I think today was the day my whole life has been leading up to: sitting in the garden dozing and reading a book without any sense that I should be doing something else. It didn't last all day of course, that inner nagging parent, our 'ought to' was soon indicating to me that I ought to be doing something useful like painting the ornamerntal garden owl or even going for the obligatory walk. I cleaned the car just before Christmas so that's not yet become a priority. What would be the point anyway of having a car all dressed up and nowhere to go?
But in that idyllic state between dozing and reading, snatches of conversation wafted in from that little bit of the outside world that is The Common. It was the usual interchange. Conversation as such has virtually ceased. Hurled across the road or bellowed over garden walls it is agreement that we're alright, agreement about the weather, agreement that it's the Spring, agreement that it's a nice environment to be isolated in and agreement that it's dreadful elsewhere. Everyone seems accepting of the situation and in good humour. No debate, no contention, no dialogue, no razor sharp interlocking of ideas or opinions. How we miss the bitter arguments of Brexit! And of course no local gossip. Because there are no posters advertsing forthcoming events, no chatting in the post office or the Loaf we simply don't know what's going on in our own village. We know the national, indeed the global news, but we don't hear who's ill in Crich or about the burst water main in Bullbridge until well after the event. I've had emails and texts from friends in Canada, the US, Germany and France and there's a real international solidarity in that because they're all in lockdown. But who's coping and who isn't in Crich neither makes the headlines nor the gossip. Gossip, when it's not malicious is the lubricant of any small community. I like the derivation of the word: God's Sibling - godsib. Your Gossip is your close confidante, your sharing partner.
In our house, meanwhile, we manufacture our own conversation independently. Deirdre has spirited dialogues with her iPad. She pokes and prods it and berates it: Why won't this work? Where's it gone? Ah it's come back again? Why is it doing that? Aware that I'm not supposed to enter into the conversation, I shuffle away, debating with myself, my equal in disputation, whether Boris would qualify as a tragic hero in the Aristotelean sense and if you wear suncream do you need a moisturiser as well. In which case which goes on first? In case I provoke a conflagration of dissension, similar to the scones, jam, cream controversy, I already know the answers.
But I enjoy those scripted conversations across the road . Even the most trivial and repetitative passing encounter reaffirms that we share a common experience, moods, hopes and opinions. So we did the ordained walk and were glad. We stopped and had a couple of proper conversations, both agreeable. On the Tors top the families were out, the sharp silhouette of St.Mary's spire bisected the sky, and from below rose an anthem of lawn mowers and children playing.
I wrote the following a few months ago when things were very different and have just added a line, you can guess which.
A FURTHER CRICH GREETING
Desolate streets,
A dim light swaying.
From the moon’s shadows
A figure steps with a dog.
“Areyouaree?”
I pause to tell him that all pets are anthropomorphic,
That all human encounters are evanescent,
Of my body’s decay, of my latest diagnosis,
Of friends dead, that all life is terminal,
Of the glaciers melting and unimaginable storms gathering,
Of viruses rampaging across the globe untamed
And of the shifting of continents.
But it’s his consonants that have shifted,
A mush of vowels fading into the darkness.
“Areyouaree?”
And I say, “Aye.”
And then I say, “AreyouareeT?” with a plosive final T
Because I’m a foreigner.
“Aye,” he says over his shoulder.
And the moon grins alone behind a cloud.
But in that glimpse of moonlight
One other and I have met and spoken.