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Castles and more castles

The summer mission to visit castles continues…..

Two Northumberland entries today, the first is Warkworth Castle. A grand old castle dating back from the 11th century. The tropical northern weather and the occasional civil war has taken some toll but it’s still mighty impressive.

The second castle is one of our favourites. Set just a few feet from the North Sea, we have Dunstanburgh Castle. Very much a ruin, but what a location. You walk from a beautiful seaside fishing village of Craster.

Along the coast…

And after a couple of miles to the remote old castle.

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Coast to coast

England is a relatively small country.

You read these epic driving blogs, taking days, weeks to travel across a land. Less so epic here. On a good afternoon you can get from North East to North West coasts, the biggest challenge being the never ending motorway roadworks.

This week we kinda did that mini adventure. A trip from our Yorkshire home to the North West edge, Liverpool….. Took just over two hours.

Then 2 days later we stood on the North East edge of England. From our home, just over 40 minutes….

122 miles apart. A famous old city port versus a small old fishing village. Vastly different accents, same WIND….

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Lake one

Ullswater in the English Lake District. The usual grand weather there….

About 200 years ago the poet William Wordsworth spent much time here, you can see why. A hundred years later Donald Campbell disrupted the creative peace by braking the world water speed record here, over 202mph.

When we visited Hawklad blew my mind, again. Randomly he started to list every top division football champions in both England and Italy. On the patchy internet I checked, every single year answer was correct. Staggeringly that went back to 1889 for England and 1898 for Italy. Even taking the time to fill in the key footballing history, managers and top goal scorers. How on earth does he do that, apparently I’m his Dad and I can’t even remember what I had for breakfast.

2019 – School gave up on him. I remember a Head of Year saying that ‘HE is low attainment with many special educational needs… there are plenty of alternatives for pupils who leave with no qualifications…. College isn’t everything’.

2023 – still on track for his goal – UNIVERSITY.

How many great kids are wrote off by the system when with the right support, THEY CAN FLY.

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Break the silence

Remoteness and Silence still exist in this mad old world.

I was watching an old Cary Grant, Loretta Young and David Niven movie. Definitely a different but really good variation on a Wonderful Life.

The Bishops Wife.

As the plot unfolded I noticed something about David Niven. He just looked so haunted, almost lost, in pain. Tragically his wife had died in an accident just a few months prior to filming leaving him completely broken. After the movie I listened to an interview where he talked about those months after the tragedy. Friends has been there for him including Clark Gable. But in his words, friends inevitably have to get on with their own life’s. When this happened he felt lost, surrounded by darkness, isolated, out of step with the world.

Looking back 7 years almost to the day and I so understand that feeling. The darkest times definitely for me were when friends moved on and suddenly the phone stopped ringing, no text messages, no cards, no knocks at the door.

Silence.

Thankfully I made it through the darkness but now I remind myself, when someone I know is going through loss, to never forget how that SILENCE felt to me. Even something as simple as a card, a text message, a phone call, or a coffee invite can make such a difference.

Break that Silence.

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Deep sigh

Thought for the day. Latest data reveals that in the UK 34,000 children are suffering from Long Covid. In Scotland it has been announced that when schools return they will maintain Covid precautions such as masks. The Scottish Government is also spending millions on improving classroom ventilation. Meanwhile in England, all Covid precautions have been removed from schools as they are deemed perfectly safe….

Deep sigh.

There have been many DEEP SIGHS recently.

We have just found out that the Psychologist supporting Hawklad is leaving in two weeks time. At this stage the Service is not able to confirm when a replacement will be put in place. They can’t even confirm if the support will continue.

Deep sigh.

It takes Hawklad a significant amount of time to build up confidence in new faces. It took a lot of work from this professional to establish a bond, unfortunately now it’s all change again. That’s been the story over the last 5 years. So many new starts….. Even if a replacement is immediately put in place it will take many many months before any kind of meaningful link could be possibly established. That is at a time when his stress and anxiety levels are rocketing with an impending return to classroom teaching (?). A time when he is likely to require high levels of support.

This service is the last remaining support that Hawklad gets these days. But like most areas of child mental health, it’s a service under stress. Service demand rapidly outstripping its limited resources. The service has to prioritise those children most at risk of immediate harm and many families miss out on the help they so badly need. We may well start to miss out. Too many children suffer. Parents and families try do their best. Muddle through. But some of these areas are highly specialised and parents are just not equipped to deal with the issues. Plus many parents are already running on fumes and are struggling.

My country can find the money to buy additional nuclear missiles, can find the money to buy a new luxury royal yacht, can find the money to build a High Speed Train link that few people want, can find the money to pay Government Ministers legal fees and cover bullying damages awarded against a member of the Government. YET the country can’t seem to find the money or desire to protect its very own children.

Deep sigh.

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Masks

A simple trip out to the local Post Office. Ok it’s a 6 mile round trip but it’s the only option unless you want to venture much further into town or city. I went with my work parcel, money and mask.

On Monday the Government lifted Covid Restrictions across England. Clearly infections aren’t rapidly rising and we don’t have the highest infection rate currently in the world.

I counted 7 other people in the shop/post office. I was the only one wearing a mask. The bloke next to me helpfully reminded me that masks weren’t required anymore because the Prime Minister had said so. I kindly reminded him that was not the message our A&E doctors and nurses are desperately trying to get across. That’s the thing. While our NHS teams are having leave cancelled to cover reopening COVID wards the Government and its MPs are just about to start their summer holidays. I also asked the chap to back away as he was now within 1 metre of my face. For some reason he seemed to take great offence at that.

Just like with most things the one thing our Government is great at is creating divisions in society. One group against the next. Well they have just done it again…..

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Appointing…

There is a new rule in England. If there is an independent body then our Prime Minister will appoint his friends to make those bodies definitely not independent. It started with BBC News. Then the media watchdogs and it’s just getting silly now. There is an independent body that advises on ethics in public life. Guess what. He has appointed an old university friend, who with Johnson was part of a notorious drinking and partying private club. That’s modern England for you.

So clearly it’s ok to appoint whoever you like to anything these days. So why don’t we all do that. What fun we can have. How easy life will be.

So here are a few of my appointments.

I would like to appoint myself as James Bond.

I would also like to appoint myself as the new Thor.

I would also like to appoint myself as the next winner of the Great British Bake Off.

I would like to appoint our family dog, Captain Chaos as my Countries Prime Minister. Far more qualified than the current numpty and our dog doesn’t lie. The Cap is also not a racist, sexist or homophobic.

I would like to appoint our family cat and gerbils as his Government.

On discussion with my son I would like to appoint Hawklad as the new Darth Vader, Head of Disney and lead guitarist of Iron Maiden.

Further appointments to follow.

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Stormy weather

It’s stormy here. Has been for over 24 hours and more to come. Sadly more storms might be heading our way.

I wish I didn’t have to keep going on about the Government. But every day, every day they strike again. This time it’s that all formal COVID restrictions will be lifted. In two weeks it will come down to individual choice. If you want to observe social distancing or wear a mask on public transport then you can, but you don’t need to. This is at a time when variant fuelled infections are rising. Currently at 27000 new cases per day. The so called Prime Minister is talking about 50000 new daily infections by the time restrictions come off.

Let’s not be under any illusions now. The plan in England is for vaccinations plus herd immunity to keep ahead of COVID-19 . Banking on vaccines staying effective while purposely infecting as many of the young as possible. It’s a massive gamble when you remove all the other restrictions that are designed to keep COVID under control. We just don’t know how long vaccines stay effective. We don’t fully understand the long term impact of COVID on the body and brain (10% of cases lead to long lasting symptoms). We don’t know how long vaccines will stay effective against variants.

As many scientists and doctors have pointed out. Variants accelerate when a virus is rapidly spreading. Like now…. England has become a giant Variant Factory. You should only release restrictions when virus numbers are under control and are LOW.

It’s a mess.

A mess when those in Government openly talk about not needing to wear a mask because the are vaccinated. They completely miss the point. Masks are primarily there to protect others. To reduce the risk of you spreading the virus to others. To those at higher risk, to those who the vaccine is not working effectively, to those who are not vaccinated, to our unprotected children.

So I’m not ditching my mask. No way…

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England

It’s no secret that I have fallen out of love with my country. I don’t like what it is becoming. I don’t like the way it’s run. I don’t like the corruption. The inequalities. The new values we are supposed to sign up to. I hate the xenophobic outlook. I constantly seem to be at odds with a sizeable portion of my fellow citizens.

But is it just me .

“Dad if we win the lottery can we leave England.”

Why?

“England is going down hill. It has been for years. It’s becoming ugly. I’m European but I’m not now allowed to be. I didn’t get a say in that. The country has no future the way it’s going. It’s stuck in the past. Our leaders are racist, law breaking clowns as corrupt as any in our history. I’m ashamed to call myself English now.

I can’t disagree with you sadly. Where might you want to move to.

Switzerland. If they won’t have us then Germany or France or Italy or . I would go to Canada, or America or New Zealand. Anywhere apart from here.

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Together

Another day of school at home. Another day of me demonstrating how little I know about Science and French. Surely answering questions like why would the earths magnetic poles switch?, involves more than incoherent mumbling and awkwardly shuffling of my feet.

Je suis un muppet et plutot stupide…..

Maybe those parents doing homeschooling should have some boaster classes. Bring the likes of me up to speed. Deep sigh. Not much chance of that here in England with our current law breaking charlatans in charge. They can’t even look after the pupils correctly.

Our so called Government has announced an extra £50 per pupil to help them catch up and deal with the impacts of COVID education disruption. That disruption has been massive. Apparently £50 is a world beating some that shows commitment to the next generation. The US is giving its students a top up of £1600 per year, Netherlands the funding is £2500.

Our Government would much rather spend money on important stuff like a new Royal Yacht costing £200M. It also comes from a Prime Minister who enjoyed the privileges of a Private Education at one of the worlds most exclusive and expensive schools. In today’s money that cost somewhere near £50000 per year.

Remember we are all in this together….