Turbo, turbo, run (and a politics-free zone, no soapbox)

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  For no better reason than it’s spring

With continued sad news on the global scale, it’s so far so good here although the chickens are a bit sniffy – it seems I was not sympathetic enough when they went through the avian flu outbreak.

Of course, people are not all behaving perfectly – we are told not to drive to our exercise and on Sunday I ran past two chaps getting their bikes out of a car parked in the village – but, in general, it’s not too bad here in rural Oxfordshire.

Goodness knows what comes next – more draconian restrictions on getting out, limits to the time/distance for exercise, total curfews? Let’s hope people are sensible as that’s probably the only thing which will remove the need for ‘lockdown plus’.

The supermarkets are getting back to almost normal as the panic buying slows – helped by more controls being exerted by the shops over the number of people allowed in at any time and restrictions on the number of some items that can be bought. Still shortages of sanitiser, pasta, eggs, bleach, flour and the like – but certainly bearable and the fresh fruit and vegetables are still there.

The organisers of July’s ultra have broken cover and come up with a masterly ‘highly likely to be postponed to either later in the year or into 2021’. I’m carrying on at exercise tick over – I haven’t even looked at the training plan I downloaded all those weeks ago. I assume that for now it’s keep fit (anti-virus training) and be ready to ramp it up as necessary once I know if/when the ultra is going to happen.

I used the turbo on Monday and Tuesday and ran with my wife on Wednesday (her fastest run for nearly 2 years – perhaps I’m improving as a personal trainer). I’m carrying on with the planks and also trying to get back to simple exercise regimes with press-ups, sit-ups etc.

I’m still missing sport – I haven’t yet resorted to following the Belarusian Premier League which, I believe, is the only professional football league in Europe that is continuing to play at the moment. Do they know something we don’t or is that just madness?

For no good reason other than I think I should, I’m reaffirming my commitment to this blog being non-political (party, national or international).

It comes to mind because a really nice blog I followed recently got into a bit of ‘Brit bashing’ in the comments section. Of course, we Brits (and many others) deserve a regular bashing for all sorts of things – but against that background I was really saddened by references to our virus situation. No doubt I’m being over-sensitive but it made me realise how careful I must be.

Chances are that, ironically, we are all going to get both hyper-sensitive and de-sensitised over the next few weeks.

I’m sure many people have some particular country or countries that they resent or distrust for a whole host of reasons. Let’s not forget that all countries are made up of people and the people need nothing but our best wishes.

Personally, I wish every nation a speedy return to normal (or, preferably, something much better than normal). From my point of view, that’s the most important thing and transcends politics and history, on all levels.

If I want to change any of that perhaps I’ll create the OMOS blog (Old Man On Soapbox).

What a sensitive fool I am becoming in my old age.