1 JUNE
Now Italy seems to be getting ticked off with Greece. Greece indicated, quite understandably, that it doesn't want planeloads of visitors from countries that have had a bad record with coronavirus infections, eg the UK and Italy. But the Italian government says it won't stand to be treated "like a leper colony". Hard on the heels of this, Greece seems to be "clarifying" its previous announcement. Now it says flights to Athens will be possible from 15 June (and to island airports from 1 July).
But, for the moment, there will be strict rules: on arrival, you'll have to stay overnight where you are told to and be tested. Here's the bad news and the bad news: if the test is negative, you have to self-quarantine for a week; if it's positive, you will be put in supervised quarantine for two weeks. After 1 July, there will just be random checks apparently. And until then, although Greece's current blacklist includes Gatwick and Heathrow and Manchester, other UK airports are deemed to be OK and arrivals from these will only be subject to random checks (and will only have to be quarantined if they test positive).
So that's all very clear, then. Basically, travelling from the UK to Greece is going to be fraught with all sorts of unknowns for the next couple of months at least. And if the much-talked-about second wave hits the UK – or if the tourists bring the virus to Greece – then I might as well just lock up and stay home.
2 JUNE
I had a socially-distanced lesson with my Alexander Technique teacher this morning. Touch and adjustment are normally a vital part of an AT session but we managed to make it worthwhile while keeping apart – and outdoors. AT really is life-changing in that it affects how you approach everything, not just how you use your body – and I've really missed lessons over the past 10 weeks. I'm also hoping to see my grandchildren – at a distance – this week. The return to some sort of "normality" has begun – but it feels like it will never be the same "normality" that we had before.
3 JUNE
The UK has very graciously suggested that it might not be so tight quarantine-wise on people coming from countries with lower rates of virus infection. There don't actually appear now to be any countries with higher rates of infection! And might it be the case that hardly anyone will want to come to the UK in the foreseeable future because the health situation here is in such chaos?
Portugal has said it's happy to have British people fly in for summer holidays – presumably the money outweighs the health risks. And there is a general rumbling among the British media, asking why the European countries are being so awkward about letting holidaymakers from the UK go wherever they want to go. This British exceptionalism seems to increase rather than diminish as it becomes apparent that the UK has made a complete hash of dealing with the virus crisis, of lockdown, of saving lives, of care home deaths, of testing, and now of tracking and tracing. What is it about the British that leads them to believe they are entitled to special treatment when nothing about them is special – apart from their jingoistic boorishness and arrogance.
4 JUNE
The reopening of Greece isn't going totally smoothly. When 12 passengers on a flight from Qatar to Athens tested positive for coronavirus, all 91 people on the flight were put in quarantine (infected ones for 14 days, non-infected ones for a week) – and all flights from Qatar to Athens have been suspended for two weeks. The only good thing about the prospect of being quarantined on arrival in Athens is that at present the Greek government says it will cover the costs. The Greeks know that tourism is vital to their economy, but they also mean business when it comes to protecting themselves from the level of virus chaos that has been seen elsewhere in Europe. The UK, Spain and Italy remain the places from which it is going to be difficult to get into Greece.
5 JUNE
British Airways has just confirmed my "insurance policy" flight to Athens on 24 August but who knows what conditions may prevail as we get nearer to that date? Today I sat with my musical mentor, the master drummer John Marshall, in his garden. His band, Soft Machine, are off the road with numerous gigs and festival appearances now in limbo. John's wife, Maxi, a strong candidate for most amazing woman in the world, was badly hit by coronavirus and is still recovering several weeks later. She joined our conversation from her bedroom window. Apart from sharing our disgust about the UK government's deceit and inefficiency, we all delighted in the blueness of the south London sky, after weeks of relief from aircraft pollution. John was ecstatic – and quite rightly so – about a huge and perfectly white cloud that hovered over his house looking like something from a hyper-real movie.
6 JUNE
The weather in London has turned from summer to autumn – cold and rainy. I just had to make a journey across London and back by bus – I really don't want to use the tube – and it was almost exciting, almost like visiting a new place. On the buses most people are masked, and from 15 June everyone on all public transport will have to be. Why then and why not immediately and why not weeks ago? Because the country is being run by half-baked ministers who have been several weeks behind reality since this whole mess began.
7 JUNE
Black Lives Matter demonstrations across the world (utterly understandable and to be supported) after the murder of George Floyd have added another dimension to the potential spread and second wave of coronavirus. Everywhere from Milan to Manchester there is talk of a resurgence of infections and deaths which could lead to a return to strict lockdown measures. Some things seem to take precedence over this anxiety: protesting against racism and (for the English) having a barbecue or going to Ikea.
I have just finished rebooking accommodation along the route of the odyssey – something that has cost me very little apart from quite a bit of time emailing back and forth. As with the train and ferry travel in Greece and Italy, people have been nothing but helpful in rearranging overnight stays. If I manage to make this trip, I will remain grateful to all of them.
8 JUNE
Well, I should have been at the mouth of the Underworld today (at Lake Avernus, the volcanic crater associated with Odysseus's entrance to the land of the dead). Instead, I probably won't be going much farther than the shops at the edge of Wandsworth Common, probably the grimmer of the two locations today as a grey and wintry chill continues here and the sun shines over Campania.
The 14-day quarantine for people coming into the UK allegedly starts today but it's already being seen as unenforceable.
9 JUNE
I'm three days into a Michel Thomas course in Greek and really love it. I've read criticism of the Thomas method online, saying it's superficial and unreal, but, like thousands of users, I find it not only a brilliant way of learning but also a truly enjoyable entertainment – like listening to your favourite radio programme. Over the past 11 weeks, I've completed a Teach Yourself course in Greek, much more traditional and based on a lot of reading and writing as well as listening. I think I've learned quite a bit from it, but it feels like everything really sinks in deep with the Michel Thomas approach. Perhaps the secret is to do both. I did Michel Thomas Italian a while ago, and I've now ordered a Teach Yourself Italian course to do after the Michel Thomas Greek. By the end of August, I should be able to speak a reasonable amount of Greek and Italian – but who I'll get to speak it with remains to be seen.
10 JUNE
Today I should have been taking a boat from the land of the Man-Eating Giants to the island of Circe... but I'm not. Some potentially good news is that Greece is going to allow visitors from Italy from next week. It's also potentially alarming, since Italy's record on the virus is almost as bad as that of the UK. Could the Greeks' desperation not to lose this summer's business entirely doom them to suffer the importation of the virus whose effect they did so much to minimise? Even if, later this year, I can get to Greece via Italy, I am sure that the possession of a UK passport could still be a major hindrance...
11 JUNE
Someone referred to the virus situation in the UK now as "the twilight zone" – that's certainly how it feels. We just seem to be drifting, with no feeling that anyone has any idea what's happening or what is likely to happen. I had a socially distanced chat with my daughter yesterday, outside, just about sheltered from the rain. We agreed we are both trying to do the right thing, ie follow what we think are the lockdown and distancing rules, while seeing many people around us no longer doing either. It's a combination of sad, depressing and anger-fuelling. The miserable, drizzly weather doesn't help.
12 JUNE
Slightly depressing news this morning... Skyros, the Greek island that has over several decades established itself as the home of trendy yoga and "wellbeing" holidays, has announced that all its courses for 2020 have been cancelled. This is slightly shocking because some of those courses run through September, and the organisers have decided that they can't commit to something even three months from now. That's totally understandable because, as things stand, even if people from the UK can get to Greece, they face the possibility of 14 days' quarantine there and then 14 days' quarantine when they get back home. It's a lose-lose situation, which must be largely put down to the failures of the UK government to get a grip on the virus crisis at the right time with the right rules and with the right resources. Skyros and its many fans (along with many, many Hellenophiles) are part of the collateral damage (although of course not the worst hit by a long way).
Relatives of some of those who died, most probably unnecessarily, in UK care homes that were infected by patients being released to them by hospitals are taking legal action against the UK government... and others are demanding an immediate public inquiry.
I sympathise with them totally and have some insight into the hell they must be having to deal with. My mother died (thankfully) last year after a fall in a care home and after dying of sepsis in hospital. The complaints that my brother and I felt compelled to make about her treatment and the way that her death was handled and wrongly recorded are ongoing... nearly 12 months after her funeral.
From what we saw last year, care homes and hospital wards for the elderly often treat their residents and patients as little more than a nuisance for doing their best to hang on to their lives. When the virus hit, all the shortcomings, failures and abuses of the system must have been magnified over and over...
13 JUNE
Today I should have been sailing from Circe's island back to the Italian coast for the final stages of my odyssey... But of course I'm not... The sun has returned here, probably temporarily, which makes being stuck here easier to put up with. A neighbour was saying this morning that this time of great change reminds her of the feeling of 1968... and I can see what she means up to a point – with the virus, the Black Lives Matters protests, the reappraisal of history, and the radical rethinking of the presentation of the arts and music, and of how we work and live... But what changed after 1968? Perhaps not very much, one could argue. So will there be real change for the better this time round?
14 JUNE
Greece's stance just got a little tougher. There will be no UK flights into Athens until at least 30 June. And, as I've said before, who can blame it for trying to defend a country where there have been hardly any virus deaths from one that has the worst pandemic record in the world after the US (which perhaps should be seen as a special case for its appalling non-handling of the crisis)?
15 JUNE
Well, that's 12 weeks of lockdown gone and here we are in just the latest version of chaos, with no clear idea of what's happening and what is likely to happen. But wait... non-essential shops in England are being allowed to open today. This news has been greeted with mild hysteria in some quarters of the media. The clue in how important this latest development is in the word "non-essential"... But then, perhaps it is a particularly important development for "restarting the economy", since that economy, as has been shown, depends greatly upon people wanting to buy non-essentials.
Another, perhaps more important, step today is the compulsory wearing of face coverings on public transport. Why on earth has it taken us 12 weeks to make compulsory a simple and possibly life-saving measure that people in some other countries hit by the virus adopted voluntarily three months ago?
16 JUNE
Everywhere there seem to be worries about the dreaded "second wave" of the virus – everywhere, that is, except in the UK, which continues to blunder out of lockdown without a coherent plan. Its belated introduction of 14-day quarantine for arrivals from abroad (which, if the government's past record is anything to go by, will be a shambles) has succeeded in prompting France to introduce a two-week quarantine for UK visitors.
The UK has said it will not have anything to do with an EU data-sharing app and website aimed at promoting tourism via up-to-the-minute information as European countries attempt to reopen. Why would anyone be surprised by this head-in-the-sand show of independence?
Meanwhile, almost-virus-free New Zealand has just found that it has two new cases... which came from guess where? The UK of course. The two people involved had been given exemption from quarantine on compassionate grounds – but it looks like New Zealand won't be making the same mistake again.
17 JUNE
Spain is now considering compulsory 14-day quarantine requirement for visitors from the UK when it opens up again this coming weekend. It's a mixture of tit-for-tat and common sense. The UK remains the sick man of Europe.
Some good news... Greggs will reopen lots of its stores tomorrow. Although the bad news is that some of them will not be reopening at all. For those of us fortunate enough to have a surviving Greggs nearby, this means its wonderful and surprisingly successful vegan sausage rolls will be available once more. They're one of the things I've really missed in lockdown!
The Greek government has been accused of using the virus crisis to directly award lucrative contracts to select private companies without transparent oversight. So, despite the vast difference in the number of infections and deaths in Greece and the UK, and the difficulties in opening up travel between the two countries, their governments may have something in common...
18 JUNE
I went to the Moon and back yesterday... Well, Wimbledon, actually... But it felt like an epic voyage. I needed a new exercise book for my latest language course and the Rymans in Wimbledon was now open. Yes, non-essential, I suppose, but it was kind of nice to get a green exercise book for my Italian notes to match the blue one I got for my Greek notes (in my local Rymans at Clapham Junction 12 weeks ago).
The bus was socially-distanced busy, with just about everybody obeying the rule on wearing a mask or face covering. And Rymans was pretty much empty and looking very clean and tidy – and had just one green exercise book. I bought that plus printer ink, got on the return bus straight away and headed home. The whole journey took about two hours and felt like a real adventure into the almost unknown – although to be honest, Wimbledon town centre is pretty dreary and dreadful, and I was glad to be back at Wandsworth Common.
19 JUNE
Things are looking up... There's a new Bob Dylan album out today... And Wales has made a surprise announcement that it's opening up from 6 July. Tempted as I am to go to the nearest HMV store and buy the Dylan CD, it's unfortunately at Westfield shopping centre, which I visited once for a similar reason and found that it was hell on earth, like the biggest and worst airport you ever visited multiplied by a factor of ten. So I may resort to mail order. On the Welsh front, it looks like I should now be able to rearrange my much-postponed trip to Pembrokeshire for mid-July... if I can fix somewhere to stay. On top of that, the Brighton Electric studio is reopening for business and I'm hopefully going to be able to get together with some musicians for a jam later in July. Plus, a drummer is needed for a jazz weekend course in Northamptonshire at the end of next month, so that should be doable too. The idea of actually playing drums (rather than practising rudiments on a pad in my bedroom) is extremely exciting.
20 JUNE
B&B in Carmarthen booked! Brighton Electric studios booked! Jazz weekend in Northamptonshire booked! Now I'm wondering how on earth I'm going to manage to fit in my Italian course and piano lessons if I start gadding about the place. Does this suggest that one day soon we will be being nostalgic about lockdown? On the other hand, as the news comes in of the virus in resurgence in China and elsewhere, maybe lockdown is still a long way from being a thing of the past.
21 JUNE
A glimmer of good news this morning... Trump's much-heralded return to the campaign trail with a rally in Oklahoma which was supposed to have had a million ticket applications and was expected to fill a 19,000-seater stadium plus large overspill area with relay big screen... actually turned out to be a PR disaster with the hall looking half-full and the overspill area having to be abandoned. On top of that, half a dozen of Trump's organisers tested positive for the virus and had to be quarantined. Whatever spin the Trump campaign tries to put on this, the pictures of empty seats tell the story. Maybe some members of his so-called base are beginning to show some sense, at least about risking catching or spreading the virus, and maybe even about the descent of this man into some of the lowest places humans can go.
In Italy this weekend there have been protests, particularly in Milan, about the government's mishandling of the virus crisis and about workers' needing to be treated better. It may not be long before we see something similar here. And of course in the US, where things continue in many states to go downhill while being ignored by a White House in denial.
22 JUNE
This week I would have been on the last legs of my odyssey, making my way back across Italy, then to Paris and finally London. Instead, I'm still here in London, travelling to foreign parts only through Greek and Italian lessons. I would have been coming back to a UK heatwave, it seems, since temperatures are forecast to be going up to 30C this week. With things opening up generally (albeit with the feeling of being in the shadow of some as yet unknown catastrophe), I probably need to make some sort of decision as to whether to go ahead with putting the final touches to an odyssey starting in the last week of August...
23 JUNE
The UK seems to be pressing ahead with opening up "the economy" – with pubs, restaurants, theatres and cinemas being told they can go back to work from early July. And no one seems to think the quarantine regulations for people coming into the country will last long – or that they will be policed properly anyway. So either we'll go back to "normal" or there will be a second wave. The US reopening debacle which has led not to a second wave but, it seems, to a swelling of the first wave is an illustration of what happens when lockdown is lifted too early and too few people respect the rules. Hopefully, Europe will be sensible enough not to let any Americans in for the foreseeable future. But will the UK be that sensible? A saving grace may be that many, many Americans will be too frightened to travel – from past experience, it doesn't seem to take much to make them stay put.
24 JUNE
The EU does seem to be giving serious thought to a ban on travellers from the US – or at least from those parts of it where the virus is still rampant. The EU may have its faults but at least it seems to have some heavyweight people who actually think things through a bit. How different to much of the US and our own dear UK... Having said that, one should add that Wales and Scotland are not being quite so gung-ho about opening just about everything up as soon as possible, and appear to be putting health concerns up there with the politico-economic ones – unlike England. The Westminster government is of course only really concerned about England – and that could be narrowed down further to the Tories and their pals...
25 JUNE
Today my odyssey would have been over... if it had started. So now I still have it to look forward to – perhaps. An optimistic neighbour is planning to go for a family holiday in Spain towards the end of August and tells me I shouldn't hesitate to follow in her footsteps a week later and head for Athens. I explained that I'm not over-concerned about travelling through Greece or even Italy – just slightly worried about the logistics of getting there and possible quarantine restrictions that could throw out all my itinerary calculations. Unlike Odysseus, if things go awry, I am unlikely to be taken in by rapacious enchantresses. Far more likely – at the moment – is being locked up in a very basic Greek hotel room near the airport or the docks.
26 JUNE
I felt very strongly that the UK should have stayed in Europe – rather than go down the path of the Brexit disaster. But seeing the pictures not only of the hordes of people crowding onto the beaches of England's south coast but also of the filth and litter they left behind them, I think now that it's absolutely right that this country should leave Europe. Wales and Scotland may still have some European sensibilities left, but England seems to have descended into being a land fit for morons. And Europe is better off without it.
27 JUNE
The British (and I suppose that includes me, although I don't want it to) seem to think they have a right to go wherever they want and do whatever they want. Despite the government's failure to deal with the pandemic and its success in recording the highest number of related deaths in Europe, plus the moronic behaviour of so many selfish rule-breakers and potential virus-spreaders, there is now endless talk of: will we be OK to go on a holiday in the sun? A friend I was talking to yesterday referred to the people who crowded and despoiled the south coast beaches this week as "those motherfuckers" whose actions could negate everything that we might have gained by being in lockdown for three months. "It could all have been a waste of time," he said – and that seems a reasonable view.
The government is now talking even more about "air bridges" with other countries – another plan that is almost completely about economic concerns and little if anything to do with health. There is even a suggestion of an "air bridge" with Greece. As I keep saying, why on earth would Greece want to risk all that it has gained by letting in hordes of irresponsible Brits?
There is no plan for an "air bridge" with the US at the moment – which is a bit like saying there is no plan to poison the water supply.
The EU seems even closer now to banning travellers from the US – which seems a no-brainer, since that country appears to have avoided a second wave of the virus by simply keeping the crest of the first wave riding high.
28 JUNE
Have hit some kind of wall... Have not been feeling great yesterday/today... All through the good weather there have been screaming kids playing outside my flat... which has very slowly been driving me mad...
I was trying play something difficult on piano yesterday and they were making a noise outside that distracted me, even through headphones... I went outside and found two girls (about 10) playing with a water outlet from the flats which is not supposed to be used by anyone except the council... and they had flooded quite a large area... which leads into an area of storage sheds where most of my drums are... To cut a long story short, I told them off – as politely as I could – and asked them to stop being antisocial... They apologised and went away... But I've felt awful ever since... I feel I've turned into a real grumpy old person... And I think this has keyed into the fact that I just can't stand living here much longer... even though I have no idea where I do want to be!!
On top of that, I checked the website I work for last night (for no reason at all) and found that we had a major problem and had lost lots and lots of pix and illustrations from stories... so had to spend an hour or two patching things up... and am still doing that this morning...
Maybe things will turn around... And maybe there's a macrocosm/microcosm thing going on... with the external lockdown exit turmoil being mirrored by inner turmoil. Maybe we're all just going crazy...
29 JUNE
With the virus apparently raging across the US, Europe keeping its fingers crossed that the second wave doesn't get going, the UK stumbling blithely/blindly out of lockdown (and the city of Leicester being threatened with its very own lockdown), the only sanity seems to be in conversations with friends (in the deep end rather than on the shallow side) and in listening to music (which I've realised I've neglected to do much of for too long). I'm working through a list of tunes for a jazz workshop in Northamptonshire at the end of July; the multiple versions of the six tunes are all an education, although researching into the musicians, and particularly the drummers, hammers home the realisation that pretty much all of them are dead – and many died young. The music, though, lives on, and I'm looking forward to my turn to play it – as long as any Leicester lockdown doesn't start spreading down the road to Northamptonshire.
30 JUNE
American visitors are essentially supposed to be banned from Europe for the time being (and Europe is supposed to include the UK until the end of this year) although individual EU countries can still make their own decisions. There was a report that Greece was thinking of opening up to the US (which would surely be madness) but now it says that it isn't. And Greece has no problem about extending its ban on flights from the UK which was due to end tomorrow but will now go on until 15 July. The Greeks claim to be optimistic about setting up an air bridge with the UK, with Brits not having to be quarantined when they return home. But what about having to be quarantined when one enters Greece? That seems rather crucial.
