Dry run? This one has the potential to become more deadly. The more the virus increases, the greater the chance of a mutation of the kind that would have greater virulence or become more infectious (there are already a couple like that, apparently originating in the UK and South Africa). Or become resistant to the vaccines. We'd have to roll another one out, and then another maybe. I think this is quite likely. It may become continuous, like the flu.
I imagined on Xmas eve that with a free trade deal agreed things would be basically OK, so I looked at the rules about moving plants across the border. Every tree I am propagating here to take to France is now prohibited. I have 100's of trees with little or no value in the UK, plus I brought my tractor back to the UK to prepare a tree nursery, for which I now have no use. And I even need phytosanitary certificates on my tractor, mower, trailer (all three) to get them back into France.
So, I was preoccupied (and pretty pissed off) with that. But yesterday, I was down at the allotment. Very cold grey day, buggering about trying to get things ready for the spring. Seemed a bit of an end of the world type activity. There was a new young guy there. I ended up helping him get a huge piece of plastic sheeting over his allotment to kill the weeds. He'd lost his job in July, no prospect of another, so he figured he was down to the basics of growing food. He hadn't known the plot he was taking over was the plot left vacant by the guy that died of Covid in the spring.
I think that little scenario has helped get the tree thing in perspective. Now, it's more of a concern that our seed orders are a couple of months late, the delivery date keeps being extended.
