So it's March 1st and a turning of the calendar pages. It's now a year since the first intimations of looming trouble appeared to me out in Newport. There the lockdown shortly followed and Bellevue Avenue completely emptied. Fairly soon after Christopher phoned to find out if I was planning to come home early, warning me, in the light of advice he'd had from an epidemiologist friend that this might not be over for months. Few of us at the time had any inkling that actually it was all going to be much longer than that - certainly not me ! Nor had I any inkling that getting on for a year of being more-or-less confined to barracks, that time, (apparently now to be limitless) would in fact prove to be in such short supply - for me at least. The reasons for this ? First and foremost, the opportunity to get cracking on the latest book, the unwise acceptance of new commitments and the extra consequences of being open to a continuing deluge of work-related e-mails and zoom sessions - because technologically it's now so much more difficult to hide away. The result is that I am busier than ever - and since I came home, I haven't even touched the family history project which I was looking forward to getting on with.
Of course one can't work all the time. The exigencies of daily living take up extra time ( all that wiping down and hand-washing !) and I have also taken on some of the domestic jobs around the house and garden that I haven't had time for in the last decade when we were travelling so much. So, it is pretty full-on at the moment - far, far more than I had anticipated. At the beginning I fondly imagined that being locked down would mean less time commuting and more time sitting in front of the telly with a glass of wine. So I feel myself falling into that old trope of an 'old man in a hurry' -like Mr Gladstone ! Busy days shuffle past unendingly, all pretty much the same if with minor variations.
The last few have been warmish and brilliantly sunny, very spring like and hopeful. The snowdrops are going over, having done their job. For the first time I’ve noticed the winter flowering hellibores and they are still going strong. Muted white and mauves, their heads demurely downwards. The only problem with that is that to see their faces you need to lie down on your back and look upwards, not ideal in the kind of wet winter we’ve had. On a recent trip to the postbox on the village path through the wood opposite, I even noticed a clump of primrose out. So things are definitely on the move. The loud sharp chirping of chaffinches in the bare branches always reminds me of family trips to Grandma in the New Forest at Easter time. We tended to spend the whole two weeks there. Those breaks nearly always seemed hopeful, promising new and better times ahead. The traditional walk on Standlynch Down followed by late Easter lunch. Happy Days !
Another job has been clearing one corner of the paddock of a scrub of sloe and bullace saplings to resurrect the old damson tree in the middle. This was with Chris the occasional Gardener's help. Again this is a job I have been meaning to do for years. The wood when I have sawed it up will be put away for next winter, some to be used to house the weird mushroom factory No 2 son sent me, as a Christmas challenge.
I have also been busy re-aligning the path through the paddock, turning it into a mini-Avenue with a National Trust garden seat at the other end acting as a focal point. We got it about five years ago but it was cheaply made and collapsed soon after the first winter. It spent two years or so unceremoniously dumped in a hedge, but I’ve resurrected it and tied it up with a mixture of wire from dead sparklers and left over iron thatching rods. With care it can be sat on.
The really cold snap we had a few weeks ago killed about half my Broad Beans so I have been sowing fill-ins from aged packets and pots found around the recently cleaned up green house. A tub of tomato seedlings which started life in the airing cupboard are now exulting in the sunshine on one of the dining room window sills. I fear the cucumber seeds have failed me though. Two things have appeared in that tray but I have no idea what they are. Some kind of weed no doubt - or a flower in the wrong place as we are now supposed to think of them.
So I’ve had a bit of a break from wrestling with ancient wood work but it is still waiting for me, spread across the kitchen table. I know that Cherry wouldn't have approved and really feel quite guilty about it, so I need to get on with the job and clear up. The tomato plants on the window sill would I think have been more acceptable to her though.
And in connection with the woodworking enterprise, I had what for me in the present circumstances counts as a real adventure. I had a routine trip to the Doctor’s – and this time was allowed to wait actually in the building along with one other person eying me suspiciously from some ten feet away. The Doctor was in the full PPE kit. Afterwards I visited the nearby ironmonger’s shop which is presumably regarded as essential and so open for such indispensable things as wood stain and wood filler for the linen-fold panel fragment and associated bits and pieces that are now cluttering up the kitchen table. My first shop visit for six weeks or so. I really enjoyed it. Pathetic !
In this way I contrive to keep myself amused when not poring over tomes on the Chinese Navy and dealing with the hundreds of e-mails that come in every day from colleagues, similarly placed. I also just about manage 10,000 steps a day. And I know that I am lucky in all this. Others are much, much worse off.
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