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Coronavirus – Day #33

~ Cheryl

That’s another week’s radio show broadcast. I have also finished a presentation for an online academic conference next week. There’s no let-up in the work that needs doing.

Both main political parties in England are now talking about an “exit strategy”. As far as Labour is concerned, this may simply be a means of embarrassing the government. As far as the government is concerned, it is crazy talk because they have no intention of putting a testing regime in place, and without testing and a track-and-trace policy there’s no way that a loosening of restraints will result in anything other than a fresh surge of infections. Clearly they don’t think that enough of us have died yet.

Of course track-and-trace brings with it a whole set of new problems. Fortunately there are internet law experts thinking about these things, in addition to the tech guys who will be only too keen to be asked to build shiny new mass surveillance tools.

Still, no point in worrying about things that you can’t fix. I think I will go and read some books. I do have plenty of them.

Coronavirus – Day #32

~ Cheryl

It being two weeks since I last shopped, and with a birthday coming up, I knew I needed to brave Tesco again this week. I had originally planned to go tomorrow because I figured that the first day back after a long weekend might be a bit mad. However, I have two deliveries scheduled to arrive tomorrow, and two phone calls booked on Thursday, so today it had to be.

The car started, which was a relief. She likes the sunshine. It is only in winter that I have to run her every week or the battery goes flat.

As I expected, the store was quite a bit busier than last time I went, but the line moved very quickly. I think I was only queuing for around 15 minutes.

Most food is back in stock. There was pasta and rice. I even found a packet of disposable gloves. But there’s still no flour. Home baking FTW, I guess.

Most people were not wearing masks. I think I only saw 4 all the time I was there. Of course they are difficult to buy here, but it is in stark contrast to what I’m hearing from other countries. However, everyone was very well behaved.

There was a mountain of chocolate. Top end Easter eggs that were selling for £10 or more were on fire sale for £1 or £2 each. I may have bought several. I also have venison steak. Tomorrow I shall order more cheese from Fine Cheese Company.

The big news story here is that the government’s figures for virus deaths may be massively understated. It turns out that other European countries are including deaths in care homes in their fatality figures. The UK figures are for hospital deaths only. In France deaths in care homes make up around a third of the total deaths. So while the official government figures say that we have had around 12,000 deaths, the actual figure may be around 18,000.

Of course this is all speculation, and while the government refuses to embrace testing it is impossible to prove, but deaths in care homes are certainly happening. Also data from the Office of National Statistics is starting to become available, and we are seeing a sharp rise in deaths not attributed to the virus.

The other big story to break today is that Westminister is ordering suppliers of much needed personal protection equipment (PPE) to supply it to customers in England only, and not to accept orders from Scotland or Wales.

So much for the “United Kingdom”, eh?

We won’t forget.

Coronavirus – Day #31

~ Cheryl

What day is it today again? Oh yes, it is a Monday, but it is still Easter so most people here are not at work. I am, of course. Still plenty to do.

Not much to add to that really. There isn’t even any interesting virus-related news on social media because everyone is too busy talking about the disaster that is the Labour Party. It’s no wonder that a recent poll showed 46% of Brits willing to vote Tory again even though the government is deliberately letting thousands of people die. Is it too much to ask to have an opposition party that doesn’t devote most of its energy to in-fighting?

Coronavirus – Day #30

~ Cheryl

Today being supposedly a major national holiday, I have tried to take things easy. I have finished editing next week’s radio show, and done some housework. Other than that, mainly reading and TV.

My Twitter feed is full of speculation that Bozo’s stint in hospital was a publicity stunt. Just how ill he actually was will probably never be known, but it is pretty obvious that the state propaganda people have over-played their hand. Portraying him as a Conan-esque hero who has taken on the virus, mano-a-mano, and triumphed was laughable enough, but to have him released from hospital on Easter Sunday and go into the whole “he is risen” shtick was clearly ridiculous.

Ah well, I guess we can look forward to the Victory Parade in which Bozo takes the salute of the Armed Forces and is presented with a Victoria Cross by the Queen for his heroism. It might be worth all of the nonsense if only because it will wind up Donny Little Hands something rotten.

Coronavirus – Day #29

~ Cheryl

Today has been a long day of recording and editing interviews. I am now mostly done with next week’s radio show. I just have to choose the music and link everything together.

Out in the wider world I understand that Krakatoa has erupted. However, I gather that it does this quite often. That’s a good thing for volcanoes. It stops them building up a head of pressure that will lead to a Very Big Bang. So Krakatoa having a bit of a moment does not mean another worldwide dust cloud. It means that having one in the near future, at least from that volcano, is now less likely.

Besides, if Gaia was really out to get us, She would have let lose with the Yellowstone supervolcano.

Here in the UK people have been wondering why the Home Secretary has been conspicuously absent from press briefings over the past few weeks. Today she was allowed to do the daily virus briefing. Now everone knows why she had been kept away from the public before. Bozo’s problem is that he knows he’s not actually very competent, so he surrounded himself with Cabinet ministers who are even less competent than his is. Now he’s in hospital and we are seeing just how bad his team is.

Coronavirus – Day #28

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

The one thing that you should never do with this virus is tell people that you are feeling better. It knows. This morning I woke up around 7:00am, listened to podcasts for a while until the loaf of bread I had in the bread machine was ready, and ate breakfast. By the end of that I was really tired and went back to bed. I woke up three hours later.

The rest of the day has been pretty much of a write-off. I did manage to record one interview for next week’s radio show, and cook some haggis & tatties. Other than that I have read, and attended an online party in Finland. I haven’t had the energy for anything much else.

And still I am doing much better than many people I know.

Here’s hoping that tomorrow is better.

Coronavirus – Day #27

~ Cheryl

Today marked a major health milestone in that it was the first morning in 27 days that I have woken up normally without having been woken in the middle of the night with a coughing fit. Slowly but surely my respiratory system is getting back to normal. I don’t feel 100% yet, but I’m getting there.

Of course I also feel quite guilty about having such mild symptoms. I have friends online who are having things much worse. This really is a nasty bug, folks. Try to avoid getting it if you can.

As you’ll see from other posts, I have had another busy day. With any luck things will calm down a bit over the long weekend.

Talking of which, Easter normally has awful weather in the UK. This year it is beautiful. I have been able to switch the central heating off. I suspect that this isn’t doing the country’s self-isolation policy any good. I’m happily staying inside, because the pollen count will be through the roof out there and that’s the last thing my sinuses need.

Coronavirus – Day #26

~ Cheryl

Today has been Publication Day for Unjust Cause, which means that you can now buy the ebook from our store. Our authors make more money if you buy direct. Also we give you both the ePub and Mobi, DRM free. Please buy from us rather than that big river place if you can.

There is going to be a new free short story going up tomorrow. This one is by me. I don’t normally push my own fiction, but I have good reason this time. All will be explained tomorrow.

Because I was busy I missed the Hugo Finalists announcement last night. I gather from Twitter that most people are very pleased, which is a relief. Personally I’m pleased to note that there are at least 6 trans people on the ballot. I’m also really pleased to see that all of the nominees for Fan Writer are first-timers. That shows that the field is really healthy.

Of course the big question will be whether a man manages to win a fiction award this year. It won’t happen in Novel because all six finalists are women. Ted Chiang, of course, has an excellent chance of winning. I will laugh myself silly if the only man who wins is Yoon Ha Lee.

Aside from pushing the new book, and the radio show, today has been more day job. I have no idea what is happening in the outside world, but I’m assuming that if the PM had died I would have heard about it.

Coronavirus – Day #25

~ Cheryl

Today has been mainly day job. Tomorrow probably will be as well, though I will be on the radio as well thanks to the magic of pre-records.

It is also Hugo Day. The announcement of the finalists is due to start in under an hour. I won’t be able to watch as I have work to do.

The outside world continues to be grim, and social media has descended into poltical point-scoring so I’m mostly avoiding it.

Coronavirus – Day #24

~ Cheryl

Slowly but surely I am running out of urgent things to do. I might actually be able to enjoy some of that free time at home that everyone else is talking about soon. Of course there are plenty of non-urgent things, or at least slightly less-urgent things, to be doing. I’m not expecting to be bored any time soon.

Today marked the last of my near-future convention cancellations. Finncon 2020 is no more. However, the Finns have taken the decision to roll everything forward to next year. The 2020 convention has become the 2021 convention with the same location, guests and so on. There’s talk of some virtual events this summer, but I don’t suppose it would be very easy to have a virtual sauna.

This does mean that I won’t be visiting Finland at all this year, unless I make a special trip once the panic is all over. Maybe I should go in the winter. There are, after all, things to do.

The next physical trip that I have planned is to an academic convention in Germany in September. I’m keeping my paws crossed for that one.

I made a pot of chili in the slow cooker today. That will keep me fed for several days.

Coronavirus – Day #23

~ Cheryl

Today was a little bit of Wizard’s Tower work then finishing off the editing for my next radio show. This one will have a big feature on taking care of your mental health during lockdown, plus my fabulous Venezuelan friend, Tamsin Clarke. Regular followers will be pleased to hear that, despite doing an interview over Zoom, Tamsin and I kept our clothes on for the whole thing.

Social media in the UK today has been mainly about the government’s threat to ban outdoor exercise if people don’t stop flocking to parks. Reaction seemed to be split between those people stressed out by having to stay indoors, and those stressed out by fear of catching the virus. Me, I’m happy to stay at home as much as possible. I note that Pilates was developed as a means of keeping fit while a prisoner of war. Most people should be able to do some exercise. As far as I’m concerned the big issue is not space, but shortness of breath.

I’ve just seen a report that Boris Johnson has been admitted to hospital for tests. There’s no means of knowing how serious this is.

Elsewhere there are reports that the US Federal Government has seized a shipment of vital medical supplies bound for Barbados. There have been earlier reports that Trump has also intercepted shipments paid for by individual state governments within the USA. The word for this is piracy. Meanwhile the British newspapers are apparently demanding that we sue the Chinese for reparations over the virus. I’m assuming that they will agree provided that they can sue us over the opium wars. Goodness only knows where it is going to end.

Coronavirus – Day #22

~ Cheryl

Today was all about Zoom again. I now have three interviews in the can for next week’s radio show, and there was the convention that I have just posted about.

The convention featured some breakout rooms in which we attendees got to chat. It was interesting to hear from people around the world who are being affected by the pandemic in different ways. The two most extreme experieneces were both from the USA. One person had been in strict quarantine for 30 days, the other said hardly anyone locally was taking self-isolation seriously.

Several people bemoaned the lack of physical contact with others, which I am not finding a problem but I totally understand. Some were happy being able to spend more time with their families, but one person reported folks on a parent chat group who just can’t cope with having the kids at home all the time.

Most people seemed to think that communities were coming together during the crisis, which is great to hear. Of course it also bepeaks a certain amount of privilege in that they must be comfortable being part of their local community. People from minority groups are often scared of their neighbours.

We spent quite a lot of time talking about the sort of fiction that might come out of this shared global experience. That too will be very varied, I suspect. Some people will find benefit in writing through the trauma. Some won’t be able to talk about it for a long time. And some will use the techniques of speculative fiction to talk about it obliquely.

Finally one piece of good news that I have noticed thanks to having it pointed out by my Finnish friend, Otto. Telephone spam has pretty much dried up. It used to be that when I worked from home I could expect 2 or 3 spam calls every day. I can’t rememeber when I last had one.

Oh, and I was sent a cake in the post. You know who you are. That was very kind of you. Thanks!

Coronavirus – Day #21

~ Cheryl

Wow, three weeks, doesn’t time fly?

I have been much more quiet on social media today as the insanity of yesterday has gone away. Juliet seems to have sold a good number of books, which is very welcome.

Instead today I have been doing interviews for next week’s radio show. The main focus of the show will be on mental health as I think we are all struggling a bit these days.

I also got the opportunity to watch some of HistFest: Lockdown, the online history festival that replaced the big event due to take place in London this weekend. My good friend Dan Vo was one of the presenters, and there were several other talks I found very interesting. The whole thing can be found online here.

By the way, if all goes according to plan then Dan and I will have some exciting news for you next week.

Tomorrow I get to attend my first ever virtual science fiction convention.

And finally, for those of you who have access to the BBC, this Mark Gatiss documentary about the great Aubrey Beardsley is well worth a watch.

The infection and death rates in the UK continue to accelerate. There were just short of 700 deaths reported today. For comparison, it appears that the number of people who die of the flu in the UK in an average winter is around 17,000. We only have 3,605 COVID-19 deaths in the UK at the moment, but the vast majority of those have occured in the last two weeks and things are getting worse.

Coronavirus – Day #20

~ Cheryl

Today has been a bit crazy. Not quite as crazy as the first time The Green Man’s Heir got to be a daily deal on Amazon. You can’t really expect the same results the second time around. Not when over 10,000 of you lovely people already own the book. But very pleasing all the same. That will mean a nice chunk of cash for Juliet.

And frankly I have been so busy that I haven’t worried much about the virus today. I gather that the infection and death rates are still increasing, and that the government is making more worthless promisies to do things that we all know it has no intention of doing. Quite why Bozo wants to go down in history as the man who killed thousands of his own people is a mystery to me, but I guess someone must be paying him well.

Anyway, I cooked today. Actual spag bol. Well, technically linguine bol, but we can’t be fussy these days. It was good, even though I forgot to put any chili in.

Tomorrow I start doing interviews for next week’s radio show.

Coronavirus – Day #19

~ Cheryl

As you can tell by the continued flurry of blog posts, life here continues to be very busy. Tomorrow, if all goes to plan, will be a whirlwind. More about that as and when it happens.

I was very pleased with how the radio show went. I suspect that I am one of the few presenters who has the ability to make shows at home. As a result I will be doing another show next week.

One of the things I did today was prepare another free story to go out. That’s something else for you to look out for tomorrow.

I see from the Public Health England website that the infection and death rates in the UK have started to accelerate again over the past couple of days. We are now running at over 500 deaths per day. That’s lower than the USA, but I suspect higher per head of population. This is not going to end well.

I’m seeing an increasing number of posts on Twitter from health service professionals angry at the lack of support they are getting. The more I see of this, the more it reminds me of the huge number of unnecessary deaths in WWI. The UK had more than twice as many military casualties in WWI than in WWII, despite the later conflict being longer, with deadlier weapons, and a much greater geographic spread. Much of that, I understand it, can be put down to incompetence and penny-pinching by government and military command. This isn’t my period of history, so I’m happy to be told I’ve been taken in by popular myth, but many of us who have seen the final episode of Blackadder Goes Forth can’t ever forget it. I don’t want us to be having to make things like that about health service workers today.

Coronavirus – Day #18

~ Cheryl

Today was a day for me to be visible, so I went out.

Well actually that wasn’t the reason. I was starting to run out of fresh food, and today was forecast to be fine weather. If I was going to have to queue to get into a grocery store I didn’t want to have to do so in the rain. So today had to be the day for the expedition.

I decided to try the big Tesco mid-afternoon. I figured it would not be too busy at that time on the Tuesday. Even so there must have been around 100 people in the store. However, it was all very smoothly marshalled. The staff were great, and everyone behaved themselves. This was a great relief after some of the stories I have been seeing on Twitter. And I only had to queue for about 10 minutes to get in.

Also the car started, which was a relief. That meant I was able to buy a lot more that I could carry.

There was plenty of food in the store. Certain things were close to unobtainable: flour, pasta and rice were all in short supply. And there are certain brands that Tesco are not stocking during the emergency. But I came away with almost everything I wanted. I even got some eggs, so there may be some baking experiments in the coming days. There was plenty of toilet paper. Not that I needed any. I don’t go through it that quickly and I have one pack of 9 in store.

Aside from that it has been a very busy day. There was all of the social media fuss over Trans Day of Visibility. There was the Unjust Cause cover reveal. And I’ve just put a new issue of Salon Futura online. I’ll talk more about this tomorrow, but if you are keen to read it you can find it here.

Oh, and I watched the first episode of Batwoman, which was very promising.

Coronavirus – Day #17

~ Cheryl

I was hoping to get lots done today. I did, just not all of the things I expected to get done. This isolation thing is turning out to be exceptionally busy.

In theory you were supposed to get a new issue of Salon Futura today. In practice it is not going to happen. And I’m certainly not planning to stay up all night making it happen. It will be there tomorrow, which is shaping up to be an even busier day than today.

In other news, I finished off editing this week’s radio show today, so that will be broadcast on Wednesday as scheduled. Many thanks to all of the people who agreed to be interviewed.

Also the hardcovers of Juliet McKenna’s Tales of Einarinn books should be available today. Amazon appears to be having issues getting them, or the paperbacks, on sale, but given the state of the world right now that could be for a whole variety of reasons. I’m happy to allow them a little slack.

In other news I’m pleased to see that the numbers of new virus cases and new deaths in the UK have been fairly flat for the past few days. That may be a sign that the restrictions on movement are starting to take effect. For a full-blown epidemic those numbers should get larger each day. Then again, I suspect that numbers of cases are being massively under-reported because people with mild symptoms don’t want to bother the over-stretched health services. Who knows?

Coronavirus – Day #16

~ Cheryl

Today was a cooking day. I made a batch of prawn and lobster risotto. That sounds pretty posh, but actually it is a mostly storecupboard meal. It needs an onion, but they keep well. Other than that it is rice, a tin of lobster soup, some frozen prawns, and seasoning. I flung in some sherry as well. Dead easy really, unless you start cooking the risotto before defrosting the prawns, which is a bit silly. You can tell I hadn’t cooked it for a while.

I have spent most of the day recording and editing interviews for Wednesday’s radio show. I have 8 interviews altogether, from different places around the world. While most people have similar experiences of government-mandated shutdowns, attitudes towards the effectiveness of government responses vary wildly. Hopefully it will be an interesting show.

Coronavirus – Day #15

~ Cheryl

One of the things that the current crisis has laid bare is just how international and connected our world now is, or at least can be.

On the one hand, my local residents’ group has sent round an email asking whether people are lonely, and offering to host a meeting by some strange new software system called Zoom.

On the other hand I have spent the day on Zoom, Google Hangouts and Facebook. I have given a talk on trans history to an LGBT+ youth group in Somerset. I have recorded interviews for my next radio show with people in France, Germany and the USA. I have chatted to friends in Finland and Greece. And I have participated in a committee meeting in the USA.

I don’t have the time to be lonely.

Coronavirus – Day #14

~ Cheryl

Two weeks in, and my life shows no sign of slowing down. Today has been mostly a Wizard’s Tower and Ujima Radio day. Huge thanks are due to all of the lovely people who agreed to be recorded for a slot on my show.

Today was also the final episode of Star Trek: Picard. I’ll have a lot more to say about this in Salon Futura next week, but basically I think that Michael Chabon has done a good job in what was a very difficult task.

The national news has been abuzz with the fact that both the Prime Minister and Health Secretary have tested positive for COVID-19. I’m not in the least bit surprised. When a junior health minister announced that she had tested positive a couple of weeks ago I expected the entire Cabinet to go down with it. This thing is incredibly infectious and also has a long incubation time, which is why it spreads so effectively. The UK had 2885 new cases and 181 new deaths today alone, and there’s no sign of it slowing down because most of the people testing positive now are people who have had it since before the lockdown began. As the only people getting tested in the UK are the very rich, no one has any idea how many actual cases there are.

That said, the vast majority of cases are in London. Most of the rest of the country is relatively quiet. Here’s hoping that it stays that way.