A New Year, A New Start?

 

Not a post about our boat.

 

As we closed the door on 2020, a year dominated by the Coronavirus pandemic, many of us have turned towards hope for 2021.  Throughout the last year we have been very fortunate to be living aboard our boat in relative isolation in some of the more picturesque parts of Britain.  We haven’t been able to travel much, whether by land or sea, and we keep our trips into populated places to a minimum, like so many people.  We have not been able to visit family or friends nor carry our adventure forwards as we imagined.  However, we are amongst the lucky ones.  We have remained healthy, we eat well and we manage to get out and have a good walk every day.  But our daily walks have highlighted what I believe is one of the problems we face in getting this virus under control.

 

When the tier system was introduced for England a few months ago Cornwall, along with the Isles of Scilly and the Isle of Wight, was the only region in Tier 1, with the lowest levels of Coronavirus cases.  Not surprisingly.  The relatively low population and lack of urban sprawl, along with an absence of mass public transport systems, meant that social distancing was easy to maintain.  On our daily walks we would rarely pass other people and those that we did became familiar faces.  That all changed when the government announced that London and the South East was going into Tier 4.  The sudden influx of people heading to their ‘second homes’ in the South West in order to escape the virus was blatantly obvious.  Car parks were full, pavements crowded and footpaths became processions of people ignoring social distancing guidelines.  And then Christmas came, which only served to make matters worse.  We have become increasingly angry with lack of consideration shown by some people.  When we see a group of walkers coming towards us we move to one side and walk in single file in order to help with social distancing.  However, on countless occasions the oncoming groups make no attempt to move to one side and have an air of entitlement about them.  Why is it that people believe they are immune to the virus or that they cannot pass it on to others?  Consequently Cornwall has seen a significant rise in the number of cases of Covid-19 and we feel increasingly unsafe.  This is directly due, I believe, to the failure of people to show consideration for other people.  We have become a very selfish nation!  On a more optimistic note, the rollout of the Coronavirus vaccine will help to bring this pandemic under control.  But we mustn’t let our guards down for a while yet.  We can beat this, but we must do it together with EVERYONE following the rules.