Call of the Wild

100 Mile House

Rain. Such a gift when so many wildfires are out of control. Today I can see the other side of the lake with its forested domes beyond. The air is clearer and less smokey. I hope there’s some respite for the wildlife too. I’ve heard so little by way of bird calls though we did see a flock of geese flying in the smoke the other day. Many people here in BC have fire insurance on their homes. Creatures of the forest don’t. 

Sitting in my cabin the other day, staying indoors to avoid breathing in too much smoke, I had nothing to do except think about how I can contribute to a shift in the collective human consciousness; a shift towards recognising that, in the words of a friend, “we are burning our own house down”.

As you can imagine, there are campfire bans here in British Columbia. Lightening strikes are scary as they create hotspots in the ground that can suddenly, maybe weeks later, inflame the area and start a wildfire. Farmers here are very worried about their crops which aren’t ripening because of the smoke. Hay cutting is badly affected because of the heat scorched land so there won’t be enough winter cattle feed. The knock on effect for all of us initially, of a climate becoming violent with fires and floods around the world, is food shortages and high prices. And that’s just the beginning. What about the wildlife, I ask, too? It’ll have another threat as we humans return to hunting in order to put food on the family table and we find that we’ve already wiped out so much of it.

Our usual response to what is happening around us is to bury our heads in the sand. “It is what it is” I hear everywhere as we suffer our sense of helplessness. As a Canadian woman yesterday remarked as she anxiously counted the lightening strikes, “the bible warned us and here it is”. 

My friends in Extinction Rebellion at home are calling people to assemble in London this month from August 23rd. How else can we mobilise our governments into doing something effective to tackle this emergency? They must be held to account for lack of leadership, intention and motivation. Only through a real groundswell of frustration can we bring about the gargantuan change needed in the way we humans operate. It’s time, folks; time to put out the flames of consumption, greed and corruption. How foolish are we to party while the house burns down?

Lightning strikes setting the land alight

Vancouver Island

These are not my photos. I have taken them from Google - they are photos of current  fire activity in the province.

Canada, Covid and Climate

At last, something to blog about! I’m in Canada! 

This August, my son William turns forty and he’s having a party. His brothers, keen to share in the occasion, were faced with the logistical challenges (and costs) of getting to the event……in Canada……in a pandemic. Solution? Club together to send Mum. And here I am, bless their dear hearts!

It was touch-and-go whether I’d get here given the red tape involved. As all but essential travel out of the UK into Canada was banned by the FCDO I had to meet various criteria for exemption. I had to be double-vaccinated and have proof of a close relationship with a Canadian citizen. Wanting the visit to be a birthday surprise for William, my sister, who has lived in Canada for many years, went through the rigmarole of providing a legally witnessed declaration to prove our sisterhood. Being able to get insurance, however, was looking highly unlikely. 

We did eventually find an insurer (with an exclusion for anything Covid related) and started feeling optimistic about the plan working. For weeks we studied the changing picture on the UK and Canadian government websites and ticked off each bureaucratic requirement as we met it. Then western Canada was hit by a heatwave, the likes of which they’ve never had before and British Columbia, where my Canadian kin live, was bursting into flame. My sister was sending pictures of their town, Kamloops, ringed in burning forest, with news that one of its neighbouring towns had been completely burned out. Her family are all in the fire-fighting business, so it was a tense time. My son and his partner, Izzy were also (they still are, in fact) evacuation prepared, though living lake-side is something of a saving grace. Now that I’ve become temporarily resident in their property, however, I can see how vulnerable it is, being set in woodland like most homes are here. Wildfires are not unusual of course, but they are becoming more frequent and widespread as the climate warms. A couple of days before I arrived the map showing wildfire and smoke presented a dire picture. I lucked out as the air cleared in time for me to make the flight! My sister had told me that flying in smoke is no fun and being a rather nervous flyer, I was losing sleep about it.

Throughout the preparations for my visit, Izzy and I had fun colluding on Messenger about how to surprise William. However, as my Canadian niece Holly pointed out, William would need some notice in order to arrange time off from work to spend with me, so we decided to tell him, and it’s just as well we did. I was already braced for the possibility of being refused entry by border staff regardless of having the right paperwork and if I hadn’t, as a back up, got a copy of William’s Canadian passport and his birth certificate I may well have been turned back. The border guard in Vancouver only accepted me on the basis of having a son in Canada. The connection with my sister wasn’t enough for him!

I’ve been wondering whether and how many people were turned away by the border guards, either before boarding at Heathrow or on arrival in Vancouver. Travelling on the 9th of August just days after restrictions on travel were lifted, I was surprised at the number of people who had jumped on the opportunity. I was also surprised, like most of the passengers going through border controls with me in Vancouver, to be subjected to a Covid test, in spite of having my UK proof of a negative PCR test result as required before leaving the UK. Some of my fellow travellers became very vocal in their objections to another test, given the Canadian government’s own travel advisory that mandatory arrival testing had been suspended. 

But I got in, and arriving in Kamloops airport after 24 hours travelling the sight of my dear boy in the flesh, instead of on a video call, filled my heart and my eyes. 

How easily we all took for granted the freedoms of our time pre-Covid, freedoms which have now, for the most part, been taken away in the cause of fighting a virus. It gives me pause for thought for sure. I have, as a utilitarian, complied with being vaccinated, in spite of my misgivings, worn a mask as a courtesy to others, exercised rigorous hand hygiene and maintained social distances in public places. Now, there is a feeling of things returning to normal and, like childbirth, the pain of the pandemic is being forgotten, lockdowns just a gap in one’s memories. And yet there are reminders. Many are still choosing to wear a mask and back home in Wales it is still mandatory to wear one in shops. I was reminded by an email from the Canadian government that I might be checked up on in spite of my airport test results coming back negative. I am not entirely free to wander at will here; my son having to account for where I might be if necessary. Freedom is a tenuous concept.

The last couple of days have been filled with smoke and the beautiful Shuswap lake in front of me has disappeared from view. Eyes prickle and chests suffer from the effect, like when sitting by a campfire. When the air clears a bit in this popular holiday destination people around here are trying hard to play and party in their speedboats and houseboats. But these continue to be strange times.

The beautiful Shuswap lake 

Shrouded in smoke

I am delighted to be here, though, hanging out with my son, his lady and their four Maine Coon cats, lunching and planning adventures with my sister and generally just ‘being’ in every moment. It’s a beautiful world, inhabited by beautiful, precious creatures. My love for it and all within it is boundless. I call to those with vested interests in fossil-fuel-hungry enterprises to love it too. Nature is doing its best to wake us up to our fragile hold on existence, so let’s not act like sulky sleepy teenagers refusing to get up for school.

The Shuswap tree

Post-script:

I’d love if my readers could subscribe to my blog and even comment if you feel moved to. I don’t intend to monetise the blog but in my own little way I am trying to provoke discussion of the things that should matter to all of us. By subscribing and sharing it might happen that the conversation will widen out. I don’t want to be too evangelical, but as I’m sure you’re aware if you’ve read much of my blog, I am concerned about what we are doing to the planet and each other. Take a look at this from Global Optimism:

The #IPCC #ClimateReport is the final alarm bell. Scientists are 'yelling from the rooftops'.

#OutrageAndOptimism brings a special analysis of the report with Michael E. Mann, looking at what is still possible if we all take decisive action in a narrowing window of opportunity.

Tune in: https://bit.ly/2VJwc1j

Feeling a bit amnaesic

Yes, I’m still here, folks; not dead yet, though I’m finding it more and more difficult to find anything interesting to blog about. When, in future times, I’m asked by my great-grandchildren, “What was it it like in the 20-21 Pandemic?”, what will I tell them? I’m having difficulty remembering much about it, to be honest. At the moment I’m not quite sure how many lockdowns we’ve had. Is it three? Things are getting a bit more ‘back to normal’ with bars and restaurants now re-opened  for indoor hospitality, retail is in full swing and we’re permitted to hug and go on holiday. A traffic lights system identifies which countries it’s ok to travel to but we are nevertheless advised not to go (the UK government’s Rules and Guidance continues to confuse and frustrate this Covid19-weary country).

In telling the story to my descendants I may have to dramatise my experience of it in order not to give the impression that I have pretty much been a waste of space throughout the whole thing. I might tell them about Dotty, our hyperactive pup who grew so fast and ended up eating her mother. That would be a dramatic story, though nothing to do with the pandemic. It’s not true, either of course. This pup certainly doesn’t look like she’ll be petite and she is chewing everything in sight, including Pwdin’s ears, but she hasn’t eaten her......yet.

I can tell those future little ones how being so separated meant that we didn’t recognise each other anymore. That’s something that really did happen. My son, Richard, who has been living in the Midlands for going on ten years but still registered with the NHS here in Swansea, was called for his vaccine. Not having seen him since our brief rendezvous last August, I was excited but also disappointed that Libby and the children weren’t able to come too. Stopping at the shop on our way to Owen and Jess’s where we were meeting up, I was disconcerted by a guy walking purposefully towards me instead of keeping his distance. I almost had to step into the road to avoid him until I realised that it was my son, aiming for me with a huge hug and which caused passers-by to stare (hugs not, then, being ‘allowed’). I don’t think I’m senile quite yet, so I blame my lack of recognition on a combination of factors - myopia, mask-wearing and the unexpectedness of seeing him there (I’ll big it up for future story-telling, of course).

Maybe I can tell a story about how G (aka Gareth) wore away his bones in ‘mending’ another house; how in the 21st century house builders built matchbox homes for people from sticks and cardboard because they are cheaper and, knowing that a pandemic was coming to wipe most of us out, matchbox homes would be easier to clear away than solidly built ones. Through lockdown Gareth has been trying to fix the bad workmanship of this Taylor-Wimpey house while struggling with his second bad hip. Hospital waiting lists for routine treatments like hip-replacements have stretched way into the coming years as a result of flippin COVID. 

G also took on a little part-time job with Tesco for a while, by the way. There was considerable demand for delivery drivers, of course, given the increase in on-line shopping. His experience of driving a motor-home seemed to fit the job’s requirements and so, dressed in his Tesco delivery-driver uniform, Gareth worked a few evenings each week putting food through people’s doorways. He was enjoying it, seeing faces other than mine, but it took its toll on his hip, and eventually I put my foot down (the good foot, not the bad one) - he had to give it up. 

We both learned a thing or two about what it’s like for these grocery deliverers. For instance, people who live in flats tend to use the delivery service for things they’d find too heavy to shop for themselves, like big bottles of pop and water. None of the drivers enjoy seeing an apartment block on their itinerary. On one trip, Gareth had to deliver a huge order which included a crate full of wine and spirits. The old guy receiving was keen to tell him that they were having a celebration. What celebration, we wondered, given that he and his wife were elderly and supposedly isolating. 

Our new respect for delivery people includes knowing how they are expected to work to a very tight time schedule while adhering to some impossible rules and regulations, and monitored by not-fit-for-purpose apps.

Let’s see......what else has happened since my last blog post? In no particular order, Prince Phillip, Duke of Edinburgh died, we’ve had local and devolved parliamentary elections (the outcomes of which I won’t bore anyone with here), the news is full of stories about how the pandemic has been scandalously mishandled by Boris and his cronies (Mark Drakeford came out well here in Wales, though). Wars are breaking out regularly - elsewhere, fortunately for us Brits, though we have seen some outbreaks of rioting. Lots of businesses have gone under, some are hanging on by the tips of their fingers, and others have managed to get very much richer. We’ve all got bored or got eye strain with Zoom’s. Many people are finding that working-from-home is a good lifestyle choice while others can’t wait to have a reason to get out of the house. Children have gone back to school and the poor teachers are having to pick up the pieces of a fractured National Curriculum and mentally disordered kids. The News gives us regular updates of where we are with infection rates, deaths and vaccinations. We hear of the latest governmental incompetencies and some colour is provided with hyped up stories of some scandal or other. It’s all a fog in my mind.

Maybe it’s the absence of Trump that makes for a foggy news outlook. Whatever our opinions of him, he lit up the news feeds and gave us something to be astonished by. I don’t know how George Biden (is it George, or John?...Jo!) getting on with putting the US in shape as he’s of much less interest to anyone. Why Trump was so ‘interesting’ I don’t know. There are plenty of other candidates out there for the job of shocking us momentarily from our apathy. 

Watching the Duke of Edinburgh’s funeral on TV was an event as I sat listlessly in our Taylor-Wimpey sitting room. It wasn’t, of course the full State funeral he would have had if we weren’t in a pandemic and having to follow the social distancing rules, but it was nevertheless a bit of a spectacle. The most moving thing was seeing our little old Queen dressed in full black, masked, bowed and sitting alone where once he’d have been at her side as he’d been throughout the long reign and marriage. For me, her small, lonely figure symbolised the sadness of these times; so many bereft families suffering loss and separation. In my own case, I’m fortunate that none of my own circle has been afflicted, though there is always the knowledge of others who have. Fortunately for Prince Phillip he died as naturally as a near-centenarian can. He didn’t have COVID as far as I know, and his family weren’t prevented from being with him in his dying days as so many other families have been. That’s Privilege for you, even if it does come with the indignities of having the ins-and-outs of family problems and tragedies splattered through the Media. I’m not sure the Harry/Meghan thing will be much to intrigue future generations unless in their history books it will have been seen as contributing to a collapse of the British monarchy.

And there you have it - my record of things I can tell my great-grandchildren about if they aren’t too pre-occupied with things happening in their own lives. No doubt my memory banks will throw up other stuff that happened but for now it’s all I can drag up. Maybe it’s my own pre-occupation with wondering what the future holds for my descendants. I would prefer not to end this post on a downer, but the Climate Emergency hangs over us like the Sword of Damocles. I hope with all my heart that I will live to see a world that is healing, full of happy, healthy, thriving descendants and in which The News is happy at last.

I can end with a happy thought for now, though. Richard and co are due to visit very soon and so is my ‘baby’ sister! I just can’t wait! It will be a banquet of hugs. Oops, I’d better get rid of my lockdown looks in order not to frighten the grandchildren. I hope my hairdresser is still in operation.

It’s a dogs’ life

Three little working dogs are we
Unemployed and fancy free
(Look at those devil eyes!)

We’re now a three-dog household. Dotty is the pup remaining with us after the other three have left. As I write she is wandering around the living room looking to see what she can chew next. Welcome to chez nous; our kennel.

I hope that those who’ve, through lockdown, thought it a good idea to get a dog are fully prepared for that dog being for life and not just for lockdown. They are a full-time commitment that requires a lifestyle to accommodate them; unless you’re one of those celebrities who apparently own dogs and home them in dog apartments, cared for by paid dog servants (I wish!). Lady Gaga’s poor dog-walker was apparently shot as her dogs were stolen from him (or was it a ‘her’?). I wonder how the star feels about that.

There are a lot of dog-accompanied people out and about nowadays and you don’t see so many mongrels any more. In my younger days, dogs wandered freely and you had to check your shoes before coming indoors. It wasn’t an uncommon sight to see dogs locked together on the street “making babies”; intriguing and a bit scary to a young child. The modern day trend in dog ownership results in a range of designer dogs being paraded about, often as statement accessories. I recently saw a news item about a trend in ‘cosmetic’ surgery on certain dogs’ ears - mutilation in other words. Insane and inhumane! There is also a growth in dog theft given the demand for and prices for such pooches. So many dogs are being bred for their looks rather than for what was their initial man’s-best-friend function - to help with things like guarding and herding sheep and cattle. They’ve come such a long way from their domesticated wolf ancestry. There is even a TV programme where dog groomers compete to be, not just the most skilled, but the most artistic and creative. 

I think it unlikely that these modern day accessory dogs will ponder, like I do about myself, as to what is their purpose in life. Dogs are generally quite happy to be one of the family - to love and be loved, and as long as the family which adopts them understands that a dog is a commitment and life is not the same once you have one. Unfortunately, there could be a booming dog-rescue industry after this current trend.

So now we have three. We’re outnumbered and the question is how to accommodate them in our life without becoming thoroughly canine ourselves. After removing the lint from the tumble dryer the other day and wondering whether I could spin the dog hair to knit a sweater, I’m concerned that my dog-allergic daughter-in-law will never forgive us and I won’t see her or my grandchildren ever again. The next task for us is to sell this place (if it’s still fit for human habitation) and find a more dog-suitable property. If any of you know of such a property, please let us know......before I leave home! 😜

This is my spot!

Where are we off to today?

What does this book taste like?

Ambivalence and sweet sorrows

We’ve had some spring sunshine! Yay! We’re moving towards the light at the end of a dark winter-lockdown tunnel. As I drove to the vaccination centre the other day, a rainbow hung over the place I was heading to! A sign? Surely it was a reassurance, and somehow more meaningful to me than the Queen’s assurance to us that the jab doesn’t hurt. But, in any case I’ve now ‘done my duty’ and with no apparent weird after-effect; not yet at any rate. My family are checking on me knowing that I’m weird enough already.

Today we said goodbye to one of our pups. He’s not gone far and we know it’s to a happy home where he’ll have a wonderful life with his dad. It was so hard parting with him though; his chubby little frame and his sweet, engaging little face - Reggie. 

It may not have been the best plan to turn our petite and bijou property into a kennel but at least with it being lockdown we haven’t had to worry about entertaining visitors. The amount of pee and poo that four pups can produce seems way out of proportion to the amount of food they consume. It’s a four handed operation dealing with this litter of, now very lively, springer spaniel puppies, and each grown to the extent of being more than one handful anyway. Recently we’ve been trying to detach them from their mother in readiness for leaving us. The sadness of it occupies my dreams and I’ve had to prepare myself, too, having fallen in love with all of them as I shouldn’t have done. I won’t miss the mess and the backache though; it’s a bit like the ambivalence of feelings as ones own offspring leave home.

There is an allegorical feel about our puppy-raising experience. This pandemic has entailed separations that are completely unnatural. The pups have provided the cuddles and snuggles that I should be having with my grandchildren. They have filled the emotional vacuum created by this strange moment in human history and I am grateful. I will miss them.

I’m not in the business of creating conspiracy theories, like the one Gareth was presented with the other day - a theory that Bill Gates is a eugenicist and that his plan is to create infertility in the human population via vaccination and thereby save the planet. You surely have to ask, ‘why then start with the very elderly, many of whom have had their 100th birthday card from the Queen?’ But........

This pandemic has created a much greater dependence on digital communication and the ‘internet of things’ is growing apace (ref Jeremy Rifkin and his “Third Industrial Revolution”). That certainly seems to be the way evolution is going, with everything and everyone digitally connected. Even our pets, it seems, given the business racquet surrounding micro-chipping. (Oh-oh - shades of a sinister future if it’s true, as believed by some, that these vaccines contain micro-chips. Too late now.) I’m Libran, so for me there needs to be a balanced view on things. There is good and bad in everything. “You can’t stop progress” is a well used slogan and it remains to be seen where we end up after all of this. As I write, the air is blue around Gareth as he grapples with the paperwork to do with handing over these pups, and also dealing with the ridiculous bureaucratic processes concerned with redress for our purchase of a faulty washing machine. It’s no joy having to hand wash everything in the bath, spending hours on the phone to Curry’s PC World going through recorded option after option and ultimately ending nowhere while at the same time the hounds are baying for attention. Surely we can find better ways to employ people than getting them to build more and more complex snakes-and-ladders-type retail after-sales-service platforms aimed at making life difficult and annoying for customers. My nephew, Russ, once proclaimed that the exponential growth in bureaucracy is because its purpose is to provide work for those who’ve done courses and degrees in business studies. So it would seem. It’s the same in every sector - our very existence makes us simply a bundle of data that can harvested for many purposes. The Kennel club is at it too, with its dubious marketing attached to puppy registration.

As my wise friend Jinny said, having these pups is proving to be a life experience for us. And this pandemic with its lockdowns and multitude of attempts to make sense of “what’s going on” is a life experience that we have shared across the globe, all of us trying to stay afloat (I hope that metaphor won’t materialise given the Climate Emergency).

After my vaccination the other day I couldn’t resist a hug with my son. Yes, I know I’m still not supposed to take such a risk, for his sake or mine, but, Boy, did it feel right! It was like being given a float cushion (don’t take that the wrong way, Owen - it’s a metaphorical float cushion).

This morning I opened the curtains and was presented with a light sea mist, drifting across this housing estate. My mind wandered back to a time, not too long ago, when travel was our new lifestyle choice and I was gazing out from Hymer at a Spanish sea mist. As I looked at the red-brick landscape, somewhere from the back of my mind came the song “Everything is beautiful in its own way”.  Whether that can be said for a fast mutating virus or a theory of dastardly plots to  enslave us I’m not sure, but whatever life throws at us we must embrace it. Hugs all round......just make sure you’re wearing a mask 

Reggie

The fourth is elsewhere still tearing the place apart!

Boxing match over

Puppy love and Paranoia

There’s nothing like a litter of puppies to make you fall in love. Their tiny faces once their eyes have opened - too cute! Now that ours are three weeks old we’re into weaning and toilet training them; a messy affair, but I’m in love with them all the same.

What is it about puppies, kittens and other fluffy youngsters that make our hearts melt and photo-fuel our social media trains? If you’re a regular viewer of Spring/Summer/Autumn and Winterwatch, you will be familiar with Chris Packham’s disparagement of ‘cuteness’. It’s a bit of a presenters’ joke, but whatever - cuteness gets me every time. 

We’ve been surprised at how quickly these pups have responded to us even though they are still so dependant on their mother. Their puppy love of snuggling into our arms and tugging at our slippers is going to make it SO hard to let them go, as go they must. In spite of advice not to name them as it makes it harder to detach when the time comes, we have inevitably done so. First of all the children thought up names for them (we’ve been keeping them involved with video) and I suppose naming couldn’t be avoided once we’d been told what one would be called by his owner-to-be. They now have kennel club names too, so their pet names have followed suit - Rosie, Dotty, Teddy and Reggie (he’s the one already spoken for).

Sigh. 

When the day comes to let them go, I know I will shed tears. While giving the house a thorough cleaning and airing I will be sharing the heartache with our poor Pwdin who will have lost her little brood. I’m already wondering how she will react. Will she miss them like I miss my own brood? Will she wake at night wondering how they are faring? Will she spend her days wondering whether they still remember and love her? Will she have any paranoid thoughts about whether she was a good-enough mother? We assume that, unlike us humans, other animals detach from their young easily and ‘happily’ resume their existence without them. But do they? How can we know? Apparently ducks don’t notice the loss of any of their brood until they’re down to just one. Their numerical skills are limited to knowing the difference between one and more-than-one; so I’ve been led to believe. But it would seem to suggest that of course they notice. It’s whether they suffer a sense of loss, like we humans do, is my question. Maybe other animals are just better at stoicism. Who knows?

There’s nothing like being locked down to fuel paranoia, I guess. It doesn’t matter how many jigsaws or sour doughs one achieves, there’s still the knowledge that a world ‘out there’ is functioning and doing so without you. Ok, it’s just me; I am retired, after all, and apparently, by being older, more threatened by the virus. It’s a bit different for the younger generation, of course, struggling with trying to keep things going. But that’s how I feel - cut off, and I guarantee that there are many more, feeling the same way. 

What was it Shakespeare said (or was it Plato) about a ‘shadow show’? Gareth and I are nice and cosy in our little house (it’s a novelty to live in one after three years) but we see the world through screens now - phones, laptops, TV - shadows of the ‘real’ world. And when we do get outside....Well! As one of us has to be with the pups at all times, we go out separately. Whenever Gareth gets back from his walk or bike ride he will download all of his angst and ire about the foolishness and lack of consideration displayed by others ‘out there’ taking air and, as he sees it, filling it with virus. There’s nothing like an invisible virus that we’re told by the shadows on our walls to be deadly and highly contagious to make us paranoid about being anywhere near other people. Unless you are one who feels invincible, of course, or someone who prefers to believe that it’s fake news. 

It always takes a close encounter with the truth before taking any story seriously.

Ok, so a new day dawns. What shall I do today (apart from rearing puppies, that is)? So far the outside is looking pretty dreary, but light is coming through the curtains earlier each day and through the gloom of yesterday’s walk I heard a robin singing his Springtime song. Through the remains of a snow sprinkle, crocus and daffodil shoots were showing through. Primroses, tucked under the frosted fallen leaves in a nearby woodland are preparing for a blooming display as the days lengthen and the sun tows along the Spring. Maybe, sometime this year, 2021, we will all emerge from our caves into a more hopeful season; one with the virus safely contained (eradicated even) and one in which the only shadows are our own, as we walk companionably in the sunshine.

                                             — - - - - - - — — ——— -

In spite of my stated hope above, I can’t finish without making a point about vaccination. Vaccines have saved us from deadly illnesses; one of humanity’s greatest medical achievements, and I have enormous admiration for the world’s scientists who have worked tirelessly to find one for this present curse. But, there are people who are nervous and even sceptical about receiving them. I confess to being somewhat wary myself. What worries me more, I have to say, is the idea being mooted that there should be some sort of vaccination ‘passport’. I’ve heard it suggested by one travel operator that without such a passport transport will be refused on the basis that other travellers would be vulnerable. I don’t get the logic. Surely it’s the unvaccinated that are vulnerable and it may be their choice to be so. In any case, we are being told that social distancing, mask wearing and hand washing must continue, even after vaccination, so where’s the issue, unless it’s to do with the travel operators’ question of liability. What on earth is this Brave New World we are entering?

Within these walls

 So 2020 rolled off over the horizon leaving a nasty smell. 2021 has a familiar odour, arriving as it did in the midst of another lockdown. News of a more infectious variant of the virus put a big dampener on everyone’s Christmas plans and while it wasn’t exactly cancelled, for many it may as well have been. Here in Wales we were allowed Christmas Day with one other household and immediately after we went into full lockdown. 

For Gareth and me it’s an extension of the torpor we’d ( I, anyway) got accustomed to at the caravan except we are now comfortably ensconced in our Legoland-type house. In November our tenant left in time for us to pack up at the caravan, get our stuff from storage and move in. 

As I write, it’s the early hours and I am on watch for the arrival of puppies as Gareth takes his turn for an an hour or two’s sleep. Knowing that we wouldn’t be travelling this winter we decided to let our Pwdin have a litter before she gets older. As a mother I am relating to her as her body prepares to bring new life into the world and Gareth is like an anxious father as he diligently checks her and studies whelping articles. We are equipped and prepared but at this moment, Pwdin seems a bit reluctant to produce. Our preoccupation with her is a welcome distraction from the fact of being separated from family and friends. We had a lovely reprieve by having Christmas Day at Owen and Jess’s; a sparkly day shining brightly in my memory like a star in what would otherwise be a gloomy winter. Contact with the rest of my brood is virtual and scarce.

In my last blog I admitted to my spectacular lack of achievement through the autumn. Apart from our period of home-making I can’t thrill you with any novel accomplishments. I have enjoyed the thinking time, however, with plenty of opportunity to ruminate on the meaning of life. I can’t offer you any stupendous revelations but I will share a couple of my thoughts (they aren’t necessarily my own thoughts, of course - I have been reading a bit).

For instance, back in the summer we picked up on a podcast that intrigued me into buying the book it was based on,  “Sitopia - how food can save the world”  by Carolyn Steel. The podcast was a vision of society, post-pandemic, that realised the significance and value of food after issues of supply and distribution (we’re now witnessing those issues as a result of Brexit, too, as it happens).  The book skilfully presents the idea of how we need to rethink our attitudes to food given the way our monetary economy has, after 5000 years, got us up a creek without a paddle. 

The book is giving me pause to think, as I often do, about the ‘olds’ that have passed on, so recently it feels; my parents, Gareth’s parents and two very dear aunts, my god-mothers.  I am glad that they didn’t suffer the same fate as so many of their generation in this pandemic, though they lived through WW2 and came through many a crisis, personal and societal. The book has caused me to think of how food featured in their lives and to what extent their lives were shaped by the foods available to them. Although I was too young to remember, I had my own ration book as a baby, food shortages still being a problem in the early fifties, but I do remember some of the tales my  parents told about what foods were available to them through the war, and how precious something like an orange was, or a piece of chocolate. My father’s recollections of fresh milk at the mid-Wales farm he was evacuated to, left him with a life-long love of a cool glass of milk. My mother, my sisters and I developed a finely tuned ear for when Dad had sneaked a swig from the fridge. Much to his bemusement we could even tell from his voice if he’d ‘been at the milk’. 

It may have been the lack of anything food-wise to get excited about in my mother’s youth that led to her being a less-than-adept cook. Like most housewives in the fifties (yes, it was a woman’s  job then) my mother fell in with the trend in convenience food and as children a large part of my sisters’ and my diet was tinned or dried and rehydrated. My father liked his meat very well done which is just as well because that’s the only way my mother could cook it - burnt.

Gareth’s parents both grew up in rural Gower, in the same corner of the peninsular, the war being a bit less apparent perhaps than it was to my Swansea town-dwelling parents. Gareth’s mother was from farming people and farm life, with its food-based economy and close community ties. It definitely shaped her to the effect of her being unable to adapt happily to the life-on-an-estate that marriage took her to. Raised on a hard-work ethic, in retirement she had to make work for herself, including for her retired teacher husband whose preference was for more cerebral things than manual labour. With no fields or flocks to attend to the only labour available to her was cleaning and cooking, with knitting for leisure. Food played a deeply important role in Val’s life, central to her need to nurture relationships and cement her place in the community. 

Many of us today are finding meal preparation a pleasant distraction from the sense of incarceration inflicted on us by this pandemic. With restaurants closed, home cooking is having a resurgence. My own cooking is definitely not Masterchef worthy, but I am enjoying the kitchen in our Lego house (Taylor Wimpey actually) having managed in our caravan kitchen or the motorhome for the past three years. It’s nice to have our stuff around us again too. Christmas surprises for us consisted of rediscovering things that have been packed away in storage since moving from Bay View. Rediscovering my cookery books has been fun. I’ve been able to whip up some of the old favourites with the book propped up in the kitchen instead of having to work my way through someone else’s blog on my iPad to follow an untried recipe. You’ll have to ask Gareth about the worth of my concoctions.

Post-script: I wrote the above just after the New Year came in, as we waited for Pwdin to deliver her babies. On January 5th she produced four pups; two males and two females. They are now one and a half weeks old and more than twice their birth weight. Pwdin has taken to motherhood beautifully and Bess is looking on carefully, looking forward (I assume) to being a playful aunty. Their eyes will start opening soon and once they start running around it’s going to be very busy here (that reminds me - I need to get a new mop and bucket). It will be fun, but tinged with the disappointment of not having the grandchildren around to see the process. Children are so detached from the natural world these days, compared with previous generations, and this pandemic is cutting them off from so many other things, now, too. 

Ok, 2021, do your worst, but get it over with so we can gather and hug again.