Holiday snap taken today: Whitby Abbey

Where did we come in?

Forgive me for a bit of introspection this month. I started this blog in the dark days of January 2021 when more than a thousand people a day were dying of COVID-19. I resolved to write a weekly blog, not so much to bemoan the situation of the pandemic, although I was deeply disturbed by it, but to impose a discipline on myself to keep writing. I had previously been reasonably prolific in writing short fiction, but since the lockdowns of 2020, my imagination seemed to have dried up. I felt I needed to carry on communicating in some way. So the weekly blog  ‘Mister Duffy Changes Trains’ was born.

From the outset, I was determined not to bore everyone with my political views, to wring my hands at the COVID-19 pandemic (or at least not too much), or to talk shop- I was an epidemiologist by occupation, and I felt I should resist the temptation to drivel on about the pandemic and our societal response to it. Inevitably, however, the lockdowns and other anti-infection precautions did feature, and indeed in the early pieces, there was some pessimism about ever returning to normal life.

The blog started in mid-January 2021, and there were 49 entries during the year, so I only missed two weeks. As a ‘Journal of the Plague Year’ (apologies to Daniel Defoe), it doesn’t really work, as it is so eclectic. Subjects include the humorous articles by Patrick Campbell in the Sunday Times in the 1970’s, horror movies, and the link between Guinness and the statistical t-test. But it did fulfil its function of giving me a safety valve and getting me writing again.

Once we were into 2022, I reduced the frequency to monthly. One thing that does come across when revisiting the blogs is that we did return to normal eventually. I am profoundly thankful that I lived the first 64 years of my life in the absence of COVID-19 and that we seem to have come through the pandemic and out the other side. My fears that ‘… I might never go overseas again. What CP Snow called the ‘Last Things’, may have come upon my generation earlier than we anticipated…’ (see The Best Years of You Life, September 3rd, 2021) have proven unfounded. In 2023, my travels included Italy, Poland, Hungary, Sweden and Japan. Thank heaven for the vaccines.

Looking back at the blog, I notice several recurring subjects: my late father and his hilarious misadventures; the peculiarities of a Roman Catholic upbringing in Presbyterian Scotland; my love of my adopted country of the East of England; ghost stories; crime fiction; and an interest in the ordinary things of everyday life. I should say that these are all interlinked, and not just in my own perception. For example, as I understand it, Suffolk has the highest population of ghosts of all the counties in the UK. And the absolutes of a religious education fit very well with those of the whodunnit: ‘the blood of the innocent crying out to heaven for the thunder of retribution’ (see Watching the Detectives, September 30th, 2021).

The period of the blog has spanned a number of life events, including my retirement, YIPPEE! I do so love waking up on Monday morning and knowing that I don’t have to get on my bike in the pouring rain to cycle to the station and catch the train for London.

The pandemic changed many things, among them the expansion of hybrid working, as employers have realised that they can get the same amount of non-manual work done without paying for the heat, light and power of the employee’s office. Another has been the move from cash to card in retail shopping (note, however, that this particular revolution hasn’t quite reached North Norfolk yet). But, and it’s a big but, we have pretty much got back to normal in many other ways.

 

I have been so lucky in having a decent job and a decent pension. I have the means to travel, and while I wouldn’t go so far as to say that every day’s a holiday, opportunities for holidays and leisure activities arise regularly for me. At the moment, due to what Jeeves called ‘a concatenation of circumstances’ (Bertie Wooster found this phrase difficult to assimilate, noting that it had something about cats in it), I am on a week’s holiday on the North York Moors with Linda’s sister Margaret and her husband Andrew. Linda has been on sabbatical in Ann Arbor Michigan for the last couple of months, and I fly out to join her next week. The following week we will spend in Atlanta, Georgia, with our dear friends Bob and Irina Smith.

So, now that we do have our lives back, am I sorry that the pandemic occurred? You bet I am. It killed heaven knows how many people, caused so much disruption in all our lives, massively worsened health inequalities, cost gezillions of pounds, leaving many national economies in tatters, and precipitated a major downstream epidemic of mental illness, depression, anxiety, and so on, particularly among the young. The experience of my students bore eloquent testimony to this during the years 2020-22. Any lessons we learned were nowhere near worth the death and suffering.

Here, wait a minute, I mentioned Margaret and Andrew above. I should pay tribute to the fact that during the dark times of 2020 and 2021, Andrew, ably assisted by Margaret, provided a weekly quiz on WhatsApp to friends and relatives. This was a lovely thing to do for one’s pals, and it provided a much-needed evening of entertainment once a week during the lockdowns. The textual exchanges during the quizzes could be quite amusing. On one occasion, there was a bonus question: what was Jasper Carrot’s real name? Answers proffered included Guy McBlokeman (apologies to Caitlin Moran, from whom the name was pinched), Popeye McBrummie and Piss McWiddlepants.

All a bit serious this month, apologies. One more joke, this time an ancient one from a grizzled Scottish stand-up comedian in the 1970’s. A chap unexpectedly comes into considerable riches and decides to buy a Rolls Royce. On inspection of the model offered by the dealer, he is duly impressed, but notices something missing. He asks, ‘Where are the windscreen wipers?’

The dealer replies, ‘It doesn’t have any. You press that button and the rain stops.’

 

https://mrduffychangestrains.blogspot.com/2021/09/watching-thedetectives-since-childhood.html

https://mrduffychangestrains.blogspot.com/2021/09/the-best-years-ofyour-life-when-i-was.html

 

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