So the 19 in the virus name is for 2019

IN all the ideas put forward for a resumption of the soccer season, it seems to me that one option has not been put forward – blow football!

The childhood game could be an ideal solution as it would not contravene the social distancing restrictions of players during the lockdown which, surely, any alternative would do.

Huge air blowers could be positioned at each end of the pitch, swivelled and running across a track to direct the ball into the opposite net. Worth trying, what do you think?

While I’m at it, what about a means of getting race meetings going again? Replace them with games of the board game Totopoly.

All those horses I remember; Dark Warrior, Dorigen, Marmaduke Jinks, Elton and the rest would be renamed after entrants in each race on the card at “meetings”, based on their pedigree and form prior to all that has happened.

Number name

I have to be careful that readers do not think I’ve totally lost it after five weeks of social isolation on my own when I write things like the above.

Anne Fullagar emailed to ask if I was being serious or testing readers when I asked (this column last week) that if the pandemic is Covid 19 what happened to the previous 18 and had to assure her it was a flippant remark.

I also had to thank her as she says the virus was so called as it began in 2019. So now I know.

Telephone test

What a disappointment for me and anti-climax for you!

The eye test by telephone I envisaged (this column last week), a contemporary version of the traditional form, a sort of 2020 Vision, if you like, was a big letdown.

It turned out to be nothing more than a “keep taking the tablets”, drops in this case, talk during a brief call when I was informed another appointment will be made when things settle back down. Fallen friend

Since the lockdown began I have, if anything but intentionally so, tried to make light of things in what is a very serious situation and sometimes we are made only too aware of just how serious it is.

David Abbott contacted me to say he had just lost a long time friend, Michael Bent, to coronavirus and recount memories of him.

“He lived opposite me on Hollycroft and we spent many hours in our youth down Sandy Walk, over the fields alongside Wykin as far as the canal, long before the Jelson estate existed. Also he ushered me to Westfield school when I began as he was in the third year.”

In later life Mr Bent who was a mobile car mechanic lived on Edward Street. He had a sister Molly who, David tells me, is well known in the town.

My condolences go to Mr Bent’s widow and all his loved ones on their loss and ask for God’s blessings and care on them and all other families affected in the same way as Michael was just one example of others taken so tragically.

My apologies to them if anything I have written has made it seem the pandemic is in any way a laughing matter as it is far from it.