Saturday. Traditionally that special day of waking later, having brunch, maybe some desultory jobs, a walk, excellent evening meal and then slumped TV watching. I’m not sure if my Saturdays were ever quite like this, but now of course, it can be every day. The brunch was true today. Then we parked the car near Holloway Church and walked around Lea Gardens. Of course they weren’t open but you can’t stop blossoms escaping over the wall with a light vanilla aroma scenting the lane. Looking over the wall there were ridges of
blooms unfolding down the valley. We were peering in wishing we could glut ourselves on all the colours and flowers that were so inviting and yet so forbidden. We were like those pauper children you see in sentimental Victorian Christmas cards spell-bound staring into a shop window. Instead our walk was through the iconic English country lanes winding down deep dells dripping with cherry blossom and hawthorn, rushing water and birdsong. Running into Gillian and Sarah we were able to have, across the required space, a conversation which wasn’t just about Covid-19, but a whole variety of illnesses and physical states. It reminded us of those pre-lockdown days when there were other ailments to fascinate us, all sorts of joints, glands, arteries and organs to fertilize our social intercourse.
Perhaps conversation generally has moved on a phase. Of course the opportunities are circumscribed to distanced interchanges in the street, telephone, remote Skype or Zoom, texts or Whatsapp. Deirdre still has noisy interrogations of her iPad – grilling the poor instrument as to why it has just done that or where has that come from or where has that gone? But I’m not expected to listen or intervene, so I can carry on my own monologue with my missing keys or glasses. A month ago there was frantic communication, herculean efforts to construct an infrastructure of social intercourse. Is that first rush over now and is this fervent desire for contact now ebbing? We are measuring it out more now, perhaps one long conversation per day, more motivation to speak to people whom we haven’t seen for months or years, friends from the past. There is that awareness that something significant has happened in history and we want to check in with old acquaintances. However conversation is moving more into the abstract, speculating about how the lockdown will end, how it will be phased and when, when will we oldies be paroled? Do we want to be let out? Isn’t there something fearful on release for someone who has been institutionalised from prison, or an asylum or hospital? As well as the excited anticipation isn’t there the worry about how to react with people on the outside, what changes may have happened, what’s right and what’s wrong? Can our generation pick up the threads of the useful contributions we felt we were making to the community, do we want to or have we now proved ourselves expendable? Questions like these make me shudder and I’m not ready. Cosset me a while longer! Naturally we worry about our grandchildren and other family members who will have to brave the virus, being exposed experimentally like miners’ canaries. For us, though, I keep being reminded that this is not an issue that’s likely to be imminent. Personally, I’m not yet ready, I still haven’t written that novel.
So this places us in Limbo Land – that psychological space in between experiences, that terrain of unreadiness or premature action. Limbo is not the same as Purgatory, for those of you who worry about theological niceties, though for some us there may have been an element of purgation in the lockdown. Limbo is where we might tarry too long or commit too early. Late April is clothing limbo. Do we put our winter clothes away, or will we have to get them out again? “Ne'er cast a clout 'til May be out” as my mother used to say, or possibly Chaucer before he
r. Do we turn off the heating and remove the electric blanket? Do we risk putting out the bedding plants or planting out the vegetable seedlings? Limbo is fraught, especially when you have the time to weigh each decision until it drives you into a frenzy of recklessness or paralysed in decision. Limbo, incidentally is also a dance – but watch your back.
Di Fretwell sent me a link for Lyce Doucet reading from Seamus Heaney’s ‘Cure at Troy’.
History says, Don’t hope
On this side of the grave
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up
And hope and history rhyme.
So hope for a great sea- change
On the far side of revenge.
Believe that a further shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles.
And cures and healing wells