Yesterday I somewhat saucily suggested frisbee as a sound socially spaced game, perfect for gatherings not exceeding six, excluding members of your own family – whatever that means. It seemed to counter the Tory games suggested as playable: tennis (though not doubles), bowls and golf. Having checked the latest guidelines and read the Faq section, I’m delighted to announce that croquet is on the list and so is frisbee. Now frisbee is definitely not a Tory sort of game; one’s monocle is inclined to fall out and one’s fob watch tends to rattle in one’s checked waistcoat pocket. However, its inclusion is pandering to the ‘borrowed’ Tory voters from the erstwhile Labour heartlands of the North-East who can now run freely about on the beaches near Sunderland skimming their frisbees across the sands.
I’m finding a tendency to interpret everything now in terms of lockdown. The new guidelines suggest that folk like the two of us would be better carrying on in our purdah, so I expect the experience of lockdown will continue to dominate my thinking. Thus it was, reading about Robert Louis Stevenson this morning, being ‘shielded’ in a villa in Bournemouth at the end of the 19th Century. These days Bournemouth is a magnet for drugs, drink, sex and English Language courses; then it was where people went to take the water, be wheeled along the prom in a bath -chair and then die. I had a friend at University who was from there and described how you would see people moving into their bungalows and then being carried out later. By the time Abaigh lived there it was far more vibrant and we thoroughly enjoyed our jaunts down the chines, very close incidentally to the villa of RLS.
RLS was the celebrated author of many novels, habitually wore a black velveteen jacket, red tie and Indian Shawl across his shoulders and had a doting wife who slaved for him. He also confided that “I am now at the cough stage and torn simply to ribbons” but was not a Covid-19 victim, but suffering from TB. With my literary ambitions I thought I might have at least one of the nicer of these things in common with him, but Deirdre assures me I have or am none of them.
Also a long term invalid was my golden orfe. Twenty years old and 15 inches long it has inhabited my pond since we moved into Crich. Since before lockdown it has been prone to float on its side until, assuming its demise, I tried to fish it out. It would then flap a tired fin and limp off, if fish can limp, to take up residence somewhere else in the pond, floating on its side. It used to be so lively that it leapt out of the pond one hot and humid day, and lay in the grass for maybe half an hour before I found it and picked it up for dead. It confounded me then too, by squirming impatiently in my hands and casting itself back into the water. Its appetite was voracious, hoovering up fish food, elbowing its smaller piscine fellows out of the way, if fish have elbows. Its fellow orfe was speared by a heron and left dead on the lawn, too big I presume to swallow. My surviving orfe hid for days and I feared for its fate too, but eventually it crept out and continued to slide golden and glorious through the waters.
Yesterday it was unmistakably, irrefutably very dead. There has been speculation here and on Facebook whether it should have a state funeral, but luckily it died on the day the bins were due to be emptied, so we wrapped it in three thicknesses of plastic bags and consigned it to a hot bin beneath the full power of a blistering sun. Now, well into Saturday evening and the bin has still not been collected. So I might have to be re-united with it yet if the aroma escapes the multi-plastic shroud. All that loyalty and faithfulness and elegance and I never even gave it a name.
I wondered if Robert Louis Stevenson had any pertinent wisdom for us today.
Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.- This for the day I’m having to replant some beans because the slugs have eaten some.
That man is a success who has lived well, laughed often and loved much.- applies equally to fish.
To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive.- for one more day travelled with no sense of ever arriving anywhere.