Well here we are into the fifth day of the second lockdown, and in one respect it is a little stranger than the first, and I’ll try to explain because there are a couple of reasons I’m a little confused and frustrated. The first was on Sunday, my wife and I were painting furniture, and I thought how good it would be to get it finished and go to the pub for a couple of beers!! I suppose I can wait until 2nd December when Boris Johnson has told us it will end. Well, the national lockdown may end, but be prepared for local restrictions if numbers don’t fall, at least that is what I predict!
Anyway, as I write this, I am listening to Sky Sports News, and there are a couple of points. Sergio Garcia and Joaquin Niemann have just announced they are withdrawing from this year’s US Golf Masters due to them both testing positive for COVID-19 and to me it adds to the confusion. But first of all, as with everyone, let’s hope for a speedy recovery for both.
We are not allowed to play golf on our local course, where there are a lot fewer people involved and you probably only need one person in the shop taking green fee’s. They can work behind a plastic screen and wear a face covering. People going into the shop can’t buy any golf accessories, but they too have to wear face coverings and can only pay by card transactions, so no cash is passed on. Then you add a few golfers in a maximum group of four all socially distancing, and off we go. All very simple, all very COVID safe. When we are out on the course, maybe we don’t remove flags to avoid touching and sharing, and if putting or trying to chip in and your ball hits the flag and bounces out, it counts as actually going in. It’s not the best option, but neither is COVID, and we need to adapt.
I remember being addicted to golf, having visitors who had stayed overnight on the Saturday, and I couldn’t wait for them to go home on the Sunday so that I could go to play golf. It was pouring down, and it was so wet I was the only person on the course, that’s how much I enjoyed it, that’s how much I wanted to play.
Now if I were still like that where golf or anything else for that matter was concerned, I would accept a small change to the rules if it meant I could play quite often, and that is how I feel about most outdoor sports and pastimes, yet there are things I still don’t understand.
So here’s the start, if elite professional golfers are testing positive for COVID, why are they allowed to continue playing? And what scientific evidence do we have that playing at local course level spreads the virus, I will bet a lot of money that there are no facts supporting this, maybe a decision made on a whim rather than facts. So, in my opinion, we are stopping people enjoying themselves in the fresh air where the Government would rather we go during the Pandemic, the same for professionals. Still, professionals have the virus, admittedly not proven to have been caught in a tournament environment, but they are allowed to play, and we’re not – why?
And from the sports news, I don’t understand why Callum Hudson-Odoi, has broken COVID rules for the second time. As a high profile England and Chelsea player, why oh why does he have to do it? He will come under more scrutiny being a premier league and international player. Still, he should know that, but for me and my older generation, it is disrespectful to his country, club and fans. And not a good example of how the younger generation should be acting. I am sure there are many, as there was with Dominic Cummings who will say ‘well if he can do it so can I’, I certainly hope not, but being a betting man I’d consider putting £5 on him doing it again and being in the news again – but that’s me!
How about tennis and this headline from the Evening Standard:
‘French Open (tennis): Five unnamed players withdraw from qualifiers after positive coronavirus tests.’ So why is elite tennis allowed to continue, yet I can’t go to the local court to play tennis with my wife whom I live with, normally stand about 20-25 metres apart and where no one else is needed as we wouldn’t have to pay, and so just the two of us, sharing equipment like we share cups, plates and much more at home?
Children are allowed to go to school and sit inside for five or six hours per day, again inside where we are told germs spread easier and quicker, but we can’t take them to their outdoor football training and games at the weekend. Yes if your kids train indoors during the week, sorry but it’s cancelled, but surely not outdoor sport and exercise, again I would doubt they have the scientific facts to tell us why they can’t play sport outside, yet they can go to school.
People say that it is important that we don’t gather in groups, such as parents gathering to watch the kids play or train, and I understand all that, but we have to be responsible. Maybe the golfers and the tennis players wear masks until they are out on the course and courts, perhaps some of them wear coverings when playing, there are options. I bet many golfers would wear a face covering if it meant getting their eighteen holes in at the weekend?
So we are told they don’t want us gathering in groups and that is one reason these pastimes have been cancelled. Yet we are still allowed to walk down crowded high streets and go to busy supermarkets or other ‘essential’ retail outlets where there are often no controls in place. Or at least they are not followed by customers, and staff won’t bother guiding people, and they rarely do. But as reported in one paper last week and seen on captured CCTV footage, if people are going to start pulling guns out when they are questioned I don’t think I’d be asking either.
But I have mentioned ‘duty of care’ before, and I wonder what would happen if someone, God forbid, caught the virus from someone in their local shop, because that person wasn’t wearing a face covering. In this day and age, if that could ever be proven, which admittedly would be difficult, but if it could, there would be some claim for compensation made, that I’m sure.
And as I watch the end of Sky News, I am seeing that we allow people out metal detecting walking right past each other and reporters out on the street interviewing groups of people that I assume because they are sitting side by side with no masks on are from the same household, let’s hope they are!! And why it all adds to the confusion and why some decisions are made. Once again, I believe a Minister for Common Sense is missing from the Government meetings, a position I would gladly apply for!
My local Physiotherapist told me that one customer didn’t want to wear a face-covering during treatment as it infringed his human rights. The Physiotherapist had to point out that by not wearing one, it violated his human rights, and so the conversation went on. In the end, the customer gave in and came into the clinic wearing a mask, but he had taken time to write on the front, and the message was ‘slave to the mask.’ But at least he got his treatment, and I do wonder at times.
But the strangest one for me is our cancelled May holiday, re-booked to fly out on the 29th December and us looking forward to spending the New Year celebrations in Malta, but we have just had notice that our EasyJet flight has been cancelled. And I asked why?
After a couple of messages backwards and forwards, I eventually got this reply:
‘Please be assured that the health and wellbeing of our passengers and crew is our highest priority. On our end, we are continually following the guidance provided by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and The European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA.) Any flights available online means that we are still able to operate during those times. Should we be advised to cancel or change our flights, we will inform passengers and remove the option online.’
So here’s my question. Why was my flight on the 29th December cancelled, yet I can still fly the same route on the 26th? Based on a seven day holiday, both flights cover the New Year festivities and what is the difference with these three days? Again like golf and tennis, I just don’t understand.
I also think I may have been the target for a ‘crash for cash’ for the first time in my life, but a car I was following stopped on double yellows, very quickly just after turning left. I managed to stop, and it was an awkward situation, and I did gesticulate to the driver because of their actions. I stopped at the local shop, and she jumped out her car, walked to the shop and followed me in shouting and swearing at me and denying she had stopped on double yellows that were there for all to see (and still are). The shop keeper told me not to worry about her, she had been in a wheelchair the week before trying to claim benefits – and once again, I despair. And admittedly that is something I find myself doing more and more these days, with today’s society.
I was speaking to my friend and told him I wanted to go back and live in 1980, but I wanted to go back as a fifty-seven-year-old, not as the seventeen-year-old I was at the time. If only – life was so much easier back then – the downside is I wouldn’t have my web site as there was no internet 🙂
Thank you for reading and stay safe
