Battling covid

Jenny and I have both had covid for around ten days now. It's my second dose and it's a lot worse than my first dose, which just seemed like a slight cold.

Both Jenny and I are feeling totally exhausted and in the grip of brain fog. It's all we can do to drag ourselves through the daily chores. I have to stop in the middle of washing up to regain some energy. Just a 30 minute walk round the neighbourhood is absurdly draining. I did manage to get to the MOT (car inspection) centre on Friday to get the car passed as roadworthy.

All I can say is, I hope I can shake this thing off before too long. It's no fun staggering through the day in a mental haze. But it can take anything up to 12 weeks for a full recovery, which is a depressing thought.

Of course I wonder if I might be getting long covid, which affects at least two million people in the UK and can be sufficiently debilitating to prevent many people from working. Luckily I'm retired so I don't need to worry about that.

The risk of getting long covid has dropped to about 3.5 per cent among vaccinated people (which includes me), but that's still a significant number of people.

Watch this space....

Party time

It's reported that young people are very keen on birthday parties for their dogs and cats, spending an average of £120 on birthday cakes, special gifts, favourite foods and new toys.

Well, time for me to dust off my party pooper hat and wonder why on earth cats and dogs need birthday parties. Do they actually appreciate them? Do they know why all these people are hovering around them? Do they like all the fuss and bother?

Why isn't it enough to mark your dog's birthday by giving them lots of fondles and extra grooming, taking them for extra walks or just giving them lots of attention and affection? Some cats and dogs are actually quite shy and might hate all the inexplicable commotion.

Surely birthday parties for pets are more for the benefit of their owners than the pets themselves? They're partly to show how much their owners care about them. But where will it end? Sooner or late it'll become competitive (if it hasn't already) and people will want their birthday party for Fido to be more lavish than their neighbour's birthday party for Rover.

Probably all Fido wants on his birthday is to curl up somewhere warm and cosy and ignore the rest of the world. But his owners may have other ideas.

.....................................................................................

Pet owners are complaining that veterinary fees have risen so steeply that some of them have had to put their pets down rather than incur fees of thousands of pounds for medical treatment.

Best avoided

I have no bright ideas for a blog post this morning, so I'm falling back on an old post about things that aren't worth wasting time on, things that don't add to my life.

Yes, life's too short to:

Pretend I'm someone I'm not. It's so easy to respond to what others expect of me, and hide my real self. But it just leaves people with a phoney idea of who I am.

Exhaust myself in a gym. Natural forms of exercise like hill-walking are more fun and more scenic. Why struggle with machines in a sweaty gym?

Listen to moaners. The hours I've wasted listening to people moaning away about their workplace, their neighbours, their relatives.

Think about the Royal Family. I couldn't care less about the royals. They're just a bunch of parasites sponging off the rest of us and giving little in return.

Idealise politicians. I no longer kid myself that politicians who promise a bright new future mean what they say. I've seen too many false dawns.

Bear grudges. Better to let bygones be bygones rather than brood over old grievances that will never be put right. Simmering over something for years only makes us sour.

Dwell on things I can't control. There's no point in harping on about things I have little influence over. Like drink-driving or homophobia or religious fanatics.

Keep the house spotless. I'm not one of those houseproud obsessives who clean and sweep non-stop. As long as the place is presentable, that's enough for me.

Shop till I drop. I can't stand shopping. I do it only when I absolutely have to. Spending time in a shopping centre, assaulted by endless Musak, is my idea of hell.

Worry about my failings. Like everyone, I make mistakes and I upset people. There's no point in fretting over it. I do what I can to make things right, and then I move on.

Misrepresented

Shocking scenes in Ballymena and Portadown, Northern Ireland in the last few days as rioting mobs targeted anyone who wasn't "local" i.e. anyone from another country. And families from elsewhere who have lived here for many years were still seen as "not local" and fit to be intimidated and told to leave their homes.

In general Northern Irish folk are quite welcoming to people from other nationalities, but there's a hard core of racists who do their best to stir up hatred and intolerance, either for political reasons or because they enjoy a bit of violence and disorder.

Most of the Ballymena and Portadown residents must have been horrified by the rioting and wanted no part of it. They are sleepy little towns were normally nothing very dramatic happens and the biggest sensation is a new set of traffic lights.

The rioting paints a negative picture of Northern Ireland that completely misrepresents the reality of sensible, peace-loving folk who just want to get on with their lives. Tourists must be wondering if the rioting might spread to Belfast or other parts of the country. Fortunately there's no sign of that as yet.

As usual, the rioting was encouraged by numerous social media posts, that no doubt included a lot of false information about foreigners getting "preferential treatment" while locals miss out.

Hopefully the rioters have already got tired of rioting and Ballymena and Portadown will return to their normal uneventful daily lives.

Suitably masculine

I do envy women the wide range of clothes they can wear, while as a  man I'm limited to a small list of clothing that's considered suitably "masculine".

Basically I'm confined to suits, jackets, shirts and trousers. Anything else would cause disapproval and dismay. But such a limited selection is horribly boring and restrictive.

I know some female clothing is absurdly uncomfortable and impractical, like shapewear or high heels, but at least women have the choice of whether to wear them or not wear them. They can be as flamboyant or dazzling as they wish and nobody will object (except in an office of course).

The irony is that every item of so-called female clothing has been worn by men at some time in the past - high heels, corsets, tights, skirts, whatever (men wore high heels for centuries before they were gradually reborn as female footwear).

Men do tend to stick to recognisably "masculine" clothes, and recoil violently from anything that's deemed "feminine". The very idea of wearing anything "feminine" is seen as humiliating or belittling or just weird.

Those men who want to cross-dress either have to do it in private, out of the public eye, or simply stifle their desire and pretend they're happy with a suit and tie. Unfortunately wives of cross-dressers are not always supportive. They often react with horror when they learn of their husband's "abnormal" inclination.

Granny's advice

I'm not an angry person. I'm more of the "Keep calm and carry on" persuasion. I believe that anger is pointless and usually self-defeating.

Some of you may remember from earlier posts that at the age of ten my grandma urged me not to be like my father - habitually bad-tempered and out of control. I took her advice and I've been remarkably even-tempered ever since.

On the rare occasion that something riles me enough to make me angry, other people are taken by surprise. They're so used to me having a cool and measured approach to whatever situation I'm confronted with that they wonder what on earth's going on.

Of course some people say that anger is one of our basic emotions, the emotion that brings us to life, and that never being angry is a bit abnormal. On the contrary, I think anger is as negative as guilt or jealousy or bitterness. Someone who is regularly angry just makes other people wary and defensive.

Anger is very fashionable at the moment. Look at a newspaper or go online and there are any number of people getting furiously angry about something or other. Where they get the energy from I can't imagine.

I also resist anger because it so often leads to violence, especially misogynistic violence. Once you allow anger to flow freely, it easily morphs into something much more dangerous. Keep a lid on it, I say.

PS: Several blogmates have suggested I'm bottling up my emotions and that expressing anger is a normal human trait that I'm lacking. Well, expressing anger may be the psychological norm but norms don't apply to everyone and to my mind it's also normal to be an un-angry outlier. I've never felt that I'm bottling up my emotions, I just hardly ever feel angry.

Coin stuffing

Tourists don't always respect the place they're visiting and many of them commit what can only be called acts of vandalism. The Giants Causeway on the north coast of Northern Ireland has been one of the victims.

Visitors are jamming tiny coins into the gaps between the stones, and these coins are discolouring the stones as iron, nickel and copper leach out of them. There's a copycat element as people see others shoving coins between the stones and do the same themselves.

It's hard to see what the motive is for this "coin stuffing". They'll never see the coins again and probably will have forgotten all about them a week later. Tour guides warn visitors not to leave coins, but the problem persists.

Unfortunately tourist vandalism is very common. Graffiti, love locks, stealing cobblestones, carving names on ancient monuments. There's a general lack of respect for the places they're visiting and too much mindless self-indulgence.

It would be a shame if popular tourist sites are routinely closed to the public because vandalism has got out of hand. A spectacular canyon in Iceland, featured in Game of Thrones, is now closed to visitors after a huge influx of tourists has damaged vegetation and trails. Iceland as a whole is now so fashionable it's buckling under the same tourist deluge as many other places.

Where will it all end?

Pic: the Giants Causeway