Lockdown: Day 34 - 26/04/20

I'm not gonna lie, this past week has easily been the toughest of the Corona Virus Lockdown so far, as the stresses and strains of the weeks of shifted routines and changed priorities have finally started to take their toll on me, bending but not breaking as I said last time around, but it's all proving much harder to take when situational stress lands on me with the only option being to absorb it, and then having to carry on without having the option of release that used to come with my weekly walks out, to clear the mind and stretch the limbs. It's really hard to explain just how much I'm now missing the routine of walking, as we press on into Spring, having had a sequence of lovely weekends that ought to have had me out on the trail and finding paths over the hills, moors and valleys between the Colne and the Calder, but actually had me limited to putting down only 14 miles across the whole of April, and thus it's hard to not spend time dwelling on where I'd like to be in my 2019 walking season, when I'm again being limited to a hour and a sub 3 mile trek as for my weekend's entertainment. Not that I'm not grateful to have the fields in the space between Morley, Churwell and the White Rose centre to pace around, mind you, because, as a passing dog-walker comments while out on circuit this morning, this area has been on Leeds City Council's residential development slate for a while, and all the greenery around Broad Oaks farm could be lost to suburbanisation in future years, matching the encroachment onto the hillside of the Low Moor farm site, above the railway off to the south. The lack of opportunity to expand my horizon also frustrates, with my experience field being limited to sole to trips between Morley and Leeds, and just over this last few weekends, I've missed the opportunities to visit my good friends in Calderdale for Easter drinks, and to stay with My Sister and her family for a long weekend, while intent to visit Mum has shifted from May to July to a hopeful aim at September, with my pre-booked annual leave looking it will be spent solely on time out from work and not for anything as outlandish as an actual holiday. So my novel travel experience for the Spring has been reduced to photography from the train windows as I do my morning and evening commutes, as there are so few other passengers on board to look at you weird, which gives me a rare opportunity to capture  a rarely seen perspective on the railway heritage that still endures at the lineside, mostly unacknowledged, from the 'flying' Farnley Junction, the long-closed Farnley & Wortley station, and the lost yards of the L&NWR on the run into the city.

Farnley & Wortley station, still extant since closure in 1952.

Another odd feeling is of just how small the world has gotten over the last few weeks, and I don't mean just by how our personal horizons have been insanely compressed during lockdown and enforced self-isolation, but how we are now on a planet where everybody in the world is experiencing some variation on the same situation with regards the Corona Virus pandemic, probably even more so than during periods of world war, and yet we seem to be hearing so little of what's going on beyond our own shore. International news seem to have become restricted to only cover the English speaking world, and far to much of that has been dedicated to the bloviations of some perma-tanned idiot, and if you want to know what's happening in other parts of Europe, it's nearly always presented in comparison to what's happening in Britain, and if it's news from the developing world you seek, you'll have to dig that out for yourself, as nought is presented as to what's happening across vast swathes of of South America, Africa and South Asia. You need to pay attention, but after a while it all gets to much to process, and thus you seek new media to keep you entertained, or distracted, or comforted as the case may be, and I've been no exception to that experience, not that I've been getting myself a Netflix or Amazon Prime subscription to burn my through multiple TV series in record time, as I've so far found enough self-created content online to keep my attention through the long and unusable days and evenings. So it's to Youtube that I direct my immediate gratitude as it so far presented to me Geoff Marshall and Vicki Pipe's 'All the Stations' odyssey across the country from 2017, Don Coffey's cab ride videos from across the Trans-Pennine Express network and beyond, and 'Well There's Your Problem' Podcast, the podcast about engineering disasters with slides (and probably too many jokes and and an excess of left wing politics to make it acceptable to a very wide audience). There's also the 'Let's Play' channels, and the many sports shit-posters who are still finding material to entertain with, and when I'm not listening and looking at my screens, I can always turn my attention to the paper walking journal that is turning into a proper labour of love and hate, which has now been abandoned and resumed twice over due to the many presentation and calculation errors that I've made in compiling it, and when that gets to much, I've still got my Lost Railways project to work at on Google Maps, as well as sifting though my thousands of digital photographs, while still keeping an eye on the extensive and years old Lego pile that I'm still saving up for the days when I might have to subject myself to actual quarantine.

As ever, my attention has to fall onto the COVID-19 situation, which is colossally depressing, but necessary as we are compelled to work on through it, and this weekend's stats still provide no reason for joy, as this weekend we hit a death toll of 20,000, against an infection total of 160,000, which broken down suggests a mortality rate of 12.5%, which is somehow double the worst projection that the WHO were presenting in the wake of the initial outbreak in China, which again does much to confirm the belief that this country still hasn't gotten to grips with this crisis. It's immediately easy to draw a conclusion that this is due to the lack of planning and the initially inadequate response of HM Government, and the ongoing failures with testing an containment as major contributing factors, but there's just as much of a probability that the figures are being skewed by the fact that statistical gathering has been weak, and with testing being largely confined to assessing those who are symptomatic and actively unwell, with the large number of people who have been asymptomatic or mildly afflicted being excluded. This shows up the problems that have landed on a government that allowed itself to caught unprepared, and it's probable that the true infection rate is far worse than presented, while actually making the mortality rate lower, while still being naturally horrifying to any who'd possess a shred of human compassion, and so we can only really conclude that Isolation is still protecting many from illness, hospitalisation and potentially death. Still, the speculation rules about when Lockdown might end, despite the facts of the situation suggesting that such a course of action would be foolhardy, and ultimately reflection on the situation has me realising that even when the initial phases of the pandemic start to come to an end, this is a crisis that will not have an obvious end, as without a vaccine, there's no guarantee that the Corona Virus is going to disappear, ensuring that restrictions of a kind will have to be maintained for some time into the future. Once the amount of social disturbance and foment that the crisis has caused is factored in, there will be little chance to really move on afterwards, despite the desire of so many to return to business as usual, as there will be so many questions that need answers from so many different places that the coming years could be filled with inquests, inquiries and even litigation, as the amount of potentially preventable death and unnecessary exposure to risk is critically examined, and I doubt many people and organisations will come out of that looking particularly good.

Walks: Morley Social Distancing Circuit. Walked: 26/4 (reversed).
2.8 miles, via Valley Mils, Broad Oaks, White Rose, and Daisy Hill.

5,000 Miles Cumulative Total: 4384.5 miles
2020 Total: 118 miles
Up Country Total: 3921.5 miles
Solo Total: 4070.3 miles
5,000 in my 40s Total: 2978.3 miles

Next Up: A Complete Change of Scenery.