The very word “Christianity” is a misunderstanding at bottom there was only one Christian, and he died on the cross.

The AntiChrist, Chapter 39, Friedrich Nietzsche 

IT IS OUR POSITION AFTER DISCUSSING AND MUSING ON THE MATTER TOGETHER. We are, of course, fortunate not to have ‘health issues’ and will continue to take sensible precautions when engaging in social intercourse. In the words of the Bard of Avon: “The choices we make dictate the lives we lead.” Life goes on. Life must go on.

Lord Sumption on the UK Lockdown BBC News 17 May 2020 https://youtu.be/eB1eqvAxQAQ via @YouTube

17 May 2020: an extract …

Jonathan Sumption …

Today, the lockdown is only about shielding us from the risk of infection. This raises serious questions about our relationship with the state.

It is OUR BUSINESS, not the state’s, to say what risks we will take with our own health. We are NOT FOOLS or children needing to be told by ministers what is good for us, and forced by police officers to do it.

We should not need to consult ministers, as the first member of the public to phone in to the daily press conference did, about whether she was allowed to hug her grandchildren.

The continuance of the lockdown is particularly odd given that in its latest paper the government accepts that, whatever we do, Covid-19 is likely to be with us long term. So, unless it plans to keep the lockdown in place for ever, all that it achieves is to put off the moment when we have to face the risk anyway.

Roe-Deer by Ted Hughes

In the dawn’s early light, in the biggest snow of the year

Two blue-dark deer stood in the road, alerted.

They had happened into my dimension

The moment I was arriving just there.

They planted their two or three years of secret deer-hood

Clear on my snow-screen vision of the abnormal

And hesitated in the all-way disintegration

And stared at me. And so for some lasting seconds

I could think the deer were waiting for me

To remember the password and sign

That the curtain had blown aside for a moment

And there where the trees were no longer trees, nor the road a road

The deer had come for me.

Then they ducked through the hedge, and upright they rode their legs

Away downhill over snow-lonely field

Towards tree dark – finally

Seeming to eddy and glide and fly away up

Into the boil of big flakes.

The snow took them and soon their nearby hoofprints as well.

Revising its dawn inspiration

Back to the ordinary.

Earth, isn’t this what you want: to arise within us, 
invisible? Isn’t it your dream
to be wholly invisible someday? – O Earth: invisible!
What do you demand but transformation?
Beloved Earth, I will. On my word, you no longer
need your spring-times to win me over – single May

is already too much for my blood.
I have been your tongue-tied subject these many years.

Ever you spoke true and your holiest inspiration
is our intimate companion, Death.
Look, I am living.

On what? Neither childhood nor future grows less …

superabundant springs of being wells up in my heart.
    (Rilke Duino Elegy IX)

This isn’t the end of lockdown!

LIBERATION 
A clean wind rocks the firs,’ Clean snow covers the ground. No longer hearing the tread of the enemy, It rests, my land.

Anna Akhmatova February 1945 

The Government thinks us over-70s are ‘vulnerable’ – but this is about attitude, not age 

The Government thinks us over-70s are ‘vulnerable’ – but this is about attitude, not age https://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking-man/government-thinks-us-over-70s-vulnerable-attitude-not-age/

If we want to be free then it’s our responsibility to behave differently https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/04/27/want-free-responsibility-behave-differently/?WT.mc_id=tmg_share_tw via @telegraphnews

AND THANKS ALSO TO THE LATE NIGEL HAGUE for his inspiration … although for some reason or another he disliked the Welsh!

What Germany got right in the fight against coronavirus https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/04/22/germany-got-right-fight-against-coronavirus/

SOME TYPE OF COMPULSORY PUBLIC (HEALTH) INSURANCE MUST BECOME PART OF OUR BRITISH WAY OF LIFE AFTER THIS INITIAL HEALTH SCARE IS OVER.

2020 is our wake-up call.

Anni and I only listen to a brief mid-day summary nowadays and read a few good articles a week. The mainstream media is now totally over the top in its coverage – and largely irrelevant. For them it is ‘filling a slot.’

Thank goodness for Daniel Finkelstein in today’s TIMES.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/truth-about-virus-is-better-for-us-than-hope-gnnfhsdg5

And Allison Pearson writes in today’s Telegraph

We need to be brave and weigh up the risks in our fight against coronavirus https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/need-brave-weigh-risks-fight-against-coronavirus/?WT.mc_id=tmg_share_tw via @TeleWonderWomen

OK Yes! Back now to business! A film to express what’s stirring deep inside me. Yes! Yes! Yes! It’s my raison d’etre.

Or, to echo the words of Martin Scorsese, I WON’T REST UNTIL I CAN TELL THE STORY THAT BURNS WITHIN ME!

Andrei Tarkovsky – Poetic Harmony | The Cinema Cartography https://youtu.be/ak6rI-j07QU via @YouTube