If Only We Had Some Cookies
My youngest daughter's school has been taking part in a huge effort to rack up as many kilometres as possible in physical exercise while in lockdown – by either walking, running, or cycling. Each day after our Couch to 5K runs she has been emailing the distance covered to her teachers, who have been compiling the results, and letting everybody know how many kilometres were left to reach the target. Last night the remaining target stood at about 49 kilometres.
This morning I set out on bicycles with Miss 15, with the intention of lopping as many kilometres off the total as possible in one go.
I had agreed to cycle around town with her – perhaps doing 10 kilometres or so. While cycling out towards a nearby town, it occurred to her that we might visit her school. Great idea – except her school is quite some distance away.
“Are you really sure? – it's a long way.” (this was one of those “are you really sure” conversations, where the parent is actually thinking about themselves, but trying to make it sound like concern for their child)
“Yeah”
And so the epic journey began – cycling across the county to her school – a twenty eight kilometre round trip. I think the biggest shock to me was the amount of traffic on the roads. It would appear that pandemic really doesn't exist any more for a lot of people. We saw car parks filled to bursting, and queues of people at many of the shops we passed along our way.
I know people joke about Darwin taking care of those that either believe the pandemic is a hoax, or massively over-blown, but trust me – I know several people that have had (still have) the virus, and it's nothing to joke about.
Perhaps the biggest annoyance is the citizen journalists that are jumping on the anti-establishment band-wagon at the moment to gain traffic, and therefore advertising money. They are cyncically playing to people's frustrations, peddling fear, uncertainly, doubt, and just about every anti-establishment fiction, or distortion of statistics they can dig up and fashion to fit their agenda. It's not helping anybody.
Anyway. I bought some coffee earlier. We ran out. I'm thinking about installing a panic button in the kitchen – one of those Amazon “instant order” buttons – specifically for coffee.
If only we had some cookies.