This looks more like an entry on the Captain's Log than a blog post, but let us go where no man has gone before! It is only 70 days to go before we all celebrate the strangest year we have ever experienced. Seventy days. I'm told it takes 21 days of consecutive and conscious effort to form a lifelong habit. Well, I think I've formed a habit of watching Netflix. When you have enough time available to watch a full season of a series in one day, then it shows you have serious time available. Time enough to watch all those series. And programmes that explain every plague we've ever had. Black Plague. Spanish Flu. The big ones. It's even incorporated into the most habit-forming series like Outlander, Pillars Of The Earth and World Without End...
Actually this year reminds me of my first year at university (with less alcohol): too much time on my hands and watching movies in an endless summer! Back then I drove so many kilometres on long stretches of roads into the countryside and alongside the ocean. Who was it that said "the more things change the more they stay the same"? That was in 1849 when Jean-Baptiste Alphonse probably didn't have this in mind but it really does have the same effect doesn't it?
Remember when Sundays were set aside for the long drive beside the ocean or driving into the countryside? Maybe even visiting a wine estate to sample a tasting? In these "Covid times" it is getting increasingly difficult to even contemplate doing this most delightful of things on any day of the week. Don't you just love it how the regulations make one wonder what one can do or not? You can't walk on the sand on the beach, but you can walk on the hard surfaces next to the sand on the beach. Then there was the talk that you could continue to earn your living from the ocean, but kayaking is disallowed. Fishermen can go in to trek fish from their small boats, but nobody can launch a boat to go game fishing. The world has gone mad. There's a ban on alcohol and the consequence is that the country runs out of yeast extracts! The police arrested 7000 more criminals in two weeks. For not wearing masks in public. One should even wear it in banks otherwise there's no access. In a year with a curfew and restricted travel, our Minister of Transport crows that there were less road accidents this year than any time in the previous five years!
Come and join us for a discovery of stories and historical happenings while driving long stretches of road in a hygienically appropriate vehicle...