Lockdown: Day 41 - 03/05/20

Frustratingly, it's not May Day weekend yet, as those who would govern us have decided to move the International Day for Solidarity among Workers to the end of the coming week, so that it might coincide with the 75th anniversary of VE Day, for which the neo-patriotic public events have had to be rather unfortunately cancelled, due to current world events, meaning that our short week of work arrives before the long weekend that we always look forward to at the start of my favourite month. Not that I'm going to fuss too much, as this has been a pretty chilled out week thanks to being granted a complete change of scenery for my working week, as I'm sent off to do some support work at Seacroft Hospital, which might be ridiculously remote from Morley and a much longer commute at the starts and ends of my days, but riding the rails to Cross Gates station is probably better for social distancing than riding the infrequent buses along the York Road, and the 20 minutes of walking through the estates gives me some good time to exercise and mentally decompress, while the only local people out and about are the dog walkers, meaning that I'm inconveniencing nobody. Travelling the extra miles by train is also good for giving a bit of an expansion to my rather confined lockdown world, allowing us fresh sights to see as we go, and taking a great interest to see what rolling stock is laid up at Neville Hill depot and yard, concluding that the answer id not all that much as even the EMR HSTs that are stabled there appear to be turning over with some regularity, confirming that it's only been the Pacer stock that has been removed thanks to the reduced timetable, as none of that has been spotted since the reduced timetable came into force. I honestly could get used to riding trains on my own, and always sitting with 2 metres of space around me at all times, and with no other passenger in my sightlines, and it's not like Cross Gates station crawls with activity at either end of the day, with no more than 8 other passengers counted daily as I admire its big red wall, and use the brick facade for photography, not even feeling any frustration as the end of April refuses to be warm and even dumps a bunch of rain on us. When a bus does have to be ridden, on Friday evening because we need to do another turn around at Tesco and jam £30 worth of goods into a single bag, it allows us to take a look at Leeds city centre in full lockdown effect, taking a path via, Eastgate, Vicar Lane, Kirkgate and Commercial Street, showing it up as just as devoid as life in a way not seen since Bank Holidays used to shut everything down, which I recall last happening in the mid 1990s, and looking at the many stores along the way you'll see that most of them are empty, with their stock having all been dispensed into storage, illustrating just what a task it has been, and will be, to suspend and then later restart the retail industry.

Commercial Street, Leeds, in full Lockdown effect.

My reason for being in business at Seacroft Hospital is to get to work on reorganising the store of RIP notes that the trust maintains out there, not least because it's always had capacity issues, but also because it looks like 2020 is shaping up to be a bad year for mortality, and while I arrive with the task already progressed on by a third of the way through, it requires that we keep busy at boxing up the notes for archiving at a rate of 160 per week, so that a single run of shelves might be cleared to facilitate the expansion of the storage space, and that's a solid four hours of labour which frees my colleague to keep busy with the day to day tasks in the place. It's nice to get out there to work with her for a change, as I usually only cover for her when she's on leave, and as we've worked together for over 15 years, and have 36+ years of experience in the MRL service between us, giving us a good chance to get on with our work and to chew over the fat on all sorts of recent shenanigans, which in her words give her partner a respite from having his ear burned on a bunch of work-related topics, and with us being the only two regulars in there it's good place for a bit of enhanced social distancing too. There's only two drivers, one porter and one clerk to be seen passing though our annex building along the course of the day, giving us a space that's far removed from the sometimes overheated atmosphere of the main sites, and only having to work to a set target each day means there's an opportunity to drop the work pace in the afternoon as boxes and boxes of paperwork from one of the cardiology offices need to be filed away, and I know the clerk that had been in charge organising that, incidentally, who'd hoped to get it all done before she went on maternity leave, which she failed to do as her baby arrived 7 weeks prematurely (but worry not as mum and son are both home and fine, now). So we land at our weekend feeling much more relaxed than we had over the preceding few, feeling inspired enough to get up early on Saturday morning, having managed to sync my trip to coincide with the passing trains as they come through Morley, catching the first pair of local services at the station, followed by the expresses at the intermediate points and the next round of stoppers passing at the route's apex, before ambling back to snare the wave of expresses at the circuit's end, resulting in some rather casual pacing for my walk, but it's just nice to have a relaxed feel on my body and mind for a change, which is well illustrated after I've settled back into my task pile back at my flat, as the Saturday evening features hitting the beers for the fist time since lockdown started, something that I wouldn't do if feeling the least bit stressed.

Still, being nearly seven weeks into the national lockdown, we ought not to be feeling too relaxed yet, even though indications are showing the Leeds has not suffered harshly so fat, still sat on the below average end on the Corona Virus infection rate scale, and we shouldn't hide from the fact that there have now been 26,000 fatalities in this country, coupled to an infection rate that continues to rise pretty consistently. The other thing to note is that for all the talk of HM Government trying to get 100,000 frontline workers tested daily by the end of April, it's proved to be a target that they couldn't attain, leaving us still woefully behind the curve in terms of protection and getting people out of circulation when potentially asymptomatic and infectious, and of course, there's been little sign of anything coming the way of the clerical staff in the hospital, way down the priority chain as we are, and even if the scheme was rolling on, it would still take two weeks to test the 1.3 million staff in the NHS, leaving just enough time to start over again at the cycle's completion, even if you were to ignore the needs of every other key worker in contemporary circulation. At least now the ONS has provided the stats that have demonstrated that the COVID-19 deaths since the pandemic hit Britain have been entirely additional to the annual and season mortality rate, indeed they have virtually doubled it over the last two months, neatly debunking the belief that so many hold the the deceased are merely people who 'would have died anyway', and showing that has been far more destructive than any wave of influenza that passes though the seasons. Talk seems to have turned to the pandemic having 'passed the peak', and attention turning to seeking an end to, or at least an easing of, lockdown conditions, but nothing much is said of any shape of a plan, indeed, one day's statements are frequently contradicted or countered by the next, which leaves the observer frustrated by the lack of clarity, anxious as to what the future may hold, as you wonder if the schemes are no be made public because they don't wish the plans to be preempted, or if the plans might not exist at all. So we find ourselves in a weird limbo, with the worst point of the health crisis feeling that it has passed, but with not clear sight to what's coming next, unsure how long the tail of the pandemic is going to run or how it is going to be managed, and how lockdown will continue, perhaps the best way is to reflect the words of Winston Churchill after the Battle of El Alamein in 1942, 'Now, this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.'

Walks: Morley Social Distancing Circuit. Walked: 2/5.
2.8 miles, via Valley Mills, Broad Oaks, White Rose, and Daisy Hill.

5,000 Miles Cumulative Total: 4387.3 miles
2020 Total: 120.8 miles
Up Country Total: 3924.3 miles
Solo Total: 4073.1 miles
5,000 in my 40s Total: 2981.1 miles

Next Up: A Four Day Week and a Three Day Weekend.