As if the coronavirus isn’t enough, the warm weather has enticed people out of lockdown and, in Derbyshire, into the Blue Lagoon. Very nice too you might think. Well, you’d be wrong. There are plenty of notices up warning visitors not to swim in the turquoise water as it is toxic with a pH level of 11.3. Bleach and ammonia have a pH level of around 12. The water is also full of animal carcasses, faeces and old cars. And there they were, taking a break from ‘stay at home’ and splashing around with all that old s**t.
Anyone looking for a bit of lockdown reading? JK Rowling has released a political fairytale for children called The Ickabog which is available, free of charge, in instalments on the internet at theickabog.com . Adults can read it to their children at bedtime if they don’t want to admit, even to themselves, that they are reading a fairytale.
A Yorkshire woman has become the first hijab wearing judge in the UK and the western world. Raffia Arshad, a mum of three and the first in her working class family to go to university was appointed Deputy District Judge on the Midlands Circuit last week. Congratulations to Raffia and good news for women and diversity.
More shenanigans and blatant hypocrisy in our lockdown parliament. The new leader of the opposition has shown his muscle and called for the resignation of Cummings following his dubious travels during lockdown. However it backfired on Keir Starmer when conservative Steven Woolfe asked why he hadn’t asked for the resignation of at least three labour MPs who had also broken the lockdown rules. No answer to that one of course, but it all gave everyone a good excuse to forget about staying at home and popping out to enjoy the sun.
On the internet suggestions abound on what to do to make the lockdown less tedious. The latest I’ve read about is to write a sitcom. The first piece of advice is to stick to something you know, in other words, your family. Look for funny situations in your own home and put it down on paper. After two months of being stuck in with your dearly beloveds I’m thinking that a drama might be more likely than a sitcom. And what about the singletons sitting it out on their own? I’m not sure we would want the rest of the world to know what we are getting up to. It’s the same as when people keep asking me to write my memoirs down, what did we really get up to in the swinging sixties? At the moment I think I’ll stick to blogging. Stay safe, sleep well and dream about the story you will tell. Nighty, night.