Category: Letters

Happy Birthday – April 1978 to April 2025

The day normality disappeared.

February’s Kibworth and District Chronicle requested memories of the events of March 2020. Having drafted notes on the spectacular starling roost witnessed by readers who live in Kibworth Beauchamp; I have deferred those notes to April so that I can respond to the request for pandemic memories.

February Lorna and I enjoying last few days of stay in Málaga. Contacted my niece in Milan because of reports of coronavirus hitting hard in Italy. She sent me her report that included disturbing pictures of life there - empty supermarket shelves and metros at rush hour. That spooked me.

When the first Covid-19 lockdown was announced I, in complete shock, unsure how I was going to fill my days. Previously I had enjoyed lots of various volunteering roles and meeting friends for coffee, lunch, etc allowing me to structure my week in a very fulfilling way. I felt that walking, gardening, reading, the search of tackling all of those tasks around the house and garden that previously there didn’t seem to be time for (in my case painting garden fences and the inside of cupboards) wasn’t going to be enough to sustain my wellbeing.

During lockdown Kibworth Community Library home-delivered over 2000 books to people of all ages across Beauchamp, Harcourt, Smeeton and Foxton. All books were donated by our lovely customers and all were returned (plus several hundred more). We had to buy a shed to store them all in.

Rainbows in the window

I saw your plea for memories of Covid in the last Kibworth & District Chronicle. My experience had a deep low and a great high. The low was that a close friend of mine was diagnosed with throat cancer shortly before Covid struck. He was undergoing radiotherapy, so his immune system was destroyed. He caught Covid - pre-vaccine - in hospital and it killed him in three days, he was only in his sixties.

Completing an online survey and watching an interview made me think about communication skills.
‘Surveys are designed to gain knowledge and assess thoughts’ (Survey - Human Research)

Dear Editor

I am both dismayed and disappointed at your irresponsible decision to publish what you termed as ‘an alternative view of climate change’ based upon the letter from Steve Needham. ‘An uninformed view’ would have been a more apposite title.