Today we had a trailer of freedom. It was just a foretaste of a long summer meal with friends, a walk, a bottle of wine – it was actually a delayed lunch that had had to be cancelled during that oscillating time of can we or can’t we at the end of March. There was the issue today of sitting in a garden in the cold and damp, low cloud and fog and mizzle; but these are friends with whom we’ve lunched on ski slopes in blizzards and white-outs, so the decision was taken – yes we’re going for it. Actually they have a roofed gazebo with a heater, so it was dining in the garden for wooses.
Naturally every precaution was taken to follow guidelines, but we soon realised how difficult they are to maintain. Unconsciously we lapsed into that old familiarity of looking at pictures on each others’ phones, passing the wine bottle around, using the same water jug and the moment came when I could have been personally responsible for the second spike – when I dipped my hand into someone else’s bowl of nuts. It was only then that there was an outcry – but what is a fellow to do when he’s eaten all his own nuts?
But we oldies freed from our shackles for an afternoon were like a herd of bullocks released onto the spring pastures, skipping and gambolling, greedy for space and lush grazing – I am speaking metaphorically. Perhaps a better metaphor would be prisoners on parole, unsure of how to behave in the big world beyond the walls and terrified of being sent back if we break the conditions of our release. Maybe all we over-seventies should be tagged and monitored by satellite. But with old friends there is so much to catch up: the progression of one’s ailments, comparisons of different patterns for masks, painful laments about hair and grandchildren. We did, though, try to adhere to that conversational rule of only allowing one rant, one ailment and one grandchild.
Our little foray today demonstrated how much we have to learn, and even more significantly, how much we have to unlearn if economic, educational and social life are going to resume. It will be especially difficult to reorientate ourselves in familiar situations where touch and proximity were so natural. Social situations will feel stilted and self-refereeing will be challenging and fraught with anxiety and guilt. None of us are going to get this right and none of us should expect anyone else to get it right.
Unlearning can take years. Today we were walking round the area where I used to teach and I still expected to run into my students, forgetting that they are probably all indoors home-schooling their secondary aged children. I missed those ducked heads as they pretend not to see me, that dash across the road to be on the other side, those backs as they stare into shop windows. And those were just my own children. But we did encounter a member of our old baby-sitting circle, when sits were traded with curtain rings and we had to learn the hard facts of over 40 years passing.
As we talk more with people outside our locked down orbit various strategies for surviving the last twelve weeks emerge. We all know about gardening and cycling, DIY and binge watching ’Game of Thrones’. Deirdre has been watching’ Anne of Green Gables’ or ‘Anne with an E’, I believe it’s called. A few years ago she had us driving across Canada to Prince Edward Island to visit the actual L.M.Montgomery homestead. It was under siege from Chinese tourists taking photos. It’s in a small village called Cavendish which took my fancy. No one seemed to know why it is called that and after enquiries at the museum we were introduced to some descendent of L.M.Montgomery. She looked through a few books and found that the company who had first settled the village was sponsored by one of our very own Derbyshire Cavendishes! I have a sneaking theory that I am the rightful heir to the Cavendish estates incidentally. The churchyard in Cavendish Suffolk is stuffed full of Offords. Anyway, when the muse permits I think I’ll add a poem about Anne of Green Gables to my ‘Big Shots from the Literary Canon That Missed Crich’ series.
A far more impressive and robust reading tactic for surviving the lockdown was the lady in her late seventies who had been reading the Just William books. Martin Jarvis’s rendition of these remains my favourite way of passing long car journeys. Richmal Crompton could well have visited Crich during her time at St.Elphin’s School in Darley Dale but chose not to reveal it. Anyway she is commemorated among the Big Shots.
BIG SHOTS – ‘JUST WILLIAM’
Richmal Crompton, who wrote the ‘Just William’ stories both attended and taught at St. Elphin’s School in Darley Dale – then a school for daughters of the clergy.
Richmal Crompton sadly was rather lame
So from St.Elphin’s School in Darley Dale.
Most probably to Crich she never came
But created ‘Just William’ all the same.
He could have come trotting o’er Tansley Moor
On the run from some sheriff’s gaol
With grey flannel shorts and quick on the draw
And Jumble the dog - adventures galore.
With the Outlaws brave banded together,
A posse on a hunt that must not fail
With knees all grazed searching hell for leather
For Ethel and her beau in the heather.
In Crich the author could have hatched a plot
To turn the Glebe Luncheon Club ladies pale
With an Outlaw invasion, but sadly not
But left William with Violet Elizabeth Bott.
At the bus shelter simply hanging out,
Sucking a bull’s eye, chewing a nail,
He eyeing the horse trough and thinking about
Drowning Violet Elizabeth Bott.