ALL HALLOWS EVE

October 31st 2020

As we ticked towards Tier 2 last night I wondered about resurrecting the Blog – A Muse A Lone. After all most worst scenarios have materialised and for those for whom months of darkness and disease, American politics, cold and wet, isolation and depression and a Christmas watching old Perry Como Christmas Specials on You Tube aren’t enough, here’s my blog. I’ve changed its name from A Muse A Lone because I can’t remember why I called it that. Now it’s A Muse A Part because I don’t feel alone but I do feel apart – socially isolated but hoping by blogging and occasionally You Tubing I can be a part of the community. Maybe a spare part. In fact the more I think about it the more meanings the title can have: ambiguity, amtriguity; any bids to make it amquaduity and enter the dictionary?

Yesterday on a walk which in my last blog we skipped along like Spring lambs, (or Christmas turkeys possibly) we waded through deep, sticky mud. Overnight the wind finally shredded our acer tree, which had been a flame of pleasure for us and passers-by. It had in fact been our identity – “Oh you’re the people with that wonderful acer tree!” Now it, and we, droop in sad and threadbare anonymity. I’ve been trying to think of a word for ‘red’ with which to describe it and to describe the deep layers of red leaves that now coat the garden and lawn. Unfortunately the ground looks like a pool of blood, so Macbeth provides the word.

Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather The multitudinous seas incarnadine,..

So ‘incarnadine’ it is. It’s not even in my Oxford Dictionary – but you saw it here, even though the picture looks a bit dowdy.

One important difference from the way we spent our time in the summer lockdown is we won’t be keeping all our coffee grinds and tea bags to put around the hydrangea to restore it to its proper blue. It didn’t work. In fact it only bore one flower and it was a sort of sickly pink – definitely not incarnadine.

All Hallows Eve is an orgy of madness and wickedness before the promise of heaven and the restoration of hallowness and goodness, which reminds me of the American Election next week. It also makes me think of the similarity between a grinning orange face and a pumpkin.

For our grandson, Ioan, in Wales, who is socially isolated because of Covid positive tests in his class and football team as well as national government policy, the solution has been to circulate all his neighbours to institute a pumpkin carving competition. This is another example of how even children who have not been able to welcome a friend into the house since March and can’t even meet with friends, can still be determined to overcome circumstances.

Now I’m going out to plant a few daffodil bulbs. They’ll have to endure some hard months underground but they will flower in the Spring.