Day 130

We journeyed to Arley Hall first thing to have a look around the gardens. People have to enter through the shop, masks on. I took mine off once outside, J felt much more comfortable keeping hers on.

The gardens are beautiful, and spacious enough to keep well away from other people. So here, in the superb herbaceous borders, we went across rather than towards these three.

This is week 19, day 4 of shielding, 130 days in all. Tomorrow formal shielding ends. Those who have been shielding will be feeling highly anxious - frightened even - about what happens next. I really feel for those who have to go back to work. The big message to shielders has been that they are highly vulnerable, likely to be very ill if they catch COVID-19, and likely to end up in hospital. That message hasn’t changed.

The government needs to sort out its strategy, sort out its messaging, and be honest with people. That should not be a tall order ! As far as I can see the strategy should be about containment to a level which allows the economy to open up (which involves living and working with the virus circulating, but at a containable level), but that can only be done with significant restrictions remaining in place. And my guess is that we are talking 18 months to 2 years, assuming the promising vaccines are proved to work, and can then be manufactured and distributed at massive scale. Talk about a return to normality by Christmas is foolish. And announcing a confusing tightening of measures at 9pm last night for parts of northern England, through Twitter, to start the next day, is ridiculous.

What has cheered us up this July is the photo in the extra. I look at it every time I go into the garden (it’s by the back door). It’s the July picture in our One World calendar. A couple dancing the salsa in the place it was invented in Havana. Pure happiness.