I think ‘torpor’ is a lovely word. I suppose any word is lovely if it says it just as it is, and after successive days of sultry sunshine, torpid is how I feel. It doesn’t have the judgemental nuance of its homonym ‘sluggish’. But that’s how I feel too. It was the right word for this morning, sitting with Sammie among buttercups and long grass looking down on his house from the meadow above. We had gone there to try and replicate the 100 year old photo of the same scene, but during that century an industrial landscape had become pastoral, with trim cottages and towering, blindingly green trees.
And now an afternoon of unapologetic torpor, lazy, too hot to do anything because with endless empty days dissolving into a summer heat, there is no urgency about anything. Torpor is adrift on a boat on a clear blue mountain lake with one hand trailing idly in the water. It is an Edwardian summer watching village cricket and the thwack of a ball on a bat. It is in striped deckchairs in striped blazer and straw boater or reclining in a punt on the Cam. Deirdre and I have been blessed in having been torpid in five continents and now torpor has ambled into Crich and settled beside our garden pond and infected our carp, lazily gliding amongst the growing pond weed. I was so torpid I couldn’t be bothered to repair the garden clock so I simply set it for that most torpid of times, ten to three.
“Just now the lilac is in bloom, All before my little room; And in my flower-beds, I think, Smile the carnation and the pink; And down the borders, well I know, The poppy and the pansy blow . . . Oh! there the chestnuts, summer through, Beside the river make for you A tunnel of green gloom, and sleep Deeply above; and green and deep The stream mysterious glides beneath, Green as a dream and deep as death.....
..........................................oh! yet Stands the Church clock at ten to three? And is there honey still for tea?
This is the perfect metaphor for time standing still and nothing changing during an absence. But of course the very English tranquillity of Grantchester Vicarage was written in Germany and less than three years later Rupert Brooke had died of blood poisoning en route to Gallipoli. The world changes when you’re away; dozing through summer afternoons won’t alter that.
One of my favourite bits of torpor is Rat and Mole gliding down the river in ‘Wind in the Willows’. They knew what lockdown was all about.
“ ‘But isn’t it a bit dull at times?’ the Mole ventured to ask. ‘Just you and the river, and no one else to pass a word with?’”
Wouldn’t it be nice to glide sleepily on the current of this summer and wake up when this business is all over? But already, from my lounger beside the pond I can hear the increased traffic and catch the whiff of diesel. The car is booked in already for a service when the dealership opens fully in July. Life is beginning to tick and we must wake up. A couple of days ago Deirdre stood beside a tiny rushing stream and dropped fragments of wood bark to test the flow, imagining the scene magnified and her kayaking the water, hopefully at some point during this summer. There were the miniature stoppers and eddies and breakout shallows hugely expanded in her hopes.
Between naps I vaguely recall Deirdre saying this afternoon that we must walk the tightrope between paranoia and being responsible and cautious. Like the fledgling birds I wrote about the other day we oldies will have to move beyond the nest and not be reliant on others to feed us. Those of us rated ‘at risk and vulnerable’ mustn’t slip into role. We will have to do our own risk assessments and take some considered chances in asserting control over our lives. We don’t want to internalise the message that we are helpless.
In a glorious afternoon heady with lilac and damselflies, relaxation leads to torpor which could lead to apathy which could lead to stupor. Soon we will wake up, shake up and get moving.