Day Forty – Feest Isolation Days

Feest Isolation Days – 23 April

Sometimes the day improves all at once in a great big hurry and it’s hard to be anything other than delighted and amazed. Matt Hancock the Health Secretary says that testing humans with the virus that Oxford has been working on will begin today. That has to be the best news! Professor Sarah Gilbert is fairly confident that her teams efforts are going to produce a vaccine – she gives the results an 80% chance of success. Even if the vaccine is proven to be effective there is a long long way from “lab to jab” as Sir Patrick Vallance, the Chief Scientific officer puts it. Nevertheless, an improvement in the news of late for certain.

Terry and I went for a walk yesterday. A proper within-the-guidelines-half-an-hour drive-from-home walk. We walked for over four miles and passed two other couples with their pooches and one gentlemen on his own. Waking just after six, the egg sandwiches and flask of tea were ready by six thirty. They were carefully packed into Terry’s backpack along with Teddy. (see Day6) The air was colder than I anticipated and until the sun was up and shining with its full intensity my teeth chattered. The expanse of fields, the views beyond of gentle hills, an old castle, spires of ancient churches and the fresh green of the trees took us away from the world. It could have been the 1800’s. Or 1900’s. The walk meandered beside a gentle burbling river that Terry might have fished given other circumstances. The experience was restorative.

Good things often come in threes and the third amazing experience was a one to one Pilates class with Simone in New Zealand. The Pilates studio there – Physio Pilates – has been our favourite for years. Richard, our usual teacher is an extraordinary physiotherapist and we are grateful to have found him. I’m not certain he’s taking one to ones outside physio clients so the gifted Simone now has my name in her diary for every Wednesday morning at seven am her time, eight pm mine. The New Zealand connection feels so right. Thank you Zoom!

Suddenly I remember that this is day FORTY. That feels a milestone, one of many on this coronavirus journey I fear. Forty days and nights for Jesus’ fasting; the reason there are forty days in lent. Forty days when Noah (the man with the Ark) decides to send a raven outside to have a look at the situation. Maybe I shouldn’t get too excited about forty days. Jesus was tempted by the devil during his fasting time, and Noah had another two hundred and some days to go. And my day was going so well…

Forty years of marriage is celebrated with rubies. Now this forty is more to my liking! Rubies symbolise that the passion in a marriage is still very much alive and strong. My fingers are graced with quite a few ruby rings as it’s also the birth stone for July. Not only is my birthday in July but so was my Mum-in-laws, the lovely Doris, and her Mum’s as well. The men in all of our lives bought us gorgeous ruby rings. Touching these stones on my fingers reminds me that these rings have been worn by women in this family for more than a hundred years. I’m comforted. They and their rings have been through much much worse. Forty days isn’t so long. There may be a lot longer to go, but we’ll cope. I’ll just stroke my rings when I need a little boost. The women who went before loaded them up with the strength from their lifetime. I’ll do my best to add mine to the mix for the next generation who’ll wear them. A few more walks in the English countryside are also definitely in order.