April 16th Shadows on the Wall

For a moment this morning I couldn't understand the filligree movements on our dining

room wall, but it was something both ordinary and spectacular, the shadows of the early sun through the huge Douglas Fir trees across the road, magically blended with the square shadow of a sign in our window. These days of sunlight have ameliorated the grim realities and deep shadows that creep across the lives of friends here and strangers in the news: the nurse who died of Covid-19 but whose unborn baby was brought alive into the world; our friend who will have to spend the first anniversary of his wife's death alone and unhugged; others who must break their isolation to care for elderly family members whose lives have collapsed into chaos; those who have been rushed into hospital for other urgent reasons not related to the Coronavirus. We continue in our sunlit bubble but for many that bubble floats close to the ground. We can all focus more on those whose lives are tragic or complicated because we have fewer distractions, but ultimately we feel impotent, we can care, pray, hope, worry and grieve, but can't actually DO anything.

But again today Spring could not be restrained, buds are exploding, blossom is crowning the cherry trees and hawthorn with tiaras of pink and white. Aubretia tumbling out of walls is almost as purple as my prose. Yesterday, as illustrated by a Whatsapp photo, our grandchildren watched a lamb being born and the mother eating the placenta. Nature is not always pretty.

I had a Zoom chat last night with some members of the Fishpond Choir. Inevitably alcohol seems to be a popular balm for the virus besieged choristers but some are doing really worthy things, the sorts of things that they had always wanted to do and the results of which would actually benefit the human race. I suffer from strong, 'ought' traits, which back in the 1970s era of Transactional Analysis would have been called ' the parent'. So I immediately thought that I should have ambitions more worthy than sleeping in the garden or painting an ornamental owl. Note this quotation from the Guardian a couple of weeks ago: ".... a viral tweet at the start of the crisis alleging that Shakespeare used quarantine to write King Lear, which made everyone who is in any way creative feel that, if they don’t leave this lockdown with at least one masterpiece, they’ve wasted the one chance they had to do it.....Here is the reality: if you were going to write King Lear, you would have written King Lear. Get over King Lear." It's also been claimed that Sir Isaac Newton's famous observation of a falling apple, proving the existence of gravity, took place whilst self-isolated from the plague in the country.

So Deirdre and I set out intrepidly on our own scientific exploration of the environs of Crich Chase, not exactly the North West Passage, but for us an exciting realisation that going down the map does not necessarily mean you're going down hill, nor vice versa. Our route, which we had been planning to explore for 18 years started in true buccolic serenity, dappled leaves and flickering shadows etc etc, gentle rustic paths winding off into the woods, bluebells drooping their heavy heads bla bla. To the left the old Stevenson's industrial site, not picturesque but from a different angle interesting to imagine it one day covered with houses. Then skirting silent industrial complexes, ugly but philsophically provocative, noting their abandonment under the current edicts. Let's blame some cartographical quirk for the fact that we emerged by mistake into the quaint pastorale of the A610 / A6 junction with the footpath clearly indicated on our OS map apparently hidden. We were not assisted by an OS map that was so old there were no woodlands in Crich Chase. Presumably it had been published soon after the Cavendishes had sold off all the timber to build Elizabeth 1s navy. Eventually we met one of those types of walker who gleefully explained that he knew every inch of the woods and it's not possible to get lost. I responded with an acidic smile.

Though the hum of traffic was never far off the industrial units were silent, the car parks empty, all drowsy under the afternoon sun. But the silence proclaimed people unemployed, jobs lost, reduced income, businesses facing closure. For a moment we had emerged from the bubble before retreating back into the buds and birdsong.