The Chase

I am lucky enough to have The Chase country park  almost literally on my doorstep. A lot of it was once a sand and gravel quarry, but when excavations stopped it was landscaped and the pits were filled with water. It is now an area of open grassland, woodlands, marsh and lakes that is popular with anglers, although the lakes are off limits at present. There are water fowl a-plenty; there are grebes, moorhens, geese, ducks, swans, and herons to name just the ones I recognise.

The country park is somewhere that I enjoy walking and have done for years, although I’ll admit that my rambles over there have become a little more frequent in the last couple of weeks as it is where I choose for my daily exercise. There’s little fun tramping the local streets at the best of times, even though I do a lot of urban walking under normal circumstances, however that is more often than not walking with a purpose – such as to the shops – rather than just for exercise.

Usually when I walk through the country park there are few other people, and the ones I see are generally dog walkers. The most people I see are usually camped by the lakes, watching their fishing lines and waiting for a bite. With the swims closed, there are people simply sitting at the swims and there are more people than normal walking, some alone but many in groups, and many of those groups do not necessarily seem to be family groups.

The fact that there are so many more people in the country park than normal, and many of those who are walking or lolling about on the grass, is because they have no work to go to, or alternative diversion such as going to the shops, coffee bars or pubs, are now not open. By and large, these people are doing little harm, even if they are not supposed to be just sitting round, or picnicking, although contrary to government advice, some seem to have driven there (even though the car park is closed, there are plenty of cars parked in the road). I don’t know if it’s a uniquely British trait, although from news stories I have read I suspect not, but it does seem that a lot of people have difficulty in accepting the need to limit their trips out of the house. And because a lot of people don’t seem to think that the restrictions apply to them, or perhaps simply don’t believe that they are necessary, it is probable that the somewhat informal lockdown we find ourselves in now will either have to become more rigid, or will have to last longer; probably both.

Whether people are walking, or picnicking, or sunbathing, at least social distancing is fairly easy in parks – my local country park consists of about 300 acres – much easier than in supermarkets, despite the best efforts of the stores. I went to my local Tesco yesterday as we had run out of salad, vegetables and bread among the essentials, while levels of other, slightly less vital supplies had diminished a bit too. I joined the queue that snaked round the store, and although it was a little longer than the line I had been in when I last went, I figured that I would be inside in about twenty minutes: how wrong I was!

Once the queue reached the store entrance, it veered off at right-angles, and snaked up and down the car park five times before actually reaching the entrance. In all, I was in that queue for just over an hour. Fortunately, it was a sunny morning and the time passed fairly quickly. Inside the store there is a one-way system, adhered to by most people (and there are staff pointing people in the right direction if they wander off course), but it has to be said that social distancing is a bit hit-or-miss. Outside the shop it’s fine, but inside it’s a different matter; the way we troll round supermarkets is second nature, changing those habits, as ingrained as they are, is difficult but given that we are probably going to have to shop this was for at least another month (two, or three months would be my guess), we will probably get used to it in the end.

A number of people at Tesco were wearing masks; even more were wearing gloves. The glove wearers seem to have adopted the attitude that the gloves make them invulnerable. I watched one glove wearing woman unload her trolley into her car, return the trolley, then get in her car, fiddle with her phone, touch her face, and drive off – still wearing the gloves, pretty much negating the benefit of them, which I would have thought she would have been better off removing before getting into her vehicle.

I saw other glove wearers touching their faces, fiddling with their phones, and generally behaving exactly as they would have done before the coronavirus outbreak, presumably because they feel that the act of wearing gloves is effective simply by itself.

All credit to Tesco and their staff (who must be quite apprehensive about going to work at the moment) all of whom were cheerful and helpful. The shelves were well stocked, and although most people were leaving the shop with full trollies, there were no shortages. Yes, people are buying more – probably in an attempt to have to visit the shops less frequently – but the panic buying seems to have abated.

The profile of many workers whom we tend to take for granted – like the supermarket workers – has been heavily promoted in recent weeks, which brings me to the Four Great Offices of State. In the UK, these are the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of The Exchequer, the Foreign Secretary, and the Home Secretary. We have seen plenty of the first three in the media recently – Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak, and Dominic Raab respectively – and, as you would expect, we’ve also heard a great deal from Health Secretary Matt Hancock.

But what of our Home Secretary, Priti Patel?  Her responsibilities include policing, immigration, law and order, etc, responsibilities that one would imagine are fairly important in a time of pandemic, but she has been conspicuous by her absence from the media. In February, Ms Patel made some pretty uncomplimentary remarks about what she described as ‘low skilled’ workers, in which group she presumably included carers, radiographers, occupational therapists, farm workers, paramedics, and shop workers (based on her definition, which was on the basis of their normal earnings), all professions that find themselves at the front line at the moment, and all of whom are frankly more useful than the Home Secretary. It is also noticeable that empty vessels Jacob Rees-Mogg and Mark Francois seem to have faded into the background during this crisis.

Have you seen this woman?

When this crisis has been averted, the contributions of nurses, shop workers, bus and train drivers, and many supposedly ‘low skilled’ workers will, in the final analysis be judged more crucial in getting the country through it than those of many of our MPs, especially those who, in 2017 voted to maintain the 1% annual pay cap for public sector workers, but who this week awarded themselves an additional £10,000 for having to work from home during the pandemic, on top of the 3.1% pay rise they gave themselves in March this year.

The respective contributions of our low-paid or so-called ‘low-skilled’ workers, and of our MPs (on all sides of the House) is something which I am sure will concentrate the minds of voters when we next go to the polls.