Will I Keep This Up?

 I mowed the lawn for the first time this week. But I have to pay for it the next day as my back moans as soon as I move the lawnmower out of the shed and it doesn’t let up for a considerable time after that! The GP is finally sending me for a scan. It’s an ultrasound scan and it’s to be on the 13th of April. And I have to drink a whole litre of water one hour before the scan. I can’t say I’m not worried because I am. But what will be will be. The interesting thing is it’s not going to be at the hospital. It’s going to be at another healthcare centre. I was completely ignorant of its existence. But my friend said she’ll take me. And I’ve a feeling that because it’s at a smaller centre the risk of Covid will be less. However, now I should be protected by this vaccine, if indeed it works.

On Monday the ‘stay at home’ rule ended. Although the government advised people to ‘be cautious’! Ha! See that flock of flying pigs!? We can now meet in groups of up to six outdoors in parks and gardens. Or two families can meet. Of course people will interpret ‘families’ in different ways, won’t they? Outdoor sports facilities can open too - golf courses , outdoor swimming pools etc. It will be interesting to see what this does to the infection rates. Pessimist that I am I expect it to rise. People can’t be trusted. 

We’ve had something resembling a mini heatwave. It’s been most pleasant. The mornings up on the cliffs have been quite idyllic. Watching the blossom coming out on the various shrubs in the hedge row has been quite delightful. There were wrens and chaffinches busying about this morning as well as the larger birds like jays and crows. 

The lady who is doing the yarn bombs for the pillar box outside her flat has done one for Easter. 

I will confess to almost forgetting that it was Easter. That’s the problem with lockdown. One day seems very much like another. I say that, though, but it’s a curious thing, for somehow weekends still feel very much like weekends even though I do exactly the same things as I do during the week. I was particularly conscious of this the last Saturday passed. For it felt unmistakably  Saturday. And I couldn’t put my finger on why. I went out for my early walk as usual. I chatted with the other walkers up there as usual. Everything I did that day was as usual. And yet it still felt that it could be no other day but Saturday. One auspicious event this Saturday was the clocks went forward. That always makes me happier. So it’s officially British summer time.

I do make an exception on Sundays though. I try to make things a little bit different. Sundays is always changing the bedding day and I treat myself to a cooked breakfast which I linger over while I listen to a little jazz. Usually Pat Metheny. There is something very “Sundays“ about his style. 

In spite of this pleasant weather we’re having at the moment the weather forecast is quite depressing for the Easter weekend. In fact they’re even sleet showers forecast for the Monday! I struggle to get my head round how it can be 21/22 degrees one day and dipping down to -1 within the space of a few days. It’s very confusing for the plants and the wildlife though not to mention an ageing old pensioner like me!

One of my favourite publishers was advertising a job on social media. Jokingly I responded and said do you take on pensioners? And I put the wink emoticon afterwards.  I got a reply back from one of the staff who said of course! Do you know what? It actually crossed my mind as to whether I should apply. I won’t. At my age it’s absolutely ridiculous. But they’re such a lovely bunch of  people. I went to a couple of the evenings that they hold to promote new titles for the forthcoming year and they invite loads of book bloggers and influencers to come along. I know I’m probably the oldest person there but they bend over backwards to make me feel included and welcome. I come away feeling so uplifted. Obviously they didn’t hold it last year because of Covid. They had an event online via zoom. And they sent a box of proofs and goodies through the post beforehand. Usually when you go they hand you a totebag which you fill up with books throughout the evening as well as helping yourself to all the drinks and nibbles they have. I’m really hoping that this year if things progress positively I might get to go again. If they invite me. Something nice to think about anyway.

Well, lookee here, I’ve done it again!

 Maybe I will try to do a blog post once a week as we enter a new year of lockdown and the Covid world. Yesterday marked a year since our prime minister, Boris Johnson, uttered those chilling words “you must stay at home“. It was called a day of reflection. At midday there was one minutes silence. Then at 8 pm people were encouraged to light candles and shine a light outside their homes. Certainly the evening activity was not well supported in my ‘hood. It might have been difficult to see candles outside houses from the position of my house but I only saw one other person shine a light. And I was talking to my walking friend who ignored the silence because she  felt it detracted from the Armistice Day silence for people who lost their lives for our freedom. I could see her point but I think the fact that they only had it for a minute and they did it at midday rather than 11 acknowledged that it wasn’t in the same category as silence for the wars. But, hey, we’re all different, eh? The lady that does the yarn  bombs has done a special one for the national day of reflection. I took a photo of it. I think I’m going to try and photograph every one that she does. 

Boris has put his foot in it again by claiming that the success of the U.K.’s vaccination rollout program is down to greed and capitalism. I’m fairly sure that will further inflame the EU and may affect supplies of the vaccine for the future. He is such a silly man sometimes. It wouldn’t surprise me if we don’t end up getting a second dose.

I had yet another telephone consultation with the surgery yesterday. The doctor is going to send me for a scan, finally. It will be in the next two weeks because of my age and because she’s checking for cancer. It feels scary. On a number of levels. I think that now I’ve had one dose of vaccine I feel a little less anxious about going to the hospital. And I know that my neighbour will give me a lift if I need one. So I haven’t got to worry about public transport.

My friend, Sue, who I meet upon the cliffs when we walk has been absent for the last couple of days. She’s injured her knee. It caught her quite badly on Sunday and she had to sit down on a bench. That tells me how bad it was because she simply doesn’t do that because of Covid. But she was out today walking very slowly and keeping to the flat. She was very sweet and said she’d missed our chats over the last couple of days. She said it was good to chat again and she hoped we would carry on chatting......... for the rest of our lives! I realise we’re on the last lap of our lives so it might not be for that long! Nevertheless I found it a very uplifting thing to hear.

It’s very springlike today. Not that it’s particularly warm but there is a certain something in the air that heralds a change. So instead of doing housework this morning I spent some time outside in the garden. I have to be very careful because I can’t do much before my back starts complaining bitterly and I have a tendency to overdo it which can then have a knock-on effect the next day. So I’ve tried to be sensible. While I was out in the front a lady went by with her dog and I said good morning, she said good morning. Didn’t know who she was but she stopped and started to give me her entire life story! I had put a watering can by my water butt to fill it up and as she was talking, non-stop I might add, I could hear that the watering can was overflowing and the water must’ve been pouring down my side way. It was so difficult to extricate myself from the situation but in the end I think she felt quite hurt when I said look I must go my butt is overflowing! Only realised later how weird that sounded. And how inaccurate it was. It wasn’t the butt that was overflowing at all, it was the watering can! But I hate wasting water. It’s such a precious commodity. My actual butt is okay, thanks. 😉

The WhatsApp schoolgirls group are trying to organise a get together for September. I still think it’s too early to start making concrete plans but they’re agreeing on dates et cetera. I’ve said nothing so far. The girl hosting it lives in Oxford which is a long way to go. And I’d be reliant on a lift from somebody which means I’d be dependent on their arriving and their leaving. I’m not very social these days I think that’s another result of lockdown. Not that I’ve ever been terribly sociable. I don’t like large groups. I much prefer smaller, intimate groups.

Here is the photo of the yarn bomb. 

Blogversary!

 I know, it’s been months since I last posted on this blog. I’m sad that it deteriorated. When I began it was my intention to continue it for every day of the lockdown. Only I didn’t know how long lockdown was going to last and I didn’t know how challenging my mental and physical health would become. And there are other reasons that I won’t go in to because the relevance is immaterial. But today is the year anniversary of when I started this project. And I thought it might be interesting, for want of a better word, to reflect on the last 12 months.

More has been lost in this year than has been gained. So many deaths, not all from Covid, but it’s been a sobering year. A dear friend diagnosed and treated for cancer has overcome it. The last scan was clear, August is the date for the next one. 18 months since I saw my brother. And I think it’s six months since I saw my sister. Solitude has become the norm. The majority of purchases, food and otherwise, all done online. That’s become another norm now. The only shops I’ve entered in the last year have been the chemist to pick up my prescriptions and the health Food Store, which is en route, to get my breakfast cereal. I did go into the co-op once last July. But the lack of social distancing in the store put me off ever returning. 

I think I could count on one hand the number of times I’ve been anywhere other than my own home to socialise. There was a brief period in the summer where we were allowed to meet in gardens. My sister came a couple of times. And I went down to my friend’s and they came to me. Otherwise we’ve had distanced conversations between me at the front door and then the front gate. My sister and I travelled to the cemetery to my mum’s grave. My friend took me to a garden nursery. And I’ve been down to the seafront twice to have an ice cream. That’s the sum total of my outings in 12 months. 

The euphoria of my early morning walks has diminished because of my back pain. Sometimes I look back and wonder if the summer was a dream I’ve woken up from. For a while it seemed my walking was effortless and I had my music playing as I strode along the cliff tops picking my blackberries and chatting with the other walkers.

Now I don’t walk as far and I don’t dare leave the house without my fold up walking stick at the very least. I found the winter mornings challenging with the dark and the cold. I feel slightly more optimistic now we’ve got lighter mornings. Also the ground has been too wet to walk on and it’s the only way you can avoid other people. The joggers continue to irritate me with their huffing, their puffing, their coughing and  their refusal to compromise. If we have another pandemic I would like it to be mandatory for joggers to wear facemasks at least. This current lockdown I feel has seen less compliance than the first one. There are more people and more traffic about. People aren’t staying home like they were. Some of it is complacency because of the vaccine. I’m sure there are people who believe that once they’ve had the first shot  that’s it, they’re free. Of course that’s not the case.  I have had one shot of vaccine. I had the Pfizer vaccine. There was no choice about which one to have. And tomorrow will be the three weeks for it to become effective. But I can’t see me changing my ways very much. Maybe when I’ve had the second one I may feel more confident.

However my walk still remains one of the highlights of my day. And I have witnessed some of the most incredible sunrises. You can see from the photos. And my friendship with one of the walkers, Sue, endures. I hope it extends beyond the pandemic for we have such a lot in common and we agree about so many things. The Covid snake stones have all been removed. They’ve been relocated to one of the flower beds but they’ve got lost within the plants and the earth. I felt sad but I knew it had to happen. The grass was growing over the stone so that they were no longer visible and it was very easy to turn on ankle if you walked on the grass. They had no choice but to remove them. But not far away from where the snake began its journey on the road opposite some enterprising soul has been knitting covers for the postbox. She is very creative and makes them according to the season or the anniversary or an event at the time. And this morning she’s put a St Patrick’s Day cover on the pillar box and I post a photo here. 

I’ve tried to give my day some kind of structure. So when my back allows it I do chores and housework in the morning and the afternoons I devote to my reading and my writing. It doesn’t always work out that way! And how I’m going to fit the gardening in is anybody’s guess. My gardener is no longer doing full-time gardening as he is devoting his time to other pursuits, Permaculture, foraging and the growing of herbs for local businesses. He did say if I got desperate I could contact him and he’d do a couple of hours. I have a feeling that I may be desperate this season.

I look back over the last year and sometimes I can’t even grasp how things have changed. When I’m walking in the mornings and I see the trains on the mainline to London I wonder whether I’ll ever get on the train again. Even the buses that go up and down from the station, I wonder if I’ll ever get on the bus again. It feels like I’m locked into this existence forever. And I feel sad about it and I feel angry too. For if we had a more compliant and less arrogant population we might not be in this mess. I’m no scientist but logic tells me that for a virus to replicate and mutate it needs a host. If it doesn’t have a host it can’t do those things and will ultimately die out, surely? And if we all socially distanced, washed our hands, wore facemasks and stopped trying to meet up with each other, stop travelling around the country and out of the country, stopped trying to manipulate the restrictions to suit our selfish selves we might have been able to stop this thing growing and spreading and developing. But we didn’t. And whilst I have misgivings about the whole vaccination program as a whole I can’t see any other way out. The long-term effects of these vaccines are unknown. Already doubt has been cast about one of them and its potential to cause blood clots. 

I look forward to the changing of the seasons and the changing of the clocks. Warmer, brighter weather and lighter evenings certainly lift my mood. At the end of the month the restrictions are easing slightly to allow people to meet outside in gardens. The rule of six returns. But only locally, so my sister still won’t be able to come down. Sometimes I crave a change. And yet I have to be grateful that I’ve got through a whole year without contracting the virus and needing hospital care or attention. Others have not been as fortunate as me. And I also have to remain grateful that I have a reliable income so I have plenty to eat and I’ve been able to keep warm and I have a pleasant space to occupy with the opportunity to go outside. There have been some losses, relatives and friends I will never see again and there is no doubt this ‘thing’ will leave its mark for years to come.

I’m not sure how many more blog posts I will write. As the whim takes me I guess. And I suppose if I feel there is anything significant to say. Maybe I won’t write again until this time next year! 😉