Vapid

Whilst I was still in bed, I caught my old pal Adam on WhatsApp as he walked around an eerily deserted Melbourne in the evening. That was a great morning treat.

Cat food when left out of the packet for more than one hour emits an unsavoury cloying smell and the sound of them eating is like someone with a wet mouth in your ear hole. I’m still falling to understand the net benefit of cats.

The Labour Party leadership results have been announced today, somewhat drowned out by coronavirus hysteria. There’s no doubt in my mind that a long-term Labour government would prepare national services better, even though a calamity like coronavirus is always going to be difficult to manage. Labour has hopefully learnt lessons from the wave of privatisation it initiated in the NHS in the Blair years. If the private sector isn’t held accountable it results in situations like the Carillion and Southern Rail debacles. The popular narrative that ‘Labour trashes the economy’ is so obviously incorrect that it’s barely worth responding to, however I do believe that will always be used against the party in an election campaign because of the unfortunate timing of the 2008/09 global recession and their most recent final year of government. Keir Starmer seems like a unifying leader and there is much reason to be hopeful, although I voted for the excellent Lisa Nandy in the hope we might for once be radical enough to avoid a white, middle-aged southern man.

On my evening walk I saw a pheasant in a meadow and a cyclist returning with a bag stuffed full of what appeared to be foraged goods. This is relatively normal in Cambridge so I can’t attribute it to extra resourcefulness during the tribulations of coronavirus. I also saw this sign and suggest to the bowling committee that there may currently be bigger questions to face than whether someone vapes on the green. I’ve always found vape fumes to smell very nice when I’ve been caught in a haze of them.

On the way back I sneezed in Sainsbury’s, which wasn’t good timing now that everyone is on high alert about the health of people around them.