Shutdown

Thursday night at eleven thirty. There was just a handful of regulars in "The Banner Cross Hotel". It was almost time to leave. Little did we know that in less than twenty four hours all British pubs, cafes and restaurants would be shut down by order of Her Majesty's government. Nothing like this happened in the twentieth century. Even in the dark days of the two world wars our pubs remained open.

The friendly barman, Birmingham Jack had been playing requests via his i-phone connected to the pub's sound system.

As my friend 83 year old Bert donned his overcoat he began to sing as he often does, "We'll Meet Again" made famous by wartime songstress Vera Lynn. Bert was twirling his walking stick and as he sang Birmingham Jack found the song on his phone. In an instant it was playing through the speakers.

Supporting Bert's performance and painfully aware of the historical moment we are living in, we all joined in with the singing. Intermittently, Steve and I were crooning at full volume. We were all laughing and connecting with each other via eye contact. And there was smiley, kind-hearted, fun-loving, gregarious Bert leaning on the bar, in his element. Singing his favourite song at closing time. It is an image that will stay with me.

With his rheumy eyes sparkling he often says, half-singing "You'll miss me when I'm gone!" and I know I will. It occurs to me that I might not see him again what with the virus and the fact that though we are good friends we don't even have each other's phone numbers. We have been pub friends for thirty years. "We'll meet again", sang Vera Lynn but maybe we won't.

Humble

I just finished reading "Thinking on My Feet" by the British TV presenter Kate Humble. She has always specialised in programmes about the natural world. The book was not a novel but a homage to walking. That is why I picked it.

It is a kind of diary of the writer's varied walking experiences over the period of a single year. The walks range from morning strolls with her dogs to rambles through the concrete canyons of New York City and a challenging long distance walk following the course of The River Wye from its source in the mountains of mid-Wales.

Kate Humble is neither pretentious nor especially intellectually gifted but she really understands the joys and the benefits of walking. She writes simply and honestly, noting the world around her - the birds, the trees, changes in the weather, rivers, mountains and farmland.

She appreciates that walking can help us to get troubles into perspective and it can help us to think creatively.  The rhythms of walking are etched into our very DNA. We were walking for thousands of years before motorised transport appeared on the scene.

"Thinking on My Feet" provides a pleasant, undemanding read about an activity that is so often overlooked or undervalued. When you walk, your feet take you from A to B so that you can stand on a hillock and see where you came from, happy in the obvious knowledge that your legs carried you there. Furthermore,  when you walk - you never know what you might see. The world around us is filled with wonder just as it always was.

Greenland

Not  Brownland, nor Yellowland - not even Redland but Greenland. Yes. Let us go there today, The photo illustrations will all be courtesy of Streetview.

I realise that many residents of Blogworld are geographically challenged but with a modicum of confidence  I will tentatively suggest that everybody has heard of Greenland! Furthermore, most of you will know that it is a stonking big island squeezed up against eastern Canada. and that its name is a mischievous deception. Surely it should have been Whiteland!

In terms of size, how does Greenland measure up? It has a land area of 836,300 square miles.  As you know, Australia is another massive island but at 2.97 million square miles it is more than three times larger than Greenland. However, Greenland is much bigger than Mexico or Alaska and almost ten times bigger than The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Despite its vast size, the population of Greenland is only 56,770 - the same size as the towns of Loughborough in Leicestershire and Macclesfield in Cheshire. The vast majority or Greenlanders live in or around the capital city - Nuuk which means "tip".

Greenland is not an independent country. It is an autonomous Danish dependent territory with limited self-government via its own parliament. Denmark contributes two thirds of Greenland's budget revenue, the rest coming mainly from fishing.

89% of Greenlanders have an indigenous Inuit heritage. The Kalaallit of western Greenland speak Kalaallisut while the Tunumilt of eastern Greenland speak Tunumilt oraasiat. The Inguhuit of north Greenland speak Inuktun.

I would love to visit Greenland in person but I don't suppose I ever will. Instead, let us board the Google Streetview car and go to Nuuk - virtually.

Queen Ingrid's Hospital, Nuuk

Streetview imagery on foot - not by car

Musing

When I went to my local "Lidl" discount supermarket on Monday morning, there were many more shoppers in the aisles than I would normally see on a Monday morning. Two fat women had loaded their trolleys with whole boxes of canned soup, baked beans and stewing steak. Perhaps they are planning a trek to The North Pole. The dogs won't be happy.

Before I could even get inside the store, a bearded man approached me. He needed a pound coin so that he could unlock a trolley. In my head, I was thinking - I should not be helping this guy out. He is going to give me some of his loose change. He might be infected.

But I was caught off-guard and I gave him a shiny pound coin as I pocketed his coronavirus change. If it happens again I am sure that I will say "No!"

How flimsy our shell of civilisation is! Built upon the shifting sands of international finance, stocks and shares and slave to the whims of Saudi Arabian princes and the dreams of Jeff Bezos. The current chaos demonstrates how easily it could all come tumbling down. Yet still only 7893 coronavirus victims have died compared with 283,962 road traffic fatalities this calendar year and 2,352,663 deaths from hunger.

Everybody has their coronavirus stories now - about how family members and friends have been directly affected - about how future plans have been destroyed or shelved for how long? Who knows? 

I am going up to the pub quiz at "The Hammer and Pincers" tonight but it might be the very last pub quiz I ever attend. Who knows?

And all of this because a particular bat sank its fangs into a particular chicken on the other side of the planet. Thereby the bridge to pandemonium was crossed.

Sheep

There are an estimated 22 million sheep on the island of Britain and I have seen most of them. My relationship with sheep is, how shall I say it, interesting. They often stare at me as I ramble by. Sometimes they run away from me as if I was a no-good sheep rustler but at other times they rush towards me as if I was Jesus tending his flock. My relationship with sheep is, I swear, wholly platonic.

Being under the age of seventy, and with a pleasant afternoon promised, I climbed upon Clint's Moroccan leather saddle and galloped off into the Derbyshire hills for a pleasant circular walk around the disused Eldon Hill Quarry beyond Castleton.

As per usual many pairs of ovine eyes observed my progress. They looked up from their perpetual grazing. Their lambs will be arriving very soon but on this mid-March promenade I did not see a single newborn.

When you are a sheep you are very hardy. Your life is simple and straightforward. You are sociable and you have no real sense of the past or the future. You live in the moment and you are fearful of the unknown - such as foxes or raptors or human beings who ramble by singing songs by The Doors:

This is the end, beautiful friend

This is the end, my only friend

The end

Poem

The Enemy

Once you could see your enemies...

They gathered by coppices on hills

Sharpening their swords,

Horses whinnying

Before the impending storm...

Or they clustered down the alley,

Shadows in the darkness

Smoking cigarettes...

Or waded  in rat-infested trenches

Preparing to attack at dawn...

Or clad themselves in IED’s

And dissolute philosophies.

Now the enemy is silent and unseen

Where it will venture or might have been

We have absolutely no idea...

We are simply waiting here -
Washing our hands
Like Lady Macbeth -
"Out, damned spot! Out, I say!"
Waiting for
The enemy to enter us
And steal our breath away.

Offer

I heard a whisper that fresh supplies of toilet rolls and hand sanitiser would soon be delivered to my local "Lidl" store. I grabbed my coat and hightailed it over there.

"What's the hurry?" grumbled Clint who had been dozing in the afternoon sunshine.

We screeched into the car park and I rushed to bag a trolley then sped into the store. To my horror, I discovered that a crowd of shoppers were gathering at the toilet roll section as supermarket employees attempted to re-stock the shelves. It was pure chaos.

Being a big lad with bulging biceps, I managed to elbow my way through the other customers and grabbed an armful of toilet roll packs. Then I went back for more. There was even a toilet roll tug of war with a Russian lorry driver called Olga. No gentlemanly decorum I'm afraid. Needs must.

From the corner of my eye I saw boxes of hand sanitiser arriving from the stockroom on a big trolley steered by Ray the assistant manager. He gave me a knowing wink and a quick thumbs up. Before he could even rip open the cartons I had grabbed three boxes - each containing a hundred "Medex" hand sanitiser dispensers.

It was "mission impossible" but I managed it. The checkout woman asked if I really needed so many toilet rolls and so much hand sanitiser but I was not prepared to legitimise her question with a response. I tapped in my PIN number and paid the £327 requested.

Driving home in Clint's cabin, I was surrounded by toilet rolls. The hand sanitiser was in the boot (American: trunk). 

When I got home, Shirley was flabbergasted.

"What the hell have you bought all that for? You must be mad!"

"I'm going to be an entrepreneur my dear! Gonna make lots of dough."

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