The year we won't forget in a hurry
We have reached the end of 2020 knowing that, compared to so many people, we have been very lucky. Sandy and I have not been infected with Covid. We think that Tessa and Joel but not Maria may have had it early on in the year, though they couldn't have a test to see if they did, but they recovered with no ill effects. Joe, Eugenie and Max have also escaped without infection. We are now into the third wave of infections and seem to be heading for a peak in hospitalisations which will be above that seen in the first wave, even though we are now into our third lock down. The light at the end of the tunnel is that mass vaccination is under way although at the moment, it looks like it will be at least two months before we are called for our first jab.
It is hard to look back over the year and not come to the conclusion that we have suffered badly from very poor management of the problem, a conclusion borne out by the fact that a greater percentage of the UK population has died compared to other European countries. I have been recording the daily statistics and it is not difficult to see from the graphs that attempts to suppress the virus have all been taken too late in the day and that relaxation of controls have been effected prematurely, particularly at the end of the second wave when the daily infection rate was way too high to justify easing off. But then, I am not an epidemiologist so what would I know?
We have heard so much from Boris Johnson about our 'world beating' achievements like the smartphone app and the testing, track and trace programme only to find that they arrived late and failed miserably to live up to the hype.
So we will be staying inside for the next two or three months, hopefully to emerge in Spring following the completion of our vaccinations.
What then have we been doing all year behind closed doors?
Well, we started off by going into the loft to find a box of jigsaws and have done quite a few of those, particularly three 2000 piece puzzles which we had never done before.
Soon we were into Spring and so we had plenty to do in the garden, which benefitted greatly from the extra attention we gave it. I was especially pleased with the new lawn, laid at the end of last year, which I managed to keep green and healthy through some long dry spells by watering it. Tessa (senior manager at Thames Water) initially moaned at me for watering until I pointed out to her that no hosepipe bans were in force, that Thames Water had, according to their website, more than enough water in its reservoirs and aquifers following one of the wettest winters on record and finally that as our water is metered, I was paying for what I was using which was good for the bottom line.
I did make one big mistake early on in the year in that I didn't try to get rid of the fox which had moved in under my shed to have her cubs. As a consequence, the cubs (four of the blighters) emerged in Spring to wreak havoc around the place digging holes and breaking down plants as they frolicked around. I am now making damn sure there is no way to get under the shed this winter.
A rather flimsy plastic mini-tool shed was replaced by a sturdy construction I made out of decking boards and some improvements were made to the fences I have erected around the vegetable plots to protect them from the unwanted attention of cats and the foxes. Once all that was done, planting got under way. Our first produce of the year was the purple sprouting broccoli from the plants grown during 2019 - we didn't get as much as usual from that but nearly everything else did very well. I am still harvesting parsnips, chard and kale and we have beans, peppers and chillies in the freezer.
I had hoped to work on the water feature during the year - having taken away the slate walling which had not been very successful. Lock-down periods and business closures however meant we never made the trip out to buy the stone I wanted to get for the rebuild so that will have to wait until the coming summer.
The hot summer did take its toll on the garden with a couple of long established bushes dying despite my watering efforts, so we have a few gaps we will need to fill soon.
Joe and Eugenie have both been able to work from home over the year, which they managed to do whilst juggling looking after Max. We were unable to help out for most of the year because Max was going to Nursery and was therefore a potential source of Covid. Joe was adamant that we shouldn't risk the exposure. In the summer, when the transmission rate dropped to really quite low figures and the rules were relaxed, we did have a couple of weeks over the holidays when we were able to help out looking after Max, but all that sadly ended when he went back to Nursery in the autumn and the transmission rate started to rise again with yet more restrictions.
Really, the abrupt halt to being able to see Max and be part of his pre-school years has been the hardest to bear over the year, particularly in the way he has been upset by us initially not being able to be there, then all of a sudden having a period of normality only to return to remote grand-parenting this autumn and over Christmas. Despite everything, he really has come on over the year and has quite enjoyed having both Joe and Eugenie around the house all the time, even though they had to have their work periods. At the end of last year, he was hardly talking at all, though he could understand English, Cantonese and French. He was clearly working it all out in his mind though and once he started, all this amazing vocabulary emerged showing just how much had understood what we had been saying to him and that the language was being stored away in the brain. The lock-downs did sadly mean that he no longer had his French speaking Nanny to take him out and about so his language skill in French has taken a hit.
Tessa has been able to partly work from home but Joel returned to his teaching once the schools re-opened. As I said earlier, they think they both had Covid early on, before testing facilities had been established, so it may well be that they haven't suffered any further problems because they now have the antibodies to protect them. Maria has coped really well with the remote learning - she reckoned that she could get through her work much better and more quickly because the teaching wasn't being adversely affected by the class idiots. The reduced transmission and relaxation of rules in Summer gave us the opportunity to visit them in Reading for the weekend of Maria's birthday (now a teenager!) which we really enjoyed. They came down for a rather chilly picnic in the garden in Autumn before the wave two restrictions came into force and there were vague hopes of a Boxing Day barbecue in the 5 day Christmas visit period before the rising transmission rate caused the 5 days to be reduced to one putting an end to our plans.
After a year off from wine making, I was back in business again this autumn when our friends brought back a load of Malbec grapes from their house in France. The wine is now in our cool larder maturing. It will be bottled in May. I think it will at least be a good year for our wine making efforts.
I've made progress with my telescope and have succeeded in taking some reasonable pictures, like this picture of The Ring Nebula (you may need to use a big screen to see it!) using my Canon camera but I quickly realised that I needed a camera which gives a real-time view as well as being able to capture an image, so Father Christmas has sorted that for me. I am now in the process of setting up the new camera on my laptop ready for the next clear night.
This is a picture of the Great Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn. I couldn't use the telescope for this because it would have been behind the trees from anywhere in the garden. I had to photograph it out of a bedroom window.
At least we end the year having avoided a 'No Deal' Brexit though it does look as if the final deal we have got is pretty poor. Sure we have tariff and quota free access on goods - of which Europe has a trade surplus, but we can't sell our services - the bits we make money on! Well done on that one. And in the tiny fraction of our economy represented by fishing, we seem to have taken back control of only a small part of the total catch, and that only after a five year transition period.
At least the nightmare scenario of a 'No Deal' Brexit and four more years of Trump in the White House has not come to pass, so with that and the vaccines, 2021 looks like it should turn out better than 2020.
We were kept entertained over the year by a constant supply of Brexit, Trump and Covid inspired humour which arrived regularly on our phones.
One other bonus from the various lock-downs has been that once the Premier League teams managed to sort out how to stay Covid safe and resumed playing, many more games have been televised for free, so I watched some decent Burnley games at the end of the 2019/20 season. The new season got off to a poor start but there are now signs of improvement. I suspect I will spend a lot more of the season with relegation anxiety but that they will survive another year.
It's been bad news for Blackheath RUFC though. The 2019/20 season was cancelled and the 2020/21 season hasn't been able to start. Maybe it will all finally get started again in Spring.
Well, that's our 2020 in a nutshell. We live in hope that 2021 will see life return to normal.
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