w/e 2021-09-19
Yesterday we went to the Abergavenny Food Festival, a short drive away. It didn’t happen at all last year, of course, and we were a bit wary this year but gave it a go. I’m not sure I’m as ready for events like this as most people seem to be.
Indoors – in the big market hall – almost everyone was masked, as is required in Wales, but I was still uncomfortable being so close to so many people crowding around stalls. I was not that desperate to look at another display of chutney for sale.
Outside hardly anyone was masked, which wouldn’t be so bad except it was impossible to keep a safe distance among the Brownian motion of the wandering punters. I ended up being one of the few people wearing a mask outside and I kept away from the stalls.
Am I over-cautious? Is the risk so little for a double-vaccinated person in the open air that I should be acting as if everything’s normal? I don’t think so but I just don’t know for sure. I really, really don’t want to get Covid, and to roll the dice over hospitalisation and/or Long Covid. But I have no sense of what criteria I need to see in order to no longer feel so cautious.
But we did buy some nice bread and cheese.
§ We watched season two of Sex Education this week, which continued to be fun. I’m still intrigued by the setting. It’s so anonymous. I don’t think they ever say the name of the place they live in and it’s impossible to tell how big it is. Sometimes it feels like one or more villages with long, tree-lined country roads between each location. Other times it could be a suburban town. Other times there are enough shops it could be a city. Are all these locations the same place? Or do they live in a village near a city, but never actually say they’re going to the city?
It does make the whole thing oddly… abstract? More like a diagram than a painting or photo. Skins, to take a different example, didn’t make a massive thing of being set in Bristol, but it obviously was, so it was real, based in our world.
It’s not a massive problem but it’s odd that I can’t imagine any of the characters saying they’re going on a trip to London, or any other real city, because they clearly don’t live in actual England. They’re somewhere disconnected in space and time. Maybe in season four we’ll realise it’s all a simulation, or a long-lost island, or it’s a single English parish hurtling through space forever.
§ I don’t usually listen to music when I’m running, partly because I don’t want to get hit by a car that I didn’t hear. But, given I rarely get passed by more than a couple of vehicles during the half hour that I’m out, I decided to give it a try in an effort to take my mind off the exhausting business.
It worked! Because I couldn’t hear my footsteps and breath so well I didn’t have to constantly think about what an effort the whole venture was. My mind could focus on the beat or the tune or the lyrics:
You miss your youth, and you miss the city
Have no regret, have no pity
It did mean I set off too fast, because the music somehow made me think I was a better runner than I am, and so I had to walk a few times, but still.
Assuming I can persuade my Mac to update the music on this ancient iPod Shuffle, so I don’t have to listen to the same music every run, then I’ll keep it up, and just hope I don’t run myself into a heart attack or an oncoming tractor. If I don’t write next weekend you know what’s happened.
§ And on that cliffhanger…