Now is the time time to get my head adjusted to being 'vulnerable' and 'at risk'. No excuses
now for not confronting the impasses: first on-line shopping; which we sought to avoid a few days ago by accepting Sainsbury's kind offer of an over 70 slot at 7am. Behold an oldies grid of starters in some grey early morning marathon, leaning on their trolleys, zimmers or each other. Then the starter's gun and they were in like some hellish trolley dodgems, a dance macabre of groceries. Determined old ladies crashing through; a couple who were doing a 30 mile round trip to get broccoli and a few satsumas. Mayhem at the checkouts. As we keep hearing, "These are exceptional times" and Sainsbury's hadn't yet tamed the elderly or put in places the procedures that everyone has learned since and with which we are now learning to live.
Twelve Weeks. Perhaps now I can learn to live intensely like Thoreau isolated in his little cabin by Walden Pond. So I determined to watch two coal tits on the patio. One always came to the bird table and flew off to the right, the other to the feeder and flew off to the left - same again, a regular routine. Fascinating - for five minutes. Only 11 weeks, 23 hours and 55 minutes to go.
And now the social media bit and enter Zoom. Well, I think we may have cracked that: blowing candles out to celebrate Al's birthday, Hangman with Sammie, homework with Mollie and plans to replicate Sunday Evening music sessions at the pub. And most satisfying meeting with our Popalong toddlers and performing our usual Friday morning songs with them. They were all so excited and positive: lying on the floor for Sleeping Bunnies, being catapulted into the air for The Grand Old Duke of York and, of course, being duly bounced for Jig Jog. But far from cultivating that meditative frame of mind the brain has been bombarded with posts, whatsapps, zooms, jokes, videos, Facebook messages, online church services, offers of help, inspirational messages and news - dreadful news. All of which are individually important, but can you hear my bleeper telling you where I'm buried in the avalanche? Of all these a blog has always been my ambition and this is what I'm at last trying. There's been plenty of procrastination - sitting ready to start and sneaking out to the garden, or checking Facebook, or rehearsing a new song - but that's what I always do with adventures on the computer. Goodness knows what you are going to make of it. I was chastened the other day by over-confidently re-tuning the TV, a project I'd been postponing since early February. Achieved easily - why all the fuss? Then we found I'd lost Netflix and iPlayer. The debate between Deirdre and me was fairly animated. Twelve Weeks without Netflix and iPlayer! Thank heavens for a 12 year old remote grandson to talk us through it. Though it's a pity he must remain remote.
Last night we watched Dan Snow and the Klondike Gold Rush. We remembered our visit there some years ago and I found this picture of me outside the Brothel Museum, obvioously waiting for something. Maybe this was it.
The terror I'm now suffering with a rather threatening blue button in the top right hand corner saying 'Publish' (and be damned?). What's going to emerge? Something incomprehensible, libel suits, mockery, monitoring by MI6 or the Kremlin. More probably an anti-climax and something read sympathetically by my wife.
I wrote this poem at the beginning of the year. Would it be cheating now to change the last lined and claim I was being prophetic?
2020
2020 has a ring about it,
Its very name like bells in the night
Or centuries dropping through slots in time.
Midnight swinging round
and ducking through arches in some merry country dance
Or searching for an address in a long American street.
The numbers of decades echoing off cold skies.
A pair of rollers in a lady’s hair.
A cricket tournament.
Or is it time stammering?
I remember a community hopeful on a hill
As fireworks splattered all around and the horizons gasped.
A bonfire blazing camaraderie and hope
Against the Millennium Bug which would turn the clocks awry
And the ticking date and world’s doomed data
That would tumble society like a Jenga tower.
But didn’t happen.
Once every hundred years the century’s number repeats itself
And though I have a degree in History
I can remember nothing that happened in 1919 or 1818 and so on
Back in time two thousand years.
Surely there must have been an emergency in 999!
So my wish for 2020 is that nothing happens to make it historic either.