As parents we can hope for nothing better for our children than to see them become happy confident individuals who meet the world on their own terms unafraid to rebel and to challenge stereotypes!
I could not be prouder as a parent that my intelligent, beautiful daughter is just such a spirit.
Prom tonight. Stunning and laughing at the world. Poppy and her best friend daring to be different and super cool!
Love you Poppy!
With her GCSEs finished Poppy and her friends met on the beach to celebrate and bid farewell to a few books.
Well what a weekend! We have spent every minute out in the fresh air and sunshine.
We left the house Saturday morning and headed up to Seven Mile Beach for the annual Flowers Sea Swim. An open water event in the turquoise waters along the western edge of Grand Cayman.
Conditions were perfect and while obviously not in the race (the Olympic swimmers and local swimming clubs have that sewn up) we did finish in very respectable times and both managed new personal bests!
Quick change in the car park and still salty we headed to Camana Bay and hopped on the taxi (a speed boat) to Kaibo with Ali and Eli for dinner upstairs. We sat outside on the balcony overlooking the beach.
Cocktails and an eight course tasting menu ensued and perhaps the nicest meal we have had here in Cayman. If you ever get the chance I highly recommend it!
Sated, salty and sleepy we headed back across the North Sound by boat. Wind in our hair we were treated to a beautiful starry sky.
Sunday morning and off to Coconut Joe’s for a Fathers Day breakfast.
Back home grabbed my dive bag and headed up to Latern Point to and Dive Tech to meet Toby so we could complete the practical part of our SDI Solo Diver Course.
Kitted out like astronauts with extra air tanks we completed a series of underwater drills and proficiency tests. The last of which we had to pause mid exercise.
We were hanging in mid water fifty feet down and about 10 meters from the mini wall. We had successfully switched to our alternate air supplies and were about to deploy surface marker buoys when an ancient loggerhead turtle swam past us.
Time stood still as this living relic of the age of the dinosaurs appeared and swam slowly past us only two or three meters away. A truly historic animal it’s massive shell covered in barnacles. We held our breaths a hovered motionless as it swam slowly past almost close enough to touch.
A once in a life time encounter with a truly stunning animal.
We surfaced on a high qualified as Solo Divers
Another quick change in a car park and off to Poppy’a annual artistic swimming show. An evening of glittering costumes, banging tunes and amazing talent.
Here in Grand Cayman the expanse of pristine white sand that runs for nearly seven miles along the western edge of the island is perhaps the islands premiere tourist attraction. Along the beach lie most of the islands four and five star resorts.
In the last few weeks however the beach has changed. Successive storms have caused major beach erosion and scoured much of the famous beach away.
From its southern end for about two miles to the north the beach is almost completely gone! Replaced instead by the sea which at the point it meets the wall is now several feet deep. In place five to six feet deep.
Building in the last ten years has encroached on the high tide mark, this has meant that during Nor Westors and storms high waves collide with these wall. Where in the past waves would have run up past the tide line and deposited their load of sand further up the beach the waves now hit the walls and roll back with almost full force carrying their load of sand out to sea.
This process of scouring has accelerated over the last few years as more walls and buildings have been built along the beaches edge. Particularly at the southern end. Where the beach used to be two or thirty meters wide it reduced and reduced and now in many places is gone.
Local land marks like the Royal Palms Beach Club are being lost.
In the case of Royal Palms the beach club is in danger of collapsing altogether. The Coral Beach Club has no beach and nor does the Marriott Hotel.
In the past, at the end of storm season the sand would be driven up the beach deposited. It could be raked back and the beach repaired using a couple of tractors or JCBs. But now where the walls are the sand is carried out to sea and along the coast.
The process of repairing the beach has now become a major civil engineering project, one that could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions.
Instead of a simple repair as in the past this year the erosion has reached a tipping point and now restoring the beach will have to involve dredging or importing thousands of tonnes of sand. Going forward beach defences and groynes will need to be installed.
But in the meantime Seven Mile Beach will need to be renamed Five Mile Beach.
Here is a little reminder of what was here. Drone footage starting at Royal Palms…
The Harvest Moon signals the time of the mass spawning of Coral all over the Caribbean Sea.
It is an event that only takes place at night.
So last night and again tonight we slipped beneath dark waves to hover weightless in space.
It’s was like visiting a strange alien world full of mysterious creatures.
To the uninitiated the idea of diving at night may seem terrifying but once you get past the initial panic of the first dive subsequent dives are just amazing.
In an octopus’s garden under the sea.
Crab is back on the menu.
There be mermaids.
Night diving is just wonderful. It’s like a strange dreamland.
A couple of weeks ago an email popped into my inbox advertising a day trip to Little Cayman. A day of diving the world famous Bloody Bay Wall.
Now normally there are only two ways to get to Little Cayman.
The first, by plane would get you there OK but after diving you should not fly for 18 to 24 hours. Being at high altitude after diving can cause the residual nitrogen in your blood to give you the bends and this can cause all sorts of serious problems like muscle aches, embolism and death.
The second is on the Cayman Aggressor. A live aboard dive boat that offers a week long cruise around all three islands. Now it is on my list of things to do but it is hardly a day trip.
This, therefore was something new.
The proposal was to set out from Ocean Frontiers on their 46ft Newton speedboat and cross the 70 miles of open water between Grand and Little, undertake three dives and then head back the same day.
Three dives in rapid succession with tight surface intervals. Air would not cut it only Nitrox, or enriched air would do.
Enriched air or Nitrox has 10% more oxygen than our atmosphere, that’s a third more than normal, it helps prevent nitrogen build up and reduces the risk of getting bent.
Air =21% oxygen, Nitrox=32% oxygen. This is the normal mix ratio in recreational diving. You can get higher mixes buts real specialist diving so for this explanation 32% works.
Divers had to be Nitrox certified.
Well I am, I did the course two weeks ago!
Serendipity.
I didn’t even think about it. I hit reply and applied for a place. Bang to flash, about 15 seconds. I then emailed a few of my friends to make sure they knew about it.
Two tense but busy days of waiting later I got an email to say I had a place. The email went on to say that demand had been so high that space in the boat had gone in under an hour. They had laid on a second boat. It also filled the same day.
The communications with Ocean Frontiers made it clear that the trip was not for the faint hearted. We would be a long way from help if anything went wrong and plenty could. It is after all Hurricane Season and we have been experiencing wicked little flash storms arriving out of clear skies for weeks. For this trip to happen a lot of things had to go right.
4:30am Sunday morning arrived. My kit had been packed the night before so grabbing this I headed out and met a Toby, my dive buddy, and we set out for the East End and adventure.
As we drove along by he sea we could not help but note as the sky lightened how calm the sea was. It was like glass in the dim dawn light. Not a single wave not a breath of wind.
We arrived at 6am to be greeted by fresh brewed Colombian Coffee and jumped aboard our designated boat. We set up our kit and then sat back to watch he sunrise.
At 6:30am we pushed away from the dock and got under way. The crew served more coffee and mini pastries and we sat and watched the sea roll by.
Cayman fell away behind us shrinking to a black line on the horizon and then disappeared. We were out of sight of land racing over some of the deepest water in the world in two small boats under an endless sky.
About an hour and a half into our crossing we were joined by a pod of bottle nose dolphins who played in the boat’s wake and swam alongside us for a while but our 20 knots speed meant they could not match us for long and soon they fell behind and once again we had the world to ourselves.
At half nine a cloud appeared on the horizon and below it a line on the horizon. We could see Little Cayman. On both boats we crowed onto the top deck to watch our destination draw closer.
The crossing had been better than hoped for, the conditions ideal. We had our first dive briefings as we crossed so as not to waste time when we reached our destination.
Ahead of us we could see the Central Caribbean Marine Institute dive boat and the Cayman Aggressor making preparations for their first dive of the day. Into this idilic scene came racing our boats. Two marauding dive boats charging at full pelt into their blissful morning.
I think the only way we could have made more of a spectacle of our arrival was if we had been blasting out Ride if Valkyries as we hurtled in.
We had all begun putting on our gear ready for a quick start while still a couple of miles out while the boat was still going at full tilt. Buddy checks done we were ready.
The captain killed the engine and we literally piled off the back of the boats and into the crystal sea and straight over the wall.
It was stunning.
I thought diving in Grand Cayman was beautiful, and it is, but it pales in comparison to the pristine reef and waters that surround its little sister.
Vivid colours, far greater coral coverage, far bigger corals and sponges that were huge.
On Grand whip corals are about as thick as your arm, here they are as thick as you torso.
And the fish! Teaming, the waters are alive. Hundreds and hundreds of conch, the ubiquitous giant sea snails, meandered sedately over the sea bed at the top of the wall.
Our first dive was Randy’s Gazebo. We dropped vertically down through a chimney, narrow, tight and dark emerging 80ft down on the bloody bay wall. We swam through a coral arch and along the face of the wall before returning, reluctantly, to the boat.
While we were underwater the crew deployed shade sails turning the boat into the perfect spot to relax on a sunny day.
A 45 minute surface interval ensued more coffee and the boat manoeuvred to our next site. Nancy’s Cup of Tea (no I don’t know who thinks of these names).
We dropped into 13ft of water and slipped over the wall. We were immediately caught by a very strong current a and swept along the reef face.
We were joined by a Caribbean Reef Shark, a huge black barracuda. The latter a monster of a fish who gave us all pause as these buggers can be aggressive, unlike the sharks. However I chased him away when he was getting too close.
We bobbed along like balloons for a while just enjoying the scenery before once again shallowing up and then making our way back against the current to the boat. It was like fighting a gale!
Once back on deck we readied for dive three and as a group revised our dive plan, instead of heading to the eastern end of the wall we would go west and drop back into the current and do a drift dive letting the current do all the work.
Normally, the boat moors up and you do a circular swim that brings you back to the boat, in a drift dive you drop into the current and let it carry you. The boat follows on the surface and picks you up at the end wherever you surface.
We dropped off the boat and onto the face of the wall. We hovered at 60ft down over 6000ft of water and off we went!
Five world class sites in one dive! Three sharks it was stunning.
We were picked up by the boat, elated and with the last diver on board we set off back to Grand tired but very happy.
What an adventure, we were looked after from start to finish. The team on the boat really took customer care to the next level. The diving at Little Cayman and on The Bloody Bay Wall was world class. The trip to Little Cayman was amazing. A fantastic day.
Can I sum it up in two pictures?
Ocean Frontiers explores Little Cayman’s Bloody Bay Wall
Today Jim and I took our inaugural Nitrox dives.
We jumped on the one of the new boats at Sunset House and headed out to the Kittiwake with Victoria, Toby and Ty.
It was raining. I can report we were wetter on the surface than under the water!
The first dive was great and as an added bonus we were treated to Silversides.
A really nice dive. Our second dive was to the Ora Verde. This is the wreck of a sunken banana boat scuttled by its crew after the captain refused to share the profit from an illicit second cargo…
Here the benefits of Nitrox really became clear. We were able to dive for nearly an hour at 50ft.
We would have run out of air long before we reached our decompression limits!
We found green moray eels and my personal favourite A drum fish!
By the time we got back the weather had cleared up enough for a beer and to watch the sunset.
James has been out with Cayman Eco Divers. He heads out regularly to clean, replant and work on the coral nursery. This week was coral cleaning.
James and I qualified for our Nitrox certification this week.
Nitrox is air enriched with oxygen.
Scuba divers normally dive with compressed atmospheric air. This means it has a 21% oxygen content.
Now this is fine but one of the big risks in diving is posed by nitrogen. At depth it is dissolved from the air you breath into your blood. Where it can accumulate and form bubbles. In turn these bubbles can accumulate in joints or in your mussels.
These bubbles can cause a range of problems and can lead to decompression illness or the bends.
After drowning the bends is a diver’s biggest fear so much of what we do, the way we plan dives, surface intervals are all designed to reduce this risk. We ascend slowly and have safety stops to allow our bodies to purge of nitrogen.
However some remains in your system and over successive dives you accumulate residual nitrogen. This residual nitrogen has to be taken into account when planning subsequent dives and so places limits on what you can do, how deep you can go and how long you can stay down in order to minimise risk.
Nitrox offers a way to mitigate some of this risk and presents some real advantages over air for divers, ok so it poses a different set of risks but it’s a trade off and let’s face it we are diving which in of its self is pretty mad.
Nitrox is shorthand for oxygen enriched air.
Nitrox is any mix of air which has a greater percentage of oxygen than normal air e,g, 22%+ up to 40% oxygen.
The most common blend tends to be around 32% (a range from 30% to a little over 32%). Specialist divers and professionals use other mixes but recreational divers do not tend to.
By increasing the proportion of oxygen in your tank you reduces the nitrogen load your body takes and reduces absorption of the gas. As a result it means less recovery time on the surface between dives, longer time at depth* during repetitive dives and it also feels great, you feel less tired at the end of your dives.
* Recreational divers only go down to about 100ft. So here I am talking about 50ft to 100ft.
Greater depth, going below 100ft (120ft really) means additional training and special prep. As below 100ft there is the danger of oxygen toxicity which can cause convulsions and hallucinations. Not ideal. Increasing the proportion of oxygen with Nitrox ups this risk so it is not used bellow 100ft below in recreational diving. But above that it’s great!
Nitrox also changes what you can do in a dive day or when out on a boat.
Living and working in the Caribbean during the Pandemic has been an education.
We closed down early here, schools shut in March and remained closed for the remainder of the school year. Life went into deep freeze with strictly enforced Suppression Measures controlling all movement, all meetings and many aspect of everyday life.
What followed school closure and the move to distance learning was an experiment in education and flipped learning. We all had to adapt quickly to the pivot to distance learning and to the technologies available to us. As a government school we faced an enormous technological barrier as many of our homes did not have computers or even tablets.
Teachers had to find ways to effectively teach using commonly available tools like Zoom and WhatsApp. To find ways to ensure that the learning to date was consolidated and that some new learning took place.
The aim being to reduce learning loss.
Perhaps the biggest challenge was maximising engagement and keeping attendance high. Here the importance of community and the relationship between home and school came to the fore and proved to be the decisive element in making distance learning work.
From day one our mantra was about developing a learning partnership with parents (read significant adult, older sibling). They were to be our partners in every sense. We altered our planning so it was accessible to the layperson, we held weekly meetings with our class parents to review the week gone and plan the next one. We had one to one coaching sessions for parents of students with additional needs so they could more effectively support them.
We trained our community. As a result we achieved good levels of regular engagement with 75%+ of our students.
Students’ work was submitted by email, text, voice note and by photo. Feedback was by every method barring smoke signal!
We even had a system wide inspection carried out by our local equivalent of OFSTED to review the quality of what we were doing. It included lessons observations. Just let that sink in.
Staff gave everything long days and seven day weeks. They developed whole new ways of working. Whole class teaching and small groups through Zoom and Teams, a hybrid of synchronous and asynchronous teaching using whatever technology we could make work and supplementing it with paper packs and activities kept learning going.
Of course there were challenges and families that were reluctant or unable to engage and these became the focus of the work of the SLT. Multiple calls and discussions to slowly reel them into the partnership.
The year ended, for my team, with June but we ran on for an extra week to wrap up the year.
We were exhausted but I can not tell you how proud I am to have been part of the extraordinary group of educators that made it happen.
No, I am not going to claim it was the same as or as effective as being at school but given the challenges, the obstacles we faced it was incredible and an achievement one of which we can all be justifiably proud.
Principals have had to work throughout the summer break. Yes we have had a bit more of a work life balance and been able to take three day weekends but we have been working the rest of the time. Certainly we have worked far more than any other summer I can remember and that includes the times when one or another of my schools had major construction work going on in the break. Over the summer we have been planning how we reopen. But we are all well and we live in our little island bubble, I guess that’s just the price we pay.
The island has been incredibly successful at controlling the spread of Covid. Most of the population has been tested and we have moved to minimal suppression. In point of fact we could probably open the island internally and keep our borders closed. Life could go on as usual. Sort of.
But the key to the islands success, so far, has been caution. The Government, who have done an incredible job, are not about to throw away the sacrifices made to date by rushing to open. So we are planning a staggered return to school in August with only half the students returning. The rest will continue with distance teaching for a further two weeks before returning.
There will be no whole school assemblies, no mixing between classes, staggered lunchtimes and playtime, masks, gallons of soap and hand sanitiser, social distancing. Lessons on social distancing and a focus on unpacking and dealing with the emotional impact of Covid, shelter in place, school closure and reopening and once settled baseline assessments so we can see where we are and what we need to do.
Today I am sat here putting the finishing touches to our opening plan and guidance for our community and I am trying to work out do we bubble by class or by year group? I think classes but if we do should we put our twins (8 pairs and a set of triplets across the school) into the same classes? After all, surely living in the same home but being in separate bubbles during the day makes no sense.
I think I will take an hour or two off and have a dive and think about this quandary while I blow a few bubbles.
Today marks 22 years of being married to this gorgeous lady.
I am the luckiest guy in the world and have been for 22 years because on August 1st 1998 I married this beautiful lady.
My soul mate.
We were just out of university when we met on the 281 bus, kids really and now have children of our own.
We have grown together.
She is so much a part of my life, of me that I can’t not imagine anything but we!
I still don’t know why she agreed but I am so glad she did.
She has been my best friend and my constant support.
She is the most patient, loving, generous, caring, giving and forgiving person I have ever met.
She has made everyday better and richer.
She still laughs at my jokes.
She has given me the two most beautiful children and been the most amazing mother to both of them.
She has made our house a home no matter where we are in the world.
She gives me the strength and courage to face the world.
She makes me a better man.
She makes me happy.
My Dearest Victoria, my love, Happy 22nd Anniversary.
Back in 2002 when James was born I started taking digital pictures.
Life in South London was gray but since 2016 my world has become blue.
Spending time underwater has changed the hue of our world and given us a whole new perspective on life.
Today James and I had two dives over the North Wall and it took my dive count to 150.
In that time I have dived with sharks, through caves, in wrecks, at night, with mermaids, from boats and with turtles.
Not bad in under four years.
Our last day’s diving was the 24th March before the Shelter in Place came into force.
Imagine 3 months living on a Caribbean island 100m from the sea and not being able to set foot on the beach!
Two weeks ago the beaches opened for exercise and we were allowed to swim again. So for the last two weeks I have been getting a mile a day in, which has been nice.
Then last week the Government announced that as of Sunday 21st June diving could recommence!
So Jim, Cissy and I headed up to the East End and Ocean Frontiers for our first dive in three months. As you can imagine new Social Distancing precautions were in place on the boat but once in the water we were away.
Our first dive was Jack McKeeny’s a dive down through a twisting cave system in the reefs eventually emerging 101ft down the Cayman Wall. We were joined at points of our dive by two big Caribbean Reef Sharks.
The largest of whom was called Victoria. She was beautiful and completely unfazed by us.
Our second dive took in Snapper Hole and the Dragon’s Lair. We explored more caves and crevices patrolled by big silver Tarpon.
The icing on the cake for the dive was an encounter with a huge Goliath Grouper.
A great return to diving! Thanks Ocean Frontiers.
We live in the Upside Down now. A world turned topsy-turvy and this is our new normal.
Today is the 10th May 2020 and we are going into Week 8 of our lockdown here in the Cayman Islands.
Curfew is part of our everyday and strict social distancing rules are in place.
The police helicopter patrols the sky day and night and the marine patrol boat ploughs up and down the coast checking beaches are clear.
Fixed roadblocks quarter the island and act as checkpoints.
Everyone has to carry photo ID. There are strict penalties for anyone found out in violation to the rules.
Monday to Saturday we are under Soft Curfew from 5:00am to 7:00pm and over night Hard Curfew is in place.
We are allowed out of our homes three days per week, for about two hours to buy essentials and for one hour per day to exercise.
When you are allowed out you have to wear a mask if you cannot maintain the required social distancing gaps.
Hand washing or the use of alcohol gels and sprays are practiced with a rigour that would make OCD sufferers proud.
On Sundays we are under Hard Curfew and cannot leave our homes at all.
Only registered key workers with government passes are an exception to these rules.
All businesses are closed, apart from garages, supermarkets and restaurants (for delivery and collection only).
A number or well known local business have gone bust already and more will follow.
The beaches and swimming pools are closed.
There is no diving!
Schools have been closed for two months and we have two more to go before the summer holidays.
We are likely to be closed to cruise ships for the remainder of the year. In bound flights will be limited for the same time and anyone arriving will have a mandatory two weeks quarantine.
If the virus burns itself out and there is no more local transmission or community transmission we will be able to open up internally but we will remain isolated from the rest of the world.
An island literally and metaphorically cut off.
In the meantime we adapt and learn how to do things differently.
With school closed I have learnt a lot about working from home and running a school remotely.
My office mark one has given way to something more permanent.
The first lesson is that when you work from home during a lockdown, you never leave work. You are literally at work 24/7. You never get to switch off. You never relax. You phone rings and beeps at all hours. You are on call constantly.
The second lesson is that you have to work so much harder and everything you need to do takes longer to achieve. It’s frustrating, simple conversion that would normally take seconds now need a phone call.
The third lesson is that even though you are working your socks off the quality of your output and effectiveness still does not match that of your normal day to day role.
The forth and final lesson is that the solution to providing any form of education is dependent on so many different factors. Ranging from the age of the children, the level of technology at home, how much support their parents can give, the home language, the teacher’s level of confidence with new technology, how many siblings there are in the house, poverty levels, social vulnerability and even the price of data.
Some houses only have a mobile phone and that’s it.
I have said before that WhatsApp and Zoom have been the heroes of the piece enabling frictionless uncomplicated two way access between home and school.
But to try to make remote learning work teachers are literally working seven days a week and long into the evenings.
The challenges are enormous.
Oh and we are being audited by the school inspection service.
Everyone feels guilty because they feel they are letting the students down.
Everyone is exhausted and close to burnout.
Everyone is anxious.
It is mentally and emotionally draining and I think we all have Stockholm Syndrome.
This is our ‘new normal’ in the Upside Down.
Some bake, others make, I write because it’s calorie free and less messy than painting.
I don’t write this blog because I have any illusions that I am a budding author, or a master wordsmith. I do it simply because I enjoy it and I wanted to capture this chapter in my family’s life.
It is in short, a self-indulgence.
Four years ago, when we set out on our adventure to experience life in another country, to widen our horizons, I started this blog.
There have been highs and lows, as you can see from this account, but when weighed in the balance it has been pretty amazing and we have been lucky.
This time has brought us closer together as a family. We have all grown and changed I think for the better.
But right now, like everyone else, I feel numb.
I cannot tell you how many times in the last month I have set out with the intention of writing and failed.
I have felt an an overwhelming compulsion to try to put into words the events and feelings of the last three months. Yet, emotional exhaustion and the realisation that nothing I could ever write can even begin to capture the magnitude of what is happening around us have halted me every time.
Telling tales of our little lives seems utterly frivolous. One questions the value of sharing my perspective at this time. I find myself thinking that in the face of what is happening in the world “what can I add?”
The scale of events is so massive, so incomprehensible. I might as well not bother.
Let’s face it, this is a global story with a cast of billions, with so many twist and turns as to make any attempt to record it meaningless.
How then does one even begin to write about their personal day to day experience of this? It is hubris to even consider it.
We are each but specks.
Motes of dust floating on a sunbeam.
Inconsequential.
Tiny.
But then so is a virus.
Maybe through the act of expression I can show defiance. Even if it only makes me feel a little bit better, then that’s enough. A sense of taking back some small measure of control at a time when we all feel pretty helpless.
So, here goes…
2020 arrived welcomed with fireworks and parties around the world. The dawn of a new decade. The world economy was buoyant and the roaring twenties were here. But along with the optimistic headlines news articles about a potentially new virus began to seep into the media and our collective consciousness. A few small articles at first about a disease in a China. A cluster of cases of a flu like disease in a place called Wuhan. So far away, so remote. Sad, but no threat.
Unwittingly we all watched the first embers of that distant fire fanned into flames.
Hundreds, then thousands became sick. The region was closed. The number of dead mounted and with morbid fascination we witnessed events unfold, oblivious to the true nature and scale of the threat. It was like something out of a film, and felt about as real.
The city was locked down, a hospital thrown up in mere days. We watched hazmat suit clad figures spraying chemicals, the army mobilised and Wuhan province turned into a police state. Drones were deployed to enforce lockdown.
We shook our heads at this over reaction to a ‘cold’. Sneering and arrogant in our united belief that it could not happen here. (Wherever here is for you). Confident that if in the unlikely event it did reach us we would deal with it just fine. Better than them.
In China, the fire raged but it was contained. No threat, we all thought.
Then it jumped the fire break.
The genie was out of the bottle. A case here, a case there and the floating embers ignited new fires wherever they touched down. Finding in our packed cities and busy lives the perfect tinder for a firestorm. Fires quietly started that would grow and make those in Australia months before seem insignificant.
Yet when the other countries began to close schools, introduce curfews and social distancing, to ‘lockdown’ we still looked on in disbelief.
“Surely it’s not that serious?”
Silently the fire spread and in so many cases the response to the spread still seemed like an over reaction. Increasingly it was becoming apparent, particularly as we learn more, we were all asleep at the wheel.
Then suddenly it all burst into flame and it became apparent that this wasn’t an outbreak it was a pandemic.
We finally woke up to the threat.
As the fires spread so did the panic and countries began to close down in earnest.
Too late to avert disaster. We had missed the early opportunity to limit the damage.
As a result we have seen ‘modern’ first world countries hit hard, Italy and Spain saw their health systems overwhelmed.
We have all watched agog as the death toll in Britain and America have continued their inexorable climb.
Today, in mid May, 31,000+ have died in the UK. That’s more than died in the Blitz. An event so seared into our collective consciousness that this week, the week of the 75th Anniversary of VE Day (Victory in Europe), this near mythical wartime spirit, the ‘Blitz Spirit’ is once again being evoked to in an attempt to bind the country together in common cause.
The concept of ‘flattening the curve’ has became a mantra, a rallying call and a war cry.
‘We are all in this together!’
As a result of missed opportunities this virus hasn’t just attacked us, it has put the global economy into intensive care.
It has divided countries and exposed an ugly side to societies. The debate is shifting and uncomfortable questions are being asked, uncomfortable views expressed.
“It effects the old more, I’m young and fit I’ll survive. I’d rather take my chances with the disease than go broke or be poor.”
“If the choice is life or lifestyle. I choose lifestyle, even if it means others die!”.
The debate is shifting, testing the ground between collective responsibility and individualism. Trying to save everyone vs saving ourselves.
Maybe that’s human nature.
Maybe that’s how we will survive as a species.
Maybe that’s just nature.
“We forge on, yes there will be many loses, loved ones will die, friends will die, the old will die but as a species, as individuals we will survive.”
“There may be a few million less of us, maybe even billions less. But maybe that’s the price we pay and won’t that be great for the environment and the economy?”
How many are we willing to allow die to keep capitalism alive? To keep some semblance of the old order?
As we are all sat at home worrying and alone with our thoughts we each face these questions in our own way. The uncertainty is eating us making us look back through rose tinted glasses at our recent past.
We somehow have forgotten the existential crisis that we were already facing runaway pollution, global warming, sea level rise, the death of coral, mass extinction, the global wealth vs polity gap. The 1%.
But somehow the fact that the threat was forty years away meant we did not have to think about it now, we could just drown out the gnawing anxiety with stuff. We could distract ourselves. After all there was nothing we could do as individuals, we were helpless.
The brainwashing of our consumerist society taught us to abrogate responsibility for tomorrow and live in the moment. And yes there were poor folk living in grinding poverty, but not us.
Tomorrow will take care of tomorrow.
There will be a solution before the crisis really happens don’t worry.
The more the issues were pushed in our faces, the more aware we became, the harder we tried to deny. The more strident the warning, the more strident the denial and the greater the attack on the credibility of individual messengers. Personal attacks on the individual designed to show they were unlikeable then we could legitimately ignore what they were saying.
Yet these same scientists are the ones who were going to magically solve all the problems down the line.
Collective cognitive dissonance.
The big difference now is the threat is here today, it’s affecting us now. We have to face it and we are just not emotionally prepared.
Life has changed and we talk about ‘a new normal’, but that’s an illusion. ‘Normal’ speaks of stability, surety even predictability. This disease does not allow that. Even now close to six months after the first cases in China we are finding new ways it expresses itself. New ways it effects and impacts us. Strokes, rashes, life long internal damage, impacting men more prevalently, it seems almost chimeric, capricious in nature.
But then it is the hybrid bastard child of a bat, a pangolin and human, like a terrible creature out of myth made real, given flesh from our flesh.
Covid takes its place in our collective imagination alongside nightmares like the Minotaur, Naga, Werewolf, Medusa, Harpy, Manbearpigc or Cockatrice. Every culture has them, they have been with us since we first became aware. Just the latest mix bred horror from the of the pantheon unleashed when Pandora’s box was opened.
But this nightmare really stalks among us turning our daily lives on their heads and we now live in a too topsy-turvy world where the mundane has become murderous. Life has become a game of Russian Roulette.
We are all living in the ‘Upside Down’.
When the lock down began many business owners were fearful that they were closing their doors for the last time. Today we heard that for Don Foster Diving that this looks to be the case.
I can’t tell you what a special place this is and how much dive history it represents, it’s been an institution here in Cayman for nearly forty years. Not only serving divers but managing a wonderful Marine Park and training centre.
Personally they took me through my first dive on qualifying, first wreck dive, night dive, boat dive, encounter with a shark and my Rescue Diver qualification.
I dived with them almost weekly.
I got my lucky hat there and James his now signature octopus shirt.
Dating back to the days of Calypso and Cousteau this is not just a dive centre it is a local cultural icon, regionally a pioneer of the recreational SCUBA industry and world renowned.
Such a great team of dedicated human beings – just gutted for Sergio Coni and all the team. I hope that there is a way back for them.
Seven Days in black and white.
Now I like eating meat. But over the last few years I have really cut down, particularly on processed meat.
Diving convinced me that eating fish is unsustainable and wrong and so despite loving it I have all but cut fish out of my diet.
Now this article has made me stop and think even more about this issue.
It’s a short piece about how eating pangolins may have been the vector for CORVID-19 between bats and humans.
It is not proven but it is interesting.
https://apple.news/AKepZ8wk9TXeXupN_yrmh0w
Now I don’t eat, crunchy on the outside chewy on the inside, pangolins and I bet most people I know’s first reaction is ‘that’s just weird why would you eat that?’.
(Well my friend John would and probably relish the thought, he sees the world as a culinary adventure and seems set on eating everything and anything providing the Chef has a Michelin Star or two but that’s another story).
The point here is not to judge, as honestly, is eating pangolin any weirder than eating chicken or goat or lamb or pig or cow?
Why is one animal ok and another not?
Cat anyone?
Where’s the line?
In the UK we were horrified to find we had been fed horse. It is better for you than beef and the French are not so squeamish about it.
Our views on this are just cultural conditioning!
My question is about the practice of killing and eating pretty much anything with a face.
And this is before we even start considering the horror that is the mass farming of animals and how they are slaughtered.
The mass farming that is the perfect Petri dish for breeding disease.
Keeping and eating pigs gave us swine flu, chickens bird flu, bush meat looks likely to have been the origin of HIV/AIDs, red meat is linked to cancer, over consumption to obesity and diabetes.
Mad cow disease anyone?
Eating bats, snakes or pangolin seems to be linked to our current pandemic.
Spot the pattern?
It really should make everyone stop and think.
It has me.
Just from a farming / environmental perspective the impact of mass commercial beef alone is insane the amount of water used to produce the meat for one hamburger is enough to produce tones of plants and beef farming has led to mass deforestation in Brazil all in the name of profit. The very air we breath!
Just watch this documentary about beef if you are not sure:
I am not against beef or beef farmers I just raise it as an illustration of my point. After all we transport lamb around the world, we keep chickens in horrific conditions.
I get that in the past we hunted or husbanded animals on a small scale because we needed the protein but there was a balance.
One that clearly no longer exists.
When we used to keep animals ourselves and took responsibility for their care when we killed and butchered them ourselves and did not eat meat for every meal, maybe it was better, maybe there was more compassion.
When you raise an animal and slaughter it yourself there is a connection. A respect. One that is missing as we open the plastic wrapped packaging of generic ‘meat’.
Mass farming and the commoditisasion of meat is awful. Our all consuming meat addiction is awful.
Before you tuck into that next slab of meat pop on a video of an abattoir in action.
Watch and enjoy while you eat.
The whole habit of eating meat has been carefully sanitised to make the horror palatable.
When was the last time you got blood on your hands?
Think about it, our meat is carefully exsanguinated to ensure it does not offend our sensibilities, to remove us one more step from that realisation of what we do.
Just ask a child where there dinner came from, so many have no clue.
Many adults are just the same, many are wilfully ignorant, choosing not to think about it. In the ‘West’ we have been socially conditioned this way for years.
Most of us have become so disconnected from what meat really is. By the time meat reaches us we have been so completely, institutionally and culturally brainwashed that we don’t even think about what we are putting in our mouths.
‘I like it’ is not enough.
The argument for eating meat is untenable.
We can after all get all the protein we need from plant based foods.
Poppy went vegetarian about six months ago and managed the switch really well, I think I shall join her.
Now I don’t mind admitting I’m pretty good at curries but tonight’s effort was soooo good and really easy:
Drain two tins of chick peas (you could use great Northern beans)
In a bowl mix:
one big glug of olive,
one finely chopped medium onion,
one small tin of tomato paste,
3 tablespoons cumin,
1 teaspoon turmeric,
5 tablespoons curry powder,
5 heaped table spoons of garlic powder,
a teaspoon of dry chillies (for more heat add a few more)
5 heaped spoons of crunchy peanut butter.
Optional: a knuckle of finely chopped ginger, a splash of lime juice and coriander to give it a Thai flavour.
Mix in the chick peas place in a large covered pot over a medium heat, add quarter of a cup of water or coconut milk/cream and let it reduce.
Serve on brown rice or with a naan bread dressed with a handful coriander.
It was easy but turned out oh so well and it all got eaten!
Under an Endless Sky 