How was your day? (Random off topic chat)

More garden clearing up. Trying to dig up weeds underneath my apple tree I struck some sort of hard and unyielding surface. There's a part of me desperately hoping that, living just off a Roman road as I do, I've discovered a previously unknown villa that will revolutionise our understanding of second-century Britain, but realistically I've probably discovered some previously unknown late twentieth century concrete.

There's this fantastic quote from an old interview with Prasanna Puwanarajah that I thought about this morning, while I was having my morning coffee with headphones on, trying to disguise the noise of drilling concrete that the construction workers outside my window were making:

'Claiming the right to be “you” in your own story is what everyone with a set of headphones is doing as they swagger down the street to their favourite tunes. It’s the best part of my day, for sure.'

And I realized that that was exactly what I've been missing!
So I took my headphones, wore my new Porcupine Tree T-shirt that I have not yet worn anywhere (I'm a sucker for band T-shirts, despite my age), told myself I look decent enough without make-up (ahem...) and set out on a walk. I walked to work/Aldwych, then to Covent Garden, to Tottenham Court Road, and then to Upper Street and back home. It added up to a little over 10km. I so missed that!

Just got home and am properly starving, so will go make some food. But I genuinely think that I miss walking around with headphones more than anything else during this lockdown (OK, theatre excluded, of course).  

It was actually kind of lovely: the area around Covent Garden was a bit of a ghost town, but the people I met along the way kept their distance and smiled in recognition of the fact that we were in this strange situation together. There was an oddly comforting feeling of friendliness in the air. 

Well I don't live with anyone else and aside from people I happen to see from a distance when grocery shopping or exercising I haven't seen a soul in weeks. People who live with anyone else don't have that problem, and I am just not going to do that indefinitely, it isn't sustainable for my mental health among other things.

Frankly everyone is probably vulnerable to something or other, so there has to come a point when it is treated like any other illness and people have to assess their own risk level while the world starts to get back to normal. For starters, many people (me included) have had treatment for other health conditions put on hold while this current crisis unfolds. That cannot continue.

We can only put coronavirus first for so long, life eventually has to move on. If you want to keep away from others that will then be your prerogative, but if people want to get back to relative normality then at some point in the next few months they should also be given that option.

I've been wading through the most dreadful e-learning courses, and breaking those up with a little judicious Twitter pruning (never mind actually living with people .. ). Not yet over but it will be. Good day for admin generally.

Here’s a bit of history!

http://instagram.com/p/B_AngKajZva

Lots of very grateful people heading home! Luckily for me plenty of downtime on the flights (about 30 hours total on the plane the past two days) and I managed 4 movies - Ad Astra, Detective Pikachu, Jumanji Next Level and Joker!

Had a walk up to the South Bank and back at the weekend and, even though it's sad to see the all the cultural institutions closed, it was nice to be there and kind of reassuring to know that they still exist.

One thing about longer walks though is - where do you wee now the pubs aren't open?? My current strategy is to properly dehydrate before I go out so it doesn't become a major issue!

 This has been a living nightmare for posties and delivery drivers, men and women.

A nightmare when I'm out walking in the countryside, too, as though I'm clearly used to having no access to proper facilities for hours, I know where all the toilets are and can usually plan to include one or two on a walk; at worst there are sometimes station loos on my return trip.

Now ALL the public toilets have closed, which is bizarre and counter-intuitive, given that cleansing staff have protective gear anyway and that more  people are now resorting to permitted exercise outdoors to stay healthy and because gyms and pools are shut.  But there is literally nowhere to go!  Supermarket toilets are still open but you have to queue as if to shop, so not an option unless you wish to wait up to an hour.

I find myself almost anxiety-free about the virus and increasingly anxious about the prospect of returning to abnormal - very keen for this opportunity for real change to not be lost.

Are you the guy who was abusive to me and very weird before?

In the future the true cost of International travel will need to be considered.

At the moment it is ridiculously cheap mainly due to there being no excise duty on aviation fuel, when we drive we pay duty which supports the infrastructure and environmental impact. (In theory)

Last year went to Edinburgh to see Local Hero, Train ~£200, Driving ~£300 (not including running costs) and flying £90.

If we pay the true cost International travel will naturally reduce, it is a difficult proposition as it will impact the poorest part of the population but this is true for all sectors and in reality are unlikely to be the ones to be flying off for weekend breaks, multiple annual holidays and unnecessary business trips.