Wirksworth is the nearest I’ve been to a town since we were in Cardiff over two months ago. The implications of Coronavirus had just become apparent. The streets had emptied except for a large number of disconsolate Scottish rugby fans who were there for the Six Nations match against Wales. This had been cancelled only hours before kick-off so they were wandering around in their kilts good natured as rugby fans tend to be, but bewildered. The pubs were still open which provided some compensation. Cardiff was closing down and yesterday Wirksworth was opening up, but in the nature of a convalescent after flu, or even after Covid-19. The town appeared frail, pallid, taking its first tentative steps, cautiously, blinking at the daylight. The shops were still mainly closed but there was some traffic and pedestrians with some sort of business to conduct.
Wirksworth is no longer “that bare heap o' stones as the very crows fly over an' won't stop at” that George Eliot features in ‘Adam Bede’. Nor are the inhabitants any longer the “rude boorish kind of people, but they are a bold, daring, and even desperate kind of fellows in their search into the bowels of the earth” that Daniel Defoe describes in his tour of the Peak District (A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain (Letter 8). Otherwise we wouldn’t have been picnicking (at separate tables) in Stony Wood with a family of them and playing frisbee. Frisbee is the perfect game for a culture of social distancing, so it should join the list of very Tory sports now allowed: bowls, golf and tennis! Back in 2012 I published a series of poems called ‘Big Shots from the Literary Canon that Missed Crich’. Very few people realised that Shakespeare, Jane Austen, John Betjeman and a host of other grand literati could have come to Crich in their travels, but probably didn’t. Big Shot IV was:
“George Eliot had an uncle in Wirksworth,
She stayed there and wrote ‘Adam Bede’.
If in Crich she had set it
More people would get it
And give it a jolly good read.”
I published this in ‘Little Rhymes with Crich’ back in 2012, along with:
Daniel Defoe and ‘A Tour Through the Whole island of Great Britain’ (Letter 8)
Defoe, in his ‘Tour’ was not very impressed with what he had heard were ‘The Wonders of the Peak’
And probably not Daniel Defoe
Who had finished Robinson Crusoe
And had heard many travellers speak
The wonders of the Derbyshire Peak.
But was not impressed.
The Wirksworth men he found quite “boorish”,
The lead miners all pale and poorish,
The Derwent “frightful” and a “fury”,
Poole’s cavern wonderless and dreary.
And still not impressed.
Matlock and Buxton he found OK
But found no decent place to stay.
The people quarrelsome and ill-bred,
A translator told him what they said.
He was not impressed.
Except Chatsworth and the local beer.
So why did Defoe not venture here
And stand with the smokers at the Cliff
Taking a pipe or of snuff a sniff,
And from their pergola watch the sun
Set on the hills and the valley run
With deepening shadow and purple light.
That would have impressed Defoe alright.
Quite a few years ago we had lighting installed in our back garden. We had just got back from some hot climate and hoped to replicate long warm and languorous evenings sitting outside until midnight, sipping chilled white wine. Needless to say we never have done, even in the warmest of weather a cool breeze seems to spring up and we get bitten by insects. However, this year we are taking practically all of our meals out there. It’s the sort of weather for spontaneous invitations because it’s set fair and someone could even phone and invite us to a BBQ tomorrow night, or early next week. Or we could phone friends and say come round for drinks and nibbles. Except of course we haven’t been able to. It’s typical Sod’s Law that when we have the weather to be spontaneously hospitable we have the less than hospitable, most anti-social Covid-19. However, maybe next week, as long as we carefully monitor the numbers, and as long as we don’t let them use the loo, and as long as we don’t let them touch anything as they go through the house to the back garden, and as long as we wash our hands and anything that could conceivably be contaminated, we can enjoy spontaneous rip-roaring non-physical-contact jollity. Perhaps we’ll play frisbee.
Mind you, spontaneity isn’t everything. Because of the shopping issue all of the ingredients for our meals have been sourced thoughtfully with our meals well planned, by my exceptional chef. Thus every meal is special and is the thing most looked forward to in an otherwise unremarkable day. From about 11 am I’m asking what are we having to eat tonight? And there’s always an answer. That sort of meal requires wine which means we haven’t had the recommended alcohol free day yet this week. We tried, but the food was too good and we’ve just had a case delivered.
My job is to clear up afterwards. Tonight as I did just that I listened to a TED talk on the skills of conversation. If you want to have a conversation in which you state your opinions with no danger of interruption, the speaker said, write a blog.