THE POSITIVE PROFESSOR
SOCIAL media’s voice of calm Karol Sikora has been signed up by the Daily Express. Readers can now enjoy his soothing advice in these troubled times that has won him hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter. If you need reassuring everything’s going to be all right read Professor Positivity.
A SACRIFICE is giving up something you value for the sake of others. We’ve all been doing it intermittently for nearly a year because of the pandemic.
Whether it’s our children’s education, going to pubs and restaurants or simply not cuddling our grandchildren. Any infringement of civil liberties is painful.
But the story of the pretty Derbyshire village of Eyam, below, is remarkable.
In 1665, the Great Plague was ripping through London. The rich, including King Charles II, fled to country estates leaving the poor to die in their city hovels.
In August, the village tailor opened a parcel of cloth and found fleas, which he shook off and thought nothing more. The following week, he died of the plague.
Gradually more villagers succumbed. Vicar William Mompesson, 28, came up with a containment plan that he amazingly convinced people to follow.
A quarantine boundary was set up around the village that nobody would cross in either direction.
Food and supplies were delivered and stone troughs with vinegar used to disinfect the coins for payment.
Nearly a third of the 800 villagers died and whole families were wiped out.
But the lives of so many in surrounding towns and villages were spared because of the sacrifice at Eyam.
There is a wonderful museum there and the stone trough is still in the field.
When I swipe my card to pay for a coffee and a swab is used to clean it, I think of the vinegar trough at Eyam and the courage of the villagers at a time when we had almost no understanding of infectious diseases.
So as we come out of the worst of our pandemic it’s really important we make our own sacrifices as we get back to our normal life. It’s painful but worth it.