The Worst Lockdown Job

We started this Lockdown with a list of tasks we didn’t want to do, but ought to. 

Our thinking was that there was no better time than during Lockdown the cold dark winter months.

However, we soon discovered that if we were feeling a little depressed, doing a horrible job like sorting out the loft did not make us feel any better.  So we let ourselves off.

But now that we have a roadmap out of Lockdown, we are more motivated.  One day, we will have more exciting prospects than decluttering our drawers.  So we should probably use these last few weeks getting through dull tasks.  I guess.

The job that we REALLY did not want to do was revise our very out-of-date will, made when the children were minors.

Now in their twenties, we figured that they might not appreciate having to go and live with our friends Nick and Jackie as the will stipulated previously.  And indeed, Nick and Jackie might have been surprised when they arrived, suitcases in hand.

So last weekend saw us on Zoom with a professional will-writer having a conversation which largely consisted of phrases like ‘If I got hit by a bus…’, ‘Any of us could get hit by a bus tomorrow…’ & ‘What if we all got hit by a bus…?’

It feels good to have done this.  But even so, I am still going to be very, very careful of buses from now on.

Snow Fest

 

In the past, I’ve always valued a snow day – one where there has been a deep enough fall to stop traffic and close schools. 

It has meant a lie-in, and the complete slow-down of life. 

Everything we meant to do that day goes by the board.  Might as well take a long walk then bake some bread.

However, this year saw yet another complete inversion of the norms.

On Sunday in St Albans, we had a reasonable fall of snow.

Usually, most people wait until the flakes stop falling before they go out. 

But I thought there might be a lot of people on the paths if we delayed, making it hard to socially distance. 

‘We should go out now, while it’s still snowing!’

So Nigel and I set off to cross the local public playing field. 

It turned out nobody had waited for the snow stop.  There were scores of people and nearly as many snow-people.  Snow fights, snow angels and sledding were all happening.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen it so busy. 

Clearly, in the absence of anything else in the diary, a snow day was no longer a peaceful oasis in the hubbub of everyday life.  Instead, it was the very epitome of excitement.

And it was great to see the everyday outlines of our local neighbourhood transformed.  Due to Covid restrictions we can’t travel to see a different landscape at the moment.  However, it came to find us.

Unsung Heroes of Lockdown

The new Lockdown stole up on me unexpectedly.  I hadn’t been watching the ‘r’ number, and it did all seem to happen swiftly.  But I guess that’s all part of the exponential curve with which we’ve grown so familiar.

However, sometimes it is good things which arrive unheralded. 

This Autumn I’ve enjoyed seeing the bright fly agaric toadstools near our home which live most of the year invisible beneath the soil as hyphae.

Field maples are scrubby hedgerow trees, but around now their foliage is pure gold.

Spindle trees are insignificant bushes most of the year, but in Autumn their leaves turn fiery shades, and they yield fabulous pink berries which split to reveal orange seeds.

The wild stinking iris has a drab brown-purple flower, but right now its seed pods are splitting open and showing off their magnificent scarlet seeds.

So I guess there are wonderful things out there - we just have to wait for the time to be right and to keep looking out for them.

 

 

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A Mast Year

For months the oak trees have been growing heavy with a mass of acorns. Now those are becoming ripe and falling to the ground.  Jays and squirrels are ecstatic at the bounty. 

Sweet chestnuts are also well-laden this year.  The hazels are bearing plenty of nuts too although the squirrels always pillage them before I get there.  Dog roses and hawthorns are embellishing the hedgerows with hips and haws like blood-red beads.

A year when woodland nuts and fruits are especially plentiful is called a mast year.  It is the trees’ opportunity to reproduce – there are so many seeds that the animals and birds cannot possibly eat them all.

Folklore says that if seeds and berries are abundant in Autumn, it will be a harsh winter ahead -  God’s way of providing for the birds and animals.  However, weather patterns show little correlation between abundant Autumns and cold winters.  It’s more likely that the favourable conditions of the preceding summer are the cause.

But what always grips me is the exquisite details of these Autumn seeds – the burnished acorn fitting exactly into its cup. The beech pods like tiny jewel boxes lined with gold velvet to hold the precious, three-sided seeds. And the horse chestnut pod, armoured with spikes like a Mediaeval weapon – all to keep the polished mahogany conker safe inside.

Whether the folklore is right or not, Autumn certainly looks like the work of a Master Craftsman.

Last Hurrah

 

Recently we had a holiday with our children.

It had been postponed from Easter lockdown and rescheduled to September.

A whole week in a lovely old house on the edge of Cardinham Woods in Cornwall.

Mainly, we went walking.  In the evening we cooked for one another and played games.

Over the front garden flew ravens, buzzards, nuthatches and siskins. 

On Bodmin Moor we climbed Rough Tor and Brown Willy, the tallest hills in Cornwall, scrambled up the granite tors which looked like craggy stacks of cheeses and explored the nearby prehistoric settlements and stone circles through an atmospheric mist.

At Fowey, we clambered round St Catherine’s Castle and Nigel, Carenza and Pascoe went for a swim at Readymoney Cove while I painted a watercolour.

It wasn’t a perfect week as Perran had been relying on being able to work from home. But the wi-fi simply wasn’t up to it, so he had to leave early.

Yet all through those days of late summer sun and early Autumn mist, we knew this was a week that had been snatched from the fire.  That once we returned home, the COVID levels would likely be rising and precautions enforced once more.

What we had not realised was just how quickly the axe would fall.

Thank heavens for golden memories and our photos which preserve those days in amber.

 

Climate and Ecological Emergency Bill – please help our planet

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PPE

Earlier in the week, I did some errands.

It was a muggy day, so not ideal, but I was keen to shift the books and clothes I had turned out during Lockdown.  Before I started deciding I had been rash and took them back again.  So I piled them into the boot.

I toured several charity shops.  Some were still closed.  Others were already full to the gunnels with donations.

All the time it was getting hotter and stickier.

I gave up and went to a small supermarket to get a few necessaries.  I scrabbled in my handbag for a mask and put it on.  I even put the blue side on the outside (a bit of etiquette which had previously escaped me).

As I followed the one-way route around Budgens I noticed not only that I was the only customer in a mask, but that other people were looking at me strangely.  I felt indignant – from next Friday EVERYBODY would have to wear masks.  It was ridiculous of them to stare.

As I returned to the car with my shopping, I caught sight of myself in the window.  Bang in the middle of my forehead was a lemon sherbert sweet wrapper.  It must have come out of my bag along with the mask and I’d been ‘wearing’ it all the way round Budgens.

I drove home.  My boot was still full of clothes and books, but at least I was laughing.

As Others See Us

Over the last three months, my phone has blossomed with photos of wildflowers, rippled with corn fields and been dappled with shady woods.

Now that Lockdown is easing, we have begun to meet friends for socially distanced walks.  Afterwards we have swapped photos and it has been very welcome to see people reappearing in my photo folder.  It is as if a very beautiful garden of Eden is gradually being populated.  

I have also found myself delighted to see Nigel and I popping up again.  As somebody else’s photo arrives via WhatsApp I have an urge to cry out ‘Look! It’s me!’

In the past, a photo of oneself could be a trophy – ‘Look – Here are Nigel and I visiting the Eiffel Tower’. 

But right at the moment, these pictures of us are proof of something more valuable – we have begun to see friends and family again.

The poet, Robert Burns said:

"O wad some Power the giftie gie us To see oursels as ithers see us!"

(‘If only some Power would give us the gift to see ourselves as others see us!’)

I’m pretty sure he did not foresee the mobile phone camera, and he probably wasn’t talking about physical appearance either.  But even so, it’s the phrase that went through my head when Carenza sent us some pics at the weekend.

It is good to be back in my own photo folder again.

Shopping

The shops are open.

I haven’t been yet.

I need some summer clothes and I really like to examine the fabric and fit of an item before I buy it.

However, as with every other phase of the release of Lockdown, I am slow to take up my new privileges. 

Part of this is for the very practical reason that Nigel is an asthma sufferer so I’m keen to avoid Covid on his behalf.

However, I seem generally a little reluctant. 

I think it is because, while I remain at home, I can half believe that the town centre is operating just as normal, with people drifting along the market stalls, making casual purchases and finally settling to a coffee at a cafe table. 

Once I get there, I shall be confronted with the reality of queues, face masks, hand sanitiser, social distancing and worse – the failure of social distancing. 

However, I know that if we don't go in and support our local businesses, they may not be there in future when we want them.

So I’m sure I shall be tempted into the shops very soon, but just for the moment, in my mind, I am still picturing St Albans town centre as a far-off magical place where everything remains perfect even in spite of Corona Virus.

Photo by Emily Fletke on Unsplash

Firsts

We’ve been a bit slow with our post-lockdown firsts.  I blame it on the fact that we’re having the kitchen ‘done’ – it’s taking up a lot of bandwidth.

However, I can proudly report that our first (and only) garden-centre purchase was two massive tubs of chicken poo – on special offer.  I had hoped for something perhaps more glamorous, but Nigel seemed pleased as punch.

Our first guest for a socially isolated chat in the garden was Jennie.  She helped us to remember how to stop gardening and enjoy the sunshine.

Our first socially isolated country walk with a friend was with Steve – which is fitting since he was also the last friend we walked with before lockdown.  After work, as the low sun struck the landscape, we strode for miles across fields and through trees and had a picnic under a towering ash which was the roost of an owl.  The most magical moment was as we came through a field gate and startled five skylarks who all rose up singing into the blue sky.

The effect of such a long seclusion is that these simple occasions, once so commonplace, are now singular and jewel-like because we have learnt to treasure them.  A privilege.

Making it Complicated

We were pretty comfortable. I’d stocked up the store cupboard before panic buying struck the nation.  We’d gone out and bought supplies for DIY and craft projects.  We’d sorted out home-working via Zoom easily.

And then we made a mistake.

As new Lockdown guidance made it possible, the kitchen design company got in touch.  We had arranged with them to have our kitchen done at the start of April.  However, everything had been postponed.  

But now we could go ahead (with careful social distancing precautions, of course).

What better time to renew the kitchen?  We can’t have friends round for dinner and we’re not going anywhere.

At least, I thought it was a good time.

But today our formerly pleasant kitchen is a hollowed-out waste.

I am cooking on a camping stove on the patio.

Worst of all, the fridge is now in the room where Nigel works.  Every time I creep in for a surreptitious snack, he flicks his laptop open and says, “I’ll just add it to the spreadsheet!”

And I’m not sure he’s joking.

Woe is me.

The Lost Meadow

We’d been walking across the local golf course in order to access some of our favourite stretches of countryside.  

We had thought we were being very daring and trespassing until we discovered the golf club had kindly opened up pedestrian access during Lockdown.

For several weeks we took only certain routes which joined up with the public footpaths we were aiming for.

Then last weekend, for no particular reason, we abandoned our plans and swerved off down a path we had never followed before.  

We discovered a massive tract of verdant golf course.  We had not even known it was there.  The blue sky above emerald grass, close-mown over rounded hummocks, was almost too good to be true.  It reminded me of Tellytubby Land.

Here and there, parents with tiny children were having a gentle toddle, or rolling balls.  Walking beside the ‘Rough’, we caught sight of a great-spotted woodpecker, a tom-tit’s nest, the first comma butterfly of the year.  It was idyllic. 

I’m glad now that we ventured out there because the following day, golf courses were declared open once more and our trespasses have come to an end.

I shall always think with longing of this Lost Meadow.

But not enough to consider taking up golf!

Make your own milk!

I’m a great one for avoiding faff. 

But logic made me change my mind this week.

After approximately six weeks of trudging to the Co-op mainly in order to score some milk, I finally remembered that some of my acquaintances had mentioned making their own milk.

Before you recoil in horror, I mean oat milk.

Oat milk is way greener than dairy milk in terms of carbon footprint.  Even greener than soya milk. 

I had mentally filed it under ‘faff’, but right now, it looks like less faff than social distancing at the Co-op.

This, coupled with the fact that we now have about 2 kilos of porridge oats which Nigel has rejected as being ‘Not the kind I like’, means that the time has come to make oat milk.

The first recipe I looked at described the problem of milk turning out slimy.  This was a bit off-putting, especially as my first batch really was slimy and sank like a stone in my tea.  

However, I tried again with a different recipe and this time it still sank like a stone, but at least it wasn’t slimy.

Nigel’s not keen, but I’m going to keep going.  I like a challenge.  And if I succeed, even after Lockdown ends (someday), it means we’ll have fewer of those hard-to-recycle tetrapaks.

Your Place or Mine?

For us during this lockdown, videoconferencing has become a magic carpet.  It is as easy to have a natter with friends who live at a distance as it is people who live just round the corner.

Some of our friends have lived miles from us for many years and we are used to putting aside weekends to see them.  But recently, several other friends have moved away from the south east and are now a day trip away, or even a whole weekend.  And there are only so many weekends in the year.

However, we can now see them for an hour or so on any evening.  If they’re not already busy videoconferencing somebody else, that is!

Similarly, because Pascoe lives in Edinburgh, it is rare to have all our offspring in one room together.  But now we are achieving this once a week.

All this was available before, but it was not socially accepted to meet a bunch of friends as if it was a work conference call.  It is one of the things from Lockdown that I hope we keep. 

Now when we make a social arrangement, we ask “Skype or Zoom?”

Nigel figures it’s become the new “Your place or mine?”

Easter bunny - a new generation

Generally at our house the Easter bunny lays a trail of little pastel-coloured  eggs around the garden for younger members of the family to find. 

Since the offspring have got older and wiser, the eggs now have to be fair trade and vegan (Oxfam supplies – if you’re wondering) and the pretty foil is now carefully recycled rather than being turned into a butterfly wing collage.

However, this year, the Easter bunny was locked down miles away from younger family members.  

The bunny posted a few eggs she had obtained before lockdown.

Pascoe ingeniously provided his own hunt by standing in his sitting room, throwing the eggs over his shoulder, then going to look for them.

However, the Bunny was worried about Carenza who particularly values this tradition (and indeed the chocloate it brings).

However, she needn’t have worried.  The family has a new Easter Bunny who stepped up to the mark, obtained Easter eggs and hid them around the flat for his sister.

He even wore a set of pink ears while doing so – surely beyond the call of duty.

Our usual Easter bunny is certainly going to have to up her game next year.

Celebrating Easter alone together

Our vicar often says, “The Church isn’t the building – it’s the people”.

So the thought of spending Good Friday and Easter Sunday without being able to grieve and rejoice alongside other members of our church family, made Nigel and I feel subdued.

In the end, our vicar and curate rose to the challenge and services were available not only on Facebook, but also YouTube, AND Zoom.

I felt like emailing to complain that there was no Skype or Teams version available.  But when you are not face to face, people sometimes don’t realise you are joking.

It was a comfort to wave to our lovely friends on Zoom.  But my favourite moment was when, with the Good Friday service just about to begin, a black square appeared on the grid, labelled “Unknown Host”.

I muted our mic and nudged Nigel.  “The Holy Ghost really is present with us today.”

Back to my roots.

I guess that a lot of us are using this period of isolation to experiment with our...ahem...grooming routine.

Probably if we were to match selfies taken right now against those from a month back, it would be evident that the nation is on average much hairier today.

For myself, I have been hijacked by spring cleaning and have waxed the wooden floors, but not my legs. 

Legs are redundant anyway, since Zoom took over our world.

At least one member of my family appears to be trying out a beard when I spot him on WhatsApp.

For myself, I wondered whether this might be a convenient period to transition to grey hair. 

However, half an inch in, I got cold feet and dyed it again.

It seems I feel as young as my hair dye and not yet as old as my roots.

 

You can take foraging too far

At the weekend, we were walking by the River Ver, hoping to spot the turquoise gleam of a kingfisher.

As always, we carried with us a couple of old plastic bread bags and some rubber gloves, in case we want to pick nettles.  We had collected a little hedge mustard and were considering the young hawthorn leaves (in the past called ‘bread and cheese’ because they are edible and do not need to be cooked).

Just then I was surprised by a sudden sound of rushing water and noticed a manhole cover in the grass. 

“I suppose that must be a drain under there.  Yes.  Look. I can see bits of toilet paper from when it flooded over winter.”

“Step right away from the drain,” said Nigel, “I know toilet paper’s in shortage, but you can take foraging just too far.”

How did things go this far?

Today I allowed myself to get caught up in a train of events which led to hardcore housework.

I must watch myself and not let it happen again.

It started with a project which has been shelved for far too long – I’m making a winter coverlet for our bed. 

Even given my shortcomings as a needlewoman, the new coverlet will look smarter than the child’s sleeping bag (from IKEA in the 1990s) which we currently lay over our bed on cold nights.

During a lockdown is the perfect time to complete such a task.

I had to find a big bit of floor to lay it out.  Only the sitting room would do.  And only after we removed the chairs.

But then I could see how dirty the wood floor was. 

I swept it, but that wasn’t enough.

So I mopped it, but then it looked rather dull and matt. 

So then I got out the floor polish – its first outing in around four years - and sprayed the floor with it.

And now I’m waiting for it to dry so I can buff it up.

And the coverlet?

I’m no further forward.

Lit up by rainbows

I've been taking a lunchtime constitutional each day, as permitted by The Rules.  Often, I make a circuit round our streets.

Painted rainbows have been appearing in windows and they have made it a joy.

The Rainbow is not a single focused campaign but a general movement stimulated by sharing on social media.  It is spreading, dare I say it...virally.

The message is one of hope and reassurance - like any storm, this will come to an end.

Recently, I've seen a variant - children have been chalking colourful rainbows on pavements and walls.

It lifted my heart.

But one family had to go and take it just too far. 

There on the pavement in front of me was a sequence of chalked instructions:
"Tip-toes....walk the tightrope....five star jumps....six hops"

Dammit, they had created a pavement exercise routine.

Feeling threatened, I returned home at once.

The thrill of the food cupboard

It’s now two weeks since I last went to the shops or had a delivery.

By now I am working my way through little-known corners of the larder.

 

I thought I had everything neatly arranged in boxes.

How great was my happiness to discover that things had been flipped out and lodged behind the boxes.  The jewel in the crown of my discoveries was…a pack of dried pasta. 

Okay, so it was wholewheat, but nothing is perfect.

I’ve stopped tidying the larder just now – hoping to find some more surprises tomorrow.

Mustn’t overexcite myself.