Like a Longfin Eel

The Bakerloo tube train pulled in - somehow reminded me of the old 1990s space shuttles - white and sturdy and fast but past its prime. I jumped in, to take it up to Paddington and then back on the sleek green train back to Exeter. I stood initially, felt bulky with my bags. Then sat. It was fairly quiet. Then stood, when a lovely old guy with a fedora came in. "Can't really socially distance in here can we?" his eyes sparkled a bit "It's good to see everyone" Across from him, a guy dressed in black, with a shiny Star of David round his neck, shiny reflective John Lennon glasses, impeccable nail polish and a stunning diamond ring on his right hand.  "Its getting more full... I just came off a boat party. I love it. Things are finally feeling normal"  They shuffled to make space for a woman in hotel uniform, who propped her head against the window and fell asleep. A young guy with a floppy fringe  standing opposite me started chatting about the boat...

..."I'm so glad to be out the other side of that." I caught up with O, another classmate from my tropical medicine course in 2014. My paper straw in my iced chocolate disintegrated long before I first tried to use it, as we talked sitting in the sun opposite the 4th plinth in Trafalgar Square. Since I last saw her, she has specialised in medicine; sub-specialised in gastroenterology and, now fully qualified, quit. A man, looking very much like Dumbledore, in his red round hat, but without a beard, walked past. The sound of broad Scottish accents lifted from a medium group of people wandering slowly, staring at the gallery roof and Trafalgar pillar. We got asked for directions. “It’s nice having tourists back” she said, as a sun shower passed through. There was a busker, three seperate small protests with a few people sitting on the edge of large posters so they wouldn’t blow away, but apart from that, pretty quiet.  “I got my Covid from a man who must have been sick with ...

If we're going to use war analogies for the covid pandemic, we have to remember what happened after the war too (Poster from the Transport for London Museum .) I met my friend A. on the tropical medicine course I did in London back in 2014. We bonded over being pre-trainees for O&G and hung on every pregnancy specific fact of the diseases we were learning about (like malaria not showing up on blood tests of pregnant woman, or at least falsely low levels, because the parasites cluster within the placenta). She has been working in StThomas and commuting from her home in Kent (90min by train) so when she agreed to meet on her only day off in the week, we agreed to meet in Kent rather than her having to come up to the city yet again. We had delicious food in West Malling - half the menu wasn’t available- due to supply chain issues. Covid? Brexit? Who needs ginger beer anyway… and caught up. I wish I could remember all the details, or that it wouldn’t be weird to interview and re...

The UK and Germany are flirting with opening the borders for double vaccinated travellers bringing into the realms of possibility a chance to visit friends there without expensive quarantine.   Bring on freedom day? My sister in NSW is in lockdown, two weeks and continuing. MIQ in NZ has become even harder to book; with folk now employing people to stand by for when spaces open up and using algorithms to make the process faster . My goodness Fortress Aotearoa  really has started to look like paradise from here. UK is planning to masks off and embrace “living with the virus” from July 19th- which actually is more a cunning way to try to “die less with the virus” and get less of a wave in the height of summer rather than double whammy it with the flu in the depths of winter. ( NZ virologist Siouxie Wiles disagrees with this approach. She's been right so far). The difference the vaccine has made is incredible; but the numbers we have make the UK look really feral, and actu...

The day started with a picnic in Greenwich followed by meanderings by the Cutty Sark. My friend pointed out a tunnel that goes under the Thames and after he and his wife and kids headed home; I took off on my brompton to check out the city. On the north of the Thames is a cycle highway; the C53, marked by blue and cutting through the city like a smooth river through hills. (It made the city seem small; but I also managed to have caught a tailwind in all of that; so the trip home again was more of a mish.) Coming in the opposite direction we’re clusters of bikes with banners - free Palestine, trans rights are human rights… It seemed like something had been up, but I wasn’t sure what. I’ve always loved Trafalgar Square; and when I got there I hit a wall of people. There was a sense like a big fist fight has happened or something. Loads of cops everywhere. Police transit vans parked side by side blocking the way off down the side roads. It seemed like utter overkill. (It wasn’t htt...

My housemate's other housemate (R lives in Exeter at the weekends, and Oxford for work during the week) informed me that the French word for sunburn is "a punch from the sun" - coup de Soleil. I like it.  I copped most of the sunburn from the bike trip where the wind had lulled me into a false sense of security. I was full lobster most of the time in Newquay, but it was still milder than home and I loved it. It been heat wave/pristine conditions here and people keep saying Cornwall looks like Greece, or the Mediterranean, or beaches like Bali. It looks like Cornwall to me, and looks amazing. While they don't need much tourism advertising to get people there (people are coming anyway), I don't think its great to say that a place looks like something else. ( Dunedin , take note).

 Once again I was hosted by my housemates parents, incredibly kind people who used to run their house as a B&B and went all out to spoil us - with food and accommodation and kindness and insistence that we stay out of the kitchen and not worry about the sand that somehow would still flitter everywhere despite dusting everything off before we left the beach or entered the house. I felt like a teenager and ate like it too... We were booked into a two day surfing lesson with  Women + Waves , a company I can definitely recommend. I appreciated that on the second day when I was pretty much tapped out (I couldn't lift my body off the board anymore without pain), the coach was still encouraging but also didn't put pressure on. She had a good sense of humour and was really skilled, some of the folk were up out the back on green waves by the second day. It was just really nice to be in the water, seeing the sun strike through the waves, casting shadows and light on the sand below. ...

I haven't ridden long distance before and I am keen to try and do some bike packing at some point, so locked in an explore around Bodmin, the region my ancestors came from before heading off to NZ. I did a lot of up hill walking, but to be honest, Im not ashamed of it, and I don't think it undermined the nature of the trip - I definitely went further than I can do on foot, and it was good to meander through a part of the world that is still pretty sparsely occupied. I saw a lot of squirrels and at one point swallowed a moth. It was about 55km (on top of a 5km ride to the train station), and I found the wind was more trouble than the hills were. I reckon I can do something like this again, which is nice to know.