welsh hills again

So here we are: the last day of 2020.  What a strange year and what a strange point we have reached with the virus.  Yesterday the Oxford Vaccine was cleared for use in the UK by the medicines regulator. On the same day new cases exceeded  50,000 and there were 981 deaths of people within 28 days of a positive test for covid 19.  So a strange tension between the hope that comes with the roll out of the vaccine and the tightening of restrictions to try to prevent the NHS from being totally overwhelmed by the increasing demand.  Here in Wales we have been in virtual lockdown since just before Christmas with an easing just on Christmas Day to allow a visit from only one household.  Yesterday it was announced that many more areas of England would go into Tier 4, not quite national lockdown but very close with all non essential retail closed and hospitality businesses open only for take away food.  It feels as if we are at a hugely significant point in the story of this virus.  If we can pr

A press conference on Saturday afternoon, the 19th December.  Boris Johnson and his scientific advisers announce that the spread of a new strain of the virus is causing great concern.  This strain appears to be considerably more infectious so while the illness itself seems to be no more (or less) virulent, if it runs unchecked we shall have a huge increase in case numbers with the inevitable impact on hospitalisations and fatalities.  So fiercer restrictions are put in place in much of England and significant changes made to the arrangements for Christmas, reducing the period in which restrictions are relaxed from five days to one.  Here in Wales there is the immediate announcement of another lockdown, again with some very slight easing on Christmas Day, but otherwise a lockdown to mirror the severity of the one we had here in spring: no travel, exercise from home, no household mixing. It was not unexpected.  Cases had been suddenly rising in the South East and in South Wales and the n

 Five things to be thankful for this Christmas. We are still here.  We come to the end of 2020 still alive, still living, breathing, laughing, doing, still here. Ian.  We have come through all these months of uncertainty and confinement together, looking after each other practically and emotionally,  keeping each other company, looking out for each other, enjoying our time together, amusing and occasionally annoying each other but always making each other's lives immeasurably richer.   Our wider family and friends.  We may not have seen as much of them as we like to do but we have been in touch often and just that sense of them being out there fills me with gratitude: a facetime degenerating into noisy chaos with the younger grandchildren, a call with the adults in the evening, a visit from local daughter and her family.  Knowing that they are there is like a warm fire in winter. The natural world.  We live in a beautiful place and like to spend a lot of time outside in it.  This y