Alone, alone, all, all alone

 

Alone, alone, all, all alone,

Alone on a wide wide sea!

And never a saint took pity on

My soul in agony.

The many men, so beautiful!

And they all dead did lie:

And a thousand thousand slimy things

Lived on; and so did I. 

 

Cheery greetings from the grey-bearded loon lost in the deserted city of culture with only Coleridge for company.

A kesterell for a knafe

There are people (usually but not always male, of a solitary disposition and thankfully limited in number) who get pleasure from taking a bird and tying leather straps to it and making it perform tricks in return for bechins of chicken. Their pastime (I almost said hobby but this is no place for puns) has been described (among other things) as expensive, time-consuming, and useless. There are other people (also funnily enough usually male) who enjoy (though they deny it, of course they deny it) tying down a whole population and limiting their freedom and in return for conformity they grant tidbits of shopping and a snippet of exercise. Their pleasure is also expensive, time-consuming, and useless. And well, there are it seems far, far more people who enjoy being tied down (figuratively, it's not that kind of blog post, though à chacun son gout), who take paid leave on 80% wage and applaud their captors for taking care of them. Their furlough is even more expensive, time-consuming, and useless. I wonder what they will do when their hoods are removed, the jesses loosened and creances dropped; probably yawn, squawk and fall off their perches with hunger.

The poor creature above is a kestrel on display at Cottingham Show back in 2011.

The Purfleet, King's Lynn

I've shown the Purfleet and Customs House before (here) so I suppose I need a reasonable excuse to show it again but I can't be bothered to make one up. These buildings were mainly the former homes and warehouses of wealthy merchants (poor merchants leave no traces I suppose). I admit I don't know what they are used for now. This spot featured in a recent film adaptation of  David Copperfield when it might have looked like this (everyone in a pre-Raphaelite glow, spotless and keeping a goodly 6 foot separation t'was ever thus back in the day).

The Purfleet behind the Customs House. The little bridge is on Queen Street. The buildings on the right house restaurants, hairdressers, tanning salons (the sun never shines enough for some apparently) and an estate agents all closed now I'm guessing as "non-essential". Seeing these pictures reminds me what a cold wind was blowing that day back in February, cut right through you and out the other side.

Are there pylons still in the heart of town?

Can you see the sparks in any other part of town?
Does the current flow out of every line?
No, it's just on this street in King's Lynn.

This pretty adornment to the street scene gives a towering feeling (well it's several storeys high) to John Kennedy Road and brings the oscillating electrons and possibly an overpowering feeling to a sub station just off to the left.

The weekend in black and white is here.

With apologies to Lerner and Loewe.

... will the line stretch out to th' crack of doom?

First time in town for nigh on four weeks and I find Tesco have a Hampton Court maze approach to public health with large arrows on the floor and "keep to the one way system" signs all over the place. There was no queue to get in but, well, this was the queue to get out. It's looks bad but was actually well organized and no real delay with dozens of checkouts open. Might be a week or two before I go back though.

What else can I say about my little trip? The buses were empty and there was no traffic to speak of, there was hardly anybody out and about, streets deserted. It was eerily quiet, even for Hull which can be a ghost town at times. This cannot go on.

DNR

My old garden incinerator, well the bottom fell out and a leg came off. No problem turn it upside down and away we go. Then the side collapsed ... might need a new one, but wouldn't want to rush these things.

Margot took this.

If it's Tuesday ...

Every Tuesday, regular as the tide, the ONS produce a set of figures, they're not exactly entertaining figures, they are the death toll for the week before last. They make for a grim read but if you want to get some proper idea of the what is going on these days, these figures are essential. If you were, for example, to have only the daily figure announced at the Coronavirus Update briefings held by the Government (each afternoon, a 90 minute exercise in futilty and self-preening) you would be seriously misled. 923 dead for the day they will say or some number, it matters not what the number is because it is a meaningless figure. It gives the impression that such and such a number died in the last 24 hours when the figure given actually represents the total accumulated that they counted in the last 24 hours. A man could die on Wednesday and not be counted until Friday, indeed a man could die one week and not be counted until two weeks later. These daily tallies serve no purpose other than to scare children and those with no sense. Indeed a weariness spreads that says "Hey Ho" when the figures come out. But figures do matter and the figures released by the ONS on Tuesday 14 April were very disturbing. Let me quote from the report:

• The provisional number of deaths registered in England and Wales in the week ending 3 April 2020 (Week 14) was 16,387; this represents an increase of 5,246 deaths registered compared with the previous week (Week 13) and 6,082 more than the five-year average.
• Of the deaths registered in Week 14, 3,475 mentioned “novel coronavirus (COVID-19)”, which was 21.2% of all deaths; this compares with 539 (4.8% of all deaths) in Week 13.
  
  

Why is this disturbing other than the large rise in COVID-19 figures? Well what isn't shown quite so clearly is that the rise from week 13 (total deaths 11,141) to week 14 in Non-COVID-19 deaths is 2,310. Since everyone is supposed to be sitting comfortably under house arrest how come so many more are dying? Could it be that the measures taken to save lives are, in fact, taking lives? The A&E departments at our hospitals report that they are hardly seeing any patients, acute surgical wards in hospitals are lying empty, patients with chronic conditions are simply not going to hospital. And given that daily and nightly bombardment of nightmare stories of deaths on TV who could blame them? We seem to have "Saved our NHS" for the sole purpose of killing COVID-19 patients.
I read that the peak number of cases was passed on April 8 but that figures are not falling (well they won't if you keep adding in cases from two weeks ago). The law keeping us penned in our bathrooms is due to be reviewed on April 16, it's reckoned there'll be at least three more weeks of this murderous economic suicide.
Of course, one week's figures do not mark a trend and it may just be a blip (I love that word "Lies, damn lies and blips!"). We shall see, that's if we are still around. Hey Ho!