Day One Hundred and Two - Immunity, Heat and Beach Bedlam

I will confess that I nearly turned back on my walk today. I wasn't feeling good. And I was starting to perspire before I'd even got started. Don't mind that by the time I've walked there and back but it doesn't seem a good thing just a minute or two outside my front door. However I'm no quitter, so I carried on and the only bit I cut short was on the return route where I go round the roundelay and up to the end and back again. I left that bit out. My tummy has been playing up a bit. It's bothering me because it can't be a tummy bug. I haven't been anywhere to pick anything up. So it must be something else. Blaming the heat, that will do. When it cools down I feel better. There. I feel better already.

I've been thinking about immunity. I'm just wondering how people will succumb to other germs and bugs when they come out of lockdown. It is my understanding that for an immune system to work efficiently it has to encounter all manner of germs in order for the bod defences to identify the good guys and bad guys. In this lockdown with the extensive sanitising and hand washing it hasn't had a chance. It hasn't had a good workout. Wouldn't that ultimately mean that we are making ourselves even more susceptible to COVID-19 than we were before? 

It's been a very hot day today. I think it's 26 degrees in the shade currently. Haven't been outside much. I had my breakfast out there first thing because at 6:30 in the morning it's pretty cool and pleasant. But I end up wondering sometimes if I'm living on a council estate or a building site. In spite of the heat the power tools are going, music is playing and the exchange of estuary English opinions are thrown across the neighbour waves. It's cooler inside in every sense of the word.

But the heatwave problems cast a wider net as this headline from the Independent tells us -

'A major incident has been declared after thousands of people flocked to beaches on the south coast of England during this week's hot weather.

Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole council said services were "completely overstretched" as huge numbers of visitors defied advice to stay away.'And praise the perpetrator saying we need to lighten our lives at the moment.
 

I wouldn't be at all surprised if similar stories are reported from coastal resorts all around the country. And that will include where I live too. I can't help wondering what is in people's heads when they behave like this. They clearly cannot believe themselves to be at any risk from coronavirus. However, something strikes me as a little odd here. Every time we have a heatwave or good weather, and we've had a fair bit during this lockdown, a different coastal resort is identified. My own hometown featured in May as the bad boy hotspot for people ignoring social distancing. Today it's Bournemouth, Poole and Dorset. Am I still being cynical and sceptical? Because my commonsense tells me that if it's hot every damn beach in the country will be under the same pressure. Why is just one being singled out as the place that everyone is going?