Racism is dead. Long live discrimination

The morning after my second Covid vaccine, I was feeling rather groggy. Not ill or flu-y but yawny and lacklustre. Not up to doing much else, I spent longer than normal eating my toast and Marmite (Help! Marmite is in short supply and I only have half-a-jar left) catching up with my LinkedIn feed, and marvelling at how many hits my blog has had this month. (It was the ‘Bodies Piling High’ post wot did it).

I was reading the kinds of articles I don’t normally bother with, such as the best UK beaches according to Which? as reported by Daily Mail Online. Bamburgh (Northumberland) was top – I wonder if the vote was taken in summer, or winter when Siberian gales blast over the North Sea. Near the bottom of the list was Weston-super-Mare (Somerset). I was disappointed with that placing because I have a soft spot for Weston. We went there a couple of times as kids, and it’s where my grandmother died suddenly in 1943 aged just 37 so of course I never knew her, but it’s still sad.

Let the bodies pile high - pure poetry

Bo Jo said, apparently, “Let the bodies pile high,” when initially refusing to lockdown the economy, again, in response to the second Covid spike.

All hell has broken loose. He’s been criticised, chastised and condemned: branded as cruel, callous and criminal. 

But not by me.

Two funerals and a wedding

When Princess Beatrice married her dashing Edoardo last summer, the contrast with the previous showy, lavish, crowd-filled, OTT affairs of sister Eugenie and, before that, cousin Harry was marked but necessary.

The country was in Covid-crisis. Minimal social gatherings were the law. The Royal Family were (are) not above the law. Bea and Ed accepted their selfless roles in wider society and didn’t pull rank. They did their duty by respecting the law and showing solidarity with those who have no rank to pull. To drive the message home, Bea symbolically wore a second-hand frock. (Yeah I know it was still one helluva frock.)  In other words, the British Royal Family showed leadership and grace.