Things are getting back 'to normal'. Unless you live in Ukraine where they're not.

The pandemic is apparently over. The vaccinations did the trick, along with a seemingly less deadly variant. Now the folk who took against the Covid vaccination are saying there's an increase in healthy people dying, usually at the football. Not the rugby, or tennis, just the football. 'It never happened before' they say. It clearly did, the husband has had to do CPR at least twice at matches pre pandemic, and there's #12aweek too. It may be on the up or it may be that it wasn't on people's radar before but as the parent of a child with CHD it's always on your radar. 

The thing that's irritated me throughout the whole debacle is people posting data with no context and lauding it as fact when most often it doesn't mean what they think it means but it fits the agenda. Post your opinion by all means but stop sending prayers for the bloke who collapsed at the Accrington Stanley game (who are they?) when he's just fell asleep because he's had too many pints and the match is boring as hell. He didn't have a Covid vax related cardiac arrest, as much as you'd like him to.

Which brings me to Ukraine. Putin, God love him (someone has to), thinks the whole world will believe his 'military operations' line if he repeats it often enough. We won't. You're a war monger-er Vlad and a war criminal too. The whole world knows it.

Three weeks

Three weeks, that's what they said. To flatten the curve. It's been a year. I'm not going to bang on about it, I'm fed up of the whole thing to be fair, along with most of the population. There's a feeling of disgruntlement I think, not just Covid related but generally. We've Brexited amongst the chaos, women are sick of being the subject of male violence, it's illegal to travel abroad, the nurses aren't getting a decent payrise and the Tories want to limit our right to protest. Not daft are they? I see a summer of discontent.

Here's some photos to cheer you up. I've walked rather a lot this year - not done a huge amount to counteract lockdown weight gain but hey ho.

 

It's been almost a year

Back in February 2020 I was on countdown to our trip to Australia. February 2021 I'm on countdown to a trip to Portsmouth. It's not even a proper trip; it's us vacating our house, exchanging keys with The Prince somewhere along the M40 so they can live here for a few days and daughter in law can see her parents in the middle of a field somewhere in Cheshire. August. That's when she last saw them. We won't actually be 'allowed' to be under the same roof until sometime in May. May be able to head off to meet No1 son outdoors soon which will be nice. The small things.

But we're all still alive, no-ones knowingly had Covid. Now there's a blessing which others can't count sadly. 120,000 plus families have lost a loved one. And there'll be more.

Though things are more hopeful. Vaccination is going on apace, schools are reopening to all students in the next couple of weeks. There's an inkling of Spring on the horizon. 

Littlest is doing OK - they're free of restrictions at the moment and their cases and death stats are tiny compared to ours. She's on the vaccine list. Maybe we'll get to Australia after all. In 2022.

I can't think of a title for this post that doesn't include a shedload of expletives so I'm not bothering.

So things got better - then got worse again. This year has been a rollercoaster, but one that's mainly in freefall with little in the way of climbs.

Christmas plans just got decimated. We were having the Prince and his wife and dog stay over Christmas and the first born was coming Boxing Day. That can't now happen due to Boris Johnson's last minute decisions and his total bloody ineptitude. Absolutely gutted for us and for the wider family. We've stuck to the rules, bent with the wind, adapted and now this. It's so disappointing.

We did get to see the family in the summer, we had a week in the Cotswolds around the Prince's birthday. My daughter in law managed to see her parents too but sadly at her nan's funeral so a memorable meeting but for the wrong reasons. My original plans were to go see my sister in Spain for Christmas but of course that fell by the wayside too.

There's a new variant apparently. I'll withhold judgment here but if this turns out to be a smokescreen for the looming no deal Brexit I'll be unsurprised. And I fully expect him to resign in January and go live in France just as a final two-fingered salute to the rest of the country. 

A brief History of time, 2012 to the present day.

I doubt it will be brief. It may well take a few posts to catch up.

Scratch that. I started but there's too much. Suffice to say all three offspring achieved fantastically well in their studies - a First, two Masters and a best in subject award. All of them settled, working, two married, one local, one down South and one on the other side of the world. Guess which one? They've not all had easy journeys to get here but such is life. There has been travel to far flung places, study abroad, each have had multiple house moves, new jobs, dogs, and recently lost dogs. We've also had semi retirement, unemployment, self employment.

We've had losses too, my mother in law and my dad. I miss my dad.

2018 deserves a special mention. It started badly, my dad died suddenly on the morning of the 3rd January. He was the King of Dads; a quiet, unassuming man, he would have been shocked at how many people loved and admired him. The messages to my mum were full of lovely words. He taught me a certain independence, gave me knowledge and life skills, love. He is irreplaceable in my life.

One of my dad's life lessons was the value of a 'sod it' fund. A small pot of cash that mean't you were free to act if things weren't going to plan. Thanks dad.

When he died I was working in a lovely school for a head that was, lets say, difficult. She was, is, a bully and a narcissist. Up to that point I wasn't on her radar and was fairly adept at grey-rocking any attention; don't feed it, don't engage. I loved my work so it was a compromise. But it changed after my dad. I couldn't ignore the bullying of a hardworking colleague, the lies, the gas-lighting. My emotional strength was on the wane, I was angry with everything, so I raised my head above the parapet and got shot at. I'm not going into detail. It wasn't pretty and to be honest unless you've worked for a person like that, secondhand explanations of the abuse, because that's what it is, just don't do it justice.

So I took my sod it fund, put it to good use and walked away, along with other colleagues, two of which remain firmly in my life and are the best, strongest women I'll probably ever meet.

For every negative, there is a positive.

Another strand to 2018 was a worry about the youngest. A routine echo combined with some dodgy blood results brought back some long buried concerns. Months passed before we got to the bottom of it and my initial fears were unsubstantiated but it was another reminder of the fragility of her health and added a further stress to my emotional and mental health.

I was glad to see the back of that year.

2019 brought the two aforementioned weddings, Eldest and The Prince  (seems I missed a trick here - this post should be entitled A Funeral and Two Weddings) Both were fabulous days, so memorable, so different to each other. Youngest, not to be outdone, had her own way of marking 2019 - by moving to the other side of the world! She's currently residing in Melbourne with her boyfriend who has a sponsored post until 2021. Covid-19 put a halt on our plans to visit and is continuing to keep us apart. I miss her so much; I'm reminded of one of my first ever blog posts about her when she was in hospital and the physical ache when you can't hold your sick child. It feels akin to that at the moment.

Bastard pandemic.

The 4th of July

This weekend marked the 4th of July. American Independence under normal circumstances - normal? will there ever be a 'normal'? There's been an attempt at it - this 4th of July was designated #SuperSaturday by our esteemed Prime Minister. The day the pubs reopened. Typical Brit mentality; you can't get a face-to-face appointment with a hospital consultant to discuss your chronic or even acute health condition but you can go sup a pint at your local. Priorities people!

Whether you think opening the pubs was a good idea or the equivalent of throwing typhoid Mary into the crowd at a Take That concert I can't help but baulk at the method. Why open on a Saturday, why not a wet Tuesday afternoon? Big on announcements, shy with the detail is the order of the day again. Schools will open in September, risk assessment to follow. And today, blaming care homes for the many, many deaths because they didn't follow the correct procedure; the one that was hastily written on the back of a beer mat by the health secretary two weeks after dispatching Covid positive patients home from hospital. Oh, those 'correct procedures'.

You don't have to look far to find other countries doing better; locked down sooner, harder, good supported the less well off, for business, for the arts, lifted restrictions more thoughtfully. 15 weeks and still we're lurching from impending doom to full on Armageddon.

Feeling very pissed off today.

I miss my kids, I miss my dad, just popping to the shop for a bloody cucumber is more anxiety inducing and requires more organisation than getting three under fives out of the door in a morning, and I'm sick of services using Covid as a reason to keep hold of cash that they have no right to.

Feel like staying in bed til it's all over.