Friend George has a substantial amount of body art and is collecting more all the time — for now. Come next year, more health fascism will see the banning of most coloured tattoo inks (see this story); restrictions on our lives based on dubious health evidence, who’d have thought such a thing could happen. She’s getting them done while she can; the new ones are being dabbed clean a couple of days after being laid down.
On 4th December 2020, a year ago, I had my one and only day of face-to-face teaching in the whole of the academic year 2020-21. The students last year had a difficult time of it for reasons that were totally (taken) out of their control, but most of them made it through. Including Mithila, seen on the left here, who as a result of having finally received her results, invited me to have a mulled wine on her at the Christmas market. Cheers, and well done all. (And hi to the colleague too, who clearly wanted to be in on the photo as well.)
It’s nice to travel, but it’s also welcome to come home. Mr Steve Grey makes at least his 10th appearance on this blog.
Tammy is clearly the driving force behind St Helena’s radio station, Saint FM (I could give you the frequencies, but you’re not going to be able to pick it up right now unless you are on a boat somewhere in the nearby South Atlantic). I was an interviewee not just once, but twice today — the first very early, so apologies to Saint listeners if I sounded a bit fazed.
The tape marks the legal limit of my world. But I have suppliers who can transfer across it some essential supplies, not least a couple of six-packs of Windhoek beer, from Namibia. Thank you Gareth — who’s also, in the end, the reason I am here in the first place (more on this next week, probably) — and his other half, Jamie. Dear St Helena Government: I didn’t cross the tape.
These are the people I have come all the way to Toronto to work with — because we all decided, no, we are not going to sit and try to interact behind screens. We needed to work together. Ahmad on the left, Dina on the right. They look kinda happy about the prospect, as I was.
I regret the fact that they all still feel the need to wear a mask. I regret that so many of them have not yet been able to arrive, thanks largely to airlines ripping them off and governments (worldwide) still using Covid as an excuse to be mean to foreigners. But I’m still glad they’re here. This is only the second day in more than 18 months — the first being 4th December 2020 — in which I’ve been able to hold a face-to-face class. There seemed to be some work going on at this point.
The Striders are a local running group. Yesterday, they set out to run a 5km lap, on the hour, every hour, for 24 hours. This was taken at the end of the last one. Jilly, in the middle with the white top, did 20 of these laps — thus, she has run 100km (or over 60 miles) since Saturday, with a couple of hours of dozing at about 3am. I am in awe of this; if I walk more than about 10 miles these days I feel knackered and have to rest for a day or so.
If you ask me, one of the most damaging consequences of The Great Fear is that it has driven a bulldozer through our close social bonds. It’s ripped apart international solidarity as well, taught us to fear the foreigner again, and that will ultimately kill far more than the virus, but I can’t do much about that right now. I can try to get together with mates more, though — and so today, Steve and Geri, both once regulars on here, make their first appearances on here for (shockingly) nearly three years. We’re all still here, at least.
Today, just a portrait of a mate in his natural habitat. Where we’ve all spent too much time lately, let’s face it.
As far as I can tell — and I might have it wrong ± a couple — this is the 3,000th English picture to feature on here. Almost half of these (and 41% of the whole total) have been taken in Hebden Bridge, but this one is just down the road in Mytholmroyd.
Being 42 