Culturally Prepared Whispers

Overheard while having our daily exercise walk:

Chairman: "Why did that lorry driver just beep his horn, smile and wave at us?"

Hay: "Perhaps he's looking for some recognition. Maybe we should clap delivery drivers whenever we see them."

Chairman: "If we did it outside our track, perhaps we could divert them down our track and hi-jack their vans."

Hay: "A lorry load of supplies should see us right through to next year."

Hayley and I have a strange habit should we both wake up at night at the same time - we converse in whispers, despite being the only souls in the house. I can't fathom out why we behave in this manner.

I think I may have sussed out why Scandinavian countries are better at coping with the pandemic than the UK. The obvious reason is the fact they have high taxes and are far more socially minded than us, but the less obvious one is that they have a habit in summer of buggering off to their mountain retreats for a couple of months and the whole country practically shuts down. This is most obvious in Sweden, where towns and cities become ghost towns. I always avoided travelling on business in Sweden in the summer months for precisely this reason. They are used to having whole swathes of their economy dormant for several months and are prepared for it.

That said, Sweden is still open for business and hasn't shut down yet - but they are nonetheless culturally prepared.

If we're to avoid a similar situation in the future, we need to adapt our economy so it can do the same for a sustained period. Following the Swedish tradition, we also could try running the economy on life support for 1 month of the year in the summer and everyone go on holiday simultaneously, but one where you require no additional support, except food. Should a pandemic appear at any future time, as it undoubtedly will, then it would be relatively easy to shift that month to any time of the year, as needed.

We also need to wean ourselves away from unsustainable levels of debt. I know several close friends who are up to their eyeballs in debt and this situation will almost certainly result in them having their cars and houses repossessed, as they don't have a penny in savings. Thank God that Hay and I don't live beyond our means and are savers rather than spenders, not owing a penny to anyone. We could probably live for several years with no income at all.