SO the COVID shackles are starting to come off just a little ('baby steps' is the buzz word) so the time is opportune to review just what we've lost in the lockdown so far - and all in a year we will never be getting back.
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It really is a depressing list.
Here in our little part of Heaven we lost our annual Show for the first time since the real war, we lost Ironfest, we lost the ball season (no Catholic or Highland flings), holiday trips, physical contact with friends and family, lazy wasted hours at the pub, club or café, Summer and Winter sports competitions, sociable cuddles and smooches, ukulele club Tuesday morning sessions at the library, nervous visits to the confessional, even that Sunday drive. Life that we took for granted ceased to exist and that situation's far from finished despite those 'baby steps'.
We're not getting a return to real normality just yet (can you picture Ironfest with just 100 visitors?) - and we won't be if we now throw caution to the winds.
At least this week we'll see a start on the long road home.
Cold comfort
AMONG the concessions is the re-opening of public open air swimming pools. Can't see much demand for that one of life's little pleasures around here any time soon.
Roll ém up!
LAST week in the column our correspondents were wondering why they couldn't play lawn bowls when the golfers were back on the fairways.
Seemed a reasonable question but we're pleased to report that bowlers are returning to the greens this week in Lithgow, with sessions allocated on a roster system. We'd like to think it was our little nudge that got them there but that would be fibbing a little.
The last rose
EVEN in the dying days of the rose growing season brazen thieves have been lopping the final blooms in Lithgow's QE Park rose garden.
The rose garden is a hugely popular feature of the park, not a free florist service for the shamelessly light fingered. And stealing from the park is as much a crime as shoplifting from Bunnings.
The thieves are so brazen they seem totally oblivious to the CCTV cameras scattered around the park or any onlookers or else they just don't care.
Essential services?
IT'S been a little confusing identifying just what are and are not essential services during the virus lockdown.
But in in that crazy den of gun totin' rednecks and 'unusual' politicians known as the USA the situation is even stranger.
In those states where 'medicinal' (and sometimes even strangely enough 'recreational') marijuana is legal the pot shops are considered essential services, just like your local pharmacy or family butcher.
All those gun totin' rednecks getting high. Go figure!
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