Covid 19 notes

OMG I have to go back to work tomorrow. It's been the Easter Weekend and despite the lock-down I've been having a marvellous time.

There's no time to explain it all. Let's have some photographs and lists which will at least serve as a reminder.

Lock-down sunset.

We ran to the hills through empty streets, always keeping away from folk.

Suggested names for weight gained during this time of pandemic..."Covid Curves" - mine, or the more cruel "Lock-down Lard" - Steve  Crane.

If this horse was a singer, who would it be?

Which bird is is that sings 'Cuckoo'? Clue - not a wood-pecker.

5am moon

On Easter Friday I had quite an amazing run on my own. I was planning to go and do a new Steps challenge, set by John Blair, which we're calling the Blair Stairs, and then run over to Arthur's Seat to do a standard 10 miler.

Once up Calton Hill it dawned on me that it would probably be quite busy over at the Seat but the centre of town was empty, so why not go and have a run around there instead?

Princes St Gardens was open and empty and I felt kind of grateful to Edinburgh Council that they haven't locked up all the green spaces.

The mound was relatively deserted so I ran it as hard as I could but I've been doing quite a lot of hills and I was a few seconds slower than last time.

Not a good photo but the point of it was Bruntsfield Links was empty.

I took a back-street to Holy Corner, since it was Easter. One of the churches is now a bank.

On Easter Sunday the weather looked a bit drab to start with. I thought I would do an off-road 10 miler and Peter came along too. He kept declaring loudly that he didn't expect to see any butterflies. After a while I realised that this was not for my benefit but he was using reverse psychology on the butterflies or fate or both. Man he's mental.

As a side-note, one of the features of this pandemic (so I'm told and so it may appear from 'social media') is an increase in domestic disharmony as couples and families are forced together for long periods of time. This makes sense to me since us humans have trouble getting along on a global level. If we're forced to stay home we will bring our not-able-to-get-along-ness along with us.

You could be forgiven for thinking that if we could tackle the disharmony at home then we wouldn't be so hard on the rest of the world and a new peaceful era might dawn.

Yeah, don't be stupid.

Let's make a list of other things that are happening just now, as I need to wrap this up. Work tomorrow FFS.

• The Tories
• People blaming everything on the Tories
• People saying we should have a proper lock-down with police and the army like Spain and Italy. (My personal view - fuck off. Do your own internal policing.)
• It is now safe to sit on your arse on the computer filling your face with doughnuts.
• A paradoxical sudden craze for exercise, which I think should be thoroughly embraced and encouraged. 
• Lovely quiet streets.
• Hardly a drunk bellowing in the night, although, come on it's Leith, and there has been the odd one. There was a chap drinking beer with his top off across the way yesterday who had his window wide open and was bellowing out "Fuck off you smelly cunt." It wasn't clear to whom his invective was addressed. I hope it wasn't me.
• taking a certain pleasure because at work there has been an increasing demand for everyone to share space - so there's 6 of us in a tiny room - but suddenly we can't! Hahaha! Hahahahahaha!!!!
• I am missing my Berlingo something terrible.
• Sainsbury's routinely has a long queue of socially distanced people out the door, whereas Scotmid has protected its staff with big plastic barriers and the punters are left to behave themselves - which largely they do. You can tell the ones who won't and just avoid them. I'm voting for Scotmid.
• In a similar vein, Sweden has stuck its elegant Scandinavian neck out and taken a policy of asking people to be responsible about not spreading the virus rather than being overly forceful about it. This has been roundly attacked from certain quarters, but last time I looked their death rate was proportionately similar to our Scottish one. That was a couple of days ago though, that might have changed. 
• Lastly, The Scottish death-rate has slowed in the last 3 days. That might be to do with it being a bank holiday weekend and the numbers being slow to be reported. We'll see.

The Butterflies fell for Peter's clever psychological manipulations and showed themselves.

Peacock. Lovely innit?

Small tortoise-shell. Cheeky innit?

Today I was tired and thought I would go out for 3 miles, incorporating the Blair Stairs. It was lovely out though. Prime running weather; cool and sunny, and no folks in the streets. Before I knew it I found myself up at the castle. I l-o-v-e the l-o-v-e-l-y empty spaces.........................