The World On Hold

 (Friday) It does seem like the whole world is on hold, a bit like when you attempt to telephone someone or something like a business, a broadband provider, delivery company or whatever, and you can't get through immediately, and you get that dreaded music which plays continually, and the voice says, ' Please be patient. your call is important to us. All our agents are busy. You are number 210 in the queue. . . ' All, lockdown does feel somewhat like that, kept eternally 'on hold.' (But without that awful music they play, while you wait . . . and wait . . . and wait, bu then eventually, someone speaks! But in the case of the confounded pandemic lockdown, we are hoping on hope that we might be released from this situation. I have been out, like being released on parole, for good behaviour! I went for a walk with my friend Mike from church. Hopefully it wasn't going to rain, but we went to where we usually go, in Willen, to have a tea and something to eat. Not sure now what the shop is called, but their prices are very reasonable. You have to wear a face covering, as we are supposed to do in all shops and other premises, but you can't sit down to eat your newly purchased food. Even outside they have taken away the tables and chair, so we had to sit on benches in the children's play area. It just seems crazy to me, that you can't sit together, even if it's socially distanced, because surely the virus is more likely to be dispersed in the open air and particularly when there's a fairly strong wind, as there was on this occasion, and it blew away the tops of our cardboard cups we had our tea in, as well as other paper. Understandable if you're inside as the virus would be more likely to be able to spread as the air will be still and such things as ventilation would help it's spread. I just think it's petty bureaucracy in some cases. But we have to just live with all this, unfortunately.

The government has seen fit to vote on a further six months extension of the lockdown legislation. Which takes us up until around August before they are likely to abandon the lockdown altogether. But we are now being told there is a THIRD WAVE of the virus on the continent of Europe. 

Coming back home afterwards from the walk I was amazed by the blossom coming out all around Milton Keynes, especially along Brickhill Street and Chaffron Way. The May, or hawthorn, mostly white, but some pink, and a variation of pink and white, in-between, looking something like clouds. Quite spectacular. No doubt the warmer weather has bought it out. The may referred to William Shakespeare as 'the darling buds of may', in sonnet 18.

I've been out will Alfie It's blowing a gale and it almost blows you off your feet. I thought it a good idea to go out as it had gone very dark and the clouds were gathering . . . sounds ominous and a bit like the opening of some story, probably set in 1939 and 'the storm clouds were gathering over Europe. Poland had been invaded and the chance of war was likely . . . etc etc.' There was even a film called 'The Gathering Storm,' which was about that very piece of history. I have an idea that it was a BBC film, but I can't be sure of that.