Writing cue: random connections

 Choose ONE word from each of the following lists:

LIST ONE:        LIST TWO:        LIST THREE:        LIST FOUR:        LIST FIVE:

silver                    cherry                     bacon                        horse                      steam train

pewter                  orange                     bread                        elephant                    Porsche

clay                      lime                         banana                     tortoise                   school bus

treacle                  pomegranate            yogurt                     cuttlefish                skateboard

ruby                    persimmon                quinoa                    labrador                   helicopter

soot                    apple                          cheese                     snake                      aeroplane

chalk                   pear                           linguine                  lion                          raft

linen                    grape                        potato                      frog                         scooter

Now, write down your five words and try to think of as many things associated with those words as you can. Allow your mind to wander and write down everything that comes to you. Don't put too much thought into this. Let one idea suggest another. Each word might suggest something specific or generic, something only you would think of or something many people would think of. Cross out any association that seems too obvious or uninteresting. 

EXAMPLE:

'soot' - after a fire - burnt-out building - letter burning in a fireplace - industrial site - nineteenth century air pollution in big cities - darkness (black as soot, sooty sky) - Sooty and Sweep - Sooty as name for a beloved teddy bear or pet - Sooty as a racist slur - a world of soot with soot covering every surface - wet soot like black ink - what has been burned? Soot = ashes? - blackness - dustiness - dirt - smudges - knee-deep in soot - Othello's 'sooty bosom' - soot/foot/gut/slut/glut/shut/hut/mutt/cut/strut

Next, try to make some connections between items on your 'Ideas Chart'. Which ideas are you most drawn to? Can you see any narratives forming, or possibly just ideas or hints for narratives? Have any unexpected images arisen? Do any of the ideas have a strong emotional pull for you? Are different ideas coalescing or transforming your original thoughts?

Use this 'Ideas Chart' to generate some prompts for stories or poems. Hopefully, you will find that each Ideas Chart you produce gives you several ideas for writing, and you can go back to the five lists you started with to select different words as often as you like. 

You might also attempt to link the words, or write a story which uses all five words, or use derivatives of the words (such as 'elephantine', 'chalky', 'appleblossom', 'cheesy', 'rafting', etc). The words are there to be used in whatever way you wish.

Happy writing!

Book Review: ‘Little Fires Everywhere’ by Celeste Ng

Someone bought this novel for me a few years ago and it has been sitting on my bookshelf ever since, until recently I picked it up to read in a fit of boredom. Published in 2017, this is Celeste Ng’s second major novel. Her debut novel, Everything I never told you, won the Hopwood Award, the Massachusetts Book Award, the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature and the American Library Association’s Alex Award. Little Fires Everywhere was a critically-acclaimed bestseller and has been made into a TV mini-series starring Reese Witherspoon (premiered on Hulu and later generally released on Amazon Prime).

This novel was a bestseller, and therefore it feels a little churlish of me to have failed to find it as compelling as others obviously did. This is not to suggest that I hated it, but simply that I found it a struggle at times. The opening chapter, which describes the housefire that occurs at the climax of the story, in theory should make the beginning of the novel grab the reader’s attention – writers are always being told to begin in medias res, after all. But somehow I found this chapter strangely lacking in drama – there seemed to be a large ensemble of characters, their names all introduced in this first chapter, and I couldn’t get a grip on who they all were straight away. The reader isn’t thrown straight into the drama of the fire itself but into its slightly dull aftermath, and though there were many hints at what had happened and who had done it, these hints were too confusing or too dull to fully engage my attention. And I have to be honest (potential spoiler alert here), when I finally reached the end of the novel, I found the full revelation about who caused the fire and why to be slightly underwhelming and obvious, and is more or less revealed in this first chapter.

            However, this is a ‘literary’ novel, and Ng is a serious writer. She doesn’t go in for fancy tricks or plot twists. She is aiming to say something profound and meaningful about life. And the fact is, though I did find Chapter One tedious, I nevertheless read on. In fact, I was roughly halfway through before I became fully engaged with the story, but the fact that I kept reading anyway, despite this, says more about the novel’s strengths than about my staying power. Ng’s style is lucid and easy to follow. This isn’t one of those irritating books where the author is showing off his/her cleverness by using elaborate imagery, obscure references and ‘experimental’ narrative devices. It is a reasonably complex plot which is organised effectively and told with great clarity. And I suspect that is actually where my lack of interest comes from, sadly.

            On my MA in Creative Writing, we were told repeatedly to ‘show’ rather than ‘tell’. While there are obviously times when telling is needed, the advice was usually to always try to show people’s emotions through their dialogue and actions rather than just telling the reader. But Ng tends to tell us what is going on inside characters’ heads: she describes what they do, often in retrospect or summarised, so we are given the information quite quickly, and she tends to focus on the aftermath of emotionally-intense situations – for instance, when Lexie has an abortion, we learn very little about the experience itself but we see her being comforted by Mia afterwards and we are told about how her sister Izzy and Mia’s daughter Pearl feel about this. When Pearl begins to have sex with Lexie’s brother, Trip, we are told this and given a quick overview of how it comes about, but I never felt truly involved in Pearl’s feelings about the experience.  In fact, I never felt that I knew Pearl much at all, throughout the novel, despite her being such a central character. We are told a great deal about Elena’s thought processes and why she has certain emotions, but we actually see very little interaction between her and her children and husband. We are told that Mia and Pearl are very close and given information about their life together, but we see very little of this tight bond in operation. This has a distancing effect on the reader – I felt that I didn’t care about the characters as much as I was intended to, which made their experiences less compelling.

            I wondered about the necessity for such a large cast of characters too. For example, I found the character of Moody to be ultimately superfluous to the plot – in the early chapters, I felt like he was going to be a central element in the unfolding plot, but in fact by the end I couldn’t really see what his purpose in the narrative was at all, other than as a means of introducing Pearl to the Richardson family. Nevertheless, all the characters are realistic and psychologically plausible. They respond like real people, they interact like real people. But we are generally kept at arm’s length from them, mainly due to the necessity for Ng to keep all these different characters’ individual stories going, like spinning plates on the tops of poles that have to be constantly swivelled to keep them spinning. And, though the writing seems effortless and unflashy (which I liked), and there are some lovely images here and there, I did feel that occasionally it dipped into cliché in the language-choices it employed.

            There were two particular strengths to this novel which struck me and made it overall a satisfactory read. One was the clever plotting. Each character’s responses to each other and to events leads quite naturally to what happens next – one event leads to another in a way that seemed completely natural and never contrived. In fact, I would have liked a bit more drama, as ultimately everyone was oddly calm and controlled. There were no spiteful cat-fights, screaming matches, bitter arguments – it was all rather constrained and quiet. The simmering emotional cauldron Ng kept hinting at never really materialised. There were moments when I almost hoped for something terrible to happen – the most dramatic event in the novel, relating to the infant Mirabelle/May Ling at the heart of the story, was narrated with a singular lack of dramatic impact. The revelations were interesting but not much more than that. Mia was by far the most interesting character but even with her I rarely felt that I was being invited into her inner life, or at least not very far in. There always seemed to be a bit more psychic distance than I needed.  It occurred to me at one point that this style of writing is something I employ in my own short stories at times, and I wondered whether this was the aspect that my final coursework marker on the MA course referred to as being ‘rather pedestrian in places’, lacking in variety. It was odd, but enlightening, to find myself criticising a well-respected novelist for a writing style which is like my own!

            The thing I thought Ng did superbly well was her descriptions of Mia’s photographs. Mia is an artist, her medium photography, and she is presented as being exceptionally talented. This is always extremely difficult for writers to convey. How do you get across to the reader the experience a viewer of a Rembrandt painting or the listener of a Beethoven concerto has, when you only have words on a page?  Getting across the idea that Mia is gifted and original takes real skill. Ng does it wonderfully. She spends a lot of time describing Mia’s artistic method, her ideas, the ways she brings media and objects and thoughts together and creates works of art that you can imagine would be sought-after. Ng gives us just enough information to whet our appetite, to make us feel that Mia has true talent, without describing the works in such detail that they begin to seem trivial, banal, unexciting. I felt that maybe Ng herself had ability as a visual artist as well as a writer: she certainly has a great deal of expertise and a very active and creative imagination. It was in fact these passages about Mia’s artwork that kept me reading and which have stayed with me since. They are also not there purely for decoration or for back-story – they are central to Mia’s character and crucial elements of the story’s climax.

You can find out more about Celeste Ng at: https://www.celesteng.com/about

RATING: Little Fires Everywhere ***

Key:
*****      highly recommended - a 'must-read'
****         good - well worth taking the time to read
***           ok - will help to pass the time in a boring situation
**            not very good -  just about readable but flawed
*             not recommended - boring, offensive, badly-written or deeply flawed in some other way

 

‘Blood Kisses’ by Jane Langan


This is a self-published collection of poetry by a talented writer who studied on the Open University’s MA in Creative Writing at the same time I did. We both finished the course last October.  Since graduating, Jane (along with a group of other excellent MA alumni) has launched an online literary magazine called Makarelle, which is also highly recommended.

  

  £4.99 paperback 

I have read some very poor self-published writing, so I didn’t necessarily have high expectations when I purchased this book. I bought it mostly because I like Jane herself and I wanted to support one of my fellow MA graduates. I am familiar with Jane’s prose fiction, but not so much with her poetry, so I was intrigued to see whether she was equally as accomplished in both genres.

Firstly, let me make a comment about the physical, material qualities of this slender volume. It is a lovely object, just thick enough to be held comfortably in one hand while still having room for profundity and reflection. The cover is dramatic and there are excellent photographs inside taken by Jane herself. Unlike some self-published books I have come across, this has all the elements you would expect from a polished volume of poetry by a mainstream publisher – an appropriate blurb on the back, an accurate contents page, an ‘About The Author’ page at the back, page numbers, a clear font in a good size and lots of white-space around the poems.  Such considerations might seem trivial and superficial, but they often make the difference between volumes which have the authority of professional publications and ones which make you think of the literary equivalent of hand-thrown mugs with thumb-prints in them or hand-knitted sweaters with one arm longer than the other and a hump that could accommodate Quasimodo. You know what I mean: the sort of earnest, well-intentioned book that is a little bit egocentric and completely lacking in self-criticism. The sort of book that you throw into the back of a cupboard rather than actually read. Blood Kisses is not one of those, and actually I didn’t expect it to be as Jane has always struck me as highly professional in her approach. It is securely in the realm of the ‘properly proofread’, ‘thoughtfully laid out’, ‘holdable and readable’. And that is before you even get to the poems themselves…

It is difficult to read numerous poems all in one go – poetry needs digesting in bite-sized chunks. Even so, after I first opened the book, I found myself being drawn into the collection and realised I had read around half the poems in a single sitting. In fact, I read some of them while walking along the landing, having just picked up the book from the bottom of the stairs where I had placed it temporarily. This readability is due to Jane’s lightness of touch, her conversational style where the reader is invited to listen to her thoughts. She isn’t a poet who is self-consciously obscure and complex; there is a clarity and simplicity about her poetic voice that is refreshing and compelling. This clarity does not exclude depth and moments of genuine poignancy and subtlety, however. At its best, in poems like the wonderful ‘Beside Me’ which ends the collection, or the unsettling ‘Blood Kisses’, the simplicity of the language lies on top of a complex layer of churning thought and feeling which colours, shapes, tempers and amplifies the surface straightforwardness of the vocabulary.

Jane is an expert at engaging openings: ‘When I went home/it was to the hills’, ‘Deep inside the crevices of the broken heart,/there is cracked glass and darkness’, ‘He didn’t forget his manners,/the nurses claimed’, ‘A A Milne has some explaining to do’, ‘There are no more words in me’, ‘In nineteen seventy-five,/I lost me/I lost me’. She also has the gift of creating startling images or lines which stay in the mind long after you’ve read them: ‘clouds like grey collared doves’, ‘a skin of stories’, ‘Like a drunk, no rhyme nor reason./Just cat’, ‘Like a friend with a gun, you just don’t care’, ‘How I wish I was young again’. Whether writing about her cat, her daughters, Winnie-the-Pooh, religion or domestic abuse, she balances the humorous and the harrowing with great skill. Blood Kisses both conveys and evokes a smorgasbord of emotions, presented in a wave of different styles, from the punkish and prickly to the soothing and simmering.

I would recommend this book, even if you think you don’t like poetry. In fact, especially if you think you don’t like poetry.

You can find Jane Langan at:  www.howilikemycoffee.blogspot and @MuddyNoSugar

RATING: Blood Kisses *****

Key:
*****      highly recommended - a 'must-read'
****         good - well worth taking the time to read
***           ok - will help to pass the time in a boring situation
**            not very good -  just about readable but flawed
*             not recommended - boring, offensive, badly-written or deeply flawed in some other way

 

 

Covid Compliance

 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jan/15/lockdown-rules-blaming-covidiots-compliance

In an opinion piece in The Guardian on 5 Jan (link above), psychologist Stephen Reiker discusses the issue of Covid compliance. He makes the points that:

a) far more people are complying with Covid restriction regulations than are refusing to comply

b) most people actually wished the regulations had been brought in earlier

c) we have the perception that masses of people are not complying due to media stories about 'Covidiots', which in fact makes others less likely to comply because humans tend to do what they perceive the majority of their peers are doing. Therefore, it would be much more helpful to have lots of media stories about people who are complying under highly stressful circumstances (and there are many of these to choose from - Reiker includes an excellent example in his article).

This is a very good, clearly-written and intelligent article which expresses my own opinion. I think the government and the media should be focusing on the positives, the way people are pulling together, the importance of 'community spirit' and self-discipline in this difficult time. This would bring people together rather than splitting us apart.

Today I read that a scientist from SAGE is saying that in fact Covid is driving a wedge between two groups of people - those who can afford to stay at home and work from home, and those who can't. There has been a lot of criticism of people for not getting tested when requested to, for example. The knee-jerk response of many people to such non-compliers is that they are selfish, or irresponsible. A more nuanced criticism is that such non-compliers are stupidly assuming that somehow it won't make a difference whether they are tested or not, that they know they don't have the virus so what's the point? If the man from SAGE is right, we are going to leave this pandemic with a nation even more gravely divided than we already are due to Brexit, and his argument rests on the fact that we are an increasingly unequal society. 

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jan/02/psychologists-pandemic-cooperation-government-public-britain

In another opinion piece (link above), Reicher argues that a failure to get tested when requested - such as the reluctance among workers in Liverpool which has caused such outrage in the media - is not necessarily a moral failing. Working people who don't want to be tested are not monsters who don't care about other people and don't care, or are too stupid to understand, that they might spread the virus if they don't self-isolate. There is a strong correlation between those who refuse to get tested and the failure to get financial support from the government for loss of earnings. If you have to pay your rent/mortgage, buy food, pay bills, and your employer isn't willing to pay you for your ten days absence from work should your Covid test prove positive, and there is no compensation from the government, then what choice do you have? The practicalities of life for people in low-paid jobs often override any sense of moral obligation to 'community'.  With the best will in the world, you might hope you aren't spreading the virus, but your family still needs to eat and pay their bills.

Covid is real and it is a serious crisis. It's victims aren't just the poor people who are dying or seriously ill with the virus, however. The government should be doing more to help the poorest to be able to comply with regulations, and the media should be doing its part in promoting a united front rather than doing it's usual dirty job of seeding conflict and being an agent provocateur, creating manufactured outrage against perceived 'dissenters' rather than against an out-of-touch and hypocritical government.

Monthly writing prompts for 2021:

 What if...

January: ...aliens landed on your lawn?

February: ...you were mugged by a little old lady?

March: ...Donald Trump revealed himself to a reptilian alien wearing an unconvincing 'human suit'?

April: ...your small child turned out to have a super-power?

May: ...you found out you were a direct descendant of a famous person from history?

June: ...your new romantic partner turned out to be a terrorist?

July: ....your new best friend turned out to be a secret agent?

August: ...you discovered you had the power to heal people?

September: ...the ship you were on sank and you were washed ashore a deserted island?

October: ...you suddenly turned into a dog?

November: ...you won a Nobel Prize?

December: ...you suddenly discovered you were pregnant, even though you hadn't had sex in a year?

 

Cornish Mysteries series by Katherine Stansfield


I have to admit to knowing the author of these wonderful novels: Katherine was my tutor in the second year of the Open University Masters in Creative Writing (I graduated in December 2020 with a Distinction – yay!).  And, yes, that’s why I read the first book, Falling Creatures – well, it always pays to familiarise yourself with your tutor’s work, doesn’t it? Katherine was a brilliant tutor, BUT I would not be writing this if I didn’t also think she was a brilliant novelist. In fact, I’m sad that I hadn’t come across her work before I did the course, as I think it deserves to be more widely known.

I have deliberately waited until well after the course ended and all my work has been marked before posting this, so that there can be no suspicion of my having any ulterior motive in praising these books, which are pictured in order below:

 

The novels are essentially historical detective stories, but they undermine many of the genre’s familiar tropes. For one thing, the investigative duo are women – the cross-dressing Anna Blake and her interestingly alcoholic and rather downtrodden sidekick, Shilly, who narrates the stories. This unconventional pairing is a kind of homage to Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes tales, which are of course narrated by Watson, but it also subverts this relationship. Where Holmes is ultra-confident, preternaturally correct in his fabulous deductions, and rather well-to-do and well-respected, Anna is female and rather lower down the social scale, sexually ambivalent, less moneyed and less urban. She does share the famous detective’s penchant for disguising herself, however. And where Watson is slightly bumbling, a sportsman, professional, ex-military, honest and utterly reliable, Shilly is from a very humble background, a domestic servant, often mentally confused due to her drinking problem, poorly educated, superstitious and credulous. Both women are rendered powerless in some ways by their gender and class, but they are more able to inveigle their way into worlds which might have been closed books to Sherlock. Shilly in particular has the gift of making friends with people.

The novels play around with sexuality and gender, both in the cross-dressing and the tentative on-and-off sexual relationship between Anna and Shilly. Their friendship is interesting and well-drawn, developing as their story progresses through the novels. Dialogue in particular is convincing, and their characters are vividly drawn. Shilly’s voice as the narrator is spot-on – her naivete and world-weariness, her innocence and experience, her lack of knowledge of so many things and yet her understanding of human nature, is pitch-perfect. Yet it was the atmosphere of the novels that first caught my attention. I began reading Falling Creatures with no particular expectations and no intention other than to sample my tutor’s own writing, but I was rapidly drawn in and read the subsequent books simply because I enjoyed their distinctive, slightly off-kilter magic.

Part of this ‘atmosphere’ is down to Shilly’s status as an unreliable narrator – she uses euphemisms for her drinking, and her belief in the occult leads to a blurring between the ‘real world’ and the world of her imagination – how much of the ‘supernatural’ elements of the stories are simply down to alcohol-induced hallucinations or delusions, and how much are real? This edginess, this uncertainty, pervades all three books and adds an extra layer of mystery to the events that unfold.

Stansfield is an expert at creepy. These aren’t novels that are in the ‘Horror’ genre or the ‘Fantasy’ genre, but they definitely contain chilling moments. Stansfield is adept at creating scenarios in which the reader begins to see the world through Shilly’s eyes, a world of tragedy, hardship, ghosts and witches. The ‘supernatural’ elements are all explained away, but not quite as fully as a different sort of writer might do – there is always the sense that there is more to these experiences than the brusque and sceptical Anna (the Scully to Shilly’s Mulder) will admit. As the story-teller, Shilly has the power she doesn’t have in her ‘real’ life – she can influence our perception of what we are reading. And at times the world of the novel is distinctly eerie – I once read The Magpie Tree in bed, on my kindle with the lights off, and I found myself pulling the blankets up round my chin and jumping when the blind rattled in the breeze! The books aren’t Stephen-King-terrifying, but they certainly generate a powerful sense of unease at times.

Stansfield, who was brought up in Cornwall, conveys the slight weirdness of this county that has always seen itself as slightly separate from mainstream England. She is writing about the 1940s, a period that seems now quite alien to our modern sensibilities, and she allows herself some leeway in her presentation of characters – they are both of their time and, occasionally, slightly anachronistic, but they are always real and convincing, which I feel is the hallmark of great writing. Stansfield's versatility can be seen in her range of writing - she writes novels in several genres and is also a talented poet.

 
You can find Katherine Stansfield at:  https://katherinestansfield.blogspot.com/     

 

RATING:

Cornish Fiction series

*****

Key:
*****      highly recommended - a 'must-read'
****         good - well worth taking the time to read
***           ok - will help to pass the time in a boring situation
**            not very good -  just about readable but flawed
*             not recommended - boring, offensive, badly-written or deeply flawed in some other way

 

How I Feel About Covid in January 2021

While idly browsing the Huff Post online today, I noticed a story about supermarkets such as Tesco intending to strengthen their approach to customers who refuse to wear masks inside their stores. Several supermarket employees were interviewed and reported facing verbal abuse from those they challenged for this behaviour. Many customers apparently claim to be 'exempt' from the rules about mask-wearing on medical grounds but fail or refuse to provide any evidence of this. The feeling of many such staff members seemed to be that, as managers were generally saying there was nothing they could do to enforce mask-wearing, it was pointless to even challenge such people. However, given the perceived level of non-compliance, supermarkets are now about to up their game, with police 'on standby' to help in extreme cases.

At the end of this article, there was a live poll asking whether people agreed that supermarkets needed to get more proactive and tougher on non-mask-wearers. 92% of those who responded (583 people) said that, yes, they should.  Obviously, readers of the Huff Post are, like any group, self-selecting and likely to share a similar outlook and similar beliefs. But nevertheless, a very large majority of this admittedly small sample of people were in favour of more stringent enforcement of Covid regulations. This straw poll suggests that, far from being overrun by Covid-deniers, Conspiracy Theorists and anti-vaxxers, we are a nation which, on the whole, supports the government's attempts to manage this crisis - in fact, most people would prefer more strict regulations, rather than more lax ones.

This chimed with a news report I heard earlier on Radio Four. Again, Radio Four has a particular demographic - older listeners, generally well-educated and middle-class, often professionals or retired professionals - and doesn't represent the whole population. Also, I am sure that many of the 'Covid Protestors' who are claiming we live in a 'police state', that Boris is a 'dictator', and that our 'civil liberties/rights' are being eroded, see the BBC in general as being the feared and despised 'Mainstream Media', peddling government propaganda and lies for some nefarious purpose known only to them. I personally find this idea laughable, and not only because Boris himself is determined to dismantle the BBC, and the BBC is also frequently accused of being too left wing (when it isn't being accused of being too right wing). Recent complaints about the BBC's support for the BLM campaign (in the Christmas Vicar of Dibley episodes and on Strictly Come Dancing) suggest it's reputation for being famously impartial - something that others complain about in itself - is being perceived as under threat.  I have watched, read and listened to many news reports from a wide spectrum of news agencies and different platforms over the past few months, and I still consider the BBC, despite its faults, to be one of the most objective, serious-minded, intelligent, non-sensationalist and sensible news-providers. So I am happy to believe the news stories I heard on Radio Four today, in which various genuine experts (no David Ickes, hysterical ex-BBC-employees, or chiropractors calling themselves 'scientists') discussed various aspects of the current state of play with regard to Covid in this country.

One thing they discussed was non-compliance with lockdown regulations. There is a perception at the moment that a large swathe of people in this country are deliberately failing to take such regulations seriously. However, a group of researchers who have carried out a study into compliance since the beginning of the first lockdown, have concluded that actually compliance appears to be greater now than at the beginning of the pandemic. Young people, though they are more likely than older people to break rules about the size of gatherings, are much more likely to get themselves tested for Covid and comply with self-isolation rules. It is wrong to demonise them, as some people are doing. Generally, there seems to be a very high level of compliance with the regulations from the population as a whole. People are angry about those who refuse to comply and see them as endangering others. Take the issue of mask-wearing, for instance. Wearing a mask is uncomfortable, a little claustrophobic at first, and inconvenient, but the evidence strongly suggests, despite a few studies which contradict this view, that wearing a mask protects both the individual wearing it and other people, to some extent. No one is saying it stops you getting Covid, but it seems to many people that if it can help to prevent you catching the virus or spreading it to others, then it is in fact only a small inconvenience. If there is a chance that wearing a mask might help to slow down the spread of the virus, most people seem prepared to do the grown-up thing and get on with it. And many see those who refuse to wear masks as being childish, selfish and stupid.

The Radio Four news programme also discussed the latest figures from the Office of National Statistics (an organisation that is generally considered to be one of the most accurate and well-respected agencies for providing statistical data) about the death-rate in this country in 2020. It was much higher in 2020 than in the previous five year period. The news programme did not give in to hysterical headlines such as 'Death rates higher than at any time since the Second World War' - Statistician Ben Humberstone (apologies if I've spelled his name wrong) explained calmly and sensibly, without being patronising, that it is difficult to compare death-rates in 2020 with those from seventy-plus years ago as so much has changed since then in terms of medical advances, social and cultural factors, size of population, etc. Incidentally, the fact that death-rates have been steadily decreasing for the past few decades suggests that the very 'science' which is so often derided by Conspiracy Theorists has in fact contributed greatly towards improving and extending human lives in this country - not only in terms of new medical breakthroughs and treatments for life-threatening diseases, but in our understanding of the lifestyle causes of some illnesses and improvements in housing, school buildings, general infrastructure, attitudes towards mental health issues, methods of communication, improved safety in vehicle design, better understanding of Health and Safety, etc.

The point is that in 2020 there was a massive spike in the death-rate in this country, and this in a year when deaths from flu have been substantially lower than usual. These 'extra' deaths are mostly accounted for, either directly or indirectly, by the corona virus. Yes, some of these deaths will be as a result of failures in the diagnosis or treatment of other unrelated illnesses, but that is an indirect result of the Covid pandemic. What are NHS staff supposed to do when faced with an immediate case of a person desperately ill from the virus or a person who might have a symptom of cancer but might not? We can't just leave the people with Covid to die while we deal with other things. And in reality most hospitals are doing both, treating everyone, sometimes in horrendously difficult situations. The idea that has been bandied about that it is a 'myth' that hospitals are full to capacity, and the photographs of empty hospital corridors that have been posted online, etc, are utter rubbish. I have friends who themselves work in the NHS or whose children or other relatives do so, in various capacities, including one consultant, several in London and some in Yorkshire, and they are reporting wards which are reaching breaking point, particularly in the south.  Why would they lie?

And there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that deaths from Covid are real, numerous and a reasonable cause for great concern.  Those people who claim that Covid is a 'hoax' are misguided. During lockdowns, it is easy to start believing that the whole thing is overblown. In 2020, I knew of one elderly person with underlying health issues who had died from Covid, and two people in their fifties who had been hospitalised for several weeks with it but who both recovered eventually. In addition, I knew of several people who had had the disease but recovered and reported it was like a bad dose of flu, and several more who tested positive but had few or no symptoms. Based on that, it was easy to start thinking this virus was no big deal and the government were reacting like a bunch of wimps - or, if you had read too much Dan Brown, were enacting some sort of long con in order to, what? Control the population? Destroy the economy? Duh!  However, since then, I have heard of a number of tragic cases of people who have lost partners or friends to the disease, people who have died very quickly, within days of being diagnosed, and people who have been extremely ill with the disease. A recent article in The Guardian (hardly mainstream media as it is one of the few national newspapers in this country with a left wing bias and is certainly no supporter of Johnson and his pals) presented a snapshot of covid wards in hospitals in London which was horrifying. Again, I was impressed by the lack of hysteria in this reporting, the discussion of different views, the analysis of expert opinion and the balanced reporting. 

All of the above is simply and wholly my own opinion. I am not an expert. I know that people are sick of lockdowns and restrictions. I know that some people have become extremely anxious and their lives have been ruined by this pandemic (I have one particular friend who seems to be having a complete mental breakdown as a result), and that others are coping by dismissing the seriousness of the situation, suggesting we are all over-reacting and sneering at us for following expert advice to wear masks, self-isolate and socially distance. I believe these people are wrong. They might be right and people like me might all be sheep, but my attitude is that, if there is any chance of containing this pandemic, we need to work together to do it.