Feest Isolation Days – 7 July
After the gales and rain and shockingly cold weather for the past while, the sun has finally appeared this afternoon. What a welcome and wondrous sight it is too. For the first time in days, I’ve been outside on my bike rather than on the stationary one sitting in the garden room. Much more fun being out in the world a bit! Biking means you see people doing all sorts, and hear snippets of conversations that are intriguing and tell stories in a sentence. There was a man on one of the greens who had strung a sort of ribbon like length of material between two trees and was practicing his tight rope skills. I didn’t hang around for long but he seemed fairly confident and competent. A little further on, a little boy wearing his school uniform, walking hand and hand with his mother said, “Do you remember Mummy before the bad virus came and we used to go to Ben’s house to play after school?” That was a bit of a heart breaker.
The city is a mixed bag of lots of people queuing at food shops, and much less traffic than normal. There are also the usual idiots about who make you take extra care when biking in traffic. I had stopped and was standing next to my bike waiting to cross the road at a blind spot and a guy nearly hit me. He was way too far over nearly on the verge. He yelled out the window, “that wasn’t very clever was it”? I retorted, “no it wasn’t terribly clever of you”! He clearly wasn’t good at accepting a driving mistake. Just as well I was stood far enough away from the road not to be mowed down.
The rich tapestry of life. Sometimes we forget that there is a pandemic around – but not for long. A friend came for a cuppa and cake in the garden this morning and it was bliss to see her. We talked about the tiny steps we are all taking to move back into the world. Carefully. We are in a book group together and will try and have our next group in the garden socially distancing of course. Zoom is okay in a pinch but we all so prefer seeing each other in person. Fingers crossed that the weather turns back toward summer at the end of the month.
Boris Johnson has said people “overwhelmingly” followed the coronavirus rules during the easing of the lockdown in England over the weekend. When he was asked if social distancing mixes with alcohol, he said, “I think they can mix if people are sensible. Actually my evidence I’ve seen is yes there have been some places where people have been imprudent and you can see there’s been some people who have been getting it wrong. But actually, overwhelmingly, over the weekend I think the people of this country did the right thing. If we can keep it up, if we can keep going in the way we are, maintain discipline, enjoy ourselves but enjoy ourselves safely, then we will continue to drive down this virus and we will be able to get back to life as close to normal as possible as fast as possible.”
We live in hope. The World Health Organisation thinks we will have another spike because we aren’t following the rules. We shall see.
Life is so often about perspective isn’t it? I have a little gem of a short Oscar winning video to remind you of just that. Watch it to the end. It’s a goody.
With love,
Kathy x