Skype is a wonderful invention - although I remember well when I used to say - "I can't believe people would ever make a telephone where you would see the other person! I'd never use it! Imagine!" - because it seemed like something out of very far-fetched science fiction. [I just checked - it was invented in 2003, and people reckon that it "became popular" by 2005 - I think I was a bit behind on that]. But it's not a substitute for travel: I wish so much that I could have been celebrating my father's 97th birthday with him. That being said, he - enjoying a glass of champagne, here - seemed to have seen quite a few people - there were two there when we called up at 5 p.m. (one masked, one not masked ... ); he was eating birthday cake - it's hard to believe that we would have been complicit in so much sociability. To be sure, cases in Merton - his London borough - are hardly at LA, or even Santa Fe levels (46 in Merton today, in a population just over 200,000) - but that's not nothing. BUT - it was his 97th birthday! This is something very much to be toasted, whether we could be there to do so in person, or not! And he should be very much in England's front line to receive the vaccine ...
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