I heard someone on the World Service this morning, complaining about the term ‘Social Distancing’. She claimed it should be ‘Physical Distancing’ because the use of the word ‘social’ is making New Yorkers (where she lives) avoid any kind of contact at all. This is a real shame. Though I’m not sure how much of that is the use of a word and how much is just living in a city.
My experiences of New York (two visits) are of a warm and friendly city with helpful, smiling people. It’s one of the reasons I fell in love with it.
And my experiences here, at home, are of people generally being friendlier. Today was a perfect example.
On the way into Farnham, almost everyone I passed said good morning, some even asked how I was, all of them smiled. I knew a few of them but generally they were strangers.
One chap I often encounter stopped and chatted about his greenhouse and successfully growing produce. He was saying how happy he was that we’d had the final frost so he could get cracking with growing food. He told me an interesting method of heating involving bricks and a long burning candle. We’ve never exchanged more than a few words before but this was like an episode of Gardener’s World.
There was also the lady who I once thought was German until we had a conversation. She was one of those people who resemble their dog. Except her dog died a while ago. Anyway, she doesn’t sound anything but English.
I’ve chatted to her before about mostly the weather and how handy the bench placements are along the all weather path. But, this morning, she told me how she’d wanted to go to the bank but, to her dismay, discovered the new hours are 10 to 2. This meant she had to sit in the park for a long while, waiting. Mind you, given the weather, she could think of worse places to sit and wait.
Then there was the Lady from St Mawes.
I didn’t know her before the Lockdown but see her most shopping mornings as she sets off for her long, eight mile walk in order to find some relief from her constantly at home husband.
This morning we discussed what she’d achieved already this morning. She’d already cooked a banana loaf, watered the garden and tidied the house. I told her I’d managed to get out of bed.
We also discussed, at great length, whether she should cancel her upcoming holiday to St Mawes. Having listened to the very long list of Cons, I suggested that she should cancel. It sounded awful. She has until July 5 to decide but was swaying towards the cancel.
The list of Pros had only one item in it: It was fun last year but in a different house.
I eventually arrived home with about 15 minutes before having to login to join Ann and Charles for the FATN recording. And, unbelievably, Mirinda had a problem getting her camera to work for a conference she was going to speak at this morning.
As it turned out, I couldn’t fix it. It worked out okay though and I logged in for my own recording just on 10:30 and apologised profusely. Ann and Charles were very understanding and we started.
Again, it was another brilliant session. As I said afterwards, I’m really going to miss recording at home with Ann. Hopefully she feels the same.
One huge bonus about recording in my office is how I get to look out at the Wildflower Patch and new raised bed rather than looking at the sound proofing on the studio wall. I also rather like not having to walk all the way down to the Chantrys.
Mirinda’s presentation went very well as did the conference which, given it was the first one of its kind and then was online, was a great achievement by the person responsible. It also gave Mirinda’s next article a bit of a run out before publication.
Eventually, though, we both needed a bit of a relief from technology so we loaded the girls into Max and headed for Frensham. There was nowhere to park at Frensham so we then headed for Hankley. The top car park has been opened again so we parked and headed off up the hill.
I have to say I was rather glad that Frensham was too crowded because Hankley was wonderful. There were more people than usual but it was far from crowded. Like Tianamen Square you’d need millions for Hankley to be crowded.
And every single one of them smiled and said hello.
What Stupid Thing Did Donald Trump Say Today
Donald Trump reached a whole new level of stupid with this.
“We have more cases that anybody in the world. But why? Because we do more testing. When you test, you have a case. When you test you find something is wrong with people. If we didn’t do any testing, we would have very few cases. They don’t want to write that.”
The American Independent
And, as a double whammy, he also said:
Trump says doctors and nurses are “running into death just like soldiers running into bullets” and that “it’s a beautiful thing to see.”
The American Independent
Of course, I realise that both these quotes make perfect sense, they are just badly expressed. But, and I think this is very important, when the President of the United States is unable to express himself without being held up to ridicule, what does it say about the country that elected him? I guess they prefer someone on an intellectual level below them in order to justify their own stupidity.
