The End of the World News

Outside we have another day of sunshine to enjoy as the second month of lockdown begins: life will continue as before but my hair is getting longer... Last week we made a real effort to get out on some long walks and without the dog in tow were able to explore a number of footpaths off our usual routes around the lanes: even without a map we could follow the footsteps of previous walkers from stile to stile. The countryside is stunning in the brilliant sunshine and there is always plenty to photograph: Meanwhile despite the lockdown I still do not seem to have any more spare time although i did manage to catalogue a pile of DVDs, or rather those that I thought other members of the Film Club might enjoy: our cunning plan is to run a virtual film club. I've always thought that you can tell a lot about a person by looking at what they have on their bookshelves, and I assume the same applies to an examination of a DVD collection. From my forensic analysis of my own collec...

After weeks of sunshine the weather had finally broken and we have had rain all day: a good opportunity to catch up with indoor matters. As we are now in the second phase of lock down (Lock Down 2: Just when you thought it was safe to do back to the Supermarket) I've been checking on our usual shopping websites to see if or when normal service can be resumed. The good news is that Riverford is now supplying  range of standard fruit and vegetable boxes and the highlight of the afternoon was that I managed to get a delivery slot for late Monday afternoon from Sainsbury's: I've been keeping a careful eye on the packets of coffee in the cupboard but there is more than enough to last the weekend. Currently we have a large number of tins of Sascha's favourite dogfood on the shelves in the utility room. we usually order in bulk from Amazon and then top up from Waitrose, but when I tried to place our usual order Amazon had sold out and there was no guarantee that Waitrose ...

After a scorching Easter Sunday we've had a chilly Easter Monday: I needed to wear a fleece when we went for our daily walk this morning but it warmed up after lunch when the sun broke through the clouds. In the past week we've had to call the vet in twice - and received very different service. The first time was when we noticed that Billy was showing signs of colic. This is Billy: The vet arrived promptly and as he pulled on to the drive I took two steps back to socially distance myself only to be told not to bother. The examination was short and to the point and the slight colic was remedied by a painkilling injection and a follow up call to check the next day. Case closed. The second time was when Sascha went down with a bad case of colitis. This is Sascha: He'd been under the weather the previous day and the usual remedies of starving him for 18 hours and then giving him a bland diet of potatoes and white fish did not produce the usual result, so I c...

Today is Good Friday and the sun is shining. I know that the date of Easter is not fixed, but as far as i can remember Good Friday always seems to have been cold and wet. in our current lockdown there are no requests for any Easter visits so this morning we went on a long walk and are taking it easy this afternoon. Last night we watched Jane Eyre, the second of the National Theatre live broadcasts on YouTube, and it was excellent. Jane Eyre is my wife's favourite novel, so apart from the numerous copies around the house and the DVDs of the most recent film and TV versions last night's NT adaptation was the fourth time we've seen it on stage (and each time with a larger cast). The first time was a one woman performance with Rebecca Vaughan portraying every character in a 90 minute tour de force performance from Dyad Productions. Dyad Productions The Watermill Theatre upped the cast to three to produce a small scale touring show for schools and village halls. It...

Today would have been my late father's 93rd birthday. From viewing old cine films with my parents I can remember one year when it snowed on his birthday, but today the weather has been dry and sunny, although the wind has been quite cutting. At the end of our second full week of close down we seem to be getting used to our new life, but inevitably it's the technology that we use on a daily basis that makes it more bearable. We live in an area that has a strong cultural life but inevitably that has come to an end: the Watermill's programme is no more and the two week Newbury Spring Festival, which brings an amazing range of classical musicians to the area, has been cancelled. Thus beyond the pages of a book we are now dependent on technology for our cultural life. over the last week we've watched the DVD of The Good Liar, next week we will watch Knives Out and I've also just ordered a copy of The Producers as I need something to cheer me up. Last night we wa...

We're now well into our second week of isolation and this morning we woke up to clear skies and a heavy frost: hence the early morning dog walk was chilly and quite brisk. I have always enjoyed learning new words and then finding situations in which to use them, and our current period of compulsory isolation at home at last allows me to tick another one of my list. For those of you who do not speak Japanese (like me) a tsundoku is the pile of books that you bought because you had to have them but which for one reason or another you have not yet had a chance to read. Hence over the next weeks and months my objective is to reduce the size of my tsundoku. I'm currently reading The Science of Diskworld by Terry Pratchett and am enjoying it so much that I've just bought volumes two and three. I also still have to read Dominion , the most recent volume of Peter Ackroyd's excellent history of Britain; I bought it over a year ago and I regularly see it glaring a...