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Christmas tree and lights up. Boys did most of the tree decorating. Much quicker and less stressful than previous years.
Kids' stuff
I have successfully replicated this study at home, and can attest to its reliability and validity.
An ethnographic study in Madrid charted the gradual “take over” by the child (accoutrements like toys, furniture, and special foods, and the removal of “dangerous” or breakable items) of the domicile, leaving less and less “adult” territory (Poveda et al. 2012).'
The Anthropology of Childhood: Cherubs, Chattel, Changelings by David F. Lancy 📚
Both boys are staying at home today. Big kid bounced into school yesterday after recovering from two days of fever, cough and sore throat, but didn’t eat his lunch. Think he’s just tired. Little kid has a raging temperature, but eating ok.
Public concerns over remediating the toxicity of the land… have not been addressed in the revised plans…. “no details have been provided” on the proposed remediation strategy.
Brighton Gasworks developer changes plans to include affordable homes
Washed up
✅ Made breakfast and packed lunch for Kid A.
✅ Dropped Kid B at nursery 😭.
✅ Dropped Kid B at school.
✅ Collected kids’ clothes from store.
✅ Listened to the end of The AbsoluteLee podcast and the start of The Prince of Aberystwyth while sitting in traffic.
✅ ☕ and breakfast.
✅ Prepared chilli con carne.
✅ Work call.
✅ Unblocked bath drain.
✅ Received grocery delivery.
✅ ☕.
✅ Washed up…
Making pizza today, so defrosting some fresh yeast.
Meantime, it’s breakfast. Egg and home fries for me. Weetabix for the little one, and bagel for the big one.
Big one is in the bathroom feeling nauseous because of the smell of smoked paprika.
Abandon all hope
I reported an abandoned car to my housing association.
It’s been left in our little communal car park since the middle of last month, taking up a neighbour’s parking space.
I previously reported it to the police, who got back to me to say “it’s not of interest” to them, and to my local council, who have apparently done nothing. Presumably because it’s not classed as being on a public road.
Let’s hope the HA removes it.
Strawberries for pigs?
Little did we know at the time, but these little strawberries were usually engulfed in a toxic plume of benzene, naphthalene, and god only knows what else.
Sensibly, the wife refused to eat them.
We later discovered that official planning documents for the nearby old gasworks, which was being dug up in the open air for new homes to be built on the contaminated land, stated that no vegetables should be grown on the land. Ever!
Ealing Council Leader Julian Bell publicly blamed 'the wrong kind of wind', and – quite possibly – privately blamed 'fucking moaners'. All the while racking up over £30,000 in declared gifts and hospitality from developers including Berkeley Group, who were digging up the gasworks land.
Our soon-to-be local ward councillor and (ex-)Head of Planning Peter Mason knew all about the dangers (he tells us on Twitter) from the contaminated land back in 2009 when he campaigned against its development along with our MP Virendra Sharma (who said the development would be 'a disaster environmentally').
Yet no one told people living nearby to expect to be gassed in our own homes and gardens during the three month heatwave that was shortly to arrive.
In fact, Ealing Council announced on Twitter that the odours, while 'unpleasant', were 'not harmful to health' would be 'gone in a few days'.
I later discovered that there is scientific evidence that some people with Asian and African heritages are genetically more vulnerable to very serious and sometimes fatal health conditions from inhaling naphthalene, a fact acknowledged (although later denied, despite the published evidence) by Public Health England at a packed public meeting in July 2019.
No one told us.
Ealing Council, despite being fully aware of the potential dangers to health (and to the environment) failed to carry out any kind of Equalities Impact Assessment, and only helped Berkeley Group to rush through the decontamination process to maximise their profit from Crossrail in Southall.
Profit over people. Labour Council. Our lives didn't matter to them.
Now, we are being asked to believe that our MP (who has begun making the right noises two years too late – what happened to the nearly 1,000 signature petition I gave you in 2018 Mr Sharma?) cares and is on our side, and that our local ward councillor cares and always has done. Only Bell is – unusually for him – honest enough not to suddenly pretend he gives a shit about anyone but himself and looking after his own family.
At the packed public meeting in 2019, which our local ward councillor chaired, he and Bell refused to declare their financial interests with Berkeley Group, refused to let me speak with the microphone so that people couldn't hear that the Council, Berkeley Group, the Environment Agency and Public Health England had all colluded to cover up the real level of toxic and carcinogenic air pollution – that it was consistently above legal limits and rising – by manipulating, removing, and presenting the air quality data in such a way as to make it look like it was mostly within legal limits.
At the same meeting, our MP arrived late, mostly unseen, sat silently at the back of the room, and left early, mostly unseen. At the same meeting, a strangely truthful Bell admitted that he had 'known about the nuisance, the BAD nuisance, for two and a half years'! Yet nothing could be done.
Now Peter Mason, free from his constraints as Head of Planning after resigning following his failed coup attempt to take the leadership from Bell last year, is telling us that something could and should have been done, yet all of them remained silent and did nothing for years.
Unbelievable!
How I caught covid
I tested positive for coronavirus yesterday.
I started to feel unwell – like I had flu – on Sunday afternoon. After a night felling too hot and too cold, Monday morning I had a temperature of 38.3°C.
I went to my local walk-through testing clinic later that afternoon.
It was a self-test. If I'd known, I would have ordered a test-at-home kit, although I wouldn't have got my result as quick.
I couldn't do the throat swab as it made me want to throw up. The nasal swab was faintly pleasurable.
• • •
The walk-through experience was generally quite anxiety-provoking. I can't wear my glasses or hearing aid while wearing a mask, so found it stressful trying to follow instructions. The testing marquee itself, for all the hand gel, seems like as good a place as any to catch covid.
In eleven months, I've been out to the supermarket maybe three times, the pharmacy the same, to the park occasionally. During the summer, we visited my mother-in-law after she had recovered from covid.
I took my six year old to and from school every day up until the Christmas holidays, and that is the last direct contact any of us as a family have had with other human beings.
• • •
So, it's a bit of a mystery how I caught the infection. The most likely source I can think of is our communal stairwell to our flat, which we share with our next door neighbours and their visitors, posties, delivery drivers.
When the pandemic began, we always used to wear a mask to go out, but we stopped doing that (and got out of the habit) in the summer when infection rates were low. I had still been wearing a mask to bring our grocery deliveries in, but not when I put the rubbish out....
A Successful Home Delivery and the Lockdown/Lock-in.
My second son was born late Saturday night (what would normally have been my beer night) two weeks ago, after a short, but intense, labour.
He was delivered at home by two brilliant midwives, who were fully protected courtesy of customised #tinap bin bag aprons, unused clean air protest dust masks, and disposable gloves my wife stocked up on back in February when – without any scientific advice whatsoever – she somehow accurately foresaw the current coronavirus global pandemic somehow reaching the UK's shores (and airports). Practising prudent use of valuable PPE supplies, the midwives wore their own prescription spectacles to protect from splashes to the eyes. (This is, of course, not true. They had NHS supplied aprons, surgical masks, and gloves.)
Home delivery
Now, we've had our groceries, pizza and most other household and personal items delivered to our home, rather than dealing with the stress of actually going out and having to interact with other people, for years, so a home delivery of our new son might have seemed like an obvious choice.
But a home birth was definitely Plan B, and only came to be Plan A due to coronavirus related issues with hospital birth and childcare arrangements for our nearly six year old, which now favoured delivery at home.
Preparing for birth
My boss had told me a few days prior that 'home births are great, because you can make a cup of tea'.
So, I stocked up on tea bags, and prepared myself mentally and physically for the big day by repeatedly ignoring my wife's pleas to listen to her hypnobirthing mp3s on the expected role of the 'birthing partner' (whatever that is), and getting through the last of my beer stockpile in anticipation of several years of enforced sobriety (in order to deal with nighttime and next morning emergencies).
I'm just thankful we never got around to implementing my boss's idea for a work appraisal, because his multi-tasking expectations are clearly way beyond my capabilities.
Labour of birth
While I fully accept that I had the easiest job on the night (bar my nearly six year old, who thankfully slept through it all in the adjacent bedroom), I was very pleased the main bit was over relatively quickly (three hours) as my right arm and hand were getting tired.
To ease the pain of contractions, and in the absence of any pain relief other than 'gas and air', my wife insisted (on pain of death) that I massage her lower back for two minutes every three minutes.
In between massages/contractions, I had to top up her glass of filtered water and hold it to her lips for her to drink.
Birth
When the baby's head came out, slowly, I remember thinking it was weirdly like watching a picture coming out of a printer.
When he was out, I immediately noticed his testicles seemed abnormally large, the size of giant tea bags. (Turns out they were swollen with fluid.)
'He's a boy, he's definitely a boy!' I said.
I could have done with some gas and air myself at this point.
After birth
My wife has been pretty amazing through it all. I don't know how she copes with the lack of sleep, although I'm doing my best to make sure she gets a couple of hours whenever she can when she's not busy feeding baby.
I have done a few nappy changes. Son no. 1 is always delighted whenever his little brother pees all over me, which was really his main reason for wanting a little brother in the first place.
Lockdown/Lock-in
We're mainly homebirds, so the lockdown/lock-in has not been too bad for us. And we're lucky to have had everything we needed, including toilet paper, flour, use of our communal garden and area where we live for exercise, sunshine, unusually fresh air, and seeing red kites and egrets flying over, among other lesser spotted wildlife.
My eldest lad has suffered the most, as he misses his school routine and friends, which is compounded by his not realising that he would no longer be the centre of attention now his little brother is here.