The Seduction of Sunshine

Oh, the spectacular seduction of the weather! The thrill of Spanish temperatures in Scotland.  Local barbecues waft charcoal, with a hint of jet engines touching down on a hot, foreign runway. The town bakes in inadvertent glamour.   

It's almost tempting to think nothing could ever go wrong. Like Trump deluding himself that sunshine 'inside the body' could be the cure. Wheesht. Madness of course, but it's as if the sunshine is eclipsing us from our dark Covid thoughts. 

I have to say, I am so glad I live in Scotland. I think Nicola Sturgeon and 'Scotgov' are handling the crisis so much better than the Westminster shambles. And by shambles, I mean criminally-negligent, deluded madness. 

Our Scottish lockdown-easing is super cautious: meeting fewer than 8 friends or family outdoors. We are not sending people back to work, or kids back to school, as is the case in England. All that fills me with a deep sense of dread. A second wave will surely follow.

England now has officially the highest death rate in the world.  
World-beating. Utterly tragic. Thousands of avoidable deaths. If only the UK had taken the Covid threat seriously and gone all-out to contain it from those first few clusters of cases. 

But you know that. At least I hope you do. 

Meanwhile, 'daughter-ito',  a.k.a. wee Tess,  is somewhat better, but her cough still won't let her exercise. At all! And the cough is triggered by car fumes, frying food, dust, pollen etc. We are still waiting for our ENT referral to come through.

Operation Find an Adorable Dog to Soothe her Heart is also limping along, due to the pandemic. I had no idea there were so many puppy crooks out there online. I can now sniff them out like a sniffer dog in a crack den.  No matter how cute, I am not going to buy a puppy that's been dragged in a van from a puppy farm. 

I will keep checking the doggy rescue sites for wee faces like this. 

Enjoy the warm air while it is here. I found an old photo of my siblings and I, two decades ago in Menorca. We look like some kind of failed pop group. Bucks Fizz? Rejected from The Corr's auditions? 

Self-deprecation is a standard in our family. I hope I'll get away with this.

Lastly, I asked Tess if she wanted a grapefruit for breakfast.

She replied with measured sincerity -

Why would I want a lemon-flavoured orange?

From now on, I will always think of grapefruits as lemon-flavoured oranges. Home-schooling works both ways. 

Until next time, amigos, slap on the sun screen. Or, as Tess still mistakenly calls it, the 'sun scream'. You can have either version, mood depending. 

What the Hungry Heart Does...

How's your hair looking? Lego man? Lady Di? 

I'm ready for my Van Halen audition, getting back to my heavy metal roots from my teenage years. Denim jackets on Islay!  Ah, those were the days, my friends, we thought they'd never end. Unflattering photo alert. Full Disclosure required. 

Still, at least I'm half-smiling, unlike Derek the Unhappy Man who was a cookie baked by the children. They made him a wife called Delilah. These small crumbs get us by. 

So, the New Normal, eh? Where to begin? It needs to work for the entire world. It's too big a subject for this little ol' blog. 

I'm no longer lamenting the loss of our foreign holiday. That's just the way it is now. I was always an inner Greta. The fresher air of lockdown has been stunning. I'll be so sad to let that go. We need to get to less vehicle use and more local services ASAP. 

My best lockdown TV has been a 12 part series called Normal People.  

It's all first love and tenderness and misunderstanding. The main actors knocked it out of the park. Everyone I know loved it. Prepare to be distracted by Connell's chain. 

In other distractions, I google things like this.

Be still my beating heart! Then I realise these pups live in Dungannon, Tyrone. Far away in Ireland. 

When I was seven, all my relatives lived in Tyrone and talked about driving to 'Dungannon' (with gorgeous Irish accents, in red Ford Cortinas with Magic Trees dangling from the mirror). 

I now feel as if the pups are half mine, via some ether of  time-warped, genetic inheritance. What the hungry heart does to convince itself.

Keep dreaming and longing.  I hope we will all see each other soon, cautiously, carefully. With Track and Trace in place (why can't be just buy South Korea's software, btw?)

Keep folding the days into neat piles and setting them gently aside, as dusk folds in. 

Dog Day Afternoon

Nobody told me Sausage Dogs cost two and a half thousand pounds.  This was another thing that happened without my noticing.

It has now come to my attention via late night trawlings through Google and Gum Tree. But hold on. Let's reverse a bit. 

You know how Tess has been desperate for a pet for aeons? Like pining, heart-sick, really really really?

She tested allergic to cats via a GP blood test. This time we tried one of those 'skin prick' allergy tests, via a private GP consultation. I'm not  even sure if they work (?) but the doctor pronounced Tess to be very allergic to house dust mites and 'negative' to dogs.

Shout it from the roof tops! Negatory to pups, good buddy! Now I have another part-time job, searching umpteen dog rescue shelters and glimpsing, then wincing at, the price of puppies online. 

I do not have 'dog confidence'. My family never had dogs. They don't know what to do with dogs. 

Once upon a time, I fell I love with a dog. We were house-sitting in Alicante and the house contained a lovely wee mixed-breed mutt. It was the colour of a speckled egg, or chocolate-flecked ice cream.  It was pretty, docile and trusting. When I came home, I actually had a wee physical ache for it, for a couple of days at least. 

But anyway, we're still in lockdown. As if you didn't know.

I think Nicola is absolutely doing the right thing by extending 'stay at home' lockdown. I think Boris has just launched a second wave of infection and fatality in England by sending people back to work. I don't have enough words to express my frustration at the scale of his f**k up with Covid 19. 

So I'm back to my brain oscillating. Normal service goes like this:

Covid horror, beyond belief. Nice dog out the window. 
New Covid statistics worse than expected. 
Imagine her face if she saw that puppy. 
The Tories, man. 
Aww, cute Jack Russell. How much?
But cleaning up dog poo? 
I'm bored. I've tried to write poetry but it's too hard. 
Go on, search for some more puppies. 
A friend for life, they say. Yeah. That dog needs us. Now, THAT dog's just waiting to love us. 

Coughing, Swinging and Crying in Lockdown

I am typing tensely, listening out for my wee girl's cough, in a different room. 

Lockdown continues its weird half-life. The best of times, the worst of times?  Family bonding, enough food, lie-ins. Remembering Covid, feeling stuck, too much time on twitter, the jag of fear. 

We don't seem much further forward. As you know, I discovered a condition called Vocal Chord Dysfunction, where the vocal-chords  spasm closed and the patient struggles to breathe in. Cue big, alarming, breathless coughing fits. This is what I am listening out for. This is what happens most evenings for poor Tess.

I'm a huge fan of the NHS, but a phone call to an NHS Speech and Language therapist led nowhere. She said, 'we hardly ever see vocal chord issues in children.' 

It's a bit like being back in my bad-old- days of having ME/CFS and doctors disagreeing all over the place on what is wrong and how to fix it. 

I found more info online, and this morning we had a private video assessment with a London clinic. The therapist surmised- 

There may be a VCD-like presentation going on, but it's difficult to say for sure without ENT involvement. 

i.e. Tess might have it, but we'd need to see an Ear, Nose and Throat doc to be sure. We're on an NHS waiting list for that. 

Poor Tess came off the call in tears and threw herself on to her bed. I understand this. She can swiftly grasp that there are no quick fixes. The strain of lockdown doesn't help one bit. 

We bought a garden swing online. It felt like an indulgence before. Now it feels like a therapy couch. The toy monkeys are retraining as psychoanalysts. I'm grateful for the sunshine. 

If you're disappointed this post is ending without a link to a Lego Fortnite Video made by a 11 year old boy.....here's one Hugh made earlier.