Although I had another long night's sleep, it didn't take me quite so long to wake up and get active, so I walked for an hour before and and hour after lunch today, as I have done several times lately. It seems to work well. I went to Thompsons Park and spotted a single coot on the pond among the scores of warring mallard drakes, alternating between chasing off mating rivals and pursuing the smaller number of ducks. Conflict and courtship look much the same to an untrained eye. Mallards make a display posture, standing out of the water with wings a flutter in a controlled pose which doesn't lead to them taking off. Drakes do it most often, but also the ducks from time to time. When I tried to photograph this behaviour, it was as if they all went on strike and refused to display for the benefit of the camera.
I was glad to l earn this morning that interviews are finally taking place for the post of Chaplain in Ibiza, after two year wait, what with pandemic disruption and the new hurdles of managing appointments and employing a British, if not another expat with post brexit regulations now effective. A great deal of persistence and prayer has been invested in keeping church fellowship going there, not least seven months without even a visit from locum priest. I'd like to think that kind of spiritual determination is being showed elsewhere, not only in the diocese in Europe but in those parts of the Church in Wales feeling the impact of clergy shortages and parochial rationalisation.
It's good to hear that covid infection and hospitalisation rates are starting to slow, a little quicker in Wales than in England, perhaps because the earlier Welsh lock-down offered a head start. Now there's a new worry however, as the South African covid variant has been identified in eight different postcode areas of England in routine testing, perhaps a hundred cases in all. Most worrying is that eleven infected people had no contact with anyone coming in from South Africa. They may have acquired it from an unknown third party - so called 'community transmission' of the virus. The entire population in an area now has to be tested to identify whoever carries the virus without symptoms and is infecting others. It's an unending nightmare for public health officials.
It was very interesting to hear a passing mention of testing sewage water for covid, being employed to identify areas where the new variants have or haven't taken hold. It's public health procedure that's been used to trace many kinds of toxins over the years. When the West was getting hysterical at the onset of the pandemic this time last year and wanting to blame Wuhan exclusively for the covid19 outbreak, sewage testing revealed that the covid19 strain had been found in the waters of certain municipalities in Europe and other parts of the world dating back three months before the Wuhan outbreak. A fact so conveniently ignored by Trump's non-diplomacy.
It's not necessarily the case that a fast spreading virus mutation comes to life exclusively in one location. Or at least, the multiple origin factor must be disproved. Ecosystem breakdown all over the planet is thought to be a contributory factor to viruses crossing the special barrier to humans and then evolving. A healthy biosphere normally neutralises this possibility in its complex interaction with many such toxins, but biosphere failures aren't unique to one place if the same conditions persist in different places, due to pollution and global warming. I think we'll be hearing a lot more about sewage testing as part of an early warning system for new virus variants in the coming months. Thank heavens there are now five different successfully proven vaccines in the global mass production line. We need them all.
Ashley called to tell me he'd been offered a vaccine shot, through his GP practice in Riverside. I'm four months older than he is, so it may not be long before we hear from our GPs. It all depends on how each post code age category is organised I guess. Clare rang up to find out if there was a stand-by list we could get our names on, but it seems that what happened to Diana and Pete last week was a one-off, as there was a batch of Pfizer vaccines which needed to be used up more rapidly than had been scheduled for, and this was already finished. More than eight million vaccinations done to date. The pace is pick up from day to day as the distribution and workflow improves. An impressive feat indeed.
No telly tonight, just for a change.
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