The long-awaited phone call came from our GP – and so it was time to unblind me. You may recall that last summer I took part in the placebo-controlled phase 3 efficacy trials for the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine. The big question was I injected with the vaccine for covid or with the placebo, a vaccine for meningitis. The vials were allocated at random and neither I nor those supervising the trial knew which vaccine I had been given. As it happens the last time I

This blog should have been coming to you from sunny Tenerife but it isn’t. Like everyone Jacqui and I have been hit by the pandemic. It’s taken, so to speak, one year out of our lives but for us, we have enough years to spare. The tragedy is for our young people. This week I’ve been moved by two articles on how the coronavirus pandemic has caused much suffering for this age group. The first from the BBC news website reported a series of protests in France by stude

I hated church, I hated church with every atom of my being – but still my parents sent me. We’re talking about St Nicholas’ Blundellsands in the 1950’s where all Sunday school children would sit right through Prayer Book sung matins, beginning to miserable end, before we went out for our classes. Utter and complete boredom. And it was the same every week. Once we got into the Venite I knew I was into unrelenting misery. The pits had to be the Te Deum, which even as I

Hard frost this morning. As the day begins, the entire field behind our house is whitened by the frost; cold and stark. I look at the hoar frost over on the tree line. Stunning. This calls for a quote from Cecil Day Lewis: White lilac on the window-pane, each grass-blade Furred like a catkin, maydrift loading the hedge. And as I write this, looking now to the front of the house, I see the milkfloat leaving its track on the frosted road – while at this very moment (hones

“Thank God,” headlines this morning’s Daily Mail. “2021 is here at last!’ Exactly. Of course, for many the Year of the Optician is best put behind us, not least because hardly anyone saw it coming. 2020 showed us that we do not have even competent vision when it comes to looking into the future. As it happens there were those who could see the potential havoc to be caused by a rogue virus. In fact, disease experts had been issuing warnings for years, but covid-19 sh