Walking in the wind

IN this summer of 2020, I have whole days when I feel as if I’m living in a trance. I spend half the day preparing for the apocalypse of the second Covid-19 wave and half looking after chickens, moving last year’s ram lambs into fields with more grass and clearing out lean-tos on redundant farm buildings so that folks have somewhere to get out of the rain. In troubled times, you can justify your existence by simply shifting things around.

All the same, I get touchy when I open emails that start: ‘How’s life in the Wyken bubble?’ I’m tempted to write back thatwith its reminders that the Government’s understanding of what comes next is as tenuous as our own.