Fair Winds

Fabulous video of murmuration of starlings by @acreswildgardendesign. Check them out on IG, esp if you need a landscape designer this spring

Hi everyone, it’s been a while I know. I’ve had a lot going on lately but I have no wish to burden y’all with that. Just a quick post, first to improve your week by sharing this wonderful video of starlings taken by @acreswildgardendesign. Who doesn’t love a murmuration of starlings? Exactly. I follow them on Insta, and so should you. I’m a sucker for a beautiful garden and their work is lovely. When I’m landscaping AlaraTowers in the future, they are a shoo-in, for sure.

I hope everyone is doing OK. The government did announce the beginning of the end of lockdown by middle of February as predicted by moi. There is no more talk of July or any of that nonsense. Even the March 8th date they’re currently testing in the press is later than the dismantling will be. They are busily leaking stuff to the media to gauge how it will play out before announcing anything concrete in a bid to ward off the reckoning that is surely coming, as sure as eggs is eggs. Unless of course, eggs is no longer eggs but is now syntheggs, brought to you by Farmer Bill. Syntheggs! Yum!! Can’t wait.

So, I say it again, the lockdown is coming down, in its entirety. No vaccine passports, no showing your papers to robocops before you’re allowed to go out and buy a carton of milk. I mean, what the helling hell? What you can expect is a big distraction, a good day to bury bad news, so to speak. We already have a beginning with the Harry & Meghan show followed by the Kim & Kanye show but that won’t save their sorry backsides because quite frankly, we all have bigger issues to deal with. Must try harder, wheel out the big guns. My heart goes out to all the poor people who are quietly being made redundant, I just pray that the economy will still be robust enough so new jobs can be created.

Meanwhile in London, our dear mayor wants lockdown to continue indefinitely. Nothing to do with the mayoral elections that have been deferred for a year already. No, sirree Bob – you conspiracy theorist 🙂 His ass is grass the minute the polls open, and he knows it. He’d have to blow up Big Ben and declare a state of emergency AND martial law, before he gets to stay as mayor. Don’t give them ideas, you say…….

As we always say @Alara: you have nothing to fear but fear itself. These incompetent poltroons are mere mortals, and the whole Covid palaver is still a busted flush. I look forward to hanging out with you all in the nearest pub, very very soon. God is firmly on the throne, and beside Him, there is no other. That’s all she wrote for this week. Obvs, I must share the mandatory cheesy joke:

A priest, a minister, and a rabbi want to see who’s best at his job. So they each go into the woods, find a bear, and attempt to convert it. Later they get together. The priest begins: “When I found the bear, I read to him from the Catechism and sprinkled him with holy water. Next week is his First Communion.”

“I found a bear by the stream,” says the minister, “and preached God’s holy word. The bear was so mesmerized that he let me baptize him.”

They both look down at the rabbi, who is lying on a gurney in a body cast. “Looking back,” he says, “maybe I shouldn’t have started with the circumcision.”

It’s the way we tell ’em. Have a wonderful week.

Addendum: The govt has just announced its hilarious 75-step road to lifting lockdown. Right on cue, cases are rising all over the country. Remove lockdown in June, then come autumn, CASES,VARIANTS, CASES! They must believe that we are as thick as mince. They are actually saying the words ‘Zero Covid’ with a straight face. When I am Empress of the world, biology and statistics will be mandatory, no food if you fail the exams. That way this smoke-and-mirrors style of governance will be impossible. Zero tolerance which is unreasonable, you say? You should be used to it – just another set of arbitrary rubbish that doesn’t make sense. As they say in sunny Lagos, “Where we are going, we will get there” 🙂 The lockdown is ending – the only people who don’t understand that is the government but they will learn that all that glitters is not gold. Today’s cheesy joke:

“I saw a guy spill all his Scrabble letters on the road. I asked him, “What’s the word on the street?”

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Carpe Diem

Pure, unadulterated talent: I think we’ve all felt like screaming in our home-prisons for the last 10 mths, what, what.

Another week in Paradise – I’m writing this from Dubai….Just kidding, just thought I’d mess witcha for a minute or so 🙂 Nope, you can rest easy, the sky is a reassuringly murky grey, all the plants in the garden are drowned, and the heating is on full blast. We’re in this together, yaaay……What’s up in Alaraville? Same old. Another busy week trying to spread joy to my captive patients; no one has actually called to complain about my cheesy jokes thus far, so it’s all good. I have to say that I’ve found that nothing makes people laugh as much as telling them that the lockdown is coming down, and well before the ludicrous May dates being put about by the government.

Regular readers may recall my sure-fire certainty that Dec 31st was the deadline for dismantling the damnfool exercise that is the lockdown, and that by the end of January the government would have started measures for ending it. Was I mocked? You bet! 🙂 Nevertheless, I’ve stuck to my guns and still maintain that it will happen exactly like that. What is that plaintive cry I hear, “Tomorrow is January ending?” O ye of little faith, will the Lord pronounce it and not make it happen? A resounding, No! AlaraApothecary: we bring you glad tidings of great joy because I can assure you that the lockdown is ending. If it’s not over by mid-Feb, colour me astonished. The government’s biggest problem having scared everyone to death, has been how to retreat from CASES! CASES!!, using a vaccine that doesn’t stop the spread or make us immune. They very much wish for us not to notice that they’ve pretty much destroyed the country and wrecked millions of lives. They very much wish to keep their jobs. If they just announce that lockdown is over, roughly 70 million people will be saying “Are you having a laugh? What was that all about?” (the language might be a bit more colourful than that)

The get-out? I give you The American Journal of Medicine. Imagine my utter lack of astonishment to find that there is a cure for Covid-19 after all. Remember that combo of Hydroxychloroquine, Azithromycin and Zinc that your favourite person Donald Trump put forward, wanted to implement federally and was shouted down vigorously by Fauci, Birx and the media for? It works, as long as you give it at the beginning of Covid. It’s exactly what was being given out in every hospital in this country until some prize idiot suffering from TDS decided to politicise medical treatment at the expense of patients. I know for a fact that many hospital pharmacies dedicated a whole team exclusively to making up packs of those 3 medicines for outpatient use, only for them to be mothballed while they ventilated patients with pressurised oxygen that shredded their lungs. Don’t believe me? Here’s this month’s AMJMED recommending it:

https://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343(20)30673-2/fulltext

This is the regimen that is being recommended:

The best bit? The 3 main drugs are all generics and cheap as chips. For the amount we’ve spent on the useless vaccines and furlough, we could have supplied the entire planet with a pack of these drugs. Essentially, the algorithm recommends home treatment for everyone up to the point that they are getting blood clots which aren’t resolved by anticoagulants? That way the hospitals are overwhelmed and we can ‘save the NHS’. What does this remind me of? Let me think…..our tried and tested treatments for pneumonia and influenza……

Not only that, the main platform at that time which rubbished the treatment as quack science and insisted vaccines are the only way was Facebook. 2 days ago, they published a statement that they have reinstated the post they labelled as misinformation and dangerous incitement. The Oversight Committee ruled against the censorship and said it’s not fake news. This is the link:

https://about.fb.com/news/2020/12/oversight-board-selects-case-on-hydroxychloroquine-azithromycin-and-covid-19/

A similar article in The Lancet trashing the doctors who wanted to use the treatment has been retracted. Isn’t that a pretty kettle of fish?

So, as I always say, don’t be afraid, and be of good cheer. We are nearly there and then we can start picking up the pieces. As for the power-mad politicians who have refused to do what’s best for their citizens, keeping their job is the least of their worries. A reckoning is coming, such as will make the ears of everyone that hears of it tingle. As for us, we are as safe as mother’s milk. To hell with the lockdown, a loud raspberry to tiers, time to go back to the old normal. And the people of God say……..Amen. Have a lovely weekend.

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Libertad

Reminder of beautiful Padstow. Good, isn’t it?

Hello, gorgeous people. Hope the past week has treated you well. We are keeping on keeping on here at Alara Towers. First of all, it’s getting lighter in the evening, hurrah and huzzah! Can’t tell you how spirit-lifting it is to see that glimmer of pale blue in the sky at 5pm. Secondly, the wretched lockdown is coming down. No, don’t choke on your drink 🙂 If you’re a regular reader you’ll know that I said last year that the deadline was the 31st of December, and that by the end of January it would be pretty much over. When the government started the year by announcing Tier 4000 or whichever tier we’re in now, yes, I was subjected to a lot of not-so-gentle mockery.

Well, I’m still absolutely certain that the lockdown is ending. How certain am I? I put my money where my mouth is and booked a holiday in New York in the spring. Plus, I’m considering booking a weekend trip to Italy in March as well – that’s the thought I woke up with today. When I hear them holding forth about keeping restrictions till June, October, 2028, or whatever ridiculous date they’ve plucked out of the air that day, I meet it with a hearty guffaw and think: busted flush. So, be of good cheer, you wonderful people. We are at the ‘sound and fury, signifying nothing‘ stage of the proceedings.

I’ve stopped discussing the whole Covid shenanigans because it’s so boring now, it makes my teeth hurt. As for the vaccine, different strokes for different folks. It’s called ‘informed consent’ – let everyone assess their own risk and make their own decision. We all have fully functioning brains – we can apply that cognition. The vaccine is a hard pass for me – firstly, I believe that I had the wretched virus in December 2019 in common with a lot of other people, way before anyone mentioned the word coronavirus. And jolly awful it was too, but I survived. That means that I should be awash and brimming with T-Cell immunity, and that was certainly tested when I worked in a pharmacy everyday during the first lockdown without so much as a sniff of social distancing or PPE (a paper mask, lol) until June. Secondly, I’m not a big fan of experimental vaccines with unknown side-effects and no longterm testing. If I were extremely vulnerable, my perspective would of course be different, but thank God, I’m not. So, taking part in what is essentially the largest clinical trial in history is not high on my resolutions list for 2021. But good luck and fair winds to all who feel they need whatever protection the vaccine can offer them.

Further to being a contrarian this week, I’m still busily freaking out everyone I know by insisting that Trump and not Biden will be president. It’s very amusing watching people going a lovely shade of eau-de-nil at the prospect, or hearing the pure horror in their voices. Endless wholesome fun, and a game that the whole family can play 🙂 Don’t hate the messenger, I just speak as I find. Either way, I’m so confident that America will not be in flames that I’ve booked a holiday there. Make of that what you will.

Well, that was my week. I’m still painting, very badly. To show how long it’s been since I put brush to canvas, I freaked out when I realised I had run out of all green paint and my art supply shop is of course closed. It literally took me a couple of minutes to remember that I generally make up my own shades anyway, and I sheepishly mixed some blue and yellow paint. Molto embarrassing, as Michelangelo didn’t say ………. I leave you with our traditional joke of the week.

“I had a dream last night that I was cutting carrots with the Grim Reaper – dicing with death.”

Boom, boom. It’s a Tim Vine special. Have a lovely weekend.

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Omission vs Commission

A happy new year to all our readers; pray it will be a much better year than 2020. Also a big thank you to all our customers – you helped to make 2020 our best year thus far. We ❤️ U. So here we are, we made it. But is it out with the old year, in with the old year? I don’t know but I believe the madness of 2020 will not continue in 2021. It’s been a difficult beginning and if anything people seem to be even more scared now – not scared of the virus per se, more of the possibility that this is our future forever now. And who can blame us for being scared? Clearly, the authorities are lurching from one ridiculous extreme to another and like any other group in a panic, they’ve backed themselves into a corner they don’t know how to get out of and are consequently doubling down on decisions that are manifestly ineffective.

They are busily pinning their hopes on vaccines – if only everyone had the vaccine, then things would er, ….. stay the same. Because, forget the conspiracy theories, the vaccine manufacturers have clearly stated that the vaccine will not prevent you from catching the virus, it will not prevent you from transmitting the virus, at most it may lessen the severity of symptoms if you catch the virus, or not, as the case may be. We will still have to wear masks, and socially-distance and presumably have lockdowns, even if vaccine uptake is 100%. So, why have the vaccine? Errr………. This is why people are scared. A substantial proportion neither believe nor trust the government any longer. In fact, they do not trust any authority figures to tell the truth – not politicians, police, clergy, scientists, bosses – you name it. This is because rightly or wrongly, we feel we are being lied to. The government may feel it’s for our own good but they’ve been leaching trust for decades now (WMDs, anyone) and those chickens are coming home to roost.

Once a significant if minor proportion of any population disbelieve all information from official sources as a matter of course, that society is in big trouble. So what are we doing now? We are doing what people do when they are scared of a nebulous threat that is too big for them – we lash out. From calling people Covidiots to blaming variously – the young, the old, schoolkids, politicians, conspiracy theorists, sheeple, etc etc, to actually believing that if we all just did what the government wants irrespective of previous failures (3 weeks to flatten the curve, anyone?), things would return to normal, it’s a self-protective mechanism against the truly terrifying prospect of possible death.

Doom, gloom, right? Not so, because AlaraApothecary: we remind you of good news. First of all, the majority of people who’ve caught Covid have fully recovered from it. Secondly, the majority of people wo are testing positive for Covid have it so mildly, they only know they are positive because of the test. Thirdly, the number of cases is not the same as the number of people who are actually sick (see number 2) I could quote any number of mortality rate statistics but quite frankly, I’m not sure it helps most people when the blasted media is screaming cases, cases, CASES! As for the minority of relatively young people (50’s : there have been fewer than 400 deaths under 40) who are dying, while that is a tragedy especially since that is my group (!), I have to break it to you that pre-Covid, people in that age group died of respiratory diseases all the time also, particularly in December to March. The total deaths figure for 2020 seems to have gone AWOL; the final total on gov.uk only goes up to w/e 13th of November. Not quite sure why they can’t get their little calculators out and add up those alarming figures they’ve been terrorising us with on a daily basis, but ho-hum. My prediction? 2020 will be on par or just over the figure for 2018 when we had the really bad flu outbreak and a vaccine that was 20% effective, but there will be an increase in deaths from all the chronic conditions like heart failure and diabetes, and a spike in cancer deaths.

All we can do is ensure that we are as healthy as possible: decrease your risk of cardiovascular disease, watch your weight, be careful if you’re clinically vulnerable, get more exercise, take Vitamin D in the winter, especially if you’re olive to dark-skinned. As for the government, seriously, the narrative is done. We are now at the stage where they need to put their hands up, admit they can’t solve all problems and they have no power over life and death and do what they should have done in the first place – shield the vulnerable, end the lockdown and put scientists to work to find a real solution, preferably in tablet form so that it is easy to administer and transport. Are they lying? To quote Jeremy Paxman, ” Why are these lying liars lying to me? ” I think a better question is, are these lies of omission or lies of commission? In other words, are these lies in the realm of “Dear God, we’ve totally got it wrong and trashed the economy and don’t want to lose our jobs, so we’ll just keep doubling down until we can figure out what to do so we can keep our jobs. In the meantime, keep everyone separate so they can’t get a clear picture and come round to burn parliament down” or is it the realm of “We plan to change the world completely and will do whatever it takes and destroy how many lives are needed to do it. We will transfer all power from the people to our little group and will lie, cheat, and kill until we get what we want. In the meantime, say anything you need to so that there will be no resistance until it’s too late” Omission vs Commission – if it’s the former, there’s a solution to that; hector your MP until they all come to their senses. If it’s the latter, no one can help us. I suggest you get on your knees and ask for divine help – you’d better hope there is a God who cares about us or we’re toast. My view? Whichever one it is, it’s irrelevant. I know that whatever this is, it won’t hold and it won’t last. As long as I know that God is in charge, I don’t fret about people and their crazy plans, no matter how powerful they appear to be. In the words of Alfred.E.Neuman, “What? Me, Worry?” Remember, fear plays havoc with your immune system – it’s nearly over, don’t worry. I leave you with one of the best videos I saw in 2020. Happy new year, it’s going to be a good one. Just keep keeping on; it’s a wonderful world out there and we will all get to explore it without restrictions this year.

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Love’s Pure Light

The Reason For The Season

So, I just came home from the Christmas eve midnight service. Yep, an actual service, in an actual church. We had the readings, sang carols albeit in rather hushed tones, took communion. Apart from the fact that we sat approximately one mile from each other, it was just like old times. It felt good to be in my Father’s house, just to be somewhere for an hour or so thinking about things that are more important than my problems or the crazy year we’ve all found ourselves in.

Still, here we are, hope we all make it to the end of this year, hale and hearty. I had to laugh in between hosannas when it occured to me that we finally got a resolution to the Brexit debacle in the most unlikely year of the four and a half years of madness that escapade has rumbled on for. Leaver or Remainer, I bet most of us are just glad to have a conclusion. And no, I don’t want to talk about the fish. The fish is way above my paygrade. The government should subside the poor fishermen and women from that magic money tree they’ve been visiting lately, until the fishing quotas end. If they can pay £20 billion for useless PPE, they can subside the people who grow and catch our food.

This post has pretty much written itself but I do want to remind myself and you that things will get better, that love always wins and that God loves us all more than we can ever fathom, even when we are at our unloveable worst 🙂 Merry Christmas, pray we all have a fabulous, love and light-filled one. The wretched tiers put the kybosh on my Christmas plans but it’s not the end of the world. I finish with one of my all-time-favourite passages: John 1:1-5, 14.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.

And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.

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