Southwold

Today we went to Southwold. It’s a long journey from our home, so it would have been forbidden territory during lockdown, and like all forbidden things I couldn’t stop dreaming of it. For us, a trip to Southwold would be a sign of getting somewhere back to normal.

Everyone else had the same idea… if it’s busier than that during the school holidays, the place will be swamped. Social distancing was out of the window. I think everyone’s fed up with this endless restriction, and the arbitrary decisions that are being made – Portugal went from Green to Amber status in the space of a few days over worries about rising case numbers, while India’s fast-spreading variant causing a huge health crisis in India’s cities (and, less well reported, outside the cities) was met with an er, er, er reaction from Government, allowing an estimated 20,000 people to disembark from flights from India to the UK with minimal checks before any action was taken. Councils have been told firmly that they are not allowed to continue Zoom meetings rather than actual meetings, but GPs have been encouraged to continue online consultations. I’d rather a small huff over a council meeting gone off the rails than a patient’s cancer being missed because the GP didn’t get a good photo of an early tumour. Our GP is all but unreachable now, a state of affairs that has existed since at least 2015 – when I tried to get an appointment for four months and was told each month by irritated Reception staff that all appointments were fully booked for the next four weeks, ring back next month.

Right now, we’ve had our fun, a walk along the beach at Southwold, an ice cream each and the sight of sun on sea. Hope to get lockdown lifted and let us all go free this month.