Salut!

Covid-19 Diaries. Small northern town (3) teacher’s blunt mid-term report on Government

I said the Covid-19 Diaries series was more or less done and it is. But I also said anyone who still sent contributions would see them published. Bill Taylor is a different matter - he simply includes me when firing off his daily chunk of life under lockdown in Toronto to Facebook. I've reproduced 25 here and am glad I have done so, but Bill and I agree the series has probably run its course.

Still time and space, though, for more thoughts from my home town of Shildon, Co Durham and my great friend Pete Sixsmith, retired teacher (head of history, no less), returning paper boy and suffering fellow Sunderland supporter ....

Covid-19 Diaries. Helping others in a small northern town

 

By common consent, Pete Sixsmith's essay on how the coronavirus pandemic was affecting life in a small town in County Durham - Shildon, my home town and his though neither of us was born there - has been among the highlights or this series. I am sure readers will tell me if they feel it's running out of steam but "hits", that is to say the number of visits to Salut!, suggest otherwise - yesterday, with a vital little push on Facebook from Bill Taylor, reached a record for Covid-19 Diaries (OK, not quite 600 but not a bad count for a piddling little site) ...

Here is Peter's follow-up. The teacher-turned-paper-boy is doing his bit for what even Boris now recognises as 'society' ...

 

Covid-19 Diaries. Shildon: (1) life turned upside down in a small northern town

 

This has been a remarkable series, triggered by the lockdown jottings from Toronto of Bill Taylor. Bill and I worked on different local newspapers at their district offices in Bishop Auckland, County Durham. We'd both been lazy, low achievers at school and were probably fortunate to scrape into journalism. But I knew from early in Bill's career that he was an exceptional writer with sharp powers of observation.

 

Pete Sixsmith was much more driven and conscientious at school and, later, college. He became an outstanding teacher by all accounts (including my own, after he persuaded me to talk to his class about the media), rising to head of history in Ferryhill. He also applied much patience and, doubtless, ingenuity in dealing one-to-one with the more challenging pupils. Pete is also a writer of rare talent; the wit, wisdom and eloquence of his prose turned my site for supporters of Sunderland AFC, salutsunderland.com (it's become something else under recent new ownership), into a beacon of great football writing.

 

I was delighted when Pete agreed to contribute to the series from our home town of Shildon. Please read on. You won't regret it. In a just world, his words and those of Bill's on the current global crisis would be seen by many thousands, not a few hundred ...