Lockdown has produced some interesting and unexpected consequences. The Gateshead Lib Dem Council group has started to go on pub crawls! Well, virtual pub crawls to be precise. Cllr Vicky Anderson set up our first session on Saturday and I bought along a bottle of elderberry vodka I made a couple of years ago. Sadly, I was unable to let others sample it but I'm sure colleagues appreciated my generosity in bringing such a handcrafted piece of my self-sufficiency to the party!
Like so many of the residents of my home village of Sunniside last night, I applauded the work of the carers and key workers. We just need to remember that these people have always been essential to the functioning of society. That deserved applause as well.
Gateshead Lib Dem Council group has produced a video to advise residents on how to deal with the pandemic lockdown and how to get help if it is needed. We also warn about scams as well. All 12 group members appear in the video. It can be viewed on the link above.
Time to use some of your lockdown time! I first gave this quiz to the Sunniside History Society on 3rd September last year to mark the 80th anniversary of the outbreak of World War 2. All the questions are about the late 1930s, the 1940s and early 1950s. Most of the 30 questions are about social history but if you want to give it a go, I will be posting the answers in a few days' time.
The pandemic lockdown has had an unintended consequence: empty streets in towns and cities around the world are being reclaimed by wild animals. I've seen videos of wild boars, seals, antelope, lynxes and deer happily walking down streets that are normally congested and polluted with vehicles. The wild goats on the Great Orme at Llandudno have grabbed the headlines. I used to work in North Wales in the mid 1990s and I return there most years for a short holiday. I know Llandudno well and I was fascinated to see the goats wandering around the empty streets, helping themselves to privet hedges and generally enjoying the newly available space without, what must be for them, the terrifying racket of human activity.
When the pandemic is behind us, somehow we need to find ways of sharing our urban spaces with nature. We cannot go back to the way things used to be.
I was last in Llandudno in June last year and I went up the Great Orme especially to see the goats. After all, I am a goat farmer so I wasn't going to miss the opportunity to see the animals. I caught them on the video above, starting about 1 min 42 seconds.
