Coronavirus diary week 1084 (or something like that!)
So here we are on day five of the sixteen day "firebreak lockdown" in Wales. The main difference for us from the local lockdown which preceded it is that we are no longer allowed to meet other people even outside and the small opening up which had led to yoga and pilates classes restarting has been withdrawn. In some ways this is fine. It is quite a short period of time and if it helps to stem the rising number of cases then it could be worthwhile. Let us hope so. In some ways it is far from fine. We were not seeing many people, really only our locally living daughter and her family and some very close local friends, but we miss them. And I am intensely missing our further away family, children and grandchildren, in South Wales, Manchester and Devon, who we have not seen properly for months. Rain and darker evenings don't help either! I just want to sit round a table with those that I love and eat delicious food and drink wine and laugh and tell stories. I want to read to grandchildren and tuck them up in bed and come down to a grown up evening with their parents by the fire. I want to get in the car and drive. I want to walk up mountains. I want to eat in restaurants. I want to see my sister and brother.
OK. Rant over. We all want things that at the moment we can't have.
So what can I have?
Colour. This little crab apple tree glowing like a fire out on the sunny bank. And in the garden the cornus and the beech hedge are ablaze.
The blueberries, which have responded to our extra care of them this year with a glorious crop, are lighting up the fruit garden.
Inside the stove is glowing.
A new set of hats has gone off in the post to grandchildren. This one is for five year old granddaughter.
I have gone back to tapestry crochet to make myself a cube shaped bag to carry chargers in, when I am allowed to travel again! This is partly because I want to work with lots of ludicrously bright colour, and I like the concentration it requires and the complexity of it. And the repetitive movement of the hands is perhaps too little recognised as a source of comfort, a woolly meditation.
And thank heavens for Zoom, bookclub this week and then Spanish yesterday, more Spanish tomorrow and a rush of Zoom and Facetime conversations with our adult children.
There is homemade tomato soup for lunch and tonight Ian is making pizza. Time to light a fire and hunker down.
Does anyone else have that longing for colour and warmth right now?
What I miss most is the ability to make plans and the anticipation of visits, holidays, treats. I feel as though I am trapped in limbo, comfortable and safe but with an empty diary stretching away into the future.
ReplyDeleteI do agree! Limbo is exactly right. There is no way of knowing what will be happening and no way of planning. On a good day that means life in the moment! That's what I'm trying for anyway. Can't claim it works every day!
DeleteI miss folks, too. It's hard to be separated. Winter is going to be long. xo
ReplyDeleteYes me too! I can cheerily forgo quite a lot of activities but I miss my special people. Thank goodness for technology, even though it is emphatically not the same!
DeleteYou are more sanguine than me - I have to try very hard not to rant - not so much at the restrictions per se, as the lack of reasoned debate, the withholds, the fear... but probably all this is just my way of venting. This too will pass...
ReplyDeleteWell I don't know that I am that sanguine! I could very easily rant at the way the response has been handled by government and quite often I have to turn away from news coverage in order to be able to maintain any sort of equilibrium. I'm just taking the view that this is my one life, this day is one of a limited number, so somehow I must wrest the good from it. Today that's a walk, home made pizza and a lot of calls with children and grandchildren. I am a big picture person generally but that doesn't work for me at all right now!
DeleteI do hope things improve there soon and that winter is not too harsh.
ReplyDeleteThank you Susan! I think you are in the right place over there in new Zealand just now! Summer's coming and covid is going!
DeleteI had a few days ranting to myself like you and then gave myself a shake and started to think about what I could do because that's the only way to get through the dark days of the coming winter. Again, like you it involves lots of colour. And projects. I'm in the process of writing a magazine for my local WI, stuffed full of our favourite things and things to do. In my head I have the mantra 'let there be light' running through my head, so I'm adding that to the colour. I like the look of your crochet, it really is a meditation. I've only learnt over the past year or so, and I enjoy getting together with my WI friends (we call ourselves 'The Happy Hookers') over Zoom to make something together. I hope you get to see your loved ones soon, we were due to go up to Yorkshire to stay with my brother in law, but they went into tougher measures the weekend before we were due to go. It's tough, but we'll get there xxx
ReplyDeleteAs you say, the only way is to focus on the good things that are still going on! I like your adding light to my colour! I must admit that at the moment I spend a lot of time switching on lights and lamps and trying to make my house a haven of light and warmth!
DeleteI too am finding the approach of winter with the attendant reduction in light very difficult. To be fair I never do look forward to the month of November very much - even in "normal" times, but this year it's bringing particular challenges. At present there is still beautiful colour on the trees but the leaves are falling thick and fast - and lying in soggy piles on the ground.
ReplyDeleteThe words of Dylan Thomas's poem "Do not go gently" echo in my head - especially "rage, rage against the dying of the light". Finding joy in the small, seemingly insignificant isn't always easy just now but it is what gets me through - along with all the things you've mentioned- particularly contact with loved ones.
My 95 year old mother is well looked after in her care home but, apart from two brief outdoor visits during the summer I haven't seen her since March. As Nottinghamshire goes into tier 3 - along with an increasing number of, as yet, mostly northern areas, the prospect of seeing her other than via a screen, which brings challenges to someone with dementia, diminish. This adds a burden of guilt to the mixed bag of emotions I experience most days. But my mother has always said "some people are worse off than me" and that's what I'm reminding myself of on a regular basis. The light will return and in the meantime baking, sewing, reading and walking are the order of the day.
Ah yes, I'm another one who never likes November at the best of times! Although it beats February because at least November normally has the run up to Christmas in it! I'm just doing today in the warmest, nicest, most interesting way.
DeleteIt must be very hard not to be able to see your mother. That is a whole other layer of difficulty.
Take care. When we ate all allowed out again it would be great to meet up!
I could, I suppose, stand on the balcony and rant at a few local cats and a passing pizza delivery boy but it's raining... and the thought of another winter of this has just de-ranted me.
ReplyDeleteWell there is no point in a rant by yourself in the rain! Better a glass of wine inside by the fire. But yes, it's hard. I'm rereading noel streatfield which is a bit of a surprise. Things that make my fur lie flat!
DeletePersonally, I'd still be getting in my car and going out in your position. Can't do Zoom meetings, haven't got the money to get the car I've decided to have and trying (to date not succeeding very well) not to take up having a couple of bottles of wine weekly (which I had given up - as I need to lose a bit of weight). So I'm leading life completely as per normal - but that still means no social life (as it had pretty much all been cancelled prior to heavier level Lockdown again - and I wasnt going to what's left of it, ie exercise classes, with it being "different to Normal"). So I'm just waiting and waiting and waiting to be able to get back on with my Normal Life again and meanwhile being an admin. for an anti-Lockdown Facebook group (so at least I'm achieving something a little bit constructive and keeping in virtual touch with people - some of whom I know In The Real World).
ReplyDeleteI'd be interested to know how anyone gets enough oomph together to even do "the basics" - I've been trying to push myself into doing some of the housework for weeks now. But I guess the displacement activity is I keep hoping that next time I switch on the Internet or kick myself into going out for a walk/chat with anyone I know that's around I'll find I've woken up from a (very prolonged) nightmare and it's all back to Normal again.
None of us know how things are going to play out over the coming weeks and months. I think I am not expecting normal back any time soon because for me, if I were to, I would feel stuck in limbo, just waiting. So I am trying hard to focus on what I can do, not what I can't and looking for the little things every day that make me smile. It is an approach I have used a lot at difficult times of my life, most recently after the sudden death of my mother. Today it was walking up the hill from my house and running down with the wind behind me. Probably a good thing there was nobody there to see!
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