A CURIOUS MIX OF BRITISH FOLK MUSIC AND AMERICAN POLITICS
While the state’s advice is to stay at home and socially distance from others, Conservative columnist Peter Hitchens says he’s concerned about the economic consequence of this will be worse than the damage caused by the virus itself.
Does Hitchens have a point (not on his head, we mean, a ‘credible opinion’)? Please comment – THE HOBBLEDEHOY
UK government officials are delivering their daily briefing on the novel coronavirus outbreak in the country. They will carry on without Prime Minister Boris Johnson who said today he would continue his isolation after testing positive for COVID-19. ‘Although I’m feeling better,’ Johnson said after seven days of isolation, ‘I still have a temperature and so, in accordance with government advice, I must continue my self-isolation until that symptom itself goes.’
Pubs and restaurants may be closed and dark, but all over the UK wildlife is bursting into the light of longer days and it’s never been more important to get some fresh air. Nature writers select their favourite seasonal destinations
“If ever I heard blessing it is there. Where birds in trees that shoals and shadows are.” In April and May the Cotswold landscape still speaks in the soft, calm tones of Laurie Lee. For a first-time visitor it can take a while to tune into the hard, spare, wall-bound fields of the Cotswold plateau. Yet in the valleys and on the scarp edges, there are bluebells and wood anemones, clear spring-fed streams and a soundtrack of willow warblers and blackcaps, fresh back from their winter travels.
The deep valleys around Stroud hold hanging woods, filled in April with the scent of wild garlic. At the National Trust-maintained Woodchester Park, where the half-completed Victorian manor stands mysterious in the valley bottom, it feels as though the clock has stopped and no one has yet arrived to restart it.
Further north, in my home patch, the same timeless feel pervades Hailes Abbey, with, above it, a monument marking Thomas Cromwell’s seat, from which it is said he watched the Abbey burn almost 500 years ago. From here you can walk a couple of miles along the Cotswold Way to Winchcombe.
Spring is a wonderful time to explore smaller towns and villages, many of which are the subject of poems and stories. For me, each name conjures a memory: a village cricket match in April snow at Guiting Power; my childhood love of Bibury,
States leads the world in confirmed coronavirus cases after surpassing China’s reported total.
Continue at Washington Post: Live updates: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson tests positive for coronavirus; the U.S. now leads the world in confirmed cases