So, what do you make out of going back into lockdown again, and orders about what to do and don’t?
With around sixty thousand new cases a day and over a thousand deaths, it’s very worrying, especially when people are continuing to go out and about so much.
Here on the prom, with lots of recent sunny days on offer, it naturally tempts people to come and enjoy the view. I get that, the sunshine makes us all want to go out and we’re all fed up. The trouble is that there are a lot of people in a small area.
We all have to make sacrifices in order to even slow down transmission rates. But the trouble is that other people don’t. It’s a bit like a red rag to a bull when you see people not keeping the two meter rule. They couldn’t anyway, as parts of the prom at Cleveleys are narrow to a point where you can’t possibly maintain the spacing, because of the width of the footpath.
Forfeit the nice days
I simply won’t go near the prom. No thank you. After all, it’s a few nice days forfeited to be safe and plenty of nice days to come when eventually it is all over. Which I do believe it will be. It isn’t all that much to ask after months of being isolated, for the sake of stopping the nasty little thing!
Jane got annoyed the other day and I don’t blame her. As you may know, she took a friend for an urgent appointment at Clifton Hospital in St. Annes. While he was being attended to, which wasn’t a quick job, she walked round locally making some videos for our Visit Fylde Coast YouTube channel.
If you’ve been watching them you’ll know that she started doing daily videos to help her readers through lockdown. The internet has been a lifeline for people who have been trapped indoors for a year. She gets hundreds of messages to say what a godsend the videos are to people who are lonely and missing their visits to the coast.
Kill two birds in one stone
But of course one person couldn’t resist telling her off on Twitter. Why had she had travelled there, when he knew that she shouldn’t have – or so he thought. She did reply that if that person had listened, he’d have known she wasn’t going there to have a morning out. She was there to take a friend to an appointment which couldn’t be missed, lockdown or no lockdown.
And she was actually working, ie doing her job, which was also allowed, along with the appointment. Usually she lets things go, but in this case making her ‘amateur’ videos (as they were described) is working for her. On streets that were just about empty, might I add.
Throughout the entire pandemic we haven’t had a penny in grants and government support. There is always something that makes us exempt. We’ve been self employed for nearly 30 years and publishing Visit Fylde Coast is our full time job – how we earn money to pay our bills! We haven’t been lucky enough to be furloughed on 80% pay, or have a public sector wage to rely on. Our clients aren’t earning, so we aren’t earning. In which case we’ve had to be creative and find other ways to earn a living.
Hard work
As a result, they have been working their backs off, trying to get some money in and prepare our business for when the pandemic is over. Luckily we don’t owe anyone anything – we haven’t got business debts. I feel so much for the people with that burden hung round their necks, as well as everything else.
I wouldn’t mind but we’ve been fastidious all the way through the pandemic. We’ve barely gone out except outdoors, avoided places where there are people and been super cautious, right through since last February.
If that person had come here he would have a field day stopping everyone and asking where they were from. Put it this way, he’d need a full notebook to take down all the rule breakers. When it’s sunny it’s mad on the seafront and obviously one heck of a lot of people are travelling from further than Thornton.
We see and hear people saying they are having a lovely time off work, while getting 80% of their wages paid. It doesn’t seem very fair to me, I don’t know what you think. It’s going to take a long time to recover from, I know that for sure.
And What about the Weather?
Hasn’t it been cold! My goodness it’s enough to freeze the………off a monkey!
It was so cold the other morning that when I went to feed our pet seagull who comes every day to be fed, I stuck to the floor!
I was standing on a paving flag and two minutes later, if not less, my shoes were stuck to the flag. I don’t know about you but that has never happened to me before. You couldn’t see any ice or frost, but when I touched some more concrete it was slippy with a layer of ice. It makes me realise how easy it is to have an accident and skid, lose control in a car or slip on foot. And there you go, an accident before you can say Jack Frost.
When I’d not been driving all that long, I went to fetch hubby from our local railway station about a mile away. It’s not much fun to have to walk home in snow and ice. So I set off, got to the end of our road which had a slope down to the main road, and before I could blink I had to brake. Where it led to the main road, the car skidded and I slewed all the way across the road and nearly shot out onto the busy main road. What a shock and a learning curve that was. I did manage to get the car under control and get back onto the right side of the road and breathed a sigh of relief.
If a car had been parked on the slope there would probably have been a nasty accident. I’ve got to say, it shook me up for quite a while. It’s not to be recommended. Driving schools should have taught what to do in all dangerous circumstances – which they didn’t back then – a long time ago. I don’t know if they do today, but it’s something that should be included.
That’s all for today folks, in the meantime, take care all of you out there and don’t catch the virus!
Some other things to look at…
While you’re here…
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