"The Great Sickness"

 I was reading a blog yesterday that referred to the Pandemic as "The Great Sickness". Rather apt, I guess.

Life continues on in what is now the new normal. We no longer hug, shake hands, slap each other on the backs, instead we nod (from a distance of 1.5m or so, depending on the State you live in and what the levels of lockdown are). We talk online. We ring each other. We send parcels and letters. We alienate ourselves from the world for the sake of the world. It's an odd place to be right now.

One thing that seems to be happening a very great deal over here is everyone, because they are home a whole lot more than they used to be, are renovating! Bunnings is doing a wild trade.

We had a vicious storm go through a week ago. Serious amounts of hail and thousands of dollars worth of damage. We as a country are cash-strapped as it is, without this extra level of dramas, but it is getting into our storm season here in Queensland, with Summer less than a month away, so I guess it is to be expected. We are already dealing with extreme heats of 37-39 degrees Celsius, and it's not even Summer yet!

Recently our Reject Shop (a nice affordable cheap shop that seems to stock every mortal thing) went into an agreement with Britain's Tesco's. I'm loving it! We have been told that other stores (Coles I think, although it could also be Woolworths) will soon be stocking ASDA and Marks & Spencer products soon as well. About 7 years ago there was an incident when Coles stocked Waitrose Christmas Puddings as they did a deal with Heston Blumethal, who did the Christmas Puddings for Waitrose. I'm definitely not against our trading with our Motherland!

As it gets hotter here, and closer to Christmas, I always think of my time spent in England during the Winters, and of the snow and the cold, which still makes much more sense to me for a Christmas setting than sun, and surf and excess heat ever did.

As seems to be the normal at the moment, I have spent time these last few extremely hot days, browsing the libraries of the world, and came across this lovely little video of sleighing in New York in 1898. The video comes from the Library of Congress, and reminds one of simpler times, don't you think?

https://www.loc.gov/item/00694381/