Category: 1,000 mile walking

This lockdown is harder than last year’s. We were encouraged to take part in a National Day of Reflection on 23 March, which they said was the first anniversary of lockdown. In fact it was the day lockdown had been announced, but it didn’t come into force until 26 March 2020 – I wonder how many died because of that tardiness. The death toll since Christmas has been worse than the death toll last year – though somehow the Government has managed to hide that statistic. Having clapped for carers last year, NHS staff have been offered a 1%...

I called these monthly blogs “northernvicarwalks” because the dream was 1,000 miles a year. The reality for the last couple of years has been 500. January was 27, February has been 5. We have been staying at home with a vengeance – one week I left the house/office twice, once for the Crematorium, once for the dentist. We ended the month with our Covid jabs, so that’s a bit of hope. Otherwise we have Zoomed, phoned, watched too much telly and read so many books. The snowdrops have been lovely, and little daffodils at the end of the month....

We moved into the new year, opened the schools for a day to give the virus lots of opportunities to spread, then went into lockdown again. I find it hard to believe that any government can be so incompetent. Vaccines started, and the NHS are doing an amazing job – if we’d give the NHS the responsibility for track and trace, rather than giving it to Tory friends, we probably wouldn’t be in such a mess. On Tuesday 26 January, the 11th anniversary of our Theo’s death, we passed the 100,000 point of those who have died within 28...