I couldn’t resist using Boris Johnson’s “Tis the season to be jolly….. careful” as this blog’s title. He said it during a recent Downing Street public announcement, which was from his Downing Street flat as he was self-isolating…. again.
So, it’s December 1st, (pinch punch) ….advent calendars are being opened all over the land and Christmas decorations have been twinkling away in lots of houses for many a week already.
This morning I got a text:
“Dear Patient, Chris Whitty, the Chief Medical Officer for England, has endorsed this project as a national Urgent Public Health Research priority, if you would like to take part please visit: www.germdefence.org/index.html…….. to take part in a short survey. Many thanks.”
My first thought was that it could be a scam of some kind – sadly there have been so many lately. However, I do like Mr Whitty. He is so gentle and polite but always looks so nervous! He knows what’s to come and makes me a tad anxious every time he joins in the Downing Street public announcement broadcasts to be honest.
It’s now 2nd December, the end of lockdown 2, which started on November 5th, and the announcement that the first of many vaccines has been approved and will start to be administered next week. The UK is the first country in the world to approve the Covid-19 vaccine BNT162b2, from Pfizer and BioNTech just seven months after the start of clinical trials. And, like I said last month, apparently Bristol will be the first city to roll it out.
Originally, my idea for this December blog title was “Mistletoe and Mindfulness“:
Mindfulness – Marshfield is the first village in the UK to offer anyone living or working here FREE ‘Mental Health Aware’ training sessions. Just walking around the village is good for your mental health. The friendliness and sense of community here is a good place to start.
Mistletoe – When we first walked around the village back in April we saw a ‘ball’ of mistletoe on a tree just behind a low wall alongside the pavement. It was unusually low, low enough to reach out and cut down I thought, which is why I was surprised to see it there. How come someone hadn’t taken it, not a villager but one of the many conmen who have been seen wandering about and been captured on the locals’ door cameras lately? I don’t want to dwell on these people (bottom dwellers in fact!) Growing up I used to see mistletoe up high in trees and it always seemed mystical.
Anyway one day recently some kind soul left a pile of 2019 BBC Countryfile magazines outside of their door with a “HELP YOURSELF” sign and so I took the top three (and left the others for the next people walking by). One happened to be the Christmas issue which is where I gleaned all the information which I will share with you later.
One issue was called ‘Love Summer’. I have squirrelled that away for next year (2021) in the hope that we will still be able to go outside, for exercise or any reason other than to shop for essentials as this pandemic rumbles on. The third issue (February 2020) featured “Britain’s paradise islands”. Escape to the tranquil Isles of Scilly it said, which, if you read the September-October blog, you will know that Karen did just that during the autumn. The ‘this is where you should have walked’ information might be of interest to her…. the same issue had mention of the Isle of Wight which always reminds me of Karen (well her parents) as they used to holiday there when we were children and bring back test tube type gifts which were full of multi coloured sand. This sounds tacky now but as someone who only went to Weymouth with its singular colour sand, well I was made up by the sight of ‘what I could have seen’ if I had gone on holiday with Karen and her parents.
I digress….. Mistletoe, I have learnt, was the pagan evergreen symbol of ongoing life, fertility and protection through the otherwise leafless winter months in the past. I was surprised to read that by the 1870s most of the UK’s mistletoe came from the south west, particularly Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Gloucestershire. There is an annual winter auction of mistletoe and holly in Tenbury…. well there is usually, the event was cancelled this year for the first time in over 150 years, because of the pandemic.
The mistletoe is generally exported in November to former colonial outposts such as South Africa and Australia. So Courtney, if you see some out there in Australia it could be from around here. We keep looking at our blueberries to see if they come from the farms where you are currently picking them, near Coffs Harbour. ❤️
The word mistletoe is derived from the Anglo Saxon meaning ‘Dung on a stick! What’s that about! Not very romantic seeing as what we use it for these days. So here in the south we had “Kissing under a dung stick! While the north had “kiss me quick” hats, especially in Blackpool and the like. All things that we are not allowed to be doing during this pandemic! Unless its a household member or someone in your bubble! Pucker up Karen!
Although I sometimes feel we are not learning much now we are not traveling to different countries and cultures we have learnt a couple of weather related things. (This might interest you Alan!). At the age of 59 I have only just this month heard about a freak phenomenon called Thundersnow. More interesting though is another strange phenomenon, that of Hair Ice. Also known as frost flowers, is something you might expect to read about on April 1st! If you haven’t seen or read about it already ‘Google it up’ because it’s spectacular.
We spent a lovely, if a tad foggy, winter afternoon in Westonbirt with Lauren, Jack and the grandchildren at the beginning of December. Simple pleasures which are now never taken for granted.
Westonbirt arboretum has always been a special place for us. Not only because Lauren and Jack got married in Westonbirt one glorious sunny October day nine years ago but because I remember going there when Glen and I were ‘courting’. I remember seeing a little boy dragging a huge stick behind him. It was one of the few times I felt that I wanted a little child like that. 😍
Here we are, some 36 years later and not only have we got two beautiful daughters and a gorgeous granddaughter but a cheeky little grandson, who on our last visit there was dragging a huge stick along the path in the same way. ❤️
They laughed at me when I picked up an artificial Christmas tree from a “Free stuff – help yourself” table in Green Lane on a hot sunny day back in May, but my goodness how quickly did those 8 months pass. So two weeks before Christmas we got it down from the shed, dusted it off and decorated it lovingly with Aunty Dar’s old baubles and tinsel which Sue had kindly leant us. We added two new handmade crocheted baubles which we bought from Kate who has been making and selling them to raise money for her local Foodbank. There are a lot of kind people out there.
Glen convinced me that we also needed to adorn the conservatory and lounge windows with fairy lights to make our one and only guest feel festive during Christmas lunch…. so, with the addition of Holly’s wonderful homemade cardboard snowman, pride of place in the front window, we were ready.
While we are talking about Christmas trees, I just want to bring your attention to the main photo used on this blog. It is a branch of a fir tree in Mum and Dad’s garden. The morning I took this photo over the fence, it was a gorgeous cold and frosty but sunny day. This tree was originally a small Christmas tree with roots bought one Christmas when I was a child, afterwards it was planted out in the garden. Now I’m all for waste not want not but I don’t think my parents ever thought it would take over the garden in the way it did in the following 50 years. It is now at least 25 feet high!
The festive season was unusual as it was spent with no mixing indoors, apart from Christmas Day in our long-standing bubble with Karen. Everyone else in our families, and many of our friends, stayed in their own homes to keep safe, if not sane. The government had originally told everyone that they could spend five days mixing indoors with two other households, allowing three households to lawfully risk passing on the virus just because it is one religion’s time for celebration. Some people planned to do just that until, at the last minute, Boris announced that things were so bad that it was now just to be one day not five, and two households not three.
Christmas came and went, with no kissing under mistletoe, no socialising indoors and no Boxing Day Mummers! This was the first time since 1944 the Marshfield Mummers did not perform.
Some things still went ahead in the village. There was the socially distanced carol singing alongside a nativity scene on the back of a tractor, with the lovely lady vicar dressed as a shepherd, Father Christmas in a sleigh, again pulled by a tractor, complete with music and fake snow to name but a few. The beautiful and imaginative Christmas door wreath competition also went ahead. I deemed the following to be my winners.
This final ‘wreath’ (excuse the out of focus photo) of what I thought was ceramic, was on subsequent closer inspection what appeared to be homemade from foil ‘milk’ bottle tops. This house always has milk and juices delivered in glass bottles to their doorstep each day so I’m sure it was. It put me in mind of the famous Blue Peter Appeals of my childhood. Literally tons of milk bottle tops were sent in to raise money for Guide Dogs, RNLI Lifeboats and many more charitable causes.
We had another winter walk around the Marsh with our favourites on 27th. Posing here outside Bond‘s award winning garage and haulage company, by their imaginative Tyre snowman, complete with mask and safety visor.
On 29th December it was announced that the vaccine by The University of Oxford and AstraZeneca plc was the second vaccine to be approved in the UK. This has been a significant achievement as it can be stored at fridge temperature, so will be easier to distribute and store and can therefore be administered using existing healthcare systems.
Glancing at the these newspaper headlines it would initially look like this lorry problem was brought about by the first days of Brexit. But this was actually the scenes caused by a ban on travel from the UK to France, just before Christmas, because of the amount of cases in the UK of the new variant of Covid-19. I’ve got to put these seemingly mundane things in the blog now because we will look back in horror and disbelief one day at how life was in 2020.
I was heartened to read that various charities supplied food and water to the drivers of the lorries who were stuck for days on the tarmac near the port of Dover. The most interesting one to me was the members of the Sikh charity LangarAid, who travelled 160 miles from Coventry to take water and food to the drivers. The Sikhs from Guru Nanak Gurdwara in Gravesend also helped cook meals and delivered them along the M20. It reminded me of the kind people we met in the Langar kitchen in the Golden Temple in Amritsar earlier this year. Lots of other companies, religions and charities did the same but the reason why I am bigging up the Sikhs is because the young man we met in the Golden Temple last year, who showed us around the world’s largest Langar kitchen, told us how his brother, who came to England to study and work, had to shave his beard to be accepted here. Anyway I had better stop there.
Since I started writing this blog post at the beginning of December, the end of Lockdown 2, Covid cases have risen so much so that hospitals are on the brink of being overwhelmed. This has been mostly due, in London and the south east, to the latest and most virulent of the virus mutations. (There has been some 23 so far I read.) It’s all very scary and yet I think many people have become a little numb to the constant stream of news and sadly some people have also become complacent. The new ‘variant’ of the Covid-19 virus is on the rampage, worse than in the first wave as it is transmitted 70% easier/faster. We all need to keep following the rules to stay safe.
Getting back to, and drawing a close to any mention of Brexit, I want to record here that a deal was finally agreed with the EU at ‘the eleventh hour’, the same day as the UK approved the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine. Oh and I feel I must make mention of Sir Captain Tom Moore, the 100 year old WW2 veteran who raised over £30million for the NHS this year….. I am wondering if he’s had the vaccine yet? Surely he deserves to be at the front of the queue.
31st December…….Everyone is celebrating the end of 2020 on this cold New Year’s Eve and looking forward to better things in 2021. However, It’s not over until the fat lady sings as they say, but nine months into this pandemic and singing, live concerts and theatre performances are still not allowed by law! 😐 It will be interesting to see how 2021 pans out.
Hi Mandy and Glen
Another great blog post. Yes indeed, I was interested to read about the thundersnow. I’ve never seen it, but I imagine it is spectacular. I’ve not come across hair ice either. I did ‘Google it up’ and found some fascinating images – living in Scotland I expect we’ll have the conditions for it some time!
The Christmas wreath judging showed that there’s a lot of creativity in your neighbourhood, and once again you packed in a lot of pictures and topical information that will give a valuable record in years to come. Alan
Once again brilliantly written.
We think this should be published in book form.
Such a complete record of life just as it is.