – couldn’t be clearer.

Shnack – snack (also very clear).

Jump

Shtep – step (up or down, but generally down)

Shtone – generally when she’s found a good one for throwing.

Nana

Mama

Pretty – she’s quite self-aware and loves to be admired when she has a dress on.

Boo – another way to pass a few minutes. Boo from behind the curtain or through the windows of the playhouse.

1, 2, 3 – she counts to three, generally when going up the steps of the slide.

Wha dat – can mean “what’s that?” or “want that”. It’s normally pretty obvious in context.

Up – I want picking up

Wack wack – a duck or goose (she especially likes to see the wack-wacks at the goose paddock.

She loves books and her favourites are Chuffa, Chuffa, Choo-Choo or any lift-the-flap book. Where’s Spot? is a good one and anything in the “That’s No My …” series. 

That’s a quick report on Saoirse. It will be out of date in days, she’ll have new tricks and new words. Yesterday, she watched Arthur walk backwards and that’s been added to her list of things to do.

What strange times we're living in

These are strange times. I’m sitting at my desk in my study at home writing this piece. I’m not allowed to go out of the house except for daily exercise or to buy essential food items and the whole country is in lock-down due to Covid 19 – a virus no-one had heard of a few months ago, but which has now spread to almost every country in the world and is killing thousands of people.

This is the worst global pandemic since the Spanish Flu outbreak in 1919-20. We’ve often been warned that sooner or later mankind would be faced with this type of challenge – well folks, here it is!

There have been other scares down the years. Polio spread fear into people in the 1940s and ‘50s; and, in recent years, we’ve has SARS, MERS, Swine Flu, Bird Flu and Ebola crises, although none has caused deaths on the scale of this.

Coronavirus, now renamed Covid 19, has an estimated mortality rate of around two per cent, although it’s higher in some countries and lower in others. It is most dangerous to old people or those with underlying health issues and it is having a profound effect on everyone in this country and beyond.

It started in China, in Wuhan Province (I’d never heard of Wuhan until February) when it jumped from animals – possible bats, possibly civets, kept in live animal markets in China – to humans.

Unlike other viral scares, Covid 19 has proven to be extremely virulent. It spreads like wildfire and it does so partly because infected and infectious victims don’t show symptoms at first but can still pass on the virus. It kills by attacking the lungs, causing pneumonia, although many people suffer mild flu-like symptoms and may not even realise they have it.

Our government response has, of course been woeful. The administration that sent soldiers to face roadside bombs in canvas-sided Land Rovers, hasn’t even been able to deliver face masks to hospital staff, let alone plan an effective strategy to prevent the virus spreading.

Initial advice was to wash your hands for at least 20 seconds as often as possible. The borders were open, people were told to go about their business, go on holiday – keep the economy going. The government strategy was to allow “herd immunity” to develop, which means 80 per cent of the population need to get the disease. At some point, a couple of weeks ago, someone realised this meant 500,000 deaths and the National Health Service being overwhelmed.

They changed tack and started issuing stricter advice. Much of this was contradictory, all of it was muddled, so no-one did much except start panic buying so supermarket shelves were stripped of toilet paper, tinned food and pasta. Folk have also been bulk buying bread, milk and cheese. I guess we’ll reach a point where their freezers and store cupboards are full.

The country is now in complete lock-down. Pubs, restaurants, theatres, cinemas, museums, galleries and cafes are shut; football and sports events are cancelled (including the Olympics); all shops except food stores and pharmacies and most businesses (from hairdressers to notary publics).

Max and Inna are in Syston. Max is writing up his PhD and Inna is working from home. Tom, Lucia, Julia, Aureliano and Florencia are in Ecuador. They should have come back to the UK this week, but Ecuador is in lock-down and their flights were cancelled.

Sam is in Jersey, but Lucy, Arthur and Saoirse are here with us. They are due to move to the UK in April (in three weeks) but have to sell their home in Jersey and buy one in Soham while all the country is shut for business.

I have no idea what will happen. I expect to be alive this time next year, but I am in that danger area of over-65, so I shouldn’t be complacent. In a week’s time, the NHS will run out of intensive-care beds and ventilators, so if you develop severe pneumonia, it’s curtains!

I can go out to walk the dog and to shop, but I’m not supposed to get closer than two metres to anyone. I’ve been to the allotment today (that’s allowed) and I’ll go shopping on Friday. I just hope there’s something on the shelves.

Books Read in 2019

These are the books I have read during 2019

The Wild Places by Robert Macfarlane

This was a 65^th birthday present from Max and I found it quite a hard book to read (which is why it took me almost six months). I kept reading it and putting it down for a month until I finally finished it in early January.

Macfarlane poses the question: are there any truly wild places left in the British Isles? I guess that depends upon your definition of “wild”. There are some wild places in Thorney – my allotment until I took it over and the patch of land next door hasn’t been disturbed for 15 years.

So my definition of wild is probably much less rigorous than Macfarlane’s. He sets off to visit a list of places he has identified as fitting his definition and they include remote islands, coastal strips, bogs and mountains. The usual suspects are there – Rannoch Moor gets a chapter – and I found his writing in the first part of the book a little unconvincing. There didn’t seem to be a connection, he didn’t seem comfortable or happy in the places he wanted to experience.

He did seem to visit them during periods of extreme weather and there was a piece about spending the night on the summit of Ben Hope in the middle of winter, which sounded quite reckless (unless he was exaggerating his predicament). In the latter part of the book, he seemed more at ease with the “wild” environment he was visiting, but it was a lot less wild Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex coasts, lost holloways in the south-west … These were the more interesting bits, but then he’s off again trying to find an arctic hare in Derbyshire in the middle of a November storm.

I’m going to pass the book on to Sam who has been watching and enjoying the YouTube channel of a chap in North America who goes wild camping in the woods.

The Spanish Civil War by Antony Beevor

I knew very little about the Spanish Civil War, except that when I was little Franco was still something of a bogeyman. Spain (and Portugal too) was a place you didn’t want to visit – run by a fascist dictator, backward, dominated by the Catholic Church (and don’t forget what they did in 1588). My knowledge of Spain was limited to what we read in the Daily Herald – they killed bulls for fun, they threw donkeys off church towers, you could be arrested for wearing a bikini.

Later, I read Ernest Hemmingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls and then Laurie Lee’s As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning and A Moment of War. Later still, I read a little about the Anarchist movement in Catalonia and I have been referring to events in the civil war during my Spanish lessons. Poets, composers and artists we may look at during lessons (such as Manuel de Falla) were greatly affected by the war. Falla, the greatest Spanish composer of the 20^th century, lived in exile after the war and refused to return to Spain despite being offered a generous pension by Franco. The Gipsy Kings were descendants of Basque gipsies, who were forced to flee to France after the Republicans lost the war.

Beevor’s writing is pretty much a factual, chronological narrative, and is easy to read; although the complicated pre-war politics and multitude of unfamiliar names do make you pause quite often and say: “who the heck is he and what side was he on?”

The background to the war is one of immense poverty in Spain, with industry (generally) and land (absolutely) in the ownership of a small, wealthy class. There was dissatisfaction with the monarchy, including a dispute over rightful succession, and dissatisfaction among the poorer classes with the Catholic church. A strong left-wing movement - including socialists, communists and anarchists – had arisen (especially in the Basque and Catalan industrial areas) and to complicate things further, there was a desire for Catalan independence, while the Basque country largely was a semi-independent entity.

The Spanish ‘left’ was an unhappy coalition. The communists (some way from Stalinism) were the smaller party and not happy bedfellows with the socialists, while the anarchists, by definition, were not going to fit in anywhere. They wanted collectivism, no government, no money, no army … The fear of anarchy (it’s still a loaded word) led to a campaign of fake news against the movement across Europe. Catalonia in Spain was its strongest place and when allowed to, during the civil war, anarchists did run factories and farming in a pragmatic, efficient way. The RNLI, rightly held up as a shining example by many, is (you could argue) an anarchist organisation.

The war started when the left won democratic elections in 1936. Leaders of the armed forces led a coup, which was only partly successful. The navy remained largely loyal and parts of the army also remained loyal. Franco emerged as the leader of the Nationalists and, helped by German and Italian military support, he finally won a bloody war that lasted three years.

Russia supported the Republicans, but did them no favours. Stalin basically took all the country’s gold reserves and gave them a few (no enough) weapons, but lots of communist advisors. His aim was to make the relatively small Spanish communist party the leader in government.

The role of Britain, France and the USA was shameful. The British maintained neutrality, while providing Franco with considerable support; France wished to be more helpful but deferred to British policy for fear of upsetting its ally and the USA, led by a strong Catholic pressure group (including the Kennedy dynasty) also thwarted democratic government.

Had we supported the Republicans, some argue Hitler may have thought twice about launching the Second World War. At least, we would have had an ally against Fascism had WW2 still started.

The most shocking thing about the Spanish Civil War was its brutality. Franco said he’d reunite Spain even if he had to shoot half the Spaniards (and that’s pretty much what happened). His Moroccan mercenaries were ruthless murderers, rapists and pillagers of conquered territory, while Hitler and Mussolini used the war as a testing ground for weapons and tactics that would be employed during WW2 against France and Britain.

The bombing of Guernica is well documented, but Madrid and Barcelona (and many other cities) were carpet-bombed against the Geneva convention, civilian refugees were machine gunned by aeroplanes and weapons such a napalm were developed by the Germans. The causes of Basque and Catalan separatism were ruthlessly supressed, the ‘national’’ language, Castellano, was imposed across Spain and church attendance made more or less compulsory.

It’s extraordinary that all this happened only 80 years ago – one lifetime. What a mess Europe was in so recently and what a blessing that Spain, Portugal, Italy and Germany are now democratic governments working together within the EU. What a shame that some elements, especially within the UK, have now pulled us out of this movement for peace, co-operation and unity.