Feeling a bit strange today OH DEAR WHAT A SHAME NEVER MIND-

DAY THIRTY-SIX:

Friday 5^th February  2021:

I am feeling strange. I mildly feel sick and my head is throbbing.  I slept very deeply and do not want to eat. This has to be a reaction to yesterday’s vaccination, give it a few hours and it will go away. It is better to have had the vaccination and to be feeling poorly than not to have had it.

 

Sod my feeling sick, what about the 19,202 people who contracted the virus yesterday ? What about the 1,322 who died ?  In Milton Keynes where I live there were 68 new cases yesterday and 4 deaths.

 

I learned yesterday that the town’s ice rink is waiting in the background to be a temporary mortuary. This morning on the news there are reports of our too little too late government dithering about quarantine for people coming into Britain.

 

At the end of last year I predicted Easter 2022 would be when some form of normality would return, I do not need to be a scientist to realise we are not never, no way getting the virus under control. If Boris Johnson continued the way he is my estimated date is far too optimistic, Easter 2025 ?  Later even ?

 

I think we need SMILE OF THE DAY: Just sending out a big hug to whoever may need one right now.

 

6am this morning I did go out, I went to the pharmacy where I was given my vaccination and pushed an envelope through the door with SMILE cards, NHS quiz sheets, smiley stickers and loads more. There were dozens and dozens and dozens of beautiful people supporting the medical team. BEAUTIFUL people.

 

I opened my laptop this morning to receive an e-mail from Amazon telling me the DVD about state executioner Albert Pierrepoint will be delivered today. I have just reached the point in my book debating the rights and wrongs of the death penalty and the part played by Executioner Pierrepoint. Perfect timing Amazon.  

 

This is the introduction I have written for the chapter:

 

So who was Albert Pierrepoint ? Who was Executioner Pierrepoint ?

 

Albert Pierrepoint was born on 30^th March 1905 in Clayton, Yorkshire. His father was a heavy drinker and in and out of work. The family struggled financially. The role of official executioner was a paid position but not a full-time occupation. Albert’s father Henry and his uncle Thomas were official hangmen before him.

 

From an early age Albert Pierrepoint wanted to become a hangman. At the age of twenty-seven years in September 1932 he was taken on as assistant executioner. In December of that year he assisted his Uncle Tom hang a man by the neck until dead. It was in October 1941 he undertook his first hanging as lead executioner.

 

His father Henry Pierrepoint was taken off the list of executioners in July 1910 after he turned up drunk at a prison two days before an execution. His brother Thomas became an official executioner in 1906.

 

Albert did not find out about his father’s job until he was eleven years of age. When asked at school to write about the job he would like to do when he left school he said: When I leave school I should like to be public executioner like my dad is, because it needs a steady man with good hands like my dad and my Uncle Tom and I shall be the same.

 

During my strange night’s sleep I was thinking how different people’s attitude was in Pierrepoint’s day to life and death. As former soldiers much of the adult population had killed someone in war.  There wasn’t a family which had not lost someone in the war.

 

Within the cases I have been reviewing shooting was the usual method for murder. Guns were all over the place as people still had them after their service.

 

Life was cheap.

 

Pierrepoint hung in excess of three hundred people during his career.

 

Life was cheap.

 

TOTALLY different today but I fear that life is again becoming cheap. Every day hideous figures which the government just brushes aside in its failure to protect the population.

 

Yes, I am feeling a bit ill today. Oh dear what a shame never mind. No breakfast. Tough luck. This will all go away within hours but what about those 1,322 families grieving today ? What about staff who may have to man a pop up mortuary at the ice rink ?

 

I am talking round in circles am I not ?  If you are reading today what I am writing perhaps this will not make any sense but for those who open my time capsule on 1^st January 2121 I hope it makes perfect sense.

 

Let’s check out ON THIS DAY:

5^th January 1957:  In a speech given to the United States Congress President Dwight D Eisenhower announces the establishment of what will later be called the Eisenhower Doctrine. Never heard of it.

Nobody I have ever heard of born on this day. As per usual.

5^th February 1998: Sony Bono as in Sonny and Chere killed in a skiing accident.

5^th February 2003 Roy Jenkins, politician died.

 

Yesterday I wrote 3,439 words bringing my total up to 287, 979. Not sure how many I will write today as I am feeling weird.

 

Speak again tomorrow

Dave