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! 😉