Lockdown: Day 20 - 12/04/20

Organizing my annual leave to give me a run of three four-day weeks for my return to work turns out to have been an excellent idea, as it has allowed me to not get too deep into the routine of work before being able to take some time out again, which is just fine as the lone Easter weekend lands between the second and third of these, as bright weather lands on both the Saturday and Sunday, allowing me to get out for a stretch on the mornings of both. It's a grand feeling to get out with the Spring season filling the environment, with blossoms blooming on the trees, especially on the run by Station Road rec, and the air being thick with the sound of birdsong, feeling so much louder with the background hum of traffic being almost completely absent, and getting a reverse trip out on the Morley Circuit route allows me a fresh perspective on the fields to the east of town, while also landing me above the station when a trio of Freightliner 66s run light into Morley tunnel, my first such spot in all the years that I've lived out here. Elsewhere, keeping in regular contact with Mum has kept us engaged while she endures the enforced isolation of lockdown while being in a notional high-risk group, as we have gotten into a routine of speaking on the phone three times per week, to talk around the business of self-isolation and the big picture of the pandemic, and also to turn over just about any other topic of conversation that we can find as it drops into our heads. Indeed, I think she's adapting to the situation rather well, by keeping her shopping needs limited, finding plenty of exercise opportunities with the business of gardening and yard work, and taking up a seated gym routine that already seems to be working out for her, and she's even mastered the arts of modern communication, with a significant number of members of her church's congregation having formed a group on Zoom, the video app of the hour. A remarkable enough achievement when you consider just how many of them are over 80, and probably more technologically engaged than I am at present, and this has allowed them to continue the fellowship that lockdown has denied them over the last few weeks, with the 40 minute free sessions having provided enough time for around 20 of them to have a social coffee and conflab at a safe remove, and to have services in the run into Easter, which is cheering news for all involved, as these church folks are people that i have known for much of my life and I'm glad that enforced isolation hasn't kept them too far removed from each other.

Lockdown Achievement Unlocked!
Light Engine movements spotted at Morley station.

A month into the global pandemic and one thing I haven't talked about yet is my own well-being, though the fact that I'm still blogging ought to indicate that things are fine for the time being, and still avoiding the risk of infection to the best of my ability, and the worst that can be said for myself is that I feel permanently congested and irritable because of it, not that that really indicates anything too unusual, as that's how I usually feel around this time of year as we transition into Spring, and if the worst feeling otherwise is the perpetually dry hands that come with regular hand-washing, that's also not really any different from the seasonal transition in normal circumstances. Travelling around to work and back also has the feeling of being completely relaxed as the trains and street seem even quieter than they did a week ago, as if the bulk of employers in the city have finally worked out the bare minimum of staff that they need to have on site, or if they need any at all, whilst in the hospital we still have work to do, though the outgoing files from the medical records libraries have dropped to minimal levels, while the returning filing continues to diminish, two weeks after the effective suspension of normal outpatient workings. That leaves us with a reduced workload and the associated feeling of not being able to regard ourselves as being all that essential as workers in the current circumstances, and it starts to feel like the time to start pressing for our department to engage in a savage audit of what we have on site, as we surely need one ahead of the push towards a paperless records service, and we'll never have a better opportunity to do one with so little other work to do in the meantime, and a potential window that could be months long to work through. We're not employed to make bold decisions, of course, and thus we are all dedicated to the task of file reduction in the library at the Clarendon Wing, with all the filing sections dived up for us to work at, which ought to keep us busy for a good old stretch for weeks, and potentially months, if the task is seen through to completion, while also keeping us securely isolated from the other business on the trust site, and in a decent enough place to be working in the current circumstances.

Elsewhere, in the wider world, there's still plenty to reflect upon, not least the fact of the Prime Minister being admitted to hospital for a few days for ICU treatment because of his COVID-19 infection, especially as I'm not going to feel especially bad for him, when social media suggests I ought when this disease is afflicting so many other people in the world (and when he himself admitted that he hadn't personally been following government guidelines on social distancing), and we might hope that he might emerge from the experience chastened at the very least, though expectations of him having a Damascene conversion in its wake would be unlikely based of previous experience. We really ought to be talking about the fact that the national death toll has exceeded 10,000 over this past weekend, and that it's only just starting to be acknowledged that this figure only includes those that have passed in hospital care, and does not include those who have died elsewhere, such as in Care homes, or those who may heave passed in their own residences without a confirmed diagnosis, which could make the mortality rate show to be much worse that is being presented. Also horrifying is the report that the number of fatalities among NHS staff is current 19, with many potential due to exposure within the hospital service, due to lack of personal protective equipment, and due to frankly inadequate rates of testing that could have infectious staff on site when they ought to be in isolation. It's especially frustrating, that when not three weeks into lockdown and when we are still getting reports of increasing daily death rates from COVID-19, that the media is already starting to query when the lockdown might be ended, or when children might be returned to school, or what businesses might be allowed to resume, as if the depths of the global health crisis hadn't quite become apparent to them yet, and the fact that this is going to be a very long haul hadn't occurred to them. So keeping away from the news has to be considered as we progress, as the 24 hour cycle demands answers when there's little else to talk about and clarity isn't easily found, indeed the wait for clarity is going probably take years, not weeks, to become apparent, once the Office of National Statistics and other agencies have finally crunched the numbers on the effects of the Coronavirus pandemic, and once that is all presented, hopefully the lessons will be learned and the wider implications will not be forgotten as this country, and the world, tries to rebuilt a new normal.

Walks: Morley Social Distancing Circuit. Walked: 11/4 & 12/4 (reversed).
2.8 miles, via Valley Mils, Broad Oaks, White Rose, and Daisy Hill. x2

5,000 Miles Cumulative Total: 4378.9 miles
2020 Total: 112.4 miles
Up Country Total: 3915.1 miles
Solo Total: 4064.7 miles
5,000 in my 40s Total: 2972.7 miles

Next Up: Entering the Acid Test Weeks of Lockdown...