No. 2 bulletin is a cause for some personal celebration but conversely some fear and loathing. Good stuff first then – just call me Dr. Pangloss – for it’s just over a fortnight since I arrived back in rural Wales from Deal, by way of 24 hours in London, and despite spending time in Sainsburys, Aldi (merely for their organic Pino Grigio obviously) and a busy builders’ merchant (I yield to no-one in my ability to roof a woodstore), I appear to be Covid-19 symptom-free.
Moreover the more genuine health-scare I mentioned not in my first blog for fear of hypochondria accusations, has also passed: the worringly low pulse rate which had caused near-fainting, dizziness and occasional sweats this past month was diagnosed as mild Bradycardia (see Dr Google, if arsed), which has been effectively cured by a major change in the blood pressure meds I’d been on for years. I was reluctant to approach our local surgery, much less the dreaded Hereford County Hospital – which, fellow music cryptologists, has elements of Hotel California, but not in a nice way – for fear of weaning resources away from the current pandemic, but two phone calls and a prescription seem to’ve done the trick.
More seriously, I am still appalled at the lack of testing and PPEs available to frontline NHS staff and the weasel words of Messrs. Hancock and Johnson about their reaction to this. The son of one friend, a senior NHS surgeon who might otherwise be deployed to the CV frontline, had been promised a test last Monday but still doesn’t know when he might get one, a disgrace replicated throughout the Service which is putting both staff, staff numbers and patients at risk and it seems unconscionable to me that there has been such a delay in starting to source adequate stocks back in January. The wider issue of running down the NHS – despite what the Tories claimed – over the past decade is equally unforgivable but like so much of industry in Western countries that is also now paying the price, the ‘just-in-time’ management mantra and fiscal short-termism are at least now proving fallacious, and catastrophically so.
For further reading on where and why we are in deep do-do – see, I haven’t lost my talent for erudite metaphor – I’m indebted to Dick Pountain for this link:
And I’d also commend you to Dick’s website and blogs which tackle subjects with more research and insight than I could ever muster: www.dickpountain.co.uk
For a brief moment of both celebration tinged with concern I must mention Keir Starmer’s election as new Labour leader. One friend questioned whether this was actually a landslide, but his 275k votes vs. Ms Long-Bailey’s 135k looked like that to me, and having seen him perform at an anti-HS2 meeting back in the day, I’m confident he’ll restore desperately-needed faith in the party and present a proper opposition to Johnson, Cummings & Co – but it will require huge energy and a delicate balancing act during this national emergency.
So onto lighter (?) notes with this pic of yrs. trly. wearing a mask made by darling Andi Silvers, wife of the redoubtable drummist. Russell H. from suitably anarchic material – true rock’n’roll protection, eh?
TOW, she may not be a rocker, but all this enforced social isolation brought to mind the concert dear Lizzie R. and I saw back in 1988 (at Victoria Palace, she’s just reminded me) where Nanci Griffith performed a haunting version of Julie Gold’s ‘From A Distance’. If you can ignore the somewhat leaden religious overtones and forget Cliff Richard's sugary version – and you can – here’s a later recording of it. Perhaps not as uplifting as ‘The Weight’ found in my last blog, but a reminder that we must all take heart and rise above this wretchedness.
And finally thanks to Marsha R. for this little vid which you may’ve already come across, but which certainly brought some much needed mirth to my workdesk.
Cheers – MW
