Jim Stewart's Blog

Saw a FB post about a new Phil Keaggy download. It includes a live version of Time. When I started isolation I took my watch off and have left it off. I know, I know, we are supposed to work to a routine. And I do have a routine, I have a food and activity plan for the next month. I just don’t operate to a watch at the moment.

How long have we let clocks tell us what we should be doing? Not really that long, probably the big introduction would be with the roll out of factory working. Because the world is not operating to a normal schedule at the moment it is easier to live life without the use of a watch.

I find it fairly relaxing, but I think that will be one thing I need to give up after this. I don’t know exactly why, and there are still things I do that has got to fit in with time. Looking at them they are about interfacing with other people (I have taken to setting alarms). I’m not sure my time was that controlled by the clock as a kid (I think my parents had to follow the clock – but nothing like I have had to in life).

I like to look at whether things control me or I control them. With my youth group I used a challenge. Hold a 10 euro between finger and thumb. Then let it go and ignore it – let it blow away, or sit of the ground where it falls. It can be surprisingly hard to do. The question is whether we are controlling the money or the money is controlling us. It would be impossible to live without money, but I don’t want it to control me.

I guess that is how I feel about time – it is an important tool in our lives, but it is easy to let it control us. I am willing to use time for good purposes, but maybe I have let it control me too much. These few weeks have been a good chance to experiment.

I spent today getting my garden ready to plant out, clearing weeds, digging soil, getting things well watered. Some of my onions have popped their heads through the surface of the soil, as have several of my peppers.

I had an interesting evening with an on-line four county get together. It is interesting hearing about differences. Comparing the DIY shop restrictions was one of our topics (Austria have just lifted restrictions on them and there are photos of close spaced crowds queuing around the stores). Although all countries are encouraging social distancing and staying at home it clearly means different things in different countries.

Forgot to ask about the toilet paper situation in the other countries.

Phew, I feel much better tonight after that quick rant. Sometimes you just need to let the pressure out, a pressure relief valve can be important. I have seen several friends hitting the wall this week. They have kept it together for a while, but it is getting hard. Trump said today that the suicide help lines are being overwhelmed. As I write this the BBC has posted an article on the effect of the response to the virus on mental health.

Even though I have been concerned about the potential for an increase in suicides in the USA (the suicide rate has been growing steadily over the last few years, suicide accounts for two thirds of gun deaths, gun ownership has been growing since the virus started) it is hard to know whether to believe the Trump claim. Quite simply, like the boy who cried wolf, even if he it looks like he might be telling the truth you have doubts about the veracity of his statements.

The tabloid headlines are often characterized by the phrase “Shock-Horror-Probe”, and there have been plenty of them recently, sometimes sensationalizing trivia. There are numerous lies and conspiracy theories going around that can be debunked sometimes by the simplest research (or even just by common sense). All of this helps to add pressure to people that are feeling the strain.

People feel like they are sinking and all of this is adding weight to them.

One of the ways they deal with anxiety in race horses is to put blinkers on. They help the horse to focus on what is ahead. Several countries seem to be using announcements of future relaxations as a tool to keep people looking forward. It can help.

When I go wilderness hiking in Greenland I walk in places where there are a lot of magnetic rocks and a compass can be next to useless, so the trick is to pick a point in the distance and walk toward it. I must admit that distances can be really hard to judge there, and you can end up walking longer or shorter distances than you expect, so picking an interim point can help.

I guess I am applying the same principles to the lockdown. On Day 21 I said that I had picked a date in early May as something to plan for (actually May bank holiday). Just like with wilderness hiking I am trying not to second guess the decisions made behind me but try to keep the focus on where to go. The final destination might seem a long way off at times, but I am focusing on that date for now.

I remember a Sean Connery film (Rising Sun) which explored Japanese culture and suggested that when things go wrong the Western idea is to look at what went wrong, but the Japanese idea is to look at making things right. I have found that concept beneficial in life. We can’t save the lives of the people that have died, we can only save the lives of the living.

I understand we are due to have some announcements on where we are to go in the future soon. I hope the UK government takes a lead from others and sets up a goal for people to head toward (personally I am hoping for garden centers to open in early May). But if they don’t I will continue to pick a point on the horizon that I am comfortable walking to (for me 4th May for a number of reasons).

To get there I will try to ignore distractions like finding somebody to blame, whether it was our government, the Chinese government, the WHO or the USA government because that does not help me get to 4th May. But if I do get distracted I may have to avoid a pressure build up by letting off steam. It can be a healthy way to refocus.

Okay, I may as well come clean, 4th May is toilet paper arrival day. Just realised I forgot to add 3000 gallons of hand sanitizer to my order, must go in and amend it.

Interesting hearing Trump talk about getting back to the way things were as soon as possible after listing a long number of “friends” that will give him advice on that (and incidentally make a lot of money at the same time – so no vested interest there – being guided by the money rather than the science is a topic for another time). But he did get me thinking as he talked about getting 150 seat restaurants full again, and soon – maybe almost immediately.

If the restrictions were lifted today would I go out tomorrow for a meal in a full restaurant? I don’t think I would. I used to walk out for a coffee every day. I’ll do that again, but I think I’ll be at an outdoor table, and maybe not for the first month after the lockdown is lifted. No, I think I would rather take a flask and go sit on a deck chair on the beach, maybe even if it was raining.

What else will I choose to change? I’ll certainly stick to my milk delivery.

One thing I have been doing is setting up on-line meetings with random groups of friends. The most interesting seem to be when people don’t know each other. Something about the interaction between strangers is quite refreshing. It struck me that this is one of the things we are missing as part of the lockdown. It is nice to talk to old friends, but the conversations seem to have a bit of sparkle when people are getting to know each other. I wonder how I can take this forward. It certainly is something I would really like to change.

It brings me to an interesting conclusion – the press are pushing and pushing about the return to normal, but actually for me it is pretty irrelevant. No doubt this is partly because I work from home – but then a lot of people have just discovered they can work from home themselves.

I think I’ll take time to list the things I like about current living that I want to carry forward to the new life. Possibly the current state of affairs is more like the normal I want.

Of course the one thing I will change is that the under stair cupboard will be emptied and used as a toilet paper bunker.

I had this growing Christmas Eve feeling today – I am supposed to get my first doorstep milk delivery tomorrow. And with it comes a wonderful world of “extras”. What the extras are is still to be seen – the milk company web site is not the best – loads of broken pages. But as long as the milk comes I’ll be happy. So there I am getting all excited about a pint of milk, just like waiting for Santa to .

On top of that I managed to get a delivery slot from Tesco (for May). So I can now order 3 packs of every type of toilet roll. Not really – but May was my expected refill time so I did order one pack.

It is amazing how quickly the non-human world is adapting to the new normal. I was standing at my door today when a bird came and landed less than a social distance away. As I watched it moved closer and closer picking up worms to eat. It seemed to have no fear of me. Then it flew up to a nearby bush where it fed a young chick.

I’ve also looked out my Zoom recorder (not the same thing as Zoom video), which I intend using to record my vinyl. It also happens to work well as a good quality microphone for Zoom video calls.

I planted another 30 onions (that makes 70 in total). Two of my chili plants have survived the winter and are already producing – I hadn’t spotted them flowering till this week, but when I looked closer several had already set and some had even ripened.

For some reason a lot of films that I like were shown today, including “As good as it gets”, where the song playing now is “Always look on the bright side of life”.

Zombieland Rule 32 – Enjoy the Little Things.

Today was a good day.

Merry Christmas

I finished stage 1 of the photo sort today. All of my digital photos are now on a removable drive. All I need to do now is sort them in to some kind of order. Quite hard when you have complete DVDs full of photos that you cannot remember. But at least I have a rough date for them all.

I started with a film camera, probably about 40 years ago. Then about 20 years ago I picked up my first digital camera. I remember walking around London taking photographs of just about everything, including post boxes, telephone boxes and traffic lights. The quality was quite poor, but it made taking a single photograph so much cheaper. A single photo from film cost about 25p at the time (including the film cost). In 1999 I took over 2000 digital photos. Since then I have taken over 150,000 photos, something I could never have afforded with a film camera.

It is amazing how a simple piece of technology can change your life so much. Now with cameras in phones we have digital photographs everywhere. Why do we take photos? Is it to remind ourselves of events (and if it is why can’t I remember any of the photos on that DVD)? One of the things I like to do is to look through some old photographs I inherited.

This photo is over 50 years old, but still something I like to look at. So who will be interested in looking at my 150,000 photos in 50 years time? Like I said, even at one photo a second it would take a full working week just to scroll through them. Who will care, or will our photos disappear with us?

So it got me to wondering, if I could put together a photo album to pass on to the future what would it contain? If I had one photo for each year of my life what would it be? Or if I had 10 photos to cover my whole life what would I pick? So maybe another project for lockdown time – put together a photo book with a page a year from 1999 to today. But what would I choose for a cover photo of the book of my life?

I guess my photo for this year might just be a toilet roll.

And talking of toilet rolls, I have discovered the location of another stash today – they are all going on the survival map. Slowly I am dragging confessions out of the roll-rich.

Another wasp today – managed to avoid killing it as I encouraged it to move off. Really starting to think they are government controlled micro-robots. I notice today that people are starting to post videos of their pets jumping over toilet rolls. They are putting them in rows across passageways and encouraging their pets to jump over higher and higher stacks.

Having big piles of spare toilet paper that allows you to do this just means one thing – you were part of the problem. The attitude behind this of “Me first” and the way that the difficulties others faced can be forgotten so that a joke can be put together feels wrong.

This is Easter, and I saw an image of three crosses. The one thing that struck me was the middle cross was bigger than the others. And this seems to be the norm for all of the images. It struck me as strange – maybe even at odds with a Christian message.

Just think about it. Jesus was born in a smelly stable, he was friends with prostitutes and thieves. He had nowhere to live. And if you read the story of his death it was alone in the dark. His method of working was not to take the prime position.

Think about the words he used, “Here it is again, the Great Reversal: many of the first ending up last, and the last first.” And then there are the beatitudes, who does he rate?

• People at the end of their rope
• People that have lost everything
• When you don’t want more than you have

In all of our communities we have churches with spires looking over the towns. And suddenly they are empty. Suddenly the pride of place buildings are not symbols to attract people. In fact most of the on-line churches seem to have more people than when they met in buildings.

I wonder if this is a chance for the church to find its place again at the bottom of the pyramid, not the top.

I believe in You,
You the architect, the engineer,
You the craftsman, the carpenter,
the shipbuilder and the blacksmith
I believe in You,
You, the builder of thought,
of music and wind,
of peace and love.

I believe in You, Comrade,
Human Christ, worker Christ,
Conqueror of Death.
With Your enormous sacrifice
the New Man was fathered
for liberation.
You are resurrected
in the arms of all who rise
to defend the people against
the rulers’ exploitation
for You are living in the farm,
in the factory, in the school
I believe in Your persistent struggle,
I believe in Your resurrection

Remember those at the bottom, who have a lifestyle that makes it hard to fight illness, who will be last in line for a hospital bed. Happy Easter.

Well the green shoots of the tomato seeds are showing, hopefully the peppers will follow.

Fascinating watching the reaction of the shoots to the sun as it moves in the sky. Green shoots seems to be the in-word. We are apparently seeing them. So much so that the Daily Express has announced the day that lockdown will end (18 May). But the Guardian are saying nobody has any clue because the government are not giving any hint of when lockdown will end.

The government are telling us it is too early to know. Well, looking at the data that would seem to be true. It’s like a Murray Walker commentary on a Grand Prix. You really have no idea of the result until you know the result – so calling it even in the last lap is not a good idea. By Monday where should be enough data to know the result of the lockdown. But until we have the data we don’t have the data, so please press – stop complaining and guessing.

Yes, the government have predictions on when this will end (the predicted dates were published before lockdown began), but those predictions depended on how we behave, and that is what we are waiting to see. So how are we going to behave this weekend?

Personally I have walked to my neighbours door three times and a post midnight walk around the block once in the past 26 days. I really (okay really really) wanted to go out and top up my shopping, you know – if I eat a loaf I want to buy another one even though I have two more frozen. Is it a ritual I want to follow, or is it an addiction to shopping? I don’t know.

Apparently Tesco are setting fixed routes in their stores these days, so they are forcing you to walk past fully stocked toilet roll shelves. Maybe they should have a “Told you there was enough” sign on the shelf. It does cause a problem though, you now need to have your shopping list in the order that you are guided round the store. I wish I was in charge of the routes – I would have so much fun.

I’m quite pleased the Beetles didn’t make it big with the song in the UK – I think the Marmalade cover is much better (people under 40 start a Google search at this point). I can remember a bunch of people half open shirts and bell bottoms dancing to it at a wedding. What ever happened to bell-bottoms? Isn’t it time they came back in to fashion? But today I was impressed by the way life is going on.

You can call me sad after reading this confession. Today I sat and watched some parliamentary committees looking at how we are dealing with coronavirus. I know a lot of people are saying things like “we need a review when this is done”. I guess they have not been aware of how parliament works. When you look at that big room where people sit opposite and behave abysmally you need to know that is just a part of the work of parliament. There are a number of committees that bring in experts to get the best information on subjects and also grill the government and civil servants.

Committees are already looking at whether the government have and are making the right decisions. For example on Wednesday a committee called in senior experts from Hong Kong and Korea (along with UK experts and NHS leaders) to examine whether the UK testing strategy was correct and whether we could learn from others.

Every time I watch these committees on coronavirus I am left with a positive feeling that we have an amazing transparent system of government that really is working effectively to manage this situation. Today I really felt proud of our system and of having been part of it. No panic, no playing to the cameras, just life going on. The scrutiny by these committees makes the press investigations seem like childish questions (maybe with a smattering of childish imagination).

The negative news I heard today was that there seems to be a global consensus building that this is only the first wave of the virus, and there will be multiple waves before we have a vaccine. The difference in how I feel after listening to the experts being grilled and listening to the news is quite different. Even though the committee is sharing negative information the feeling I am left with is positive as a result of the feeling that our parliamentary system and our civil service are responding effectively.

Another interesting thing I noted was that all of the MPs are working remotely from home and you get to see their home office. It is fascinating to see the pictures on the wall,the musical instruments and things like the bicycle helmets hanging on the wall. An interesting insight in to the lives of our leaders.

It also appears that wasps are making an early appearance this year. I do wonder whether this has something to do with the large amounts of toilet paper or hand gel, and maybe there is something in them that attracts wasps. Or maybe these are not wasps. Could they be micro-robots searching for our hidden stashes of toilet paper and hand gel? If so – how far a way could the transmitter be. Is this a neighbour, or could it be somebody more distant. In fact with the number of people reporting seeing wasps in different locations – could this be secret government investigations in to toilet paper hoarding?

A couple of photos of my creations this week:

Oh – and a friend sent me an email offering a coronavirus test. Not a scam, he does work in the testing business. Unfortunately not in this country.

Big success today – I managed to get myself on the delivery schedule of the local milkman. Up to now we had been told that the delivery routes were full, but they seem to have found a few extra places. So that should be me fixed for fresh milk and bread.

Tried out my new diamond cutter today on a bottle – sliced through the glass really easily. So now I have two tealight holders made out of green glass. Actually when I say my new diamond cutter I mean the one I bought to work on these bottles ages ago but never got round to using. I also made two new candle making kits and a necklace. I really might manage to get a few things off my to do list…

I listened to a lot of the questions yesterday and today from the press as they tried to work out who would make decisions. Odd that they are all political correspondents but don’t seem to know much about how government works. The idea of consensus seems to be really strange to people. All they could think about was who should decide which argument should win if there was a disagreement.

When I was working in Vienna consensus was at the heart of what we did in committees. The chair does not decide anything (or at least should not). The job of the chair is to lead the committee to a conclusion. It didn’t mean a vote with a winner and a loser, it meant finding a way forward that nobody in the committee found they had to say no to. At worst people would say “I don’t agree but I can live with that”. A good chair would find a way to get this consensus.

It was an eye opener listening to the press that had to focus on disagreement being solved by winners and losers – the idea of consensus seemed to be something they found hard to understand. Thinking about it, the Great Toilet Roll Rush of 2020 was a good demonstration of a lack of consensus. Consensus would have meant everybody getting some Toilet Roll.

Talking of toilet roll, it looks like it is now back in stock. Anti-bacterial soap and hand gel are still in short supply though. Forgot to put the electric wire up today though. Hope my hand gel survives the night.

A bit of a paraphrase, but something that was made clear to me today. I looked out of the window to see four vans and this beast arriving on the other side of the street. This is the fourth time since lockdown.

When drains get blocked (I guess because of all the extra toilet paper being used) somebody has to come and clear them. I can probably manage without drains, but I would really rather not. And then there is this.

I’ve been wearing my slippers a lot more over the last few weeks and they have suddenly given up the ghost. There are so many things our modern lifestyle depends on that we will soon find a challenge to maintain if this lockdown lasts for an extended period (and don’t worry – I know how to repair them).

Our lifestyles have become more complex over the years. If you get a chance watch the boxset “Survivors” which explores how hard it would be to adapt to a simpler lifestyle. For a start we all rely on the Internet so much – our libraries are closing. But one thing we would really need to simplify our life would be books that tell us how things used to be done. What has been our response to the lockdown – it has been to place more reliance on our modern technology.

I am left thinking about the work of CEPAD in Nicaragua, reaching communities how to become self-sufficient in food through a variety of small scale agricultural techniques. Here our soil and climate is much more suitable for growing, but how many of us would really know how to maximise our food growth without having a friendly garden center nearby?