After spending most of the summer in Broadstone I’m now back London. My return was delayed by the petrol shortages which are already seeming like a distant memory but which were very frustrating for motorists only a month ago. Broadstone was no bad place to be stranded but I was missing my COVID and flu jabs and the next installment of my cancer treatment, and there were other things that needed dealing with, so I was getting rather twitchy as the time to return approached.

This recent summer has been a whole lot better than last year’s, however, when amid the double isolation of lockdown and shielding I underwent a course of radiotherapy, which was torturous in itself and which didn’t work. I still have cancer, and it’s spreading. This wasn’t helped when my next-door neighbour in London played a cruel trick on me for her own amusement, which wasted a lot of my time and work and thoroughly humiliated me. Before she did that we’d been quite friendly, but that killed any possibility of future friendship and has made the neighbourhood into a very unfriendly place for me.

There have been good things happening in Broadstone, however, apart from getting together with the much better neighbours there. Celia’s caponata was a real treat, but the reason I went there in the first place was to meet up with a visitor from New Zealand, my neice Juliet’s husband Gerard whom I’d never met and who had wangled a visit to see his father and Juliet’s father, my former brother-in-law, both stricken with cancer. The damn thing’s everywhere. Gerard proved to be a very nice guy. I hope to see him and the rest of the tribe again one day.

Another nice thing that came completely out of the blue was a request from a publisher to reprint a piece I’d written on my blog — this very blog — in a collection of new writing that they were bringing out. I said yes, of course. They’ve moved quickly to get this done and I’ve now received a copy of it. It’s the latest volume in an ongoing series called Emanations, and I can’t deny that I’m chuffed to bits. It’s the first time my name has appeared in print for about 20 years, and it’s encouraging me to write more and maybe try my hand at drawing again. Emanations 9, with a lot of fascinating writing in it including a new Jerry Cornelius story from Michael Moorcock, is now available from Amazon here, but the original version of my piece (with illustrations) is still here to be read for free.

I got some other things done in Broadstone, like writing a whole lot of stuff about vegetables for reasons that are obscure even to me and getting my car through its first MOT, but most of the time I basically flaked out.  After nearly two years of near-isolation and inactivity perhaps this was what I needed to do. Eventually I felt better for it, and returned to London somewhat energised and ready for the fray.

The fray in question was likely to be the next assault from my horrid London neighbour. Last time I returned I found that she’d been making complaints about the somewhat overgrown state of my garden — not to me, however, but to the estate agents representing the freeholder of the flat she lives in with her husband. She’s well aware of my health problems. Her complaints were soon dealt with but the fact that she had made them and in such a devious way has soured the atmosphere even more. I’ve been wondering what I can do about this as it’s been bugging me, and I was somewhat heartened by a newspaper story that I came across here while I was away, about an incident that happened not far from Broadstone. It was good to see the other neighbours rallying to this poor woman’s defence and getting together to help her with her garden, and while I can’t quite imagine the same thing happening in trendy North London I think a bit of naming-and-shaming of my persecutors might not go amiss. I can’t imagine what makes people so self-righteous, judgemental and mean-spirited. Some of the charities dealing with the problems of older people are now speaking out against such abuse and may be able to help me and perhaps speak for me, since I’m not always very good at speaking up for myself. We’ll see.

In the meantime I’ve returned to something of a financial crisis, partly my own fault for not dealing with the agreement on my car while I was held up in Broadstone, but all the relevent documents were in London and in my semi-comatose state I let it slide. The problem’s solvable but is taking a good deal of phoning and emailing and running around to banks, and until it’s solved I’m just about broke. Not starving, but broke. Gerard’s now back in New Zealand after a longish period in a quarantine hotel in Auckland where he didn’t want to be when he was longing to get home to Tauranga. The rest of the family seem fine, and now Gerard is too. I’ve now had all my jabs and despite all the problems and the cancer I’m feeling quite optimistic. Again, we’ll see.

I was going to write about what’s happening with the pandemic here in the UK, but this piece from the latest Private Eye summarizes the situation better than I could.

Whether you think it is a good or bad idea, the UK is now living with high levels of Covid. This is down to a combination of a carefully planned and executed vaccine programme, which has given many adults the confidence of double protection, and a carelessly planned and executed border control programme which needlessly imported the Delta variant in very large numbers.

It is now spreading through those who are unvaccinated or partially vaccinated, but the harm it is causing is more from short-term malaise and long Covid than widespread hospitalisation and death. Even the doubly vaccinated are not immune to (re)infection, and some will also suffer disabling long Covid.

Covid deaths and hospitalisations will inevitably rise as restrictions are lifted, particularly among the elderly and most vulnerable who had vaccinations last December and January, the protection from which start waning after six months. NHS workers are similarly being re-infected after early vaccination. The last thing they — and the UK — needed was a huge Delta wave before the autumn booster jabs. But nothing can stop it now.

By cock-up or design, we are letting hundreds of thousands of people catch the Delta variant, and crossing our fingers that the long-term consequences won’t be too bad.

I had my first one yesterday.  The summons came out of the blue by phone on Monday evening, and the appointment was for Tuesday afternoon.  I’d hoped that these Covid-19 innoculations would take place at my GP’s surgery which is easy for me to reach, but no: I had to go up to Tottenham and the first problem was how I was going to get there.  A few minutes online research told me that parking my car anywhere near the centre would be impossible, and the nearest tube stations and bus stops are further away than I could walk even if I dared used public transport, which I haven’t for months.  It would have to be a taxi, then.

The local taxi service that I’ve been using for hospital visits were busy with many more such calls but said they would take me there and bring me back again — I’ve been a good customer of theirs and a generous tipper — so at 3:40 off we went.  Our destination was the Lordship Lane Primary Care Centre which has been hastily adapted for administering hundreds of jabs, and the place was seething with mask-wearing seventy-somethings.  Checking in, I was given a ticket and found that I was No. 60 in the queue.  As I sat down No. 32 was called, so I sat down and waited.

There was only the vaguest attempt at social distancing, and many of the waiting oldies were getting increasingly agitated and distressed as the numbers were called.  Some of them were in wheelchairs or on crutches.  We were asked to write our telephone numbers on a form that each of us had been given to fill in, and the woman in the chair next to me couldn’t remember hers.  Like me she had a taxi waiting outside to take her home and the cost of it was bothering her as we waited and waited as the meters ticked over.  The room presented a distressing scene.

The book I’d brought with me proved less than gripping, and as I waited my mind started to wander.  I started to see the place as a field hospital in a future war in some dystopian science fiction story where old people are conscripted and treated as expendable cannon-fodder, while the younger ones sit safely behind enemy lines in bunkers operating their computers and managing the conflict.  This might make an interesting movie, I thought, since there are so many famous actors now too old to play action heroes or romantic leads.  There would have to be a rebellion of the old against this appalling treament, of course.  I wondered whether Clint Eastwood is still alive …

My reverie was interrupted when I heard my number called.  I was ushered into a corridor and told to follow the green line on the floor which led me to another corridor.  The jab itself was very quick: sit down, roll up your sleeve, dab dab, you’ll feel a bit of a prick (stop sniggering at the back there), didn’t feel a thing, then we’re done and follow the green line out again, which led back through the still-crowded waiting area to the observation room, where jabbees have to wait for fifteen minutes in case there are any immediate side-effects.  None of us seemed to be showing any.

It was dark by the time I got away.  My taxi-driver was still there and remarkably good-natured about the long wait he’d had to endure.  He’d been hanging about for more than an hour.  I gave him a very decent tip.  At home with a large mug of strong tea I turned on the news and learned that during the course of the day 1610 people had died of Covid-19: a new record, so despite all the hassles I’m very glad to have had the jab.  By my very rough calculation I’m the four million, two hundred and sixty-six thousand, five hundred and somethingth person to get the jab in the UK.  When I’ll get my second one is anybody’s guess, so I’ll just have to sit around for a while longer waiting for the call.

I wonder how many old folk missed out because they couldn’t manage a trip to the Centre, or couldn’t quickly find £40 or so for a taxi.  I hope that local charities and neighbourhood networks are mobilizing to help them, but full credit to the authorities for getting the innoculation programme organized so quickly even if the organization isn’t always perfect — and we must suppress the resentment many of us feel about them getting us into this mess by acting too late in the first place then relaxing the rules much too quickly.  The ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ scheme seems almost suicidally stupid in retrospect.  Some of us thought so at the time, and said so, and I was appalled at the speed with which some people immediately started socializing and even going on foreign holidays as though there had never been a pandemic.  So foolish, so appallingly selfish.

Only another twenty-five million jabs to go, then we have to do it all over again for the second jabs, and after that there are the kids to protect — if the jabs are effective.

This show could run and run.

Autumn is my favourite time of year.  I have no patience with those who complain of cooler weather, falling leaves, the nip in the air, darker evenings etc.  I love these things and this is England, for heaven’s sake.  Sun-worshippers should live somewhere else.

Summer was a bummer.  For many it was a season of uncertain weather, travel restrictions, masks, social distancing (ignored by lots of young people, with the consequences we’re now seeing) and the general frustrations of a pandemic-stricken world.  For me it was an even more joyless time with much of it devoted to a stepped-up course of cancer treatment.  Strong prescribed laxatives played a large part in this.

The daily drive across North London to the hospital was no fun at all, consisting of rat-runs, speed bumps and white vans which seemed to be on a concerted mission to clip off my wing mirrors.  Once there the staff in the radiology department were as wonderful as NHS staff always seem to be, overworked but friendly and gorgeous and very tolerant of a sometimes difficult patient, but there was an awful lot of just hanging around, waiting.  There were unpleasant side-effects of the treatment too, depressing to manage at home on my own and not helped by a quarrel with someone I thought was sympathetic to my situation but who turned out to not to be.  To some extent it was probably my own fault for poking my nose in where it wasn’t wanted, or simply being old and sick and boring when there was fun to be had elsewhere, but it was painful to have my friendly overtures spurned so callously and in the process to be made into a laughing-stock.  Nasty stuff, and being somewhat autistic^• I found this more than usually difficult to cope with.  Still do.

After that shitstorm I was desperate to get out of London.  Driving south down the motorway and leaving the suburban sprawl behind I felt my spirits gradually lifting.  The trees were still green — no autumn colours just yet — and speeding through the gently rolling countryside gave me a feeling of freedom and exhilaration that has been on furlough lately.  I stopped at the services to buy some food for later and a couple of cans of a lager called Hells, which seemed apt for the occasion.  I thought that if I could sink that and expel it in the all-too-familar way it might act as a sort of symbolic purging of a rotten time, but it didn’t.

Broadstone was looking a bit sad even before the pandemic hit, and every time I approach it these days I find Iris Dement’s ‘Our Town’ running through my brain.  I first heard this as it played over the closing credits of the very last episode of Northern Exposure, maybe my all-time favourite US tv series, when it actually brought a little tear to my eyes.  Listen to it here.  Seems to suit the general mood.  What has been called The Death of the High Street has hit such places hard as people increasingly shop at trading estates or online, and lockdown made things even worse in Broadstone with many of the long-established shops and cafés now closed and the premises vacant.  Gone are Irené’s dress shop; Pampurred Pets where we bought things for the cat and who found her a new home when my mum had to go into care; The Owl’s Roost where my parents often went for morning coffee; Harris and Nash where we got our electrical goods and who mended them on the premises when they went wrong; McColl’s the biggest and best newsagent’s with a fine array of magazines … and I’m particularly sad to find that the Oxfam shop has now closed, where for years my mum worked as a volunteer doing the accounts and generally helping out.  This sort of thing is happening all over the UK but it’s especially sad when it’s your own patch, which holds so many bittersweet memories.

Even so, I’m more than glad to be here.  The house is looking better than it has for some time thanks to the gardening skills of Raymond who has been loaned to me by my neighbours and has been looking after the place while I’ve been away, so the lawns are neatly mown, the bushes pruned and the hedges clipped.  It’s been raining almost continuously since I arrived but I don’t mind a bit.  There have been no mists and no fruitfulness, mellow or otherwise, since a deer got into the back garden and ripped the leaves off the little fruit trees that I planted a couple of years ago — a beautiful creature but in gardening terms a pest — but there may be hedgehogs, which would be welcome.  They eat slugs.  Celia next door has found evidence of them in her garden though she hasn’t actually seen one so far (neither have I), but ‘ghost hedgehog’ signs can be spotted around the area, and I’ve joined The Dorset Mammal Group to try and do my bit to help.

I’m still reeling from the effects of the treatment I’ve received. I’ve been taking things quietly since I’ve been here and have been feeling better day by day, and have even managed to get a few things done: a new computer, a decent-seized bed at last. My neighbours here have been such good friends, inviting me round for meals and drinks, listening patiently to my moans, and gently setting me straight when I seem to be going astray.  Their daughter Michelle, who knows about medical stuff — she’s just got her Ph.D — bought me a bottle of tonic to help with my depleted energy levels, and it works!  I’ve ordered further supplies, and since we’re all Bob Dylan fans we’ve been sipping from a bottle of Bob’s personally blended bourbon, Heaven’s Door, which helps in other ways.

Broadstone isn’t exactly Heaven but for me it’s the nearest thing and I’m very fortunate to be able to spend time here, but I have to go back to London in a couple of days and I’m dreading it.  It’s a long time since I was able to enjoy the things that London has to offer and I’ve been living in the same house and locality for much too long.  It has all become over-familiar and boring, and there’s no reason for me to be there except for the cancer treatment.  There are indications that it may not have worked too well, with the damn thing spreading into other parts of my body.  This is what killed my beloved sister over ten agonizing years and I know all too well how it may progress, so the next round of tests and scans may not be the routine things that we expected, and as I’m now feeling like a pariah in my own neighbourhood I’m finding it difficult to be positive and brave, let alone cheerful — and a new lockdown has just been decreed.  Fucking hell.

Meanwhile I try to live in the moment.  At the bottom of the garden are two lovely trees, an aspen and a huge beech.  Next time I come here their branches will be bare, but today I’m very happy just to sit and watch the leaves turn from green to gold.

• I’ve wanted for a while to write about being autistic but found it very difficult to do without sounding self-pitying. which on the whole I’m not.  If I can find a way of doing it I’ll post it on this blog.

A few day ago I decided to try and make contact with my relatives in New Zealand.  There’s been a family feud going on for years but as I get older I realize how stupid these things can be so I sent what I hoped was a conciliatory email to my niece Juliet half expecting her to ignore it or to tell me to get lost — but no: her reply was welcoming and forgiving, and she also put me in touch with my nephew Andrew whose email address I had lost and who has proved equally accepting.

They live close to each other in Tauranga and both now have families that I’ve never met and whose existence I was only barely aware of.  Now we’re friends again and they have sent me photos, everyone looking so happy and healthy, and the little kids so damn cute:

I’m as proud as if they were my own, and I’m tempted to print off copies and take them to the park to shove under the noses of complete strangers.  I won’t do that, of course, but I’m so damn pleased.  It’s a lift I needed because last weekend I was very upset by the antics of … never mind.  Finding that I have this amazing family and am not totally alone in the world far outweighs such nastiness.  It also means that next time the hospital asks for the names and details of my next-of-kin I’ll be able to tell them, and maybe bring out the photos.  I’m finding it hard not to wander about with a great big grin on my face.

Naturally I’m tempted to hop on a plane to New Zealand right now to go and give these people a big hug and possibly do the Lord of the Rings tour as well (would the kids like to come along? I’m determined to be a much better uncle from now on), but alas that’s not possible at the moment.  But it’s something to look forward to, something indeed to live for.

Back to Stroud Green, the beating heart of North London, with distinctly mixed feelings. I know that in the next few weeks I’ll have to do a lot of work if I’m going to get the house here a bit further along the way to selling it, but I’d been looking forward to seeing friends again and getting out and about a lot more now that lockdown has been eased and for many completely junked. I had pleasant visions of strolls in the park, pub lunches, outings to garden centres, evening drinkies — shopping! — and generally getting back to a more normal life, but as the new reality bites I realize that it’s not going to be like that at all.  Not for a while, anyway.  Not for me.

As an extremely vulnerable old person (cancer, chronic asthma and a few other jollies) I must continue to shield myself as best I can; I don’t trust the Government’s chaotic and contradictory advice on this as they seem much more concerned with refilling the Treasury’s depleted coffers than with looking out for sick fucks like me, especially when independent scientists with no political agenda are telling everyone to be much more cautious, wear masks, keep well apart etc.  A message arrives in my inbox from the (non-Governmental) Coronavirus News and Service Updates which reads in part:

We’re not back to normal yet. It is vital that you continue to keep a safe distance from others. Don’t put your loved ones at risk. In situations where you can’t keep two metres apart, stay at least one metre apart while taking other extra precautions.

and Professor Susan Michie from UCL (my alma mater) goes further:

The change [from two metres to one] is a disaster waiting to happen.  Opening indoor areas in pubs is probably the top of the level in the hierarchy of riskiness. If you look around at people trying to keep two metres apart, most are actually more like one-and-a-half metres, which is significantly safer than one metre. If you go down to one metre, actually that is about the distance that people you don’t know and are not intimate with are distant from each other just generally going around and about their business. So basically you have lost the whole concept of social distance. And once you have lost that, you really are in trouble.

Most of my family and old friends are now either dead or widely dispersed so I wasn’t exactly living in a giddy social whirl anyway, but I did manage to maintain a few contacts and find ways of enjoying a bit of social life now and then. All that now seems like a distant memory, and as I’m following the scientists rather than the Government my life will certainly not be back to “normal” any time soon.  I know that catching the coronavirus would almost certainly kill me.

Two weeks later

Pippa Kent, a sufferer from cystic fibrosis who has been shielding since the start of lockdown and whose experience is not unlike my own, writes in today’s Guardian:

“I have only ventured out three times in the first week and remain cautious. The guidance almost suggests that we should open our doors, simply forget the rhetoric we’ve had drilled into us over the past few months and get back to ‘real life’. But for those of us whose pre-existing medical conditions greatly increase the risk from Covid-19, we are naturally a little hesitant to embrace this sweeping change.

“Speaking to other high-risk shielders it seems experiences have been mixed. While a few have felt safe sitting outside cafés and restaurants or popping into shops, the majority are yet to take these steps.

“Some have had outings to normally quiet coastal locations, now crowded as people holiday in the UK, where social distancing seems completely non-existent. Others, during essential trips to a car mechanic, have found they needed to make several requests for staff to comply with putting on masks and gloves.

“Unlike at the start of lockdown, when most people seemed very willing to support those who were shielding, the reality is that many seem to have virtually forgotten the last three months; hugging for pictures on social media, crammed into bars, flouting the use of masks and ignoring ongoing guidance around distancing. They seem oblivious, or indifferent, not only to the risks to themselves, but potentially to those who are more vulnerable around them.”

Exactly.

As for me, in the intervals between the cancer treatment there’s gardening to be done, or I could just stay indoors and get on with the fucking plastering.  My hair needs cutting again.  It’s great to be home.

Yesterday the MP for Brent, Dawn Butler, was stopped by police while driving across North London to meet friends for lunch.  Ms Butler is black.  In the US it seems that black people are often prepared for such unpleasant encounters by what is called ‘the talk’.

Just about every teenager gets copious safe-driving tips from their parents when they get their first driver’s license. But for black teens, the freedom and independence that comes with driving necessitates an added conversation — one often referred to simply as “the talk.”

This one offers advice for safely navigating potential encounters with police.

Dwayne Bryant was inspired to write his book The Stop: Improving Police and Community Relations after having a positive encounter with an Indiana state trooper.  Bryant says the talk is necessary for black children and teens in particular because they bear a greater risk of harm in those interactions.

“The reality is the community can do 100% of everything the officer says and they can still get killed,” he said. “That is the reality of being black in America. So what I do is I talk to them about many things, from understanding their rights to being respectful, but also understanding what their future is, because ultimately you do not want to have a 20-minute encounter derail 20 years of your life.”

Child development specialist and Erikson Institute adjunct faculty Angela Searcy says “the talk” should not be just one talk, but a series of open-ended conversations throughout a child’s life — and not only black families should have them.  Searcy, the author of Push Past It: A Positive Approach to Challenging Classroom Behaviors, says it’s important to prepare all children for a world that often perceives black children differently from other children, and that having those talks can empower children, rather than scare them.

“Learning about racism and racial violence is not as scary as experiencing it … Just like a tornado can be scary, or a fire drill can be scary, if you know what to do when there’s a fire, you actually feel empowered,” she said. “Also not just talking about how black children may feel, but also including all children within this conversation that some children feel unsafe, what we can do about it, how we can support them, and how we can respond when there is a situation that is scary. This doesn’t lead to mental health issues, this actually stops us from having mental health issues.”

Reuben Jonathan Miller, associate professor at the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration and the author of the forthcoming book Halfway Home: Race, Punishment and the Afterlife of Mass Incarceration, says his studies of criminal justice policy and mass incarceration primed him for these discussions with his own children.

“Black children particularly and black people have been stripped of our innocence. The research tells us this, we know that police officers view black boys as older [by] four years on average, it reports them being [perceived to be] less innocent,” he said.

Along with advising compliant and respectful behavior towards police to his children, Miller says it’s “very important for me to let them know, sometimes, in fact often, you’re stopped for nothing that you’ve done at all. You’re stopped for just being, just hanging around. So it’s about working very hard to make sure they don’t internalize that it’s their problem, that it’s something they’ve done.”

And though black families have extra reason to speak to their children about police encounters, Miller says that when it comes to criminal justice, white families have every reason to have “the talk” too.

“Mass incarceration does not stop at the threshold of the black family. Thirty-nine percent of white boys will be arrested before they turn the age of 23 in this country,” he said. “So this is a national problem of epic proportions. Black folks are stopped at a much greater rate, but white families are not absolved from needing to address this crisis.”

[Adapted from an article by Erica Gunderson: https://news.wttw.com/2020/06/08/having-talk-how-families-prepare-black-children-police-interactions%5D

I have books the way some people have — what?  I was going to say mice but who has 2000 mice? Every feasible wall in my house is lined with bookshelves and every corner has a bookcase in it, but the books have long ago overflowed these and they lie in piles on the floor, on the stairs, all around the bed and sometimes in it. I have an awful lot of books.

There is some excuse for this. My career was in publishing, and publishers do tend to accumulate books as well as spawning new ones, but I think it would have been much the same whatever I was doing. The fact is that I like books.  A lot.  I could read before I went to school at the age of three and have been reading voraciously ever since.  My very first reading memory is of Mary Mouse, one of Enid Blyton’s early creations, and soon after that came Rupert, Molesworth (did you know that Hogwarts is a place in one of those still-funny books?), Just William and The Beano … but this isn’t a nostalgia trip: it’s about books as physical objects and what the hell I’m going to do with them all now I’m moving to a smaller house.

I give them away when I can. Lots have gone to charity shops and freecyclers, and I’ll press a few books onto anyone who seems even vaguely interested, but this is like chipping away at an iceberg with a penknife: it makes no discernible difference to the vast bulk of the thing.

When I’m driving down to the new house in Dorset I load the car with boxes full of books, and I’ve been fitting as many bookshelves as I can cram into the place to house the books I want to keep. It turns out that I want to keep quite a lot of them, but there are very many left behind in London.

I’m looking to sell the London house, so I need to clear it out and most of the remaining books have to go — but where?  If anyone out there knows of some charity or organization that would welcome a lot of books, all good and all free, please contact me.

It would be a shame to put them into a skip.

Today has been the hottest day of the year so far, and like a fool I got tangled up in traffic for three hours during the height of it.

I’d spotted a post on the local Freecycle network¹ offering a pair of beds for nothing, and since I hope to have guests to stay here when I’ve got the place sorted out I thought I’d like those beds. Although there are two bedrooms in this small house there is at the moment only one bed: a small single bed for myself when I’m here. In London I have a big double bed — a relic of happier times! — which I was planning to bring down, though with the state it’s in I think it’s probably fit only for a bonfire, but what was on offer here was two single beds that could somehow be combined into a double, which seemed ideal to accommodate guests in whatever combinations they might arrive, or me when there are no guests and I feel like stretching out a bit, and I wanted them.

So I phoned the Freecycler, Debbie, and arrangements were made and directions given. I would drive over to her place at Bay View on West Cliff, Bournemouth, to pick up the beds at one o’clock. I set off from Broadstone at 12:30 as I like to be punctual — Bournemouth isn’t far away — and thought I’d take the coastal route which in normal times is a pleasant, quiet road affording fine views of the sea. Big mistake. Huge mistake.  A mistake with poison-tipped spikes all over it.

When I got to Bournemouth it was already getting hot and the road leading down to the beach was jammed solid with cars which showed no signs of moving, and the drivers were getting impatient and sometimes aggressive, so I did a three-point turn — tricky in the circumstances, and not a popular move with the queuing drivers — and drove up a side-road away from the coast. I suffer in hot weather anyway, and being stuck in the car on a day like this was becoming distinctly unpleasant. I drove around the maze of quiet residential streets for a while with an increasing sense of desperation, looking for a sign or any clue that might get me to West Cliff and I realized that I was going to be very late for my date with Debbie.  The heat was now sweltering.

Eventually, and more by luck than judgement, I came to the big roundabout that Debbie had described on the phone and by taking the second exit as she had suggested I thought that I’d soon find Bay View, the newish development where she’d said she lived.  Oh yeah?  There was a Bay View Lodge, a Bay View Tower, a Bay View This and a Bay View That, but nothing called just Bay View. I was getting seriously hot and bothered — I was now more than an hour late, and these roads were very busy — and realized that I needed help, so I pulled up outside one of these Bay View places and asked a passing youth if he knew Bay View itself.

He didn’t, but he was a nice bloke and looked for it on his iPhone, and was able to give me some detailed directions. Since he was on his phone anyway and mine was packed away I asked him if he would ring Debbie and tell her that I’d be there shortly, which he kindly did, with me yelling “Sorry!” from a socially-acceptable distance away. But the detailed directions just took me back to the jam-packed streets that I’d already been round several times, and when I braked only slightly too hard it caused the driver behind to rear-end me. These sun-seekers are fucking maniacs. The damage wasn’t too serious but it took another half-hour to sort things out with Mr Impatient Suntanned Bastard — and at this point, with sweat running in rivulets down my face and desperately thirsty, I decided that I’d had enough. I wanted to phone Debbie to apologize again but realized that the helpful youth had walked off with the bit of paper that had her telephone number on it, so I turned the car round again, wound down all the windows, and headed home by a fast inland route, with no beds and a shiny new dent on the rear fender of my car.

Once home I glugged down a pint of orange juice, showered, drank more juice and turned on the TV news. The Sky cameras were showing hordes of people thronging the Bournemouth beach and the lockjammed roads where I’d just been, with the reporters deploring such irresponsible behaviour and the police declaring it a Major Incident. Now, in the late evening and after some stabbings have been reported the TV pundits and politicians are giving it their two-pennorth. Appalling, Irresponsible, Dangerous, Police are some of the words I’m hearing. Yes, but this is more than just relief after the easing (not the end) of two months’ lockdown. It may be partly that, but there’s also some sort of herd instinct at work here. From my days as a psychologist I recall a book called The Madness of Crowds.² Must look it out.

I phoned Debbie to apologize for my no-show and she was very nice about it. We thought we could maybe try again next week when it might be cooler. I suggested that very early in the morning might be a good time, when there would be none of these demented sun-worshippers about.  We got chatting, and it emerged that before moving to Bournemouth recently she had worked in the Crouch End branch of Barclays Bank in London, where I’ve been a customer for donkey’s years. When — if — we eventually meet we’ll probably recognize each other.

Small world.  Small, horrible, crowded, stinking, sweltering world today.

^{1  The Freecycle Network™ is made up of 5,327 groups with 8,926,497 members around the world and next-door to you. It’s a grassroots and entirely nonprofit movement of people who are giving (and getting) stuff for free in their own towns and neighborhoods. It’s all about re-use and keeping good stuff out of landfills.  Join us now!}

^{2  Extraordinary Popular Delusions and The Madness of Crowds by Charles MacKay (1841)}