Reflections - An interview with SPVR

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Life Behind the Gate

For the first time in many years, the gate into our house is shut. Not to keep us in but to keep others out. I will shortly be going out to put a table in place for delivery drivers to leave parcels. And attaching a few helpful instructions on the other side of the gate. Last night's statement from Nicola and the legislation that is coming shortly from Westminster and Holyrood will create a framework designed to protect us all. Our role as more vulnerable oldsters, whose bodily systems are gently declining as we age, is to protect ourselves from becoming a burden on our health service, our social services. People with serious conditions, whose immune systems are relatively ineffective for whatever reason, sick babies, need to able to get to the front of the queue without people like us who can take action to avoid, or at least postpone catching the bug, getting in the way. Reports coming to me from elsewhere suggest that there is still a minority who may need something a...

How to avoid being a celebrity

Some things sneak up on you unobserved. I had previously thought that I would have stopped this daily diary after 100 editions. Just hadn't noticed that yesterday was that milestone. Today has its own significance. The words written here will take the total over the 120 thousand mark. So today marks diary day 101. George Orwell created the original Room 101 as the place that the enemies of Big Brother are consigned to. And the fearsome Big Brother has been transmogrified into a "reality" show on TV. Just like Room 101. These are both programs I am unlikely to watch. A quick glance or two at Room 101 took no time to persuade me that I found it neither humorous, informative nor entertaining. The whole genre of "reality" shows, from which it appears "celebrity" emerges is as far from entertainment as I could imagine. But does it do any harm to society as a whole that TV broadcasts some programs for which I have zero affinity? Probably not. So fa...

Nature's gems

It can get a wee bit confusing as to what day it is when my schedule for each day is essentially similar. And for other people who can work at home and choose their own timetable, I guess it will be similar. I do know today is Sunday, because the newspapers whose web sites I am reading are, mostly, Sunday papers. But just as the variety and number of newspapers has significantly changed over the years, so too has the degree to which the "Sundays" are differentiated from papers published on other days. They are thinner for one thing. That goes for almost all our news media. It's not simply the focus on COVID-19, quite properly and necessarily, but the paucity of stories on other subjects. I guess in part that is because there is less going on. But it is likely that the inability of journalists to go out and hunt down new stories is shrinking the news agenda as well. A reminder of how much we need their profession. When I was a student in the 1960s, I stayed in...

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