VILLEIN = Low born rustic : peasant, farmer, yokel. I’ve been reading a book about feudalism: a time when simple folk looked for protection in the face of marauding bands by swearing allegiance to a lord. Let’s hope that current instabilities don’t drag us back in that direction
I’m just back from two weeks in the UK. So exciting to travel again after all the pandemic nonsense. Not that a novel respiratory virus is a small thing. I am on the edge of the vulnerable age group and I did my best to behave responsibly in terms of social distancing and vaccination. But I was never in favour of compulsion or shaming and the politicisation on “both sides” was sad to see.
My biggest worry now is the knock-on effect of the lock downs. We in the “developed world” are feeling the pinch, but that is nothing to what the weaker economies have been going through. I have personal knowledge of young people in Africa whose small businesses were ruined by lock downs and I think we will be very…