Tamu in box (2016), looking like how I feel…

I don’t know how other people feel here in the UK and elsewhere in the world, but I’m heartily worn down by the government’s reaction to Covid-19.

I like to keep this space – my website – politics-free but there’s a limit, I suppose.

It’s hard not to say anything when…

Figures are revised but only after it’s been pointed out by professors who aren’t ‘in’ with the government and we realise that, apparently, even after someone has recovered from Covid but dies of other causes, including an accident, the death is still recorded as a Covid death.

The number of excess deaths in the home which is higher than average; of “3,799 in total reported in the home setting over the past five weeks… 179 deaths of these have… Covid-19 on the death certificate.”

The Class of 2020 has all but been thrown under the bus with the mother of all exam results fiasco, on which the government has now done a massive U-turn.

The number of people out of work in the UK is over 730,000 and counting.

The refusal to equate the rise in cases with the rise in the numbers being tested, and all but ignoring the falling number of patients needing hospital treatment.

Speaking of the test, turns out the PCR test, used to detect if someone has the virus or not, is not fit for purpose.

Mike Hearn has written about a 2006 whooping cough epidemic in the US that wasn’t, where the PCR test was used. According to the specialists, “the problem was that they placed too much faith in a quick and highly sensitive molecular test that led them astray…”

Investigative journalist, Celia Farber, met and interviewed the inventor of PCR, Kary B. Mullis, who “would have warned us not to use it to detect a virus”.

As for those ‘in charge’ and the MSM, why aren’t dissenting views allowed more airtime? Why can’t we have a balanced discussion about Covid and lockdown? Instead, we have “exclusion, and in some cases direct censorship, of alternative viewpoints.
The result (whether intended or unintentional) of this media narrative has been to produce a high degree of fear and compliance amongst the population at large. Both the narrative and the consequent fear has continued, largely unabated by a changing evidence base which shows both a lesser degree of mortality (and, by extension of infection) than had been initially feared.
Bluntly: perception and reality have diverged markedly.”

So says Rick Hayward as he uses easy-to-obtain data for the UK to show, using clear graphs, ‘Winter/Spring Mortality 1993-2020 in Relation to Covid-19’, and where Covid-19 ranks in terms of the percentage of seasonal deaths.

Anyway, as the months wear on with no end in sight to this madness, with rules/guidance changing with the wind – do this, don’t do that; wear face coverings in some places but not others; it’s ok to travel until it’s not ok etc – apparently while ‘following the science’ – but only the ‘science’ that chimes with their narrative as no dissenting views allowed – it finally came to me at the weekend just how depleted my creative well has become.

I haven’t written since… I can’t remember when.

For a while, I was happy to focus on creating designs for my handmade journals.

But lately, my ‘get up and go’ has got up and left without me and has yet to return.

I have ideas for journal paper sets, but I just cannot be bothered to start designing them.

Same with reading. I’ve started at least 2 books which remain half-finished as I have no interest in continuing them.

As for writing… I look at my ideas-notebook and that’s it; it doesn’t go beyond looking.

Listening to music, however, is still as wonderful as ever and for that I’m grateful.

In fact, I’m grateful for many things – getting up each morning; having my children with me; having kooky kitties to love and keep me on my toes; going to the horse field with Liam; not living in Australia or NZ (!), to name a few of those many things…

One thing I have enjoyed doing is working on changing the look of my website.

So, if you pop over for a visit in the next couple of weeks, things will look a little different, namely the ‘welcome’ page, the blog page and the shop.

So, what to do about this malaise?

While lazily flicking through one of my notebooks, I paused on the notes I’d made from a couple of books to do with writing.

In ‘Take Joy’, Jane Yolen says, “Exercising the writing muscle is important.”

How true – writers write.

Another Yolen gem – “Hard work is the only real magic there is… if the book in your head is to get onto the page.”

From ‘A Writer’s Book of Days’ by Judy Reeves, I’d noted a couple of ways of coming up with writing topics.

One is to make a list of things – 50 or, if you can manage it, 100 – you want to write about. The trick is to write as quick as you can without giving it much thought, and to keep it short.

Another way is to make a note of any phrase or image that stands out from anything you read, from novels to non-fiction books to magazines to song lyrics, the more obscure the better.

Either of those seems like a good starting point to drag myself out of this bog. If there’s one thing I enjoy doing, it’s writing out lists.

Fingers crossed, my creaky muscles will soon recognise the thrill of getting the story out of my head and onto the page.

Who knows? My ‘get up and go’ might actually find its way home.

Lacking Motivation in These [whatever you want to call it] Times