Of Revisiting Old Boat Engine Repairs

It has been ages since I've written anything boaty. I know some people like to read about the boat so this essay is about yet more repairs.

It doesn't take much to please me. Mainly I am very happy when plan simply works and even more so when it's a boat engine repair. Over the years I have had repeated issues with fluids leaking into the engine bay. Nearly every part that can be replaced in the cooling and fuel systems has been. If you've seen some of the videos I added in a previous batch of boat essays you may have shared my childish joy that I could take a trip and occasionally not break down. Of course the scariest breakdowns are the ones that happen in the middle of the river. In some places in the Fen the nearest bank could be anywhere between ten and twenty feet away. Without power one just has to wait and see which way the wind wants to blow the boat. Patience and courage are required, as well as luck hoping that there is no other vessel around to be hit by my meandering and uncontrollable fifty feet of solid steel. In most parts of this system overcrowding isn't much of an issue. I do admit to being nervous every time I go through the centre of the nearest town where boats moor on both sides in places. A few years ago I signed up to River Canal Rescue - a breakdown service for the inland waterways. I have not yet had to call them out for a waterside rescue, but it has come close a few times. Most breakdowns recently have been related to issues in the cooling system. Mostly I wait for the engine to cool down and top up the coolant and get on my way within a couple of hours. Every time I have been into the boatyard to service or repair there has been some issue with the cooling system. Repairs have been carried out and all looks fine. The following journey or two may even be without incident, but before too long there is fluid in the tray under the engine. My engine being an old BMC diesel it is, apparently, "a thing" that they leak. Like British motorbikes, they just leak. They're not proud, they're not fussy. If they can take a fluid, it will leak out somewhere ... apparently.

Starting out this boat life as a total novice I've become a little more knowledgeable about where to look when things go wrong. I've certainly become more patient. Some days I have sat with the engine running for hours, while I try to locate the leaks. As part of my most expensive level of membership, RCR undertake a reduced rate on an annual engine service. During the last one, in December, the engineer offered to help me look for leaks. He was either very kind, very bored or he didn't want to go home for some reason. He found two that I'd missed, despite my hours of observation. The Polar end cap (red arrow) was leaking slightly. This was something of a surprise because, adding this cap three or four years ago seemed to solve the overheating problem for a while. It provided a new and extended route through the cooling system. The previous arrangement did not send coolant through the entire length of the heat exchanger because this end was capped off. No wonder I kept overheating. However I have hardly worked the engine hard in the years since it was fitted, so having to replace it was a nuisance. They are not exactly cheap for a bit of rubber.

My engine with the new parts. How clean and dry is my engine tray!

Diesel leaks were also a nightmare. Several years ago The Engineer used to come to visit and seemed to enjoy working on my boat. With his help I ended up replacing most of the fuel pipes and pretty much every nut, bolt, washer and olive in the system. The fuel injection pump was removed and serviced three times by a specialist company - that's a story in itself that I have already told. I bought a complete new spill rail and all sorts of other bits. The CAV housing (green arrow), a sort of spaghetti junction for the fuel system to which the primary fuel filter is attached also needed replacing. Mine was blue like the engine. The Engineer found an old one in his workshop, which he kindly fitted for me. It was definitely not blue, but it could have been used as an aid to navigation on cloudy days. Some years further on it seems it began to disintegrate and sprang a small leak of the slow persistent variety. I could see the drips, but couldn't locate the source. It took the eagle eyes of the RCR mechanic to spot that the CAV housing seemed to have bits missing where they'd broken off. Feeling around and under the edge it was apparent that the leak was coming from that part where the rubber washer was no longer being held securely. 

The old CAV housing with the broken bit clearly visible in front.

Aluminium, copper, brass and steel ... ripe for galvanic erosion?

Having carried out the service, RCR Mechanic left me with a report suggesting that I need to replace the (barely used) Polar end cap and the (bright yellow, previously very obviously used) CAV housing. It took me a few months to get round to doing it, but doing it I have now done. I left it six months because it's been that kind of year. Firstly I don't like opening the hatch to see what I'm doing in the engine room when it's chucking it down. I'm not that keen on the cold either. February saw all my plans for the rest of the year come unravelled as I was stuck in mainland Europe. As you may have read, I eventually managed to get back to the UK and to the boat. Looking for the correct parts is tedious, so I found lots of more interesting things to do. Eventually, though, once some businesses started back, I forced myself to phone and speak to the good folk at ASAP Supplies. As usual they were very helpful even though not all the parts were in stock. £150 later though, they would send me what they had and I would have to wait for the CAV housing until the end of June when their supplies were renewed.

Last month I replaced the Polar end cap. When I took the old one off there was a lot of scale build up and I suppose it was the unevenness of this that forced the existing cap to leak. I cleaned up the heat exchanger and pipes with emery and clamped the new cap into place with the new jubilee clips I added to the shopping list. One month later the level of coolant visible in the heat exchanger is just the same. That hasn't happened before. Yay me!

With three weeks to go before the end of the month I received a notice from ASAP that my order would be completed within two days. Now that's what I call service! Another DHL delivery two days ago and I had no excuse for getting on with the other job. This is the one I wasn't looking forward to, because I knew it wouldn't be as straightforward as the YouTube video suggested. I was, of course, absolutely right. Firstly the maze of copper pipework and the steel throttle cable bracket were attached to the existing housing. None of those were going to be as malleable as the cable itself. Bits had to come off in a particular order to make it possible to remove the next nut or bolt. I managed to do this without spilling any blood (mine is what I was most concerned about) or bestowing curses on any of my tools, the engine, the boat, or indeed anyone with whom she had previously come into contact or their progeny. That is until I reached the final sleeve nut. As I searched in vain for a spanner to fit I began to remember The Engineer's words as he fitted copper and stainless steel fuel pipes back to the bright yellow CAV housing ... "Let's hope you never need to remove this ..."

The hexagonal edges of the nut had become almost smooth and circular. I completed its metamorphosis trying to remove it. Still no cursing though. I thought if I detached the pipe with the housing I could get the whole thing out and the see if the new one was actually going to fit. Fortunately it did, so I loosely assembled everything. Now what to do. Phone a friend. 

I have a friend in the next village who calls himself an engineer, but he is secretly a Mad Inventor. It is almost coincidental that he is also a really nice person and a good friend. He has several projects on the go at all times and holds a number of patents for interesting stuff that has usually served to make someone else money. He would know exactly what to do if he saw my problem. It was convenient for both of us that I head up to his house immediately. Often, if he has come to visit me, he has come by bicycle. I feel ashamed that I have always done the three or four mile journey by boat or van. The CAV housing, even with the attached fuel pipe sticking out, was still small enough to carry in my bike basket. I dragged the bike out of the boat and pumped up the tyres (they always need inflating because I use the bike so rarely). It began raining ... of course it did. Stiff upper lip and all that, carry on. I suppose it must have been close to an hour after we'd spoken on the phone that I turned into his driveway. 

There is always a lot to talk about whenever I see the Mad Inventor - the latest inventions for a start. With the aid of a vice and a special kind of wrench he managed to remove the sleeve nut from the housing and remove the pipe, without damaging it. That was the first impressive act of the afternoon. I thought he would have to rummage through assorted hardware to find exactly the right replacement for the smoothed off nut, but oh no, he had a much better plan. He wondered whether there was enough metal in the head of the nut to file it back into shape, albeit a smaller one. That, dear reader, is precisely what he achieved for his next trick with the aid of the vice, the file, callipers and years of knowing how to make do and mend. The imperial nut now needs a 12mm spanner, but it was perfectly serviceable in its original purpose. Next time I do any work on this part of the boat I shall simply need seven different spanners instead of the present tally of six.

The weather was beautiful today, so I had no excuse not to finish the job. Naturally it was nowhere near as easy as I had hoped but, to be fair, neither was it as difficult as I feared. I had to fit, dismantle and refit some of the parts a few times, because something was always in the way of refitting the next part. It came apart without too much exertion, so I knew it had to go back somehow. Then I had to bleed the fuel system to clear out the air I had introduced. I've actually managed this procedure a few times before and more or less remembered the drill. I was very encouraged to see fuel bleeding through the places I expected and, when the moment came, the engine fired up first time. I am still glowing with pride at having been able to fix something. Normally most repairs I try end in spectacular failure, tears of frustration and another expensive trip to the boatyard. Let's hope I haven't jinxed the repair by crowing about it!

Of The Lives That Matter?

Once again, one faces issues around race, privilege, power, deprivation and denial. The best I can come up with is that there are times to speak out and there are times to listen. I can relate to the weariness of having to enter “that” conversation for the umpteenth time, but I am privileged that a minority to which I belong is not immediately apparent if I, a gay white man, pass you in the street. You will pass gay men every time you step foot outside without knowing it. I can wear a metaphorical mask and avoid confrontation or conversation if I’m not in the mood. I understand the exhaustion of remaining on high alert in public situations, but again there are ways I can mitigate this. Albeit these are at a cost of something most people can take for granted. For example, I cannot hold hands with my partner or share a kiss without running the risk that someone will make a comment, when the same person would not say anything to a straight couple. What I cannot imagine, though, is the effect of having to be on high alert all day every day, if I looked different from most of the other people around me. That has to take its toll. It would inevitably affect how I live in this world. 

I think often of how ill-prepared I was for my first teaching job in the late 1970s. I am ashamed to remember that I fell into all the traps of stereotyping the “difficult” kids in my class, the ones who came from minority ethnic backgrounds; the ones who came to school with “chips on their shoulders” and were disruptive to my world, the bubble in which I was expected to operate and instructed to maintain order. In my class of thirty eleven year-olds, six would these days tick the  white British box in a questionnaire. That meant that most of the class wouldn't. Jaswinder and Mohammed found a way to connect with me. They insisted that, because I taught them English, they should teach me “Indian”. I remember those times fondly, I let them have a few minutes each day just after morning registration. I was a poor student though. I am ashamed to admit that all I learned was to count to ten in Punjabi. Conversely, Leon, Rose, and Caleb had no such way of approaching me. After all, their mother tongue may have been English, but their families were from Jamaica. I didn’t understand why some of the Afro-Caribbean pupils in the school had to be so difficult. I was only trying to do a job and help them learn. I particularly remember spending extra time with Caleb, Rose and Leon. They all found school work so hard. We didn’t make the kind of progress I thought they needed to make. They were great kids, but I didn’t value them enough to work out how to help them. 

I had a fleeting moment of success with fifteen year-old Trevor in my next school. I had found him pretty unapproachable and full of fury. I heard him rehearse a shout I'd heard many times in my previous school, "You're only picking on me because I'm black!" There seemed no point in pursuing that discussion. As in every other case I was required to apply warnings and sanctions when the rules and the norms of acceptable behaviour were being tested. Despite his quick temper, he was the best table-tennis player I have ever seen. It was a residential school and all the boys were there through unfortunate and usually very sad circumstances. One evening Trevor was the only pupil who wanted to go to the "boot room" where the table tennis table was kept. I was widely considered a “weak” member of staff and the duty leader that evening made clear it was down to me whether I thought I could cope with Trevor. My decision would determine whether he was allowed his activity of choice that night. Of course I couldn’t deny him that, but it meant his only way of getting a game would be if I played too. I was a little anxious that he could explode with frustration at my inexperience and I had no idea how I would cope. As we both expected, I was rubbish and although he went easy on me, he still thrashed me. We talked some, we played some. Much to my surprise, I really enjoyed that shift. For the next two days Trevor was an extraordinary supporter of my miserable attempts to keep order in my classes, but peer pressure forced him to give up on me and things went back to normal. I still imagine I see the disappointment in his expression as I failed to meet his expectation of how a teacher should be able to keep order.

Fast forward to the late 1980s and yet another job. I had the good fortune to meet the composer, Michael Henry who was one of the workshop leaders at a course I was attending. I was really keen to bring him to Norfolk for a music project. He was an early pioneer of computer-based composition and worked in dance music as well as in more traditional composer modes. I heard some of his work on Radio 3. I thought it would be great to see him work in some of our whiter than white secondary schools. Up to that point all the black musicians I had seen in our schools sang, danced or played drums. This was all well, good and very enjoyable, but hardly dispelled stereotype. Unfortunately the project failed to materialise because there was not sufficient interest. Most of the teachers I approached couldn't see the point of the project and it would have interrupted the tight timetabling for teaching the exam syllabus. I couldn’t raise the necessary funding either whereby I might have been able to make them an offer they couldn't refuse. I even had Norwich Arts Centre on board to host a “club night” where pupil compositions would be highlighted. It promised to be a most exciting project, but I failed to pull it off. That failure aside, my abiding memory of working with Michael was a planning meeting at his house. These were preliminary talks to discuss what we could offer to the schools, but we both had our priorities and consequently a lot of negotiating to do. I really liked him and respected his work. I was learning a lot and we were getting to grips with some very complicated planning. Then, in the middle of a conversation, he informed me that I was a racist. This came right out of the blue. I thought my past experience had taught me to leave my white privilege in my (leased!) car. I’d not considered the racist charge a possibility and his accusation hurt a lot. I asked him to expound and began to see that white privilege had got me to this point and that being stung with his insight was still a luxury in the context of his own experience. However, being irked by someone dismissing my attempts to bring diversity to Norfolk has not been enough. I have needed to have that conversation over many years and on many occasions to begin to pick at the seams of what white privilege means. The more I find out, the less I seem to know. I’m trying, but somehow we need to keep the conversations alive. We are all products of our experiences. It is easy to retreat into entrenched positions claiming we’ve done what we can and now it’s up to someone else. 

What I've tried to record so far is part of my personal journey. The following link is to an old and well-travelled blog essay. If you have the energy I commend it to you. Unusually, many of the comments that follow it are also worth reading.

http://renieddolodge.co.uk/why-im-no-longer-talking-to-white-people-about-race/

If you've had enough reading already, Reni Eddo Lodge reads it for you and discusses the background to her essay in this talk:

She mentions the complacency we face when we try to raise discussion. One of my dearest friends told me I really didn't have anything to worry about these days. She wasn't aware that homophobia was a "thing" in our schools to anything like the degree that it was in the past. Apparently it was okay because things weren't as bad as they used to be. My response to that was to write my personal experiences of homophobia in my song, "Never Say Never". I'm sure that many women have similar experiences concerning "mansplaining" as people of colour have with "whitesplaining".

The reason for this, my own essay, is to try and put a number of points of view into one easily accessible source for a member of my family who was asking in all seriousness her social network contacts for context and background about the controversy surrounding the recent death of George Floyd. If you have lived in a bunker during lockdown and are unfamiliar with the events that led to his death in the USA look on YouTube. I shall not link the video of those events here. Unfortunately, but sadly not unexpectedly, several people attempted to shut down her enquiry. I know her well-enough to understand that she has a genuine intellectual curiosity. Other people thought she was being "racist" or putting herself in danger. They demanded she remove her request from Facebook.

The death of George Floyd has been followed by a massive response in peaceful protest, but also in unrest, violence, rioting and looting. There is a lot of discussion about "black lives matter", "all lives matter" and who gets to say what. This morning I saw a video of a songwriter performing a song about Mr Floyd's death. For me it pushed all the wrong buttons. It was a flagrant example of a white man attempting to turn a many times convicted criminal into some sort of folk hero. As a songwriter myself, I feel if I am writing from anything other than personal experience I need to do due diligence. This songwriter, as ably as he performed his song, lost every shred of credibility as far as I am concerned. I suspect that just as no one else can fairly comment on my personal experiences of being a gay man in this place at this time, my first port of call must be to listen to the people of colour who can articulate their own experiences.

However, I'll start from the outside. This video is a report by Anna Slatz, who was going about her lawful business as a journalist reporting on the unrest and looting in her home city of New York.

Here is an early response to the situation by Brandon Tatum, an ex-police officer who now has his own YouTube channel. He has added other videos on the topic. While I am not particularly in accord with his religious and political convictions he clearly has a contribution to make to this discussion: 

A friend pointed me in the direction of Candace Owens, another representative of black conservative opinion. She doesn't really become interesting to me until a few minutes in when she starts to quote statistics. Assuming there is any truth in those stats, they place the discussion in a very different place from the noise we are receiving.

Coming from yet another perspective Gary Younge places racially motivated violence within a broader context. I think I am more in accord with his suggestion that violence comes in many disguises. He also notes that more white men are killed by the police than black men, but that the proportions of the deaths as a percentage of the population are not equal.

I've already mentioned that I don't know the answers. We all have a journey of our own to undertake. I don't know the situation in the USA apart from what I see in reports. So many aspects of life there are very different. A few days ago I encountered a very articulate British voice, Akala. I found this whole interview quite riveting and have bought his book, "Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire", for further enlightenment. Sit down for an hour and have a listen to this:

Of Virtual Pride

June marks the beginning of what, in some places, is known as the Pride season. While it feels daft to have a special season for celebrating the freedoms we have to be who we are all year round, I guess the press needs some way of keeping focussed.

My feelings about the purpose of Pride (in the LGBT+ sense) are sometimes seen as anachronistic and possibly even controversial by some. Naturally to me they are not anything of the sort. I am not trying to be controversial. I do have something to celebrate and, COVID notwithstanding, the freedom to do so ... at the moment.

I was born eleven months after Alan Turing took his own life and a few years before the Wolfenden Report recommended the removal of criminal sanctions for the so-called "crime" of homosexuality activity even though it was nearly another decade before those recommendations were implemented. I grew up through the years when being gay led to prosecution and imprisonment. I actually remember the Sexual Offences Act (1967) being passed into law. Many people thought that meant the end of persecution for being gay, but what those people may not know is that the number of prosecutions for homosexual behaviour actually went up in the decade that followed. I experienced an attempted entrapment by two good looking young constables in the early 1970s. Luckily I did not take the bait. There was something that felt very wrong in that situation. They weren't in uniform, but their clothes certainly made me suspicious. They were dressed alike with exactly the same type of very shiny black shoes. I was right to be suspicious. I saw newspaper reports later of men having been caught out by pretty policemen in that exact same cottage. I found out a few years later that a teacher colleague had been caught out in an entrapment. He was charged and tried for gross indecency and, while awaiting sentencing, he committed suicide.

Although deeply in the closet at the time I was a school teacher through the years after Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government brought in the notorious Section 28 of the Local Government Act (1988) with its deeply insulting homophobic language. This was in the midst of the devastation brought about by the AIDS crisis; a time when many reactionary forces seemed to believe that if they left us to get on with it we would wipe ourselves out and save them the trouble. I lost friends. P. lost friends ... and his brother. Governments all round the world were slow to act and were partly responsible for too many deaths.

I have lived to see countries slowly become open to the idea that same-sex relationships could be formalised and recognised in law. I finally climbed aboard the bus when I helped campaign for equal marriage.

I have also seen that many people who want to be left alone to live their lives freely in consensual same-sex relationships are subject to the most terrible abuses depending on where they happen to live. I have marched, rallied and demonstrated on behalf of some of those people who have no voice. I have stood shoulder to shoulder with people whose dedication to human rights I greatly admire outside many embassies in London, including Iran, Nigeria, India and (several times) the Russian Federation.

I have marched among hundreds of thousands in London many times and in tiny embryonic Pride events outside the capital to see them grow year on year. Perhaps my own personal favourite Pride moment has been to lead the band at the head of the first Pride event in my local town.

I march because I can. I have had many discussions with young people who do not know the history of the struggle to get where we are. To too many of them, Pride is party time. They see my reasons for marching as if they were regarding some artefact in a museum. While there is still one person in the world oppressed for being in a sexual minority the marching and the rallying need to carry on. If we are free to celebrate what we have achieved we have a responsibility to continue to march for those who can't. The European Union seems to be very quiet while many municipalities in Poland are illegally, but with impunity, declaring themselves "LGBT-free zones". The death penalty and life imprisonment is still all that people in some countries can look forward to. I'd like to think that everyone remembers why we can dance in our Pride parties to our X-Factor wannabes, but that seems to be not always true. I cannot turn my back on my own past or the present and future of too many other people. The peace is fragile and, for that reason too, the struggle must continue.

Sadly, COVID has seen to it that there will be no marching this year. I looked back through this blog to try and capture a photograph of a past Pride to put in a discussion forum, but maybe I didn't get round to writing about them. Anyway, here are a few photographs of some of those moments.

Me 'n' P at Norwich Pride a few years ago

Performing on the bandstand at the first West Norfolk Pride. (Photograph by Sas Astro)

Of BSS

I suppose that someone not acquainted with some of the rituals of living on a boat, or even owning one, might imagine BSS is just a rude set of initials. I suppose it depends on the outcome of the event, but for us it's pretty important. BSS stands for Boat Safety Scheme and certification under the scheme requires the services of a qualified tester. He ( the person I use is a he) checks out the systems on the boat for safety, gas, electricity, fuel, fire extinguishers, ventilation and so on and this testing has to be carried out every four years. Failure to have the vessel tested invalidates boat insurance and can affect validity of waterways licences and so on, so for such a little name it's a big deal.

My four years were up in February, after I'd left to go to France and Italy. Given the excitement of being away and the quarantine periods first in France on returning from Italy and then back on the boat when returning from France it slipped my mind until I thought I'd better check the paperwork. My BSS was, of course, out of date. This put my insurance in jeopardy. I phoned S, who normally carries out the test for me. He said that lockdown prevented him from working at the time, but that he would get back to me when the situation changed. So, the situation has apparently changed and today's the day. I am not allowed to be on the boat this time while the systems are being tested and all social distancing conventions must be observed. I spent yesterday cleaning and tidying and generally trying to make the bits that need to be seen as accessible as possible. Now, I wait ...

This morning I set up my laptop in the shed and ran a lead out to plug it in, so here I am. It has been raining all morning, as it has done for the past couple of days, so I guess the boat is pretty wet from when I've left doorways open and to go in and out. S. has just appeared out of the back of the boat and enquired about the fire extinguishers. I have the right number of extinguishers, but there's a special number that should add up to be greater than the total of the three he has found. I point out where he'd not seen the extinguishers extra to requirement. This brings the number up to the right level - phew!

It's always a worry that he'll find something that doesn't meet the standard. The stove door has still not come back from being repaired. Not related, but I've also noted the floor is becoming a bit bouncy in places. that means something underfoot is broken, but I don't think that's part of the examination ...

Breathe again. It has passed. Great, that's that for the next four years. Paperwork to follow.

Letters To A Kingfisher - 5

Good morning, Kingfisher neighbour.

It's the second day of June in 2020. and while, at the moment, England rejoices in one of the highest rates of covid-19 per head of population, I'm not sure if I know anyone personally who has been infected. Considering we are by no means yet out of trouble, lockdown is easing. I'm using the word, "lockdown" in its colloquial sense because we have not honestly experienced a lockdown in the UK at all. For a few weeks people were told to stay at home, but there were so many exceptions to the rule it was never going to work. The talk of beginning to ease this "lockdown" has led to many people thinking that because, like me, they have no personal experience of the illness there has been a lot of panic over not very much. This has resulted in vast numbers of people congregating in limited spaces, like some of our beautiful beaches.

For some reason Lulworth Cove has become one of the main attractions in this regard. As the name suggests it is a curved strand and is accessed by steps cut into the cliff. At one end (the eastern end if childhood memory serves me correctly) is the geological formation known as Durdle Door. The newspapers have been filled with reports of people jumping into the sea from Durdle Door, some even jumping from the two-hundred foot high "lintel", and earning themselves some serious injuries. Over the past weekend one young man lost consciousness and lay on the bottom of the sea for at least a minute until other sun-worshippers on the beach reached him and got him out. Another broke his back and still one more suffered horrible injuries to his body and a broken leg. Somehow that last man managed to get to the top of the cliff and attract medical attention before being carted swiftly off to hospital by ambulance. The other two required more immediate attention and a helicopter rescue. Lulworth Cove being the size and shape it is meant that the two helicopters could only land on the beach, the one packed with people. This is what had to happen:

Image courtesy of Purbeck Police

The police had to clear enough space for the helicopters to land and that could only mean crowding the people so that social distancing was no longer possible. I should imagine that everyone who left their homes that morning under the impression that going out was now okay as long as we "stay alert" had no idea that they were going to be kettled with others on the beach so that emergency services could operate. Come to that I don't suppose the 'tombstoners" as they left home considered that, by the end of the day, they would incur life-altering injuries.

A lot of outrage and anger has been expressed about the events of the past couple of days. Does it help to apportion blame? I don't know the answer. A lot of unfortunate events coincided to spoil a lovely day at the seaside. Among these would be the number of people who considered a trip to the beach was safe and the thrill seekers who thought that jumping into the sea from a great height was safe enough. I'd like to think that we were all adults and capable of making informed decisions concerning how we behave. Clearly some of our adult decisions are better than others. I live less than an hour from some of the country's most beautifully sandy, unspoilt and often deserted beaches, but I haven't felt the need to visit. However, another layer to this event was that some people on the beach were apparently calling out encouragement to the tombstoners. Is a young man's bravado strengthened by the baying support of those who would not entertain the thought of performing any such action themselves? Is it possible that one of those injured young men might have thought better of jumping had he been there on his own? Were there jeers amongst the cheers if one of them showed a moment of caution? Accusations of being a chicken can be a powerful motivation to do something stupid. Counter-intuitively a leap into the unknown is often considered better than facing the disapproval of the mob. When the emergency services tried to create safe landing space for the helicopters they were met with some resistance, some of that fuelled by a hot day's boozing. Did that resistance result in dangerous delays for the injured? Again I don't know. 

We think we have been on lockdown. We haven't. People have used all kinds of excuses for getting out of the house to enjoy the sunshine. Had there been ten weeks of rain I suppose behaviour might have been different.  Where police forces have taken a decision to prosecute those who broke the rules it is the police forces that have been castigated. The prevailing dynamic is that this is a free country and we should be allowed to interpret the guidance on living in these covid-19 times for ourselves. To a degree I can sympathise. I swing strongly towards social liberalism. However along with that I carry a massive burden of responsibility on my shoulders. I know that if I can blame myself when something goes wrong I am likely to do exactly that. Because I feel that responsibility so keenly I do what I can to inform myself as fully as possible before I make a decision. Sometimes my way of living induces paralysing inaction, but experience has generally shown me that if I don't know what to do, I do nothing. Eventually a way will reveal itself. A system is only as strong, though, as its weakest component. 

The lockdown we were never really in has been relaxed. We are now sending our children back to school, and more people back to work, many by public transport. New cases of covid are being reported daily. The magical R number is still very close to 1, the point at which there is no reduction in the spread of the disease. There is no cure, there is no vaccine, people still die. If members of the government and their advisors drove miles to test whether they were safe to drive or hundreds of miles to avail themselves of childcare during lockdown is it any wonder that people are not feeling fully informed? For years we have been briefed not to accept the wisdom of experts and I am one who finds it very difficult to know what and whom I should believe.

So what's the point of this rant? It's nothing to do with you, is it, Mr Kingfisher? A few days ago, someone read my previous letters to you. They've emerged as streams of consciousness, but have suffered through editing to the point where they seem to point to me being afraid to venture out. I'm cautious, but not afraid and I quite like not having to go out unless I really have to. Yes, I certainly miss being with P, I miss seeing members of my family and my friends, I miss going to live arts events, on train journeys, sharing meals and to some extent I even miss performing - however much the thought of doing it is agony. I miss physical contact, handshakes, hugs and other intimacies. I don't miss having to put fuel in the van every week or even going out in the van. I am surprised at how little I even need to go out and buy food. I don't have an underlying condition that means I need to shield myself from the virus, but I'm getting on a bit and have better things to do than become ill. In that regard I have been very, very fortunate.  Two days ago I spoke to a cousin several years my junior. She, like my mother, had a stroke at the age of fifty-two. That was the age at which the wife of a friend died of cancer. Another friend was the age I was two years ago when he had a number of heart attacks and needed a multiple heart-bypass operation. My best friend from my college years has cancer. She is quite open about the fact that it is terminal. We both want to see each other before we can't. I shan't be able to see her if I allow myself to become ill. Another friend, five years younger than I am, and who celebrated her sixtieth birthday two days before my birthday last month, is a musician who postponed last month's sold-out concert tour of Germany until later on this year because of covid shutting everything down. This morning she has had to cancel altogether following a cancer diagnosis. Yes I am very, very lucky and the plan is to inform myself and stay lucky for as long as possible.

So, dear kingfisher, I am looking forward to seeing this year's family hatch and fly. I know you're there.

Love and stuff,

marsh