It has been a strange week in Laytonia.
A week of highs and lows. Ups and downs. Dejection and elation. Happiness and despair.
I think you get the idea.
I am happy to tell you that ‘the ups and the highs’ kick the ‘the downs and the lows’ way into the long grass, putting everything into perspective, rendering the lows relatively unimportant at the end of the Laytonia day.
I’ll detail the reasons for the dejection first, get it out of the way, then gravitate to the elation, hopefully ending this week’s ‘L in L’ on a happier and more optimistic note.
So what is this gloom all about?
If this were a film script, it would read:
INT. LIVING ROOM DAY
We are on a close-up of a television screen. Newsreel footage of a Chinese wet market. We hear a CNN reporter relaying news of a virus affecting people in the city of Wuhan.
Camera pans to an elderly man, slobbing out on the settee, as he enjoys a glass of wine and munches crisps.
Elderly Man (calling to kitchen): Moya, have you ever heard of a place called Wuhan?
Moya (oov): It’s in China.
George (for it is he): How the hell do you know these things? There are people out there dying from some virus.
George slurps his wine, draining the glass and gobbles the last few crisps.
Moya (oov): Probably started in a wet market.
George: (mumbling to himself) How does she know these things? Thank God it’s over there and not here…Darling, wouldn’t mind a top up when you come in! And few more crisps!
Moya (oov): What was that word?
George: Please!
George picks up the remote control.
George: Can’t watch this. Bloody depressing…
Who could have foreseen this pandemic and the ensuing consequences?
Certainly, not me. Back in late November/early December 2019, when we first started seeing news reports coming out of Wuhan, I watched footage of people being dragged out of their apartments by what looked like hazmat-suited thugs. They were physically manhandled, thrown into vans and driven to who knows where?
I watched in disbelief, all the while unkindly thinking: ‘Thank God this is happening in China and not here.’
Not for one moment did it occur to me that this Covid 19, this Coronavirus, whatever they were calling it, would come to our shores. I thought it would be contained in China. In fact, I thought it would be contained in Wuhan.
As with the Sars virus, Hong Kong ‘flu and even scary ebola, whilst it alarmed me, I selfishly thought that being so far away, it was unlikely to affect us. It would eventually become old news.
How could I have been that naïve? Complacency? To a degree. Unintelligence? Definitely. What did I know about viruses? How could I have foreseen what would happen?
I was not it seems, alone.
It would appear that the government watched events in Wuhan with the same complacency, unintelligence and lack of foresight as I did. How else can one explain the sanctioning of the 4-day Cheltenham Festival in mid-March 2020 when the pandemic was clearly gathering pace?
By then, it was not a question of if the country was going into lockdown, it was a question of when. The ‘when’ came a mere 10 days after the Cheltenham race meeting.
Complacency, unintelligence, a lack of foresight or what?
Boris inherited a horrible situation that no leader here or abroad could have foreseen.
Nobody knew how to deal with it. You were damned if you do, you were damned if you don’t.
National lockdown was imposed and I think it is fair to say that in the main, the nation acknowledged that the Prime Minister had little option. Most got behind him at a time of national crisis with stoicism and sacrifice beyond admirable.
National lockdown brought us together. There was a community spirit, helping each other, helping the NHS. One felt that the country was united at a time of national crisis.
One may not have agreed with everything that the government was doing but there was a feeling in those early days that they were doing their best.
Sacrifices asked of us were made. Businesses suffered. Jobs were lost. Lives were lost.
Here we are, 7 months later and you’d think things should be easier with the benefit of hindsight.
But 7 months later, even with that benefit of hindsight, we are rapidly heading back to square one – and this is what has been depressing me.
This week 16,000 infectious people were missed because our ‘world beating track and trace’ is reliant on a 13-year old version of Microsoft Excel.
This week we are witnessing surging coronavirus infection rates.
This week people with symptoms still cannot get testing appointments unless they pay privately.
This week the North/South divide has never been wider
This week we are warned that the vulnerable face months of having to stay indoors.
‘The vulnerable’, aka the elderly. Aka me! Little wonder I’m depressed.
This week, in a television interview, the Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, said musicians and other people in the arts sector “should retrain and find other jobs”.
This was later denied, claiming that his comments were about employment generally and not specifically about the music or arts sector.
Either way, it’s deeply depressing.
Could anybody else have done better? Could anybody else do better? Who knows?
This worldwide pandemic is not what Boris bargained for when he won the high office he had for years striven after. He inherited an impossible problem
I am not comfortable with the blame game. But after 7 months of flim-flam, indecision, meaningless sound bites and platitudinous waffle, isn’t it time to hold our leaders to account?
7 months on, I am weary of seeing our Prime Minister squandering his energy on diversionary staged photo opportunities:
Boris on a building site in a hard hat (again). Boris with a trowel in his hand, cementing a brick on a wall. Boris driving a forklift truck. Boris in another luminous jacket in another warehouse…
Last Tuesday, we had Boris posing with the leader in waiting, Rishi Sunak, at an electric car charging point, each holding a charging cable as if re-enacting a scene from ‘Gunfight At The O.K. Corral’.
Over the water, President Trump, who from day one has run the White House like a man on steroids, is now probably pumped with more steroids than a team of Russian athletes, so God help us!
Am I being harsh on Boris Johnson and his ministers – some of whom should not be in office having flouted lockdown rules?
Oops, there I go again!
Am I being pessimistic or realistic?
Either way, apologies for an uncharacteristically downbeat ‘Life in Laytonia’ this week.
However – I am thrilled to say that all the above was put in the shade by some news this week that really lifted our spirits.
In the early hours of Saturday the 3rd of October, our younger son and his much loved partner (‘much loved’ by him and all the family) presented us with our 4th grandchild.
A Beautiful Bundle of Boy!
As I said at the start, it puts everything into perspective, doesn’t it?
Congratulations on becoming a grandad again George. Wonderful news and definitely a perfect way to end what was obviously a hard week for you. x
Thanks Elena. I hope I was fair in this week’s column. I don’t want to be perceived as a ‘Boris Basher’ and I truly do not like the blame game in awful situations like this.
But the powers that be seemed to have learned nothing in the past 7 months. Or am I wrong?
The new family member is doing fabulously! Thank you…
Replying to the rhetorical question at the End, abso-blooming-lutely George!
Thank you Grandma!!
You sum up how a lot of how I feel. We are sadly sleep walking towards a Second wave. However, fantastic news at the end, congratulations. We cannot let Covid steal the good moments from us, if it does then it really has us beat.
Hello Alan – I am never sure how many people read ‘Life in Laytonia’, therefore it is always cheering to receive a comment from a new person. You may of course be a regular reader but have never left a comment before??
If this is your first visit, by nature of what I was writing about, this one somewhat a somewhat different to my normal ‘Life in Laytonia’.
Please read some of my other musings,including the Telegraph online articles, ‘Layton on Lockdown’. Would be interested to hear what you think.
Thanks for taking the trouble to write!!
Hi George. Me again!
I had a long day yesterday and was listening to the radio broadcast of Boris Johnson’s Q and A sesssion in Parliament and then to his address at 7pm. When I walked in to my kitchen at 8pm, I asked my wife if she felt the same as me about where we are at. Not personally, but nationally. She said she was worried, as I am.
Despite being Conservative supporters all our lives and knowing how hard it must be for an individual to lead the Country, I really do not understand at all what this Government is doing at the moment. Introducing “tiers” of infection is simply adding to the confusion. We are no longer being governed by Ministers who are being “lead by the science”. Of that I am certain. They are clutching at straws. Knee jerking their way through a miriad of tangled ideas and without listening hard enough to the intelligent sections of the population, the Scientists, the Lab experts and the Professors.
As a nation, we have experienced a Government which is now far from able to prove it’s competence. Any shred of confidence I had in how we were being managed has gone. And I fear the worst for all of us as a result.
Writing this is very hard for me as I am a born optimist and feel strongly that there is something special in everyone and that even the idiots and loons in our society are basically good. We each have something to offer. The goons at the top, though, I am unsure about. They live in another Country which exists only in their heads.
As others have said, though, great news about a new face appearing in your family. I hope that brings so much joy to the Laytons that all worries, anger and frustration are pushed to the backs of your minds.
Keep on writing, George. And how about a new book? You must have lots and lots to write about, not just stuff from 2020.
Thank you. You’re a top bloke.
Maybe Dig and Dug should be put in charge of the country. Unless, of course, they already are…
Dig & Dug?? Goodness, you must be one of the two people in the country to remember that programme!Myself being the other.
Re. another book. Yes, that is in the pipeline but you would be surprised how much time it takes to write ‘Life in Laytonia’ – I have never been great at working on more than one project at a time.
It may be that ‘LiL’ will have to be more sporadic…comments??
Ps Great to see you & Danni commenting on each other’s comments. I Love It!!
We loved Dig and Dug. Our children loved it, too. They are now at university. My friend Alan, retired copper aged 62, borrowed my DVD of Dig and Dug last year and he loves it, too. For anyone reading this who hasn’t seen it, do watch it. It’s on You Tube.
As regards commenting on each other’s comments, it’s healthy to bounce off other people’s views. On your column, though, we all appear like minded.
A “sporadic” LiL would be better than no LiL. I don’t mind admitting that I do look forward to it each week, though.
Dear George,
well actually the region I’m living in was the first covid hotspot in Germany. It was quite surreal when on the eve of Ash Wednesday, at the start of lent and the final day of Carnival, which is always celebrated profusely here, the head of the regional administration, the Landrat, announced first the shutdown of the schools and kindergartens and then gradually as the days and weeks progressed of almost everything else. Yet the population very much supported him and still does. We had local elections just recently in September. He was re-elected getting almost 80 per cent of the votes!
Now what makes me angry is those people who are in denial of the pandemic. Who go around protesting these measures for egoistical and egotistical reasons. Who are not able to simply control their ego for a few weeks – and not much more would be necessary if everybody adhered to the measures – for the sake of others and themselves. People who happily proclaim that they do not need anybody to do anything for them, as other people point out to them that people wearing facemasks predominantely protect others including the deniers – a sorry lot. So this was my rant!
On another note I also want to join the many well-wishers here. It must be a blessing to welcome a newborn these days.
This is hoping for better days pretty soon! Esperance!
Daniela
Danni. I agree regarding the people who are, as you say, in denial. If it is the law and you live here, you simply wear a mask and abide by the rules. I wonder what these deniers would have to say if I broke laws which didn’t suit me?
Brad, I do not know about the UK, but here there are people actually denying the existence of the virus. So to them it is a question of faith and they see themselves as the resistance because they know the “truth”. It is a small but loud minority, yes, but the media for lack of any other events or sensations supply them with a great platform to spread their strange conspiracy theories. News has to sell after all.
Abiding by the law is a good reason to adhere to the restrictions. Yet I also think that it is down to common decency. If I’m not sure that I’m not infected – and with this virus it’s hard to tell indeed -, I will wear a facemask and keep my distance. I also better think twice if I really have to go somewhere. Until very recently it was not required by law to wear a facemask in a shop in the Netherlands, yet me and my family have done so, even if we were the only ones. The Dutch and sometimes Belgians though wear facemasks in German shops. There is a lot of border traffic here.
Stay save!
Good rant Danni. I love it! And as I said to Brad – so good to see you two having you own correspondence courtesy of ‘L in L’. I love that too!!
I was in London today. Islington, a walk to Old Street tube then on to Wood Green via Kings Cross and then up to White Hart Lane. A quick stop off at Brent Cross Tesco, into my car, twice around the Hangar Lane gyratory ( I missed my exit!) and a quick coffee in Beaconsfield. I can state with great pleasure that I saw and met no one who was without a mask. Not one. And everyone I walked amongst tried to keep their distance. Well done, Londoners.
Only today seen this (Was correcting a couple of typos pointed out to me).
Yes, very encouraging!!