On the Calculation of Risk

Last weekend Team Powell came to stay, just for one night on their way down to Clovelly, the 'almost family holiday home' down on the Cornish/Devon border. A school friend of Cherry actually owns it but various members and combinations of the Till family have stayed there probably more than 20 times over the years. I went there to regroup immediately after Cherry died. The harsh conditions prevailing in the middle of winter after a long period without occupancy certainly gave me other things to think about  ! Anyhow I am mulling over whether to go down and join them for a couple of days. It would be within the current rules but undoubtedly comes with a degree of added and avoidable  risk.

                The experience of their overnight stay was illuminating. We all kept at a distance. That was fairly easy, even when, most inconveniently it drizzled during the barbecue so we had to gather under the overhanging porch of the Granny annex offering advice and encouragement to poor Chiff slaving over the charcoal briquettes under the apple trees. This was instead of our original plan of being spaciously arrayed around the back garden in the evening sunshine at a distance but within  semaphore range. Wondering whether anyone else had touched that particular bit of lettuce - or that tomato sauce bottle  certainly added a frisson to the proceedings. We were all as careful as we could be but the added risk could not be discounted. Probably the experts would say that we were relying too much on the unlikelihood that any of us actually had the bug anyway, since we were all rigorously observing the rules beforehand and were still effectively in lock-down as a near normal state.

                But one thing that does seem to me to have merged from the current situation is another nail in the coffin of the idea of the expert to whose opinion we should all defer. This whole idea was already under strain because of the extent to which the social media have elevated the status and apparent authority of personal opinion and gut feelings. Following the science is difficult when the scientists seems to disagree, but such disagreements are inevitable as more and more data comes on stream about how the pandemic is developing. In the absence of hard fact at any one time all we can do is go on 'balances of probability.'  We have to think about things properly, treat it all seriously and properly note who s saying what and why  So I conclude that yes there's a risk to going to Clovelly for a few days, but it's probably no higher than the risk of my being in a bad road accident on the way down. Almost everything we do has an element of risk in it. Avoiding it altogether means avoiding life.  Moreover all the evidence currently points to higher levels of risk later on, so its having a change now or not for a possibly long time to come.

                Another thing I have been surprised about is the sudden burst of interest in the UK in countering obesity because of the extra vulnerabilities to the bug that it brings. This seemed like a sudden revelation. Yet back in mid March when the lockdown in Rhode island was just starting, articles in the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal were already loudly pointing to the link between obesity and severe Covid-19 consequences. That was the reason why I started on my  faintly ridiculous keep-fit trails winding mindlessly around the trees of Ocean View in Newport. For the life of me I can't understand why in the UK we've been so slow to connect those two dots publicly.

 

                Of course I thought taking he necessary action would be much easier once back home. A smaller estate to wander around in certainly, as shown by the picture taken from the bedroom window with the new phone that Chiff supplied. But the estate is set in the splendidly open Marlborough Downs offering  nice walking everywhere. What I hadn't factored in was, just before leaving the US, getting a touch of 'housemaid's knee' which made walking uncomfortable. The routine fell off dramatically and is only just, after a month at home getting back to what it was. So far at least the price hasn't been too heavy, but I reckon that clambering up a few Cornish cliffs and doing a bit of surfing will help restore the programme.  So that's another, perhaps pretty feeble, reason to go to Clovelly !

                Naturally being with some of the family again after 5 contactless virtual months, on either side of the Atlantic, is another major reason to take this risk, as it helps to put everything into proper proportion. One other thing we did that brief weekend was to take a walk along the canal and of course, the kids couldn't resist putting the frighteners on their mother by sitting on the bridge over the canal in the way they did. Clearly I am not the only one engaging in a process of semi-calculated risk !

How Time Flies !

Even though the last couple of weeks was spent in quarantine, the time has flown by. Interestingly, no-one checked up on me to make sure that I really was in quarantine so I am far from sure that the hour or so in Boston airport that I spent laboriously filling up that form actually served any useful purpose ! But the days have passed very quickly and fortunately I hadn't picked up anything nasty on the flight. Looking at the way the numbers are going in the US (though not, admittedly, Rhode Island) I think I made my escape in good time.

But time has flown in other ways too, as re-settling in the UK after 5 months away has taken up more of it that I had anticipated, and I haven't yet been able to enjoy that idling time of rest and tranquillity that I thought would be my reward for the slogs of the past. It's my own fault of course. The grass might be racing upwards outside,  but I am still reluctant to give up the academics. So I am still 'teleworking' with colleagues back in Newport  and having to cope with evening Zoom 'meetings' because of the time differential. This always seems to amuse them for some reason ! I've also collected  some zoom sessions here in the UK.

Time had an impact on one of those too. Because Zoom sessions usually only show one's top half,  it's become the fashion to wear formal gear (maybe jacket and tie) on top and, in hot weather shorts below. So the visual side of Zoom is quite easy to handle. The audio side is more difficult. I have a 1930's striking German clock which I like not just because of its sound and appearance, but also because of its associations with my Aunt Ethel in Southsea of whom I was very fond. It sat on the mantlepiece in her sitting room and from my earlier days I remember being charmed by it dignified, loud and sonorous chimes.

Cherry always hated it because for her it summoned up memories of oppressive silences of homework and other such enforcements from her Convent boarding school days. Accordingly, the clock was consigned  to a detached and harmless existence in my study. Well, last week I was in a zoom session on the Russian Navy  with some people from NATO in Brussels, when of course the wretched thing went off and solemnly banged its way through ten chimes while I was on air, and so was heard all over Europe and in the US. The meeting collapsed in laughter. Fortunately it was just a rehearsal. When the organisers had recovered, they politely asked me to make sure I had silenced it for the real session.  So time can fly geographically too, apparently.        

                My 'domestic staff' as I like to think of them in my more 'Downton Abbey moments' have done a great job in looking after the house and garden. Both were great shape - although I could see that there were lots of things I could hardly wait to do. Sadly, though, and mysteriously, I seem to have contracted a mild case of 'Housemaid's knee' which makes walking uncomfortable after a while. This is frustrating and has slowed up progress on making acquaintance with my new mower. The old one died, rusting away, while I was still in the US. But that apart I have been gainfully employed catching up and sorting out and also of course carrying on with the academics.

                I have now seen most of the immediate family, Christopher who takes things seriously picked me up at the airport, sprayed me down in the car park and drove me home.  Team Powell  came for a day soon after I got back, when we engaged at distance very nicely with fish and chips in the garden. Finally S,R &V came last weekend. The weather allowed a  real adventure - a breakfast rendezvous on the downs behind Pewsey  where Simon cooked bacon and egg while red kites wheeled in the bluest of skies, directly above us.

Quite by coincidence we discovered from the survey map that there was one of the Wiltshire 'white horses' carved in the turf behind us, but invisible from the little road. Of course we went to find it, a short way away via a field path. At the site there was a stunning view over the Vale of Pewsey which I knew nothing about and even a bench to rest upon. In the evening a properly socially distanced barbeque followed and on Sunday, the promised pilgrimage to the Eagle Oak in the New Forest. I had told the big oak tree on my keep-fit rounds in the grounds of my Newport mansion all about the Eagle Oak and was able to convey cousinly greetings. A picnic afterwards completed a very successful weekend, and marked the end of my time for re-acquaintance with the UK.