Wednesday 29 April 2020

Pointing and shooting


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I’ve always taken photographs, ever since I received a Box Brownie one Christmas when I was about eight. I stopped in my forties because films were no longer available for my ancient camera but then started again around ten years ago, about the time I started this blog, because Frog managed to repair a broken digital camera that one of my brothers had thrown out.

I loved the simplicity of it. All you had to do was point and shoot and there was none of that traipsing to the chemist to have your films developed. I rediscovered my love of photography.

Four years ago my brother’s camera failed for the last time and I bought myself a new one. It had a few features but I’ve yet to investigate any of them. I still point and shoot.

I used only to snap people because pictures were in black and white but now I almost exclusively photograph nature. I take my camera with me whenever I go out for a walk as it helps me concentrate on my surroundings. Instead of being lost in my own head, I notice things.

And here are some of the things I’ve noticed over the last few days.



On Friday the bluebells in my secret wood were at their most beautiful. I wish I could convey to you their delicate hyacinth scent. Somehow Ellie has managed to get into nearly every picture.







Contrasting so well with the blue was this Yellow Archangel with its gorgeous custardy flowers. The plant is a sign of ancient woodland, so it's always thrilling to see it.







On Sunday, with the weather still balmy,  I was astonished to see this elder blossom in the field behind the house since the tree doesn't usually bloom until June.




On Monday in gentle drizzle, my neighbour's tumbledown shed captured my attention. I think they've been trying to remove the ivy, only to reveal the appalling state of the shed's roof and cob (mud) walls no longer protected by render. Those ivy stalks - like something out of a fairy tale - made me want to be a painter.




On Tuesday in the rain, these luminous newly-hatched oak leaves leapt out of the hedgerow at me.






This morning on my way up the hill, I stood underneath this battered Scots pine. I always do that because it lines up with a neighbour's old farmhouse and another Scots pine on top of another hill. I imagine it's on a ley, and that some of the power of that line might pass through me and help me be a stronger, braver, wiser person. (Well, I can keep on hoping can't I.)




And on my way home down another track I passed this froth of cowparsley, quivering in the wind and gleaming ultra-violet white in the sun.


Sunday 26 April 2020

The Spring of Love

Wednesday 22 April

‘I think we should go out for the day,’ said Frog as we sat eating breakfast.
    ‘Ooh,’ I said. ‘What about my list?’
    My list was getting longer and longer as the lockdown stopped being a break and became the new reality: things to do in the veg garden, blog posts to write, people to ring, people to email, supplies to order online, possible cleaning jobs.
    ‘Bin it,’ said Frog. ‘It works for me.’
    ‘Ooh,’ I said.
    One of the most stressful things about the current situation as far as Frog and I were concerned was that we never had a day off, and we’d been wondering whether we could take a trip to Waitrose for our potatoes (see ‘A top of many colours’) and combine it with a walk. We live halfway between the Exeter Waitrose and the Sidmouth one so we could with a clear conscience go to either, and the Sidmouth one just happened to be 10 minutes’ drive from one of our favourite coastal walks. We wouldn’t of course be able to combine the walk with our usual lunch out, but I could make some sandwiches.
    I was unsure. It wasn’t clear whether you could or couldn’t drive somewhere for your daily exercise, and friends kept giving me dire warnings about how the police were stopping cars all over the place. More importantly however, was such a trip within the spirit of the new rules? But we knew we could park somewhere out of the way and that the paths were more than wide enough to allow for social distancing and we’d never found the walk that busy anyway.
    We were both becoming ill however – even list-free Frog. Neither of us was sleeping at all well and I had a permanent headache which sometimes dipped into migraine.
    I went upstairs to my room and studied my list. There was nothing that couldn’t be put off until the next day.
    I returned to Frog. ‘OK,’ I said. ‘Let’s give it a try.’

As we drove through the back lanes, the sun shone clear as it had ever since the lockdown four weeks earlier and the cold north-easterly wind of the last few days had dropped. People were out walking, bicycling and jogging, far more of them than normal, all dressed as if for a holiday, with all ages, shapes and sizes in shorts and many of the men shirtless.
    We were listening to a ‘Frog Prog’, one of the music radio programmes that Frog has been compiling and presenting (on local and university radio) for 42 years – since around the time I met him. Originally he recorded these on reel-to-reel tape, but now he could record them digitally, transfer them to memory stick and replay them in our newish Hyundai. For me they were one of the treats of days out.
    The music today came from the late 1960s and early ’70s, in particular 1967, the ‘Summer of Love’, the zenith of the hippie movement.
    This movement, with its emphasis on love, peace and care for the natural environment, arose in America in response to the Vietnam War and the compulsory drafting of young men. Derided by many, it has nevertheless had a huge influence and we in the West are still working through its ideals today. Frog and I  were in our early teens at the time and so too young to fully enjoy it, but we certainly enjoy its music.
    As I listened to the beautiful songs and watched the happy people, I thought of the way countries and communities had come together in response the latest worldwide crisis and how that crisis might – just might – mean that eventually we would make a better world. Suddenly, I was filled with hope and joy. How amazing it was to be here with Frog now at this time.
    ‘It’s not so much the Summer of Love,’ I said to Frog, ‘as the Spring of Love.’

Few people were about as we parked and made our way to the coastal path. Some excited dogs splashed in the saltmarsh and a handful of humans wandered over the shingle beach.



On the cliffs, thrift bloomed . . .



. . . and it wasn’t long before we found a suitable place for our picnic.



A skylark trilled above us but Ellie, sadly, was in a tizz because a bird-scarer was firing at intervals in the distance.

We were able to christen our new stainless-steel water bottle, bought at Christmas for this year’s Greek holiday which I never booked (another piece of forethought of which I’m proud), after I left our old plastic one on the plane on the way to Greece last year (by mistake).



As we turned inland, stitchwort and bluebells gleamed in the verges.





We weren’t sure whether to take the river path back to the car as it’s very popular but for the dog’s sake we did. She needed a splash. I took her on to a gravel beach and threw sticks for her and she raced into the shallows scooping up mouthfuls of water like a basking shark. She doesn’t swim but she loves a paddle.
    Game over, she came out of the river and promptly sicked up not only all the water she’d drunk but also her breakfast. Oh dear.
    ‘That’s what you get,’ said Frog unsympathetically, ‘for drinking too quickly.’
    He talks to her as if she were human, using complicated concepts and posh words like 'remonstrate' and 'desist'. She usually gets the gist.
    The river was low and the water murky as a result of the drought . . .



. . . but in the trees on the opposite bank rooks were noisily nesting.



Back at the car, the parking spots were filling up, but only as normal for a weekday – neither more nor less we decided - with as many visitors as locals. (It’s easy to spot the difference. Visitors look more excited. By visitor I mean anyone who lives more than two miles away.)

We stopped at Waitrose on the way back. It was too hot to leave Ellie on her own in the car so Frog stayed with her, sitting on the edge of the boot with the hatchback wide open, while I did the shopping. The system was easy – even I could cope with it – and the atmosphere easygoing.

On the local news that evening we learnt that Devon and Cornwall police had been reprimanded for being too heavy handed with drivers. Had we been lucky, we wondered, choosing the one day to go out when the police were unlikely to be around. Indeed we’d not seen hide nor hair of them.
    The programme then had a long discussion about what one could and couldn’t do and someone (I can’t remember who) said that so long as your car journey was shorter than your walk you were within the rules. That’s all right, we said. We'd driven for ten minutes and walked for two hours.
    Nevertheless, we hadn’t relaxed quite as much as we normally do on days out. We knew there’d been no danger of us infecting anyone – we didn’t touch any gates, let alone come with 2 metres of anyone – but even so we felt uncomfortable and we weren’t sure whether we would do the same again.

Thursday 23 April 2020

Meltdown

Monday 20 April

I receive news that there's a cage-trap at the top of the hill behind the house. These catch live birds and animals and are legal up to a point (the rules are complicated). It’s inside an electric fence next to a large chicken farm near where a friend and I have both seen a fox recently. Foxes are so rare in the countryside these days and I’m riven with concern for the beautiful creature.

The fox that lives nearby. Photograph by Trish Currie
This picture (taken from the internet) shows a trap similar to the one near the chicken farm but much smaller
The trap is big enough to enclose a large child as well as most wild animals. When it was set last year and baited with dead chickens, I found a live buzzard in it one day. Luckily, because the trap was unprotected at that time, I was able to release the buzzard and shut the trap afterwards. Someone else found a buzzard too and released it and between us after that we monitored the trap and tried to keep it shut at all times.
    The farmer is obviously wise to what was going on, hence the new protection.
    In fact, the whole complex is like a concentration camp, with at least three strands of electrified wire several feet high, and I wonder if the farmer really has that much trouble with predation. I think of the Greek islands we've visited and the chickens there happily scratching through woods.

Greek chickens
Could the farmer not spare the odd chicken, and give wildlife a chance? Certainly, when I spoke to Devon Wildlife Trust about the trap they were horrified and urged me to contact the police. (I did but they never got back to me and I didn’t pursue it.)

I have a dread of electric fences, having received too many shocks from them as a child. I’m not too keen on angry farmers either, but I resolve to walk up and see if there’s anything I can do. When Frog offers to come with me, I’m much relieved. We go armed with a wooden broom handle in case we need to push live wires out of the way.
    It’s a hot morning and Frog struggles up the track behind me. I’m used to the climb as I do it nearly every day but Frog tends to muscle rather than puff. As we cross the field before the chicken farm we hear a large vehicle and notice that the ground is covered in white pellets. Something is spreading fertiliser.
    We’re nearly at the trap when a tractor appears. In true collie fashion Ellie dances round its front wheels, barking. I want to disappear, but instead wave a greeting. It’s my usual strategy in such situations and luckily the farmer doesn’t question our presence, instead waving back and driving into the chicken farm. There’s no doubt now that he would see us if we approached the trap, so we retreat, leaping through a hedge into the land of a different farmer.
    We recover over lunch and I decide to talk to a retired farmer friend who rang the chicken farmer for me last year and persuaded him to stop using the trap. Luckily the farmer friend is a bird enthusiast and didn’t like the sound of  buzzards being caught. I hope he’ll help this time too. Farmers are something of a Mafia. They listen to each other but not to anyone else.

We have another potentially stressful errand in the afternoon: a visit to Sainsbury's. Frog hasn’t food-shopped yet during lockdown as he was laid low five weeks ago with a three-day temperature and has only recently returned to full strength. (Yes, we wonder now too. We didn’t question it at the time.) Last time I went, the queue stretched the whole way round the carpark so we go equipped with hats and I sling my camera over my shoulder, planning to take photographs.
    To our relief there's no queue at all but I take a trolley from the wrong place so it’s unsanitised and then I can’t work out what to do with the trolley, how to transfer my bags with my polluted hands, which are the sanitised trolleys, and how, when and where to clean my hands. All the while the two guards (?) are shouting instructions at me. I have a meltdown. ‘Look,’ I shout. ‘I’m trying to do the right thing.’ They back down immediately and explain to me slowly and gently what they want me to do. The female guard tries to spray my hands – at a safe distance – with dribbly sanitiser. At last, I’m allowed in. It's a good start. I don’t feel in the least bit guilty about my meltdown.
    Inside, there’s the usual cast of zombies. No one smiles and wherever I stand I’m too close to someone. I think it’s part of my makeup. I never could get the hang of team games like netball, or jumping into moving skipping ropes, and now I can’t cope with driving in the middle lane of a motorway. My spatial awareness is basic. Nevertheless I have Frog with me today, albeit with a separate trolley as per the rules, and that's a comfort. I’ve divided the shopping list into two and we meet at intervals to compare notes.
    Job done, we wander back to the car together and discuss whether Frog should come on his own next time. ‘I don’t worry too much about anyone else,’ he says. ‘I just do my shopping and try to keep out of people's way.’ That’s the difference, I think, between men and women.
    I’ve completely forgotten to take any photographs.

Tuesday 21 April 2020

A top of many colours

Thursday 16 April continued

Even though it’s sunny there’s a strong north-easterly wind which makes it cold so, having done my tour of the garden, I decide on an indoor occupation. I will cut out a top I’m planning.
    Because all the sewing shops are closed I looked for a pattern online, intending to make a loose, sleeved, tunic-length shirt for the summer, as befits my age (mid-60s). Instead I ordered this.



It’s probably far too young for me (I fancy the sleeveless version with the handkerchief hem) and I have no idea whether it will work but the only loss is the cost of the pattern as I’m making it from material I already have (seeing as I can’t buy any new), with each section the remnant of a different summer garment. In fact, it doesn’t have to work because all I’ll have to do is explain that I made it during the lockdown and people will understand. For once I’ll have a good excuse for my dress eccentricities.


After a fun couple of hours juggling with bits of material I decide it’s time for some yoga. I’ve started doing yoga in the garden as I was beginning to creak, missing my weekly class in the village. Because it’s made me feel so much better, I've resolved to try and have at least a short practice most days even though I rush it when on my own and don’t get the mental and spiritual benefits.
    Online classes are another option but that involves moving furniture, setting up an ancient laptop which I’ve never used before and battling with our almost non-existent broadband.
    Ellie thinks the mat is a new sort of dogbed – unsurprisingly since it’s placed on her favourite spot for keeping watch on the world.



When I start my exercises however, she wanders off, ever tactful. I’m flattered that the birds on the hand keep coming to the feeders nearby. I hear the flutter and brrr of their wings.

We’ve been early these days ‘battening down the hatches’ (as my father with his naval background would have said), giving ourselves a break, and watching television for most of the evening with a clear conscience. Frog keeps up with essential coronavirus news during the day so we allow ourselves to avoid any programme that mentions the dreaded corvid (as I call it – although I like crows) and stick to comfort viewing.
    While I prepare supper he watches a programme about a Yorkshire steam railway, which I’m only too pleased to miss as I find the unreconstructed male engineers and their disparaging comments about their wives hard to stomach.
    I managed to fill the freezer and store cupboard before lockdown and now take two Clive’s pies out of the freezer, a mushroom one which is Frog’s favourite and a chillified kidney bean and veg one which is mine.

Two of Clive's pies, handmade in Devon with love (as listed in the ingredients)
I mash some potato and mix it with the last of the hummus so as to give Frog his quota of garlic as well as spice up the potatoes which are tasteless. The only potatoes with any zing come from Waitrose, to which we would have to make a special trip, and so far we haven't made one. (Every trip is an effort at the moment and every time I think of the film 28 Days Later  - Google it if you don't know the plot. It's a good film though.) Lastly I chop and steam a vat of my home-grown broccoli - which is anything but tasteless.

After supper, as we settle down to a ‘Poirot’, the phone rings and I race to answer it while Frog sets the recorder. I see from the display that it’s Frog’s sister J.
    ‘J!’ I say. ‘I’ve been meaning to ring you.’
    It’s true. She was top of the mini-list I make each day to remind me of what I could be doing, but I decided to email instead as I’m not a fan of the telephone.
    ‘Ah,’ she chuckled, ‘I must be psychic.’
    Which is a very nice thing to say seeing as it’s several days, if not a week, since we spoke and her husband died two weeks ago. I did ring her a lot to start with and then wondered if I was being a nuisance so decided to take a step back. She obviously doesn’t mind.
    She’s now self-isolating because of her age and state of health and because when they finally took her husband to hospital he was found to have coronavirus – but as he’d been in bad health for many months if not years and very poorly for weeks it hardly seems to matter.
    However, like Frog (and unlike me) J is amazingly pragmatic and positive and now sounds more confident and more herself than I’ve ever known her. She’s been sorting out her clutter (she’s even more of a hoarder than Frog), dancing to her old records as she goes through them, and with the help of a grand-daughter planning her husband’s funeral.
    We can’t go because she lives the other side of the country and because only 20 people are allowed and that number is easily taken up by children, grandchildren and her husband’s family who all live nearby. She’s planning a bigger do after lockdown.
    She’s written five pages of A4 about her husband for the funeral and, because she thinks I’m a writer, she wants to read them out to me.
    I listen, rapt.
    ‘Well?’ she says at the end. ‘’Could I be a writer?’
    ‘You already are,’ I say.
    I hand her over to Frog, and after an hour and a half we return to Poirot, worn out by the unaccustomed contact with the outside world.
 
Sometimes recently a picture has come into my mind of Frog and me alone on a boat in the middle of a vast ocean. I wonder how we would cope if anything happened to either of us.

Monday 20 April 2020

Untethered

Thursday 16 April continued

For lunch I have home-made hummus.
    I started making hummus, instead of buying it from the supermarket, shortly before the lockdown as my small contribution to reducing single-use plastic. Now, it’s a godsend as I can keep cartons/tins of chickpeas in the store cupboard (when I can buy them) and have hummus whenever I want it. This batch is very garlicky and I make a mental note to add some to Frog’s supper so that I don’t repel him.
    I'm eating outside with my hat on to shield me from the sun as it's too windy to put the parasol up.
    We have a problem with shade in our garden as it’s open to the prevailing south-westerly winds and in Devon these can be quite strong. Parasols never last and even our mini-marquee-gazebo uprooted itself one day and flew into the hedge. Frog splinted its broken skeleton with pieces of wood and fixed its ropes with screw-in ground-anchors (rather than skewers) but it was never the same again, so last year we gave up and took it to the recycling centre.
    Our latest ruse is a shade-sail but it's not arrived yet even though we ordered it three weeks ago. The company say they are inundated with orders and many weeks behind. Presumably (with the lockdown) everybody is planning long hours in the garden this summer.
    All we have so far are the post-holders, which is a pity as I could do with a nice job outside, digging the post-holes with Frog, but we don't want to do anything till we have the sail and can lay it out and plan its position.

The post-holders, waiting forlornly

After lunch I wander round the garden (followed by Ellie as usual), putting off the time when I do something ‘useful’. What is ‘useful’ however? I’m not sure I know any more. I don’t even know if ‘useful’ is desirable. My life is topsy-turvy in so many ways.
    Last summer Frog retired. He was only working three days a week by then but even so that was three days I had to myself and which I now share with him. At least before the lockdown we each went out separately at times on shopping trips or to yoga (me) but now we’re together 24/7 which is lovely but demanding and every time I start doing something Frog comes along and asks me if I can help with something he’s doing. (I know I’m guilty of doing the same to him.) Perhaps that’s why I love writing so much, because I can shut the door of my room and know I won’t be disturbed except for dire emergencies.

My room - the place where I sew and write
For a year and a half, up until last December, I was writing full time, firstly describing our trip to Norway in summer 2018 and then redrafting The Novel. The writing gave my life structure and anything ‘useful’ was relegated to second place and had to be fitted in as and when. With the novel to one side, however, the list of  jobs is endless.
    And now with the lockdown I'm  feel as if I’m on holiday all the time. I can do exactly what I want – and that’s a fairly long list too.
    Topsy-turvy in so many ways. Not so much locked down as untethered.

As I walk past the house I admire the sparkling clean glass and window-frames. For the last week Frog and I have been washing the windows inside and out, a job both useful and satisfying. It’s probably ten years since we last did them and it’s immediately noticeable how much extra light we get in the house. I think of Frog's philosophy: do useful things because you want to not because you have to. It's a subtle and wise distinction. I realise that we did the windows for ourselves, not in a panic because someone was visiting.
    I'm pleased we've finally had the time - and that's not because our daily lives are vastly changed by the lockdown but because with the lockdown stretching indefinitely into the future there doesn't seem to be any urgency about anything any more. 
    
The sparkling clean conservatory doors and windows
I’m up to date with the gardening, I think, as I wander past the flower beds. I pruned the shrubs earlier in the year and I leave the rest because I love wildflowers so much I can’t bear to remove them.
    I reach my raised veg beds and stoop to check on the potatoes. They've started to shoot and I think of those delicious new potatoes which I hope to dig in a couple of months. Yum.

Potato shoots (and ground ivy, which I leave because it doesn't do any harm)
My Swiss chard is coming on too and it won't be long before we have something other than purple sprouting broccoli to eat. Not that we're complaining. It's exceptionally sweet and tender this year and even Frog - not a fan of healthy dark-green veg - is relishing it.

 
Swiss chard
Purple sprouting broccoli (and rhubarb)
As I pass the greenhouse, I think of my tomato plants and parsley in the conservatory, grown from seed, waiting for the nights to warm up so that I can bring them out here.



Tomato plants and parsley seedlings keeping warm in the conservatory
And I’m waiting for the new moon on Thursday to sew my cucumbers, courgettes and runner beans. (The moon does make a difference – they proved it on ‘Gardeners’ World’ so it must be true.)
    I’ve never grown cucumbers and tomatoes from seed before but I rightly guessed that plants wouldn't be available this year and managed to buy some seed before the lockdown. I’m quite proud of that. I'm OK for runner beans seeds as I've been saving my own every year recently and I’m proud of that too.


I wouldn't say I was a true gardener - I don't spend hours pottering about in the garden - but I do grow as much veg as I can because I love eating home-grown veg - the taste is incomparable. And I have a sense that this summer having one’s own veg might be important. At least it will mean we won’t have to go to the supermarket so often which is at the moment a ‘vile’ experience, as Frog’s sister so accurately described it.

Ellie rushes to the gate and starts barking frantically. It’s TNT delivering some blinds for the Velux windows in my room – again in anticipation of a long hot summer at home.
    ‘Sorry about the noise,’ I say to the delivery man. ‘She’s desperate to say hello to you. She’s finding this social distancing very hard.’
    The man laughs, dumps the parcels outside the gate and vanishes with a cheery wave. Delivery people are working so hard at the moment. They don't stop to chat like they used to and we were given a time slot up until seven in the evening. At least they don’t have to bother with signatures any more.
    It’s true though. Ellie can’t understand why I won’t let her rush up to humans at the moment. She loves company, unlike Frog and me.
    And that's something else from which I've been released - the pressure to be sociable - even though I feel closer to other people than before and kinder. Somehow the thought of all those people ill or bereaved or alone at home or struggling to make ends meet or in cities where the parks are closed awakens one's compassion.
    To be continued

Friday 17 April 2020

Sanctuaries

I’m fascinated by the minutiae of people’s lives and particularly so at the moment when we’re all thrown back on our own resources. I’m shy however of revealing my own (who on earth would want to know about them?).
    Yesterday morning however I read lovely post on my new discovery ‘I live, I love, I craft, I am me’ (actually, the blogger discovered me, which is a fillip), in which she gave us a tour of her greenhouse. It was so vivid I could almost hear the birds chirruping.
    This greenhouse is her sanctuary at the moment, and at the end of the post she asked her readers to share their sanctuaries. ‘How do you cope?’ she asked. ‘What is your strategy to survive? Do share, it might help others who are struggling.’
    So I thought I might do just that, or at least show how the lockdown affects everything and how I'm adapting, by describing in detail one of my days.

Thursday 16 April

Breakfast is always a moveable feast. Frog and I take it back to bed with us and spend a long time having what we call our ‘morning meeting’ – long discussions about life, the universe and everything, and also what our plans are for the day. It's an important part of our routine, especially so now you would have thought when so many routines have gone, but I'm restless. I leave Frog dozing and take the dog out.
    I stop off first at the gate of a neighbour, C. We're swapping books because I didn’t have time to get to the library before lockdown and because C and her husband are self-isolating. I’ve introduced her to one of my favourite series . . .


The first of  Elly Griffiths' books about Ruth Galloway, a forensic archaeologist in Norfolk, one of my favourite series

. . . and she’s introduced me to one of hers.

Books 4 and 3 of Jacqueline Winspear's series of books about Maisie Dobbs, a 1930s' sleuth. I'm finding them comforting and absorbing in an old-fashioned way and just what I need at the moment
C and I stand talking at a safe distance either side of the gate, while C's husband stays in his wheelchair the other side of their courtyard explaining that he’s taking the infection threat more seriously now than he did. It must be very hard for him. He never complains however, and neither does C. Last time I dropped by - a few days ago - he came up close and joined in the conversation and we all saw a swallow – the first of the year. I haven’t seen one since.

I set off on the track that leads uphill from C's house but soon turn off because I don’t want to meet anybody. A lot of people use the track, especially so now, and it makes me sad that we have to avoid each other and that I have to put Ellie on a lead in case people are worried about picking up infection from her.
    Bullocks as well as cows with calves have appeared in the grass fields, and the wheat fields are being sprayed this morning according to C, so I cross where I can and duck into my favourite place, a Y-shaped wood along steep valleys formed by converging streams.



Only C, her sister and I venture into the wood and it’s a jungle – unmanaged and almost unfootpathed.


It occurs to me that I could explore the wood more easily by walking up the stream beds. Another time. I have a slight headache and flop down in a patch of dappled shade under an oak tree while Ellie hurtles up and down the precipitous valley-sides and into the streams where she noisily slurps water. She loves it here too.
    My head is busy so I don’t do anything very profound with it. Instead I rest and gaze at the first bluebells. 



I treasure the way this place is wild, that nature is more important here than humans are. Strangely, I have the sense that something similar is happening to the countryside as a whole as a result of the lockdown.
    A couple of days ago I surprised a red deer in a paddock close to home. I see deer on the hill but I’ve never seen any down near the houses before, and never red ones anywhere in the area as they usually live on the moors and wilder places. It looked at me as if to say ‘What are you doing here?’
    A friend from the village emailed me earlier with pictures she’s taken near where I live of a fox with its prey. She's amazed, she says, that it stopped long enough for her to do so. I too have seen a fox recently – the first for years – and I wonder if it's the same animal.



Fox photos taken by Trish Currie. See her blog 'What's Cooking'

Is it simply the lack of traffic bringing the animals out or are they identifying some change in us humans? If the latter, that's an exciting thought. 

I have lunch and try to plan my afternoon. I've been working on and off for ten years on my novel The Banker’s Niece but now I'm thinking of putting it aside. It's writing that makes me feel calmest, safest, most like me, and now just when I need it most I'm abandoning a large chunk. Ironically, it's the lockdown, the loss of so much that's familiar as well as the sense that we're all on Pause, that's given me the time and space to see that I might need to give up the novel. I wrote it to heal my life, and it may be that constantly reworking it is not helping. It's blocking the flow.
    What am I now, I wonder. Where am I going?
    To be continued

Saturday 11 April 2020

A better world?

Easter Saturday

I'm finding it difficult to blog at the moment as in some ways and for some people so much is happening and in/for others nothing. I know that so many people are fighting to survive or working long hours to keep the country afloat, and I'm scared of hitting the wrong note, of saying something crass.

Frog’s amazing niece K for instance, who lives in Manchester, lost all her income when the country locked down, and lived off piecemeal work for several weeks (stacking supermarket shelves, sorting online orders, guarding empty hotels at night), has just landed a job supervising hostels for the homeless set up by the city council in all the empty hotels. This is dangerous and difficult work and she reminds me of those women who enlisted as nurses during the First World War.
    ‘You must record what’s going on,’ I said to her on the phone yesterday. ‘These are historic times. You’re in the front line. Keep a diary. Take photographs.’
    ‘Mmm,’ she said sounding interested. ‘I could start a blog.’
    ‘I can’t wait to read it,’ I said.

For Frog and me, on the other hand, not much has changed. We work on the house and garden. I sew and walk the dog and try to write. We speak to neighbours over garden gates and when we meet on roads and paths. We have enough money to live on and we have each other.
    Except that everything’s changed.
    Because there's no knowing how long the lockdown will last, I’ve lost all sense of urgency. Time and the days of the week no longer matter. Without aeroplanes and road traffic, absolute silence prevails (apart from the birds and their glorious spring songs). I have that rest, that pause, I’ve longed for for so long.
    And somehow, I have the sense that when this is over (if it ever is), we will all wake up to a completely different world.
    A better one, I hope.