Hello,
Since I last sent my newsletter (to which you are subscribed for some reason probably long forgotten) I’ve posted a few things to my blog which you might not have seen.
Whales on the Hudson (30th April, 400 words)
In which our sofa-dwelling insomniac decides to distract himself with a dumb-assed superhero movie and chooses the one in which half the universe has been murdered and everyone left spends the first 30 minutes being really sad.
Stirchley Safari (2nd May, 300 words, one video)
In which our locked-down loafer notices the wildlife and remembers he has film-making equipment, so goes on safari in his back yard.
Insomnia Journal (7th May, 1900 words)
In which your intrepid correspondent gets very annoyed at the tabloid hit-job on infectious disease modeller Neil Ferguson by the right-wing press and tears into the whole notion of British Exceptionalism. You’ll want a cup of tea for this one.
Last week a jigsaw saved my life (18th May, 1750 words)
In which our daring diarist shares his discovery of jigsaw puzzles and their medicinal qualities for those suffering an over-active mind. He also delves more deeply into the Autistic Traits he was assigned during a diagnosis a couple of years past and how they’re affected him during the pandemic.
During our government-mandated exercise strolls I have, on occasion, been taking the camera along and have been posting photos on my Flickr which you may enjoy. Here’s one of a felled tree in a drained lake.
I also produced a piece of algo-art after the nonsense that was our Prime Minister’s address to the nation. I was quite pleased with it.
Links-wise, I’m reluctant to add to the doomscrolling but have been throwing stuff that caught my eye up on notes.peteashton.com, if you’re in desperate need of some long-form analysis of the state of world.
One piece that I think is worth everyone reading, however, is Erin Bromage’s run down of the risks of catching the coronavirus which has certainly helped Fiona and I go outside with a bit less fear in our hearts. If nothing else it will stop you shouting at joggers, because it turns out they’re not the problem. It’s groups of people talking with each other in rooms without good ventilation that’s the problem.
Speaking of which, wear a mask when you’re talking with people.
Finally, if you didn’t know already, m’darling wife Fiona has been blogging her corner of the pandemic for 56 days straight and many people have said they’ve found it useful.
I hope you are well. I found out the other day that a friend’s wife had been through a serious case of Covid. She’s fine now, or at least as fine as you can be, but it struck me I had no idea because I’m in this lockdown bubble with no random chats. I’m not saying I needed to know - I most certainly didn’t. But with something like that I would normally have known. And that makes me wonder what else I don’t know about people I care about.
So yeah, I hope you are well.
Pete
http://peteashton.com