The Conclusions of 2020

Wrapping the 2020 Walking
Season at Morley Hole.

In retrospect, it seems entirely plausible that I cursed this past twelve months before they even got started, as the previous year's summation boldly declared both '2019 has been a rough year that I do not care to see a repeat of', and 'I'm going to need my good mental health as much as ever in 2020' almost as if I had accidentally wished upon us all a year of pain, frustration and intemperance with my hopeful words for the future, a reality that gave the world a stiff old kicking and left us all in a much less certain situation than we started out in. But if we ignore the Covid-19 pandemic and all that came with it, which we really ought to in the context of this walking blog, 2020's active season turned out to be far from ruined, as in spite of all the obstacles thrown in its path, like losing two months of Spring to absolute lockdown and being unable to travel beyond Morley, we managed to make the best of the Summer and Autumn while keeping ourselves mostly removed from the risks of the disease which has blanketed all our experiences. I'm really happy that my resolve to keep walking managed to hold so firm after losing so much of the first half of the year when compelled to keep my exercising local, and despite all the stresses and strains through the back half of the year, I managed to get all the way through all of the trips that I had originally planned for the four lost months, keeping going until the last available day of the year and reaching a final mileage which made it not even close to my least impressive year, surpassing both 2012 and 2013's totals. Indeed, only one walking weekend between July and November was actively under-utilised, as I gratefully absorbed the hospitality of My Good Friends in Calderdale, and while I might have not managed all the route across the Pennines to the fringes of Greater manchester, I managed to keep a tight focus to gain the landscape knowledge of another part of the county that had been absent from my walking field for too many years, giving all the lands between the Colne and calder as much exposure as they could have ever wanted. So while we may have seen more of my home town that I'd ever have anticipated, and only done half of the long trails I may have wished to have paced, I don't feel like I've missed out on the expansion of my walking experiences at all, as all you really need are a high viewpoint or two to look beyond what you know, such as ascending the Pennine ridge and looking west across the Cheshire plain to the Clwydian Hills, or east to the North York Moors and the Wolds, giving you a new visual horizon in excess of 100 miles wide.

2020 expressed in Numbers.

With the initial period of National Lockdown granting us all a lot more free time than we might have wished for, it did give me the opportunity to finally sit down with my paper journal of my walking exploits to actually make the concerted efforts to get my many statistics in order, with the result being that I have found that I have grown to love my numbers, as they express so much of what I have learned over my nine years of walking. As anyone who has worked for a living should know, statistics are one of the most useful tools that we have, and gaining a knowledge of how your task-specific numbers work will reveal so much about where you're at and what you're doing, as the tales of my 400+ walking excursions so far present their distance, duration and speed after the numbers have been properly crunched, more than two years after starting on this intensely frustrating and time-consuming project. We should already know that the difference between a proper hurry-up trip at 3mph and a real dawdle at 2mph is only 10 minutes per mile, but it's also telling to discover that walking rate is remarkably consistent, only really varying by about 5 minutes per mile, and my speed is affected much more by how many times I stop for breaks, than it is by the quality of the terrain or the weather, and that my internal chronometer is excellent at judging exactly how quickly we need to travel against the plotted windows of time. It's hard to express here, but looking back it's fascinating to see how my performance has improved over the years as I've settled into my walking groove, and how the choice of route and footwear can affect my performance, as I've built up a narrative document that will give me years of entertainment, all written by hand and calculated with an actual calculator, because using Excel is still beyond me, and while it's frustrating that I never got my Garmin working so that all my ascents and altitudes might have been recorded too, I can't help but be delighted with my own handiwork. Of course there are surely walkers who have created better and more accurate statistical records by merely using apps on their smartphones, but I'm quietly delighted with what I've created, and you'll know I've started to get obsessed with my many numbers when I start breaking out the graph paper which I have in my cupboard, because of course I do, or starting investing in graphics software so that I might start Jon Bois-ing the shit out of it, and creating illuminating four-dimensional narratives of all my walking experiences.

Looking West from the Pennines
 to Fiddler's Ferry Power Station
 and the Clwydian Hills.

While the many external pressures may have failed to take a lasting toll on my mental health, which has stiffened with my walking resolve across the whole of the back half of the year, living and working through 9+ months hasn't done any favours to the lingering feelings of enduring youth, which has me feeling that 2020 has been the year when I'm finally starting to feel my age, and for what it's worth, it's been a pretty good run over the 16 years since 30 hit me pretty hard. If it's no longer true that old age starts at 40, I can draw my own conclusion that while the youthful spirit might endure longer, once you've landed on 45, the body is no longer going to let you retain the physical and visual benefits, and I can look at my visage and see the years starting to hang more heavily on it, while the hairline finally starts to look like its gradual retreat has started (if you ignore the fact that I can still virtually replicate the thatch that I used to wear in my early teens). The first real indication came with needing to get vari-focal glasses, as my ability to read while wearing my previous pair (which I was never entirely happy with) seemed to depart me completely, purchased at an age that was younger than when My Mum first needed her's, and compelling me to downgrade my style to wearing Dad glasses after almost 30 years in more dynamic styles, and it's been an adjustment that I've gotten through well, once you get used to the ground apparently moving ahead of you, though you'll still notice that I map read by peering over my specs, as the detail focus needed for an OS Explorer map still doesn't match with comfortable reading distance. More worrying is pains developing in my right hip, as that's an issue that I'm much less ready to contend with, knowing already that hip problems blighted some of My Dad's later years, and that I do actually have slightly deformed leg already, albeit being an issue that was deemed as unworthy of concern when I was a baby and toddler, and which has no visual cue at present, and that's something to worry about in the future, as it oddly causes me no discomfort as I walk, but can be sometimes on the hard to tolerate pain scale when sitting and at rest. Factor in the worsening tinnitus which still blights my quiet moments and my ability to get regular amounts of satisfying sleep, and my feelings turn toward the idea that once we get some way beyond this ongoing pandemic situation, I will be among the many people who will be heading out to see their GP with a laundry list of ailments that they've been doing their best to ignore over the last few months, hopeful that obtaining treatment won't involve any more exposure to the risks that we've spent so long living with.

Vicar Lane, Leeds, in Lockdown.

Finally, and frustratingly, we cannot conclude with a summation of the Covid-19 Pandemic, as it is still ongoing and very far from its final acts, when I'm sure we'd all hoped that it would have been a background feature of the Autumn - Winter seasons, rather than its major focus still, and thus we can only regard the fact that 2020 has revealed much about humanity, and not all of it has been good, as too many both those in power, and those who've tried to live and work through this time of contagion, have conducted themselves so poorly. Despite all the extensive and selfless work of so many on the medical and social front lines during this crisis, I doubt it would be too controversial to declare that the global response has been little short of a disaster, with only the imposition of national lockdowns and quarantines in March and across the Spring having prevented a catastrophic death toll on a par with the Influenza pandemic of 1918, as governments acted too slowly or chose to downplay the risk that were all too real. It's been disturbing to watch those in power making their decisions with such a lack of urgency, or taking only the slightest of guidance from those giving them scientific advice, while demonstrating more apparent concern for the health of the economy than that of the people, by trying to force everything back into some semblance of normality across the late spring and summer before dithering about tacking action when infection rates started to rise again, essentially returning us all to square one. The lack of clear and concise direction to the public has also been deeply worrying, which has no doubt gone such a long way to making the situation worse, while also permitting foreign travel and the extensive re-opening of schools and universities, when they seemed like poor choices at the time, and the actions of so many citizens  has been similarly disappointing, as so many people acted like they wanted their lifestyles back to normal as soon as was possible, hurrying back into their social whirls without really acknowledging the risks. Then there's the cynicism as to the risks posed, as the conspiratorial  mindset that has afflicted so many decides to believe that the Covid pandemic isn't as dangerous as suggested, that an infection is no worse than a bout of flu, and that the vaccination programme is merely a cover for social conditioning and an excuse to pump money into big pharma, I mean seriously, a dose of cynicism is essential as a means to self preservation when facing the modern world, but it has to be well applied and used with discretion, along with a healthy and functional bullshit filter.

Ultimately, the conclusions of the Covid-19 Pandemic will not be made for many months, and we can only draw down the veil on it as we pass out of 2020, again sharing the thought that we all made it out of the year in one piece, as everyone in my family has been in a mode of as much isolation as is plausible, while taking all the precautions needed for self protection by staying out of circulation, while so many elderly family friends have surely been kept well by keeping themselves at home and away from the risks posed. Similarly, all my colleagues have kept themselves well despite having worked and travelled consistently through nine months of this pandemic, while my perspective beyond has only shown up a couple of people who have gotten ill, and been nastily afflicted by Long Covid in one case, but my perspective is limited by my solitary nature and small friend circle, so I cannot offer any real perspective from anyone who has had their lives and livelihoods ruined by death, illness or the loss of income caused by the prolonged periods of commercial inactivity in so many business sectors. I still can'y get myself feeling optimistic for the future, as there's still a lot more pandemic to traverse, and a lot of stupid still floating around in the global air, and all we can do for now is hope that when the new normal does arrive, maybe some of the many issues that affect us all might get properly addressed as we finally start to realize just how fragile and exposed our societies and existences have become? Well, at the very least, we can hope, can't we?

and, Playout...

~~~

Pandemic Thoughts - December 2020

So where to even start with this month, where so many of our expectations have been thrown into total disarray, and we start to feel like we are right back where we started with this damned pandemic in March, and its ongoing fallout that is still blanketing everything that we experience? At the beginning, I guess, as we came out of the second National Lockdown on the 2nd, having finally gotten with the program and done my first Zoom call of the Pandemic with a school friend whom I haven't spoken with in probably 24 years, getting back into a working routine of staying out of harm's way at the hospital and feeling hopeful that we might be able to power our way through to the long Christmas weekend, where we might be allowed to make the most of the Festive Bubble that has been promised to us by HM Government. With West Yorkshire going straight back into Tier 3 Covid restrictions, I'm pretty happy to have the instinct to stay out of circulation for most of the month, not having any desire to join the throng of shoppers who will be crowding the reopened stores to get in the seasonal spending that their spirits and the economy demand, and it's also a relief to be denied the opportunity to have to do the Christmas party routine, which is always the almightiest of binds that is never as enjoyable as it ought to be, as every pub and restaurant remains closed, thus losing all the festive income that they'd expect to come their ways. Indeed the month seems to be going in the right direction for much of the first half of the month, with the Pfizer vaccine rollout commencing, as the first phase of the mass vaccination programme in the UK started with the most clinically vulnerable (which appears to have included My Mum, despite her falling outside the age and health parameters, not that she's complaining), while news from the US has the election certification date and the sittings of the electoral college passing without incident, while the president's attempt to get the results reversed in the Supreme Court gets thrown out without being heard by its justices. As the days progress through, it soon becomes apparent that all is not well, with the infection rates increasing, notably in the southeast, where multiple London Boroughs make an attempt to close down the schools a week early, and get threatened by HM Government with legal action for their trouble, despite the school system being by far the worst place for the continuing spread of Covid, and the promised national review of the tiering system on December 18th, which had projected an easing of restrictions for many districts, came to absolutely nothing.

The very next day, though dropped the bombshell that a new variant of Covid-19 had been discovered, more virulent than the prior version, which had been spreading through London and the southeast of England at an alarming rate, which suddenly brought in a new Tier 4 to the restrictions and effectively renewed total lockdown conditions across that corner of the country, a development that HM Government must have known about ahead of time, but didn't allow the departments of Health or Education to work around, and tried to keep from the general public for as long as possible. The major disruption that comes for everyone because of this is to effectively cancel the four day Christmas Bubble, and to only allow for the smallest of household gatherings for the festive season, for one day only, which immediately throws into relief the fact that both Islamic Eid al-Adha and Hindu Diwali got cancelled by lockdown restrictions too, but this time around no one seems to be blaming Christians for not taking social distancing rules seriously. Still, much is sarcastically made of the Government being the first to cancel Christmas since the 17th century and the days of Cromwell and the English Commonwealth, and the anger voiced because of it seems to be more forceful than any that was raised due the rising death toll or the pressure put on the health service, and thus even our modest and socially responsible plans are thus deemed inappropriate for the season, despite all our best intentions. Perhaps more significantly, the spread of the new variant causes multiple European countries, most notably France to close their borders to all traffic to and from the UK, against the expressed wishes of the EU, incidentally, which throws multiple trade routes into disarray, preventing goods from entering the country and many hauliers from departing, causing a backlog of traffic in Kent that many had been warning might happen if HM Government were to fail to forge a trade agreement with the EU by the end of the year. So, after months of limited progress in talks and blame being preemptively shared around ahead of the anticipated failure, on Christmas Eve a trade deal was suddenly agreed, apparently fulfilling all the desires of those who would govern us, but to the cynical eye looking like they were completely spooked by the closure of the borders and were frightened into signing up to whatever was on the table at the time, while still trying to present it as a triumph for their scheming, and you'll never convince me otherwise.

So perhaps 2021 won't start with the trade chaos that we may have predicted for it, and our total departure from the EU won't start with a bang, and will instead be a long slow grind across the next decade, but our conclusion to 2020 instead comes to a very quiet end, as the festive season promises to be as close to a non-event as possible, not that we didn't try to make as good fist of it as we could, as Mum could still travel to visit me for Christmas Day, to form a 24 hour bubble and do the absolute best for our social and mental healths. That means that she can travel up in the early morning, and we can do dinner together, just as we had catered for, as well as doing an exchange of gifts in person and using her I-pad to get together with My Sister and her family via a Facetime call so that we can all share as much of the festive spirit and familial love as we can, ahead of settling into a bottle of wine and a jigsaw puzzle as we would probably have done under normal circumstances, after we've talked the year around on only our second period of in-person interaction in twelve months. Having formed our bubble, she can overnight it at mine, before we can have a Boxing Day catch-up with multiple family friends in here church congregation via a Zoom call, none of whom have been harshly afflicted by the pandemic or the prolonged lockdown conditions, thankfully, ahead of us sharing our traditional lunch of leftovers, before she heads away, almost a quickly as she arrived, with us both feeling grateful that we managed to do this much together. Post-Christmas, the news of the further national extension of Tier 4 restrictions strangely leaves West Yorkshire in an oasis of Tier 3 rules, not that any of the rules would prevent me renewing my own Support Bubble in Calderdale for the turn of the New Year, to get together with my good friends who can ply me with dinners and wine, as well as two nights board, a healthy stretch along the greenway and canal paths and the familiar napping in front of the College Football games, as is the tradition. They've much to say about the situation with regards education and the lack of clear direction with regards keeping schools open for the new term in 2021, while also providing remote learning without really adequate preparation and planning, while we also look back at the end of 2020, where we've hit a national death toll of 75,000 Covid-related fatalities and an increase in hospitalisation rate which has now exceeded the first wave numbers, and while try to feel positive for the New Year, we can all be certain that a Third National Lockdown has to be right around the corner.