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We’re free! Kinda.

Gyms, shops and all hairdressers are set to reopen from December 3 and there’s even an early Christmas present for sport fans with crowds allowed back into stadiums from next week.

As expected, the new stricter tiered system will come into play from December 3 and will last until March next year. The Government’s ‘stay at home’ message will once again be dropped and collective worship, weddings and outdoor sports can resume. Social gathering will once again have to abide by the rule of six.

This from the Telegraph’s WhatsApp group. Okay, writing that sentence gave me temporal whiplash.

I’m surprised, actually. I thought we were going to be on hard lockdown until the vaccine got wide distribution. I wonder if they got the sense they were losing people. Because they were.

Oh, yes. The screenshot is from the game I’m playing and they did their homework on this one. Yes, Victorian Britons loved the banjo. It was the first musical craze to hop the Atlantic and it stayed popular, in one form or another, until WWII.

It started with the minstrel shows but, Brits being Brits, that just wasn’t posh enough. So they invented a style called Classic Banjo (not classical, mind) which consisted of happy little tunes played sitting down and wearing a tux.

And the banjos! They had dozens of home workshops turning out weird and wacky ‘jos . I own a few (they don’t age well and generally aren’t very expensive). I started to write a book about it once, then realized — oh, yeah. I’m lazy!

The men in the picture are glowing white because apparently I’m intimidating Mr Banjo by standing this close. I had to, to hear the tune. Didn’t recognize it, but it was generally in keeping with Classic Banjo. As is the banjo itself, if a little boring.

November 23, 2020 — 6:54 pm
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