Feest Isolation Days – 5 April 2020
The sun is shining and we are all told not to go out. Stay at home! Matt Hancock told us it’s an instruction. We’re listening Matt! How privileged we are to have a garden to sit in and enjoy. The glorious tulips, now at their peak, were planted last year by my personal in-house gardener before there was a sniff of virus around and before the world was in lockdown.
We have photographed the garden several times in the past few weeks and shared the results with you. What we notice as we spend so much time sitting outside (except for the in-house gardener who is constantly doing something out there) is that not only does the garden change daily, but almost hourly as the sun moves around and the tulips open and close. There is a bunch of red tulips that have daffodils behind them and depending on the light, the daffodils are befriending them or waving at them or just being petulant and ignoring them. There are many tulip stories.
Yesterday I joined one hundred and fifty other singers as we participated in a “Stay and Sing” as opposed to the usual “Come and Sing.” Each of us were in our own homes with our headphones on. Hilary the Bristol Choral Society Musical Director took us through our paces at breakneck speed. We sang Mr. Mozart’s Coronation Mass. Two hours of learning and then singing together. Except we couldn’t hear each other. Instead we sang along as Hilary conducted us and a pre recorded Mass came through our headphones. We saw each other via Zoom, and could send brief written chat messages. It wasn’t perfect but beats not singing at all. Choir becomes something else up there with walking and swimming that I miss. I’m sure we will all get together and do more of this sort of thing on Zoom. We singers are fortunate that it’s possible for us to practice our hobby from anywhere.
The key is to do enough and not too much of whatever it is you enjoy, as our young next door neighbour the batsman discovered. The thud thud of the ball on the back of the net had been absent for a few days, and I discovered that the silence was due to the blisters on his hands. Invaluable lessons continue to be learned throughout all of this.
The NHS has now placed everyone who retired in the past six years back on the Medical Register. Terry is once again a Professor of Medicine. He hasn’t yet heard how he can help from home, but will happily do so. He has a way of calming people down with his deep and reassuring voice, and would be a welcome presence at the end of a phone disseminating information or mentoring young stressed doctors. Watch this space.
The Queen is going to speak to the Nation today, and according to the BBC, she is going to tell us among other things, “that the attributes of self-discipline, of quiet good humoured resolve and of fellow feeling still characterise this country.”
The psychologists tell us to keep taking deep breaths, and most importantly stay connected.
As it’s Sunday, here’s a heart warming video. Some firemen from the Czech Republic
And I couldn’t resist this Sylvia Plath poem called Tulips.
Yet another photo of red tulips and their friendly daffodil escort. One can never have enough pictures of flowers!
Happy Sunday.
With love,
Kathy