Mrs PBT’s been sitting downstairs watching Eurovision, or
the virtual, socially distanced version of what passes for the contest this year!
This served to remind me that today is the anniversary of my trip, last year,
to the People’s Republic of China.
The association with Eurovision arose because whilst waiting
in the departure lounge at Doha airport in Qatar, for my connecting flight to Guangzhou,
I remember the news-feed on my phone displaying the results of the song contest,
as they came in, country by country.
I wasn’t overly bothered about the overall winner, but it did
provide a connection with home from a location thousands of miles away, and
thinking about that trip today, brought home the reality of what a difference a
year makes.
Thinking forward, I was also reminded that, had things been
normal, and this nasty little virus not raised its ugly head, son Matthew and I
would be flying out to Prague tomorrow morning, to join up with a group of
fellow beer enthusiasts from Maidstone, to
spend a few days in the city of Pilsen, in western Bohemia.
The trip’s been postponed until next year, but whether
things are back to normal by then, remains to be seen. In the meantime, it’s null
points for Coronavirus, and for our lack of preparedness in dealing with a
pandemic which history, and more recent events, told us was long overdue.
5 comments:
I'm glad you got to China before the Lockdown, Paul. And I'm glad I got so much in last year. Loads I still want to do, as I'm sure you have.
Looking back Martin, I too am glad I took the opportunity to visit China when I did. I would like to go back one day, but in a tourist capacity next time.
That won’t be for quite some time, as even if Covid-19 was to magically vanish tomorrow, there are so many other places and things I want to see and do, much closer to home.
If you'll forgive one of my more sardonic posts, Paul, I think that it is ironic, that the Right, along with their usual mouthpieces on the internet, are the ones baying for the reversal of their very own government's measures, pretty nominal though they are.
Doubly so, since over their beloved brexit they endlessly lectured us about how the wishes of the elderly must be respected over those of the young, what with being the wartime generation, older and wiser and all that.
Now, they seem blithely content for potentially hundreds of thousands of them to be asphyxiated by this rotten virus, just so that tax-dodging, cash-in-hand, Brexit Party-voting white van man can get back to bullying them out of their life savings for bodging roofs that didn't need fixing and the like.
Suddenly, that most basic of their wishes, merely to stay alive, doesn't seem to matter that much, does it?
I am trying to steer clear of politics at the moment Etu, if only because the dominance of populist parties, both here and in the US is so depressing.
What I will say in answer to your comments, is those on the Right who are the biggest cheerleaders for a return to work, aren't prepared to put their money where their mouths are. What they usually mean is people in low paid jobs should go back to work, whilst they smugly sit on their backsides, in their nice secure mansions, doing sweet FA, apart from counting their cash, of course.
The thing I find even more depressing is the refusal of our Cummings-led, puppet government, to even contemplate an extension to the Brexit trade negotiations, despite being in the middle of a major pandemic. It's almost as if they wish us to crash out of the EU with a catastrophic no-deal, because it suits their disaster capitalism, asset stripping, hedge-fund mentality.
I'm pretty certain that even white van man, and the rest of the uneducated Sun-reading masses, who voted this cabal of posh Tory boys into power, aren't really prepared for what's coming to the country on 31st December.
It will make those queues outside Tesco, and fights over that last pack of toilet rolls, look like a vicarage tea party!
Yes, Paul, it's a pity that the window onto the quaint and endearing aspects of humanity, which pub life gave us, and about which so much could be written, is closed for the time being.
But we take our humour where we can find it, even if it might be in bitter irony.
I'm not going to make a habit of such posts - some blogs have been taken over by them, usually from the other side, and I see their owners now taking refuge in the sanity of others, for instance, Martin's occasionally 😆
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