Another morning of sunshine. I so like these early mornings with the sun on the dew reminding me of Buck’s Fizz for breakfast, effervescence to start the day. Today has been usefully employed looking for glasses, keys and the spiky ball. The spiky ball should be a feature of all of our lives during lockdown, a piece of pilates equipment designed to enliven the feet, so live feet can then effectively transport half dead bodies around the house. So essential is the spiky ball that it went with us to Peru, just in case clambering up Inca ruins should not sufficiently enliven the feet. Rather awkwardly the spiky ball was left in a hotel room and when we returned there a couple of days later it was handed to us in a plastic bag by the receptionist. The look on his face was a cross between bewilderment and disgust. Some blurted explanation from us rather defeated translation. So, having travelled some 12,000 miles and been rolled around under our feet throughout the high Andean plateau, it’s now lost somewhere behind a curtain or at the bottom of a drawer. Now we have been compelled to order a set of three and 2 over-balls. What adventures we have!
11am was Zoom homework time when Mollie read us a story she had written. Deirdre then related the story of Finn McCool which she (Mollie, not Deirdre) had to summarise in 5 sentences. There was some hesitation about spelling Finn MacCool, but when I explained it meant ‘Son of Cool’ all seemed clear. You could hear Sammie in the background saying he sounded like a Rap artist. Sammie’s Maths presented more of a challenge. We were tossing coins, rolling dice and dropping cards and calculating probabilities. We managed question (a) and even (b) but were thankful when a lunch call interrupted question (c). Sammie explained that the odds were that buttered toast would always drop butter side down because of the weight of the butter. I thought that was Sod’s Law and nothing to do with Maths.
My birdtable is now invincibly armoured against the forays of pigeons with wires, netting, portcullises and minefields. I pulled up a chair to watch and enjoy the sensation of knowing that I can outwit a pigeon.
A perplexed looking pigeon sat on the roof of the table, looked down and round, consulted with a fellow pigeon, hovered with a frantic beating of wings and tried to bully its way in. It thrust its head in rather like Louise XVI into the guillotine. Repulsed and realising it had been outwitted it retired to a more distant perch to contemplate its target from a different angle. For a moment it turned its malicious, hooked-beaky, beady eye on me, part threat, part challenge, part vengeance. Pigeons have been celebrated as war heroes and have had walk-on, or rather fly-on parts in block-busters like ‘Mary Poppins’. But they don’t scare me. Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘The Birds’ once had me cowering against a gable end because of sea-gulls. But not a pigeon. I’m waiting for the puffed up pompous thing to retire gracefully.
I went out a short way in the car today. It felt strange, not liberating but somewhat furtive. I’ve always been excited by long car journeys, ‘On the Road’ like Jack Kerouac, "Be in love with your life, every detail of it." Maybe not Route 66 but at least the A66 from Scotch Corner. But even a round trip to South Wingfield felt a risky assertion of the will against uniformity. We were going to drive some long distances this summer, but have now cancelled. I was looking forward to heading north, the wind behind us, Dolly Parton on the sound system, breakfast in a roadside cafe. Now I’m left wondering if I would eventually lose my driving skills and was already aware of how strange it was to be behind a wheel again.
Tonight we shared pizzas over Facebook Messenger with Jo and Paul. Partying with friends remotely is becoming a familiar exercise, but it needs some reappraisal of protocols. Do we change, set the table, tidy the house, show them round the garden? How do you get two large pizzas and their eaters in one screen without getting your elbows in someone else’s Florentino? But you can clink glasses toasting one another as long as you remember that when the other person's glass approaches you there is a screen there. Lockdown is certainly posing some existential dilemmas.