Before the lockdown I took some money out of the Post Office and slipped it in my wallet. I'm now out of the habit of carrying my wallet on our daily exercise excursions and when I peeped into it today, all that money was still there. It's the same with my petrol tank. Yesterday I felt we were treading water, today, still treading water I noticed that time is moving on around us. I'm feeling that illusion of movement you have when you're sitting on a train and think you're in motion, only to realise you are stationary and it's the adjacent train that is moving. The indicator of time still easing its way towards the future is not the money in the wallet, or the petrol in the car, but the bluebells beginning to look tired and drooping and the buds on the sycamores exploding out into a spectacular springtime green. I love the word viridescent and would like to use it now, but it's not green enough.
Yesterday was Saturday, today is Sunday and tomorrow is Monday. Each of those days used to denote different moods and activities: getting up late, church and sherry at lunchtime and then the gloom of back to work. Vestigial sensations are still attached to these squares in the calendar, even though they haven't been relevant to me for years. But it still takes an act of will to leave a task undertaken on a Sunday to complete on the Monday. A burden still shifts when I wrap up our Sunday evening singsong on Zoom and realise there are no awkward meetings tomorrow or difficult interviews or apologies to make for work not completed over the weekend. At the moment I'm still enjoying the luxury of doing very little on one day and then finishing it off the next day.
This afternoon we Skyped our Welsh family and there was another sense of time having stood still, in this case for 50 years as 12 year old grandson played us 'Twist and Shout' on the guitar. At least I could hear it. When I saw the Beatles perform it live around 1964, I couldn't hear a word. Then the 10 year old played us Beethoven's 'Ode to Joy' on the trumpet, his music stand draped with European flags. A reminder of what monopolised our mental energy a few months ago. At least we have had a respite from all that bitterness and division with a common Covid enemy and united support of our NHS. I suppose Brexit is still suppurating away beneath the shock and anxiety that has supplanted it. Maybe there will be more cohesion and co-operation after this nightmare as we rebuild our world.
I called the blog A Muse A Lone. It should have been called A Muse A Sleep, firstly because it sounds more clever, but secondly the creative urge has been rather torpid. It's been too easy to sink into a recliner with a book. However, this afternoon in Kennel Wood in Alderwasley I just wrote down what I saw and heard and this happened complete with the assonance and internal rhymes!
Permitted Walk
Bluebells don’t last long
Not as long as the song of the robin
Or the rusty scrape of the pheasant across the meadow
Catch them while the sun
Is still young in the sycamores
And the leaves are unfolding on the branches
Catch them while the breeze
Still teases the bark of the birch trees
With shadows shifting like a smile in the morning
Catch them before the rain
Scampers down the lane and wakes the garlic
With white flowers and whispers of scent
Catch them while the teenagers walk
With easy lope and talk to their parents
And the old couple still hold hands
Beneath a shower of cherry blossom
I can' t make up my mind whether to write "couple hold hands" or "couple holds hands" - it's a very uncertain area of subject verb agreement. That's the size of my dilemma to worry me through to Monday morning at the moment.