The Saturday List #463 - Ten things that Covid and the pandemic changed in my life

 Four years ago, towards the end of November 2020, I wrote this 

" I always have a note in my diary for today to remind me to order the Turkey, think of a present for Clare, arrange an Xmas beer with a couple of friends that I've not seen through the year. It gives me a month to get myself in order. As I am sure you are aware, this year that note is largely redundant right now. I doubt those beers will be had. It seems likely that London will be in tier 2 or 3 of lockdown. It seems that we might see the family, but mass and a meal at Prezzo seems unlikely. In a normal year, I'd be in the middle of planning a few things right now. Since the Barnet Eye became established, we've always had the Barnet Eye community awards and The False Dots Xmas party in December. That isn't happening. There is the annoual Pogues/Pogue traders gig. That isn't happening. There is the Xmas trip to The Etihad for a match. There is my sister in laws Xmas party in Notting Hill. There is our post Xmas break with friends. You get the picture."  

The Blog was titled "Don't feel guilty for being happy". What was interesting was how much things have returned to Normal. I will be seeing friends for Xmas drinks. The False Dots have their Xmas gig in the diary (please come along, it will be a blast - click on poster for tix). 

We are booked to see The Pogue Traders at Dingwalls for the Xmas gig. On Wednesday, we go to the Etihad for our Xmas trip. My sister in law is having her party in Notting Hill and we have our trip away with friends. The only thing on that list that isn't happening is we won't be doing the Barnet Eye Community Awards. There are a couple of reasons for that, nothing really to do with the Pandemic. The first is the pubs we used to hold the awards at have either shut down or are under new management. The second is that I am really too busy with other things to do it properly. I may well next year, if we can get a decent venue.. I do feel that community hero's should be recognised, but getting nominations and putting an evening together is actually a lot of work. But in truth, the pandemic is the reason this stopped. When you do something every year and then you can't, you lose momentum and other things take priority. It got me thinking. What things in my life have changed because of the pandemic? I thought I'd make a list.

1. My finances. I was chatting yesterday with one of my customers. A nice chap, who was a candidate for the Conservatives in Mill Hill for many years, when the Lib Dems used to always win. He's also a musician. We always have a good chinwag about local issues etc. Before the pandemic, we were doing well financially. Don't get me wrong, we are not paupers now, but we are what you may describe as asset rich / cash poor. Keeping the business alive cleaned out our ready cash savings and the business turnover has not returned to pre pandemic levels. This means no expensive holidays, far fewer dinners out and cutting of other luxuries. Given that in 2020 I didn't think the business would survive and it has, I suppose I should be grateful. What upsets me is that it seems that at every budget in the last two years, both Tory and Labour governments have put the boot into small business. I discussed this with my friend yesterday. We are on opposite sides of the political divide, but he agreed with everything I said. If I wasn't so in love with music, I'd cash my chips in and put my feet up. Sadly, my life is music and without it, life wouldn't be worth living, so I am lumbered running my studio and my missus is lumbered putting up with it. Many people don't understand, but to me, what is the point of cash if you are not doing what you love? I could have all the money in the world and still be miserable, if I didn't have a band and my studios.

2. My sense of smell. This is an odd one. I have never tested positive for covid. I've never had the symptoms for the whole period of the pandemic. However, before the pandemic struck, over Xmas 2019, I had all of the symptoms. I lost my sense of taste. I thought I had lung cancer. I was waking up at night in a sweat. I was seriously thinking of going to the Doctor for a chest x-ray, but it abated after about two weeks and I forgot about it. I only realised when the government announced that loss of smell and taste was a symptom. We'd been having a curry on new years eve and my mates were saying it was lovely. I can recall thinking "They are mad, it tastes of nothing". I went to bed at five past midnight as I felt so ill. But.... and this is the really odd thing, now my sense of smell is 100 times better than it ever was. This is generally a bad thing. I have the sense of smell of a blood hound. Most smells are horrible. People on the tube, the smell when you have a pee (I can tell what my last meal was, be it fish, meat or veg). I can smell the pollen from Oak trees in the spring (never noticed it before). The list goes on. Anyone else noticed? Was it a long covid symptom? I am curious.

3. My musical taste. The pandemic made me listen to a hell of a lot more recorded music than I have for decades. I started making up Spotify playlists for fun. Lots of things that previously I dismissed as "unserious" I now love. A good example is the Mariachis cover of I love rock and roll, from the Mexican party album. This is now on my Cheer me up playlist!

4. My culinary ability. Mostly due to boredom, during covid, I did a lot of cooking. I had the time to experiment and I realised where I'd been going wrong previously. The down side of this is that I expect a far higher quality of food when I eat out. Summed up, I want restaurants to use good ingredients and prepare food properly. The best example is roast potatoes.  Before the pandemic, I'd par boil for ten minutes, then put in the oven. Now, I par boil for twelve minutes, give them a quick fry, salt and pepper them and put them on a hot plate in the oven. They taste a million times better. 

5. I am calmer. I did a lot of introspection during covid. I realised that I got riled far too easily. This has been an ongoing thing for me. In 1995, I actually had anger management sessions as Clare was pregnant and I realised that I needed to calm down. I am not a violent person, but I can be horrible when I am riled. During covid, I realised that I needed to do more work on this and actively practice the stratetgies. I realised this had worked on Wednesday. I was at the Virgin Gym in Mill Hill East, sitting in the sauna. A very arrogant and inconsiderate fellow member did did something that infuriated me (rightly). I was furious. Thirty years ago I'd have probably lost the plot and punched him. There was a big part of me that really wanted to but despite seething, I simply said in a very low, calm voice "what you just did was extremely inconsiderate and bad mannered" whilst glaring at him. To my amazement he backed down and apologised. It is the better way. Without the pause for lockdown, I doubt I'd have taken the time to understand my own weaknesses.

6. My time management has gone out of the window. I used to be extremely well disciplined and got things done. Now I don't.It infuriates me. Luckily Clare just about keeps things on track. Being lazy and having nothing to do for four months of total lockdown really messed me up. 

7. I discovered my voice. When we first set up the band, Pete Conway was the singer. He left and for a while I'd sing a few songs. I hated it and always felt embarrassed. After a couple of years, we got a singer and I concentrated on guitar. During lockdown, our then singer Allen Ashley couldn't rehearse. I started singing out of necessity. I realised I actually enjoyed it, I'd just been singing the wrong sort of songs! This culminated with the band releasing an album with me singing all the songs last week. I am really pleased with it. I am very much in the Ian Dury/Suggs school of singing, but as that's the music I love most, that's fine! I now bitterly regret having waited 45 years to realise.

8. My relationship with social media. The pandemic and lockdown made Social Media toxic. As people had nothing else to do, they piled on to social media and got really cross about everything. I very quickly tired of it all.

9. My relationship with God. I don't particularly feel comfortable talking about my faith and my religion publicly, but I also believe in honesty. I don't think anyone could see what was happening without challenging their view of the Universe. As someone raised in the Roman Catholic tradition, having time on my hands to think about my religion and faith enabled me to get an adult perspective that I'd never had previously. I've always had a deep suspicion of the heriarchical nature of most religions and a dislike of rituals and ceremonies. Weighed against that I have huge appreciation of the fact that churches etc are community hubs, where people come together to mingle and mix and try and be better, more compassionate individuals. I think it is a very good thing to spend an hour in such an environment. Clearly during covid, there were no masses etc at the Church. I didn't miss it, but when the Church reopened, I found I was glad to be back. I respect everyone's views. If atheism or another religion works for you that is great. This works for me.

10. My songwriting skills. When lockdown hit, I thought "great, I'll have time to write some brilliant songs". What did I do? I lay on the lounger and drank beer. I realised that without inspiration, I had nothing to write about. I tried, but failed miserably, so I gave up. Then I was looking at some old pictures and videos. When the band started rehearsing, I had some ideas. We were still in a level of lockdown but as music is my job, we could rehearse,  I started experimenting. Our drummer, Graham, started talking about how lockdown was like "Sunday in the 70's" where nothing was open and there was nothing to do. It inspired a song. The bits fell into place. It also gave me a template for how False Dots songs should work. It was the first video we released as part of the "New False Dots". Without lockdown, I'd never have written a song like this. 

What did the pandemic/covid change in your life?

The ten mistakes of Boris Johnson's government that cost tens of thousands of lives

Matt Hancock has gone and we have a new health secretary. Boris Johnson has been briefing that he wants to draw a line under Hancocks reign and move on. But the buck never stopped with Matt Hancock. It stopped with Boris Johnson. He chaired the COBRA committee (when he could be bothered to attend). He was Hancock's boss. When there was good news it was him who fronted the conference (when there was bad news it was 'rent a stooge Hancock who generally got the gig). 

His government presided over the worst death rate for a major nation last year. This could have been avoided. I thought I'd list the grave errors of his government that lead to us having a 50% higher death rate than Germany. 

1. Johnson didn't bother attending COBRA meetings in the earliest days of the pandemic, this caused drift and meant that he was late to the game in his understanding the severity of the crisis.

2. When it was clear that the disease was deadly Boris did not close down air travel between hotspots and the UK (Primarily China and Italy).

3. As well as failing to close down air travel, there was no requirement for anyone returning from these places to self isolate or even have their temperature taken before or after boarding a plane. Thios point and the previous point meant that the disease entered the UK completely unhindered.

4. When it was clear that the disease was running rampant, Boris dithered for a week. If he'd have locked down a week earlier, every single study has shown we'd have had a minimum of 10-15,000 less deaths.

5. There was no attempt at all to prevent the disease entering the care home network. The most vulnerable people in the country, those most likely to get seriously ill and die, were recklessly and negligently exposed to the disease as people with infections returned from hospitals. 

6. There was no protocol to separate carers who had been exposed to the disease from carers and patients who were vulnerable in the early days of the crisis.

7. The government lied to the nation that face coverings were ineffective in slowing the spread of the disease. This was done to protect the NHS stockpile. This meant that when they changed the advice, many people simply didn't believe them. 

8.  When Dominic Cummings did his trip to Barnard Castle, he wasn't instantly sacked. This undermined the unity of the nation in fighting the disease and made a significant minority say "If they won't follow the rules, then neither will I". This meant that lockdown observance would never be as effective again.

9. Boris Johnson and his Chancellor Rishi Sunak launched the 'Eat Out To Help Out" scheme, without a vaccination programme in place and without tying it to use of the highly costly NHS App. I believe that if people had needed to 'check in'  on the App to get the discount, then the scheme may have been of some use, but all it did was pour petrol on the cooling embers of the fire.

10. When it was clear that the Indian Variant was rampant, he repeated the mistake of last February and March and was late in imposing travel restrictions.  Fortunately this has not lead to the same number of deaths as the first mistake, but that is completely down to luck.

None of these points are hindsight, they are statements of the bleeding obvious. The government needs to be properly held to account for these appalling failures. Sacking Matt Hancock for snogging his secretary in the broom cupboard in no way atones for the abject failure. If Boris was an honourable man, he'd have stood down long ago. 

Don't make the mistake of thinking the pandemic is over

 Like most of the country, we've been following the ups and downs of the pandemic, the infection and death counts and vaccination program with morbid interest over the last fourteen months. I remember the early days, going to the Good Earth for a Valentines lunch, where the owner, who has been a friend for many years, told us that people had cancelled due to the 'Wuhan virus'. We had a chuckle with him at the time, none of us expected that within a month, the pandemic would be on the verge of shutting the UK down. From being an obscure news story on the other side of the world, within two months, it would have killed my favourite auntie,  a good friends daughter and a long time studio customer and friend. That is the thing about highly infectious diseases, they are highly infectious. This one has mutated several times, becoming more infectious and more resistant to vaccines. In Barnet the signs are very positive. However we are one mutation away from being back to square one, if a vaccine resistant strain emerges. The best thing we can do is suppress the virus globally as strongly as possible.

There are arguments as to how best to do this. Vaccines are clearly the best way. Developed nations should make giving vaccines to the poorer areas of the world a priority. The more people who are infected, the higher the probability of new variants emerging that will set us back. There is also the spectre of more deadly variants. 

The anti vaxxer/covid denying lobby are pushing Boris hard to damn the science and open up. I am not quite sure what these people expect if the government followed their gameplan. It seems to me, from some conversations, that they believe that had we had no lockdowns and no vaccination program, we'd have had no deaths and everything would be marvellous. Many of them believe that the virus doesn't exist, or that it is harmless and the government has pulled a sleight of hand to con us. Anyone who refuses to believe these absurd claims are labelled 'sheeple' and told we've been conned. Sadly, for them at least, their evidence does not stand up to scrutiny. You would think that the suppression of the virus death rate would be evidence enough, but these strange people believe that viruses magically disappear of their own accord when they get bored. 

The truth is that a virus has exactly the same mission as any other life form. To reproduce and survive. to do this, it has to be passed on. This is why viruses will always evolve to become more infectious. It is there best chance of survival. It also means that they must mutate, as this is their only weapon in their fight against our immune system. Understanding these facts can only lead to one conclusion. We are not out of the woods yet.

Now I hope that we've seen the last of lockdowns and all the strain that goes with it.   My business has just about survived the shock. Our finances are not in the robustly strong shape they were last March, but we are OK. Many in the music industry are not. Many have taken on other jobs to pay the bills. Many are very wary of restarting their music career as they have bills to pay. Festivals cannot get insurance and freelance back up crew have been especially hard hit. Whilst we all crave a full opening up, nothing is more damaging than opening up then slamming on the brakes. This just makes everyone unwilling to make commitments. I was planning for my band to do some recordings in Portugal later this year. You may wonder why someone who owns a studio would want to fly to Portugal to another studio? The reason is that a change of scenery is helpful to the writing process. The studio is owned by one of my main collaborators and we often record material at both studios. As a band, we feel that it would be a fitting coda to the pandemic. But now our plans are thrown into chaos again. Many planning holidays will feel the same. What has happened today with regard to travel to Portugal is a stark reminder that we mustn't make the mistake of thinking the pandemic is over. We need to be careful until such time as we really do know it is beaten and it is not just ill informed, siren voices on Twitter shouting it.