The schools are still open over Easter holidays.
My wife is SEN teacher and currently 'looking after' seven kids aged between three and 11.
It is now causing a real issue between us. We have two kids of our own and there would be zero exposure otherwise.
Four of the kids are from NHS workers. No safety measures.
Got a friend who's just qualified as early years, she's volunteering at a school. Won't stop going in. She's got health conditions too but survived viral meningitis and a car crash last year so maybe I should expect her to be the last one standing when the rest of us all are wiped out by the WW3 and return of the bubonic plague. Has another health condition, or two, or three. Won't give up smoking. Jesus christ. Started because I invited her out for smoke breaks by accident because I thought she already did it!
Random anecdote. There was a dead rat near to one of the entrances to these flats today. Big fucker. 8 inches plus, not including tail. I'd seen him, or his family, a few times in the previous week, scurrying between the wheelie bins and hedges outside our windows. And there he was, just laying in the middle of the busy path. Like he'd been put on display.
I don't know what got him, I assume it was a cat because there are plenty round here - but if that's the case I want to meet this cat and get onside with him, maybe swap training tips or something - not only because of the size of the quarry, but I was struck by the lack of obvious gore. No entrails or sinew. No signs of a fight, or even an particularly obvious lethal blow. I'm no pathologist, nor even a taxidermist, but that must have been clinical, straight through the spinal column, or possibly the jugular. Probably a professionally trained international hit-cat. David Attenborough highlights stuff.
Four flies feeding on the blood were disturbed by my approach and flew off, glinting green in the bright sun. Eww. Being the proactive and social type, I repurposed my disgust to serve the collective good. Sacrificing my Morissons bag, I carefully removed the corpse - without ever coming close to touching the corpse (or a part of the bag that the corpse had touched) by doing the thing where you turn it inside out first and then grab it. Straight in the wheelie bin, which felt off, but was the only thing I could think of aside from calling 999, or wandering the streets rat-in-bag in-hand, searching for a better site for its disposal.
Of all the things right now. That massive, fat, rat right were everyone walks home, laid out neatly in the glorious sun, like a fillet of beef waiting to be seasoned by Jamie Oliver. I can feel the weight of it in my hands now. I repeat: Eww!
We did get rid of the bubonic plague, didn't we?
