The Bluebell Web

Another beautiful and hot day. I went early for my exercise walk, taking a detour through the woods where I spotted this bluebell in the sunlight with it's own web and spider. A bit of gardening and some reading in the sun in the afternoon. I then spoke by phone with a friend in the next road whose birthday is this weekend - she was telling me that in the war she was evacuated to Stony Stratford which is only 2 miles from the town I grew up in - it's a small world!

Day 55 / Day 47 of Full Lockdown (for my record only)
UK deaths up 346 to 31,587, Italy up 194 to 30,395, Spain up 179 to 26,478 (Spain has one of the highest deaths per million despite a lot of testing and what was a strict lockdown). UK testing is near target levels, but it still concerns me that one of the 6 WHO preconditions for lifting lockdown includes the capacity to detect, test, isolate and treat every case and trace every contact - which as I've said before is missing from the UK's 5 tests and we appear to be not capable of for at least several weeks.

The briefing focused on public transport and it was striking to hear that even if public transport operated at the same volumes, in order to adhere to the 2m distancing rule it would only be able to transport 10% of the passenger numbers.  The government is investing £2bn in schemes to support cyclists and pedestrians in getting to work to avoid gridlock if they tried to switch to cars. There's to be a National Cycling Plan, potholes are to be filled and pedestrians will also need more space through the widening of pavements. A green recovery will also help reduce the 20,000 who die each year from vehicle emissions.