Tales From Magpie Hill

You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep spring from coming

Pablo Neruda

“No you mustn’t!” Old Winter cried.
But Young Spring laughed, 
And scatted broken crayon nibs 
of verdant green,
Above the sea of mud,
Until every gnarly elbow was sprigged 
with a supple unripe bud.

“You won’t succeed amongst this death!”
The Pale Crone hissed before first light,
and capped the buds in icy breath.
But the youth warmed the earth
with early dawn, and defying her further still,
She hung a string of yellow bells 
on every frosty sill.

“What foolishness! You’ll soon learn
the error of your ways.”
Came a warning on the wind. 
But Spring couldn’t hear, she’d filled the air
with dancing notes, a merry life-giving tune,
unfolding leagues of vivid fronds,
to beguile her cousin June. 

Dreaming of blissful times spent on Ireland’s North Coast.

Around the final bend we slip,
and there it is, the dip 
in the road that leads
to the end of the world.

"Oh look" she says from the back seat.
Popping out her thumb especially.
"There's a dragon lying in the water.”
And so there is. 
The Skerries dozing in the swell.

Perhaps once it lumbered, 
this great leather bird.
Perched on cliffs,
flinty like its beady eye.
But now it only slumbers.
Surrounded in blue.

Above and before.
Blue, blue, blue.
The sight of it is 
a vacuum, pulling your lungs
tight to the edges,
flooding you with oxygen.
Lifting you onto your tiptoes,
until you might almost 
catch the tail of the zephyr.

It is the only living dragon now - 
the flitting breeze.
Cerulean above. Beryl below.

You take her hand and tumble 
together over the rocks, 
looking for treasure
in every filmy pool.
Soft speckled limestone boules
like ancient eggs nestled 
on tangled nest of kelp.
Rubbed glass nosing out 
from the sparkling grit.
Tokens to pay the river man.

But no. Not yet.
The dragon is sleeping. 
There is nothing to fear.
Instead, breathe.

Hear the trailing fingers of frothing tide
mussing up the shifting shale.
Take a gulp of the mineral air.
A tonic filled with light.
Feel the space around you that does not end. 
Take her small dimpled hand in yours 
and let your heart take flight.

“If you find it hard to laugh at yourself, I’d be happy to do it for you.” Groucho Marx

Once upon a time a loooong time ago my lovely school friend and I decided that being single, 21 and at the peak of our youth and gorgeousness (obviously), it was high time we took our chance at a sun-soaked responsibility-free holiday to the Med. The sky would be blue, the sand would be white, the cocktails would flow, and our distinctly ghostly complexions, buffed alabaster by many a summer on Irish beaches being gently caressed by gale force Siberian winds, would be transformed to a becoming shade of olive within mere hours of arrival.

The accepted thing to do in these circumstances, of course, would be to book a 2 star tiled white cell with a balcony, two plastic chairs and no soft furnishings in Costa Del Boozio. For entertainment we could have perhaps considered spending afternoons with someone called Dan, a tanned chap with a love of short shorts, out on his uninsured speed boat, taking turns drinking sangria from plastic glasses and riding an inflatable banana.  

As it turns out we were not very good at it. 

We booked a garden suite in a tasteful 4 star low rise resort hotel favoured by the retired. It was very clean and had a luxury marble bathroom. We were worried about eating dodgy paella in a local taverna and spending the entire holiday staring down the loo and so we also took advantage of the half-board package. 

Instead of waking in a tangle of greasy sheets with a banging hangover and temporary amnesia, we awoke each morning refreshed, removing our eye masks before picking our way through the tropical gardens for mimosas and smoked salmon on the breakfast terrace. 

Perhaps worried that Dan might not be able to find us, we did make some concessions to youth. Though we did spend several afternoons touring sites of historical interest and browsing through the old town for local pottery, we balanced this with inordinate amounts of time spreadeagled by the pool, dripping in an inappropriately low factor sun block (it was 20 years ago: the norm in Ireland at the time was in fact to forego cream or lotion altogether in favour of basting oneself in cooking oil prior to a sunbathing session for that lovely battered sausage glow). For the first time in my life, and against my better judgement, I had also brought a bikini. 

One afternoon we hired bikes and cycled into town. In my mind I looked like Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday. In reality I fear, I was distinctly more like a younger and sweatier Marina in Last of the Summer Wine. 

There was a boardwalk close to the hotel and having watched countless lithe Amazonian beings zooming past on their roller blades – the perfect balance between athleticism and glamour – we decided to have a go. 

Equipment for hire at the Hotel Villa Jardin Bougainvillia was in a semi-basement level storage garage to one side of the main reception. It was manned by one of the minor Greek deities. A stunning physical specimen with curly blond shoulder length hair and a muscle vest. His visage had caused much flushed giggling the day we had gone to hire the bikes. It was no surprise that we had decided to go back for the roller blades. 

I have always had a penchant for a good honest Celtic man, white hairy shins, pasty complexion and all. But even if I didn’t want a Dan for myself, much like admiring the exotic toucans at the local zoo, there was no harm in looking.  

My wing-woman duly strapped on the blades and zoomed off effortlessly eliciting a “Sehr Gut!” from Dan. (It turned out he was actually one of the minor Bavarian deities). All those years in primary school roller booting round her cul-de-sac on Saturday afternoons had paid dividends now when she needed it most. 

Palms sweating, I put on the roller blades. Truth be told, I was beginning to have serious misgivings about the entire project. In my own version of temporary amnesia I had decided to ignore the fact that I don’t do well when my feet aren’t in direct contact with terra firma. Sometimes I don’t even do well when they are. Adding wheels or a blade, or a blade with wheels, was a recipe for carnage. On another note and entirely unrelated to Dan/Bavarian Zeus of the rental shack, I had worn a denim mini skirt and bikini top. Instead of you know, clothes.

Anyway, I thought, perhaps all those other failed attempts had just been due to a lack of commitment. Perhaps a sheer act of will topped by the very real fear of abject humiliation would be enough to bring forth a nimble balletic grace that had been sadly lacking before. 

My first faltering steps avec blades were not encouraging. “Uh-oh,” said Dan/Zeus. 

He disappeared briefly into the back of the shack and soon re-emerged with a luggage trolley.

“For holding?” he said helpfully in halting English pushing it towards me, head to one side, like an endearing cocker spaniel with pecs. 

“Thank you,” I said awkwardly feeling the flush rise up my neck. I heard a distinct guffaw coming from my wing-woman who had been amusing herself blading in confident circles outside. 

Pushing the luggage trolley in front of me like a zimmer frame I managed to make it outside. “Excellent!” said Dan in the manner of someone who has watched a toddler stack three bricks on top of each other for the first time. 

Channeling a young Jane Torvill in her “Bolero” days I skimmed (shuffled) forward in a halting fashion. But no sooner had I begun to get my blades beneath me than I faced a metaphorical and literal mountain. For in order to get to ground level I had to skate up a short slope to the reception area. It was a slightly curved path about 40 feet long on a very gradual incline. It might as well have been the last kilometre of the ascent to the top of Kilimanjaro. And I was doing it with four wheels attached to each foot. 

My friend who, no doubt eager to start zooming along the boardwalk herself, was full of encouragement. “Don’t worry. I’ll push you to the top. You’ll be fine once you’re on level ground,” she said generously. 

This seemed to make perfect sense. The boardwalk looked so easy. I’d be flying along it in no time. I shuffled sideways to make room for her on the luggage trolley, and tried to look elegant and stately while she pushed it, with me attached, to the top of the hill. I’m sure Jane Torvill had her share of luggage trolley days when she was learning. Everyone has to start somewhere. I tried not to think about Dan/Bavarian Zeus watching this performance but instead focused on remaining dignified under duress.

A few moments later we reached the top of the summit. My companion began to skate in wider and wider circles in the space afforded by the wide reception forecourt. “COME ON!” she shouted joyfully as she glided past. “LET’S GO!”

I tried to go. I very much wanted to go. Every fibre of my being said, “Go!” The problem was I had absolutely no idea how to do so. The fear was overwhelming. I felt like someone who is scared of heights, waking up and finding themselves balanced on the top of the Golden Gate Bridge. Wearing roller skates. I found that if I tried to remain absolutely motionless, including holding my breath, everything was fine. It definitely was the moving that was the problem. 

There was further trouble in paradise though. Because, despite all my best attempts at staying completely still, I seemed to be inexplicably moving anyway. Backwards as it happens. For you see, dear reader, the ground was not absolutely level. Thus gravity and Newton’s first law of motion had duly combined. In other words, I had begun rolling back down the hill.

“Help,” I peeped in a strangled voice, attempting to catch the attention of my zooming friend while simultaneously not catching the attention of the coach load of holiday makers who had just pulled up in front of the hotel, fresh from the airport. She was too far away to hear. I tried again. 

“I don’t know how to stop!” I called out in high-pitched panic as my backwards velocity increased. 

“What?” she stopped some way off looking puzzled as to why I wasn’t moving towards her but rather much farther away. At speed. I can still remember the sense of panic along with a irrefutable sense of inevitability I felt in that moment. Though my knuckles were white gripping the handle of the luggage trolley, I knew it could not save me. There was nothing that could be done. I simply had to live through the impending cataclysm and with any luck survive it. 

I am sad to say I have experienced this sense of resignation in disaster quite a few times in my life. These moments have been vivid and heart-stopping in equal measure. I like to think that regular exposure is a very life-giving process. Like being jolted awake by electrocution.

By this time the speed had become sickening. A few passers by had stopped to watch in some surprise as a bikini-clad, white-faced girl gripping a luggage trolley as though her life depended on it, zoomed past. Backwards. 

My friend by this point had grasped the enormity of the situation and was madly skating towards me. She was shouting something now which I struggled to catch. Finally I worked it out. 

“TURN YOUR FEET! TURN THEM!” 

She was frantically demonstrating this repeatedly, coming to neat quick stops by turning her feet to one side at right angles. She made it look so easy. Not quite understanding what I was supposed to do, but having less than nothing to lose, I turned my feet. 

There was a brief moment in mid-air, when not just my own life, but that of all humanity, flashed in front of my eyes and then with absolute finality and some considerable momentum I hit the deck. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Newton again. And he was not wrong. For as fast as I had been previously moving, I was as now, not moving. The stopping had been both abrupt and violent in its force. 

For some unknown reason I had lost all sense of self preservation in mid-air and had landed face first, banging my chin, hands, elbows and knees off the ground simultaneously. The luggage trolley had fared no better. I lay for some moments trying to ascertain if I was alive or dead in the wreckage of my dreams (not to mention my dignity). 

A hush had descended in the reception forecourt. I began to peel myself off the ground. It was with some difficulty because every single part of my body felt like it had been hit by a mallet. It was at this juncture that I began to deeply regret my wardrobes choices of earlier that morning. It was very hard to continue to look alluring in the bikini after everything I had just been through. Plus, to add insult to very real injury, I still had the blasted roller blades on. 

An elderly gentleman was soon nudged by his wife to come and ease me to my feet. Slowly and painfully, I tottered up holding tightly on to his arm in an ironic role-reversal. Unfortunately now I was fully upright I could see that a second coach load of tourists had pulled up in the interim. Several rows of aghast faces in the buses, plus all the people who had gathered in reception, were now watching me pick myself up. 

Dan/Zeus had jogged back up the hill by this point and, righting the luggage trolley, he and the elderly gentleman began to slowly push me back down the hill towards the hire shack by the same method by which I had ascended mere moments before. 

A ripple of elated and supportive applause broke out from the coaches as the luggage trolley procession pulled away. I allowed myself a brief and regal wave of acknowledgement in their direction. 

Now safely in transit, and no longer under my own untrustworthy speed, I took the opportunity to look around for my friend. She was lying curled up beside a bush clutching her sides. It appeared that she was laughing so hard she had rolled onto the grass, and had fallen over.

Partly from relief that my ordeal was over and partly being overwhelmed by the ridiculous nature of the entire tableau, I lost all sense of decorum and began to giggle myself. By the time I had reached the hire shack the tears were rolling down my face and hysteria had set in.

It will not surprise you to learn that we did not reach the boardwalk that day. In order to keep some shreds of dignity intact we had escaped round the corner and out of sight as quickly as possible in order to avoid further scrutiny from the 100+ tourists complete with luggage still watching our every move with great interest. Since we’d paid for the hour (and that seemed important at the time) I did try a few circuits of the tennis courts, hand over hand, holding on to the chain link fence. But by that time my knees had started to swell like melons and were bulging over the knee pads in a most unbecoming way. 

So I decided it was best to admit defeat, retire to the garden suite and put ice on my aching limbs instead. Perhaps while enjoying a few pleasantly cooled triangles of Toblerone from the minibar just to raise my depleted sugar levels. 

On return to the Emerald Isle, I decided that I had no further need of the bikini. It just wasn’t me. Not to mention that the next time I was to (inevitably) fall over in front of hundreds of people I would much prefer to be fully clothed. Following this moment of self-realisation, and with enormous relish, I ceremonially burned it. I might have considered dancing on the ashes but my bruised knees would not permit it. 

While I cannot recall this escapade without a chuckle there is no doubt that it has taught me two important lessons that have stood the test of time in the intervening years. Firstly, that it is vitally vitally important not to take oneself too seriously and, secondly, that it’s not the hitting the deck that matters, but the bouncing (or creaking) back up. 

It occurs to me in fact, that much like a good quality high-factor sun block, these are lessons that are best discovered young, and then applied liberally and at every opportunity from thence onwards. 

“What’s wrong with knowing what you know now and not knowing what you don’t know until later?” Winnie the Pooh

What a strange year it has been. In no time flat, things became at once very, very simple and very, very complicated.

I would be lying if I said I leapt out of bed every day eager to get home school started. I’m definitely not cut out for teaching. I knew this already. But it’s good to have things confirmed by the universe. 

Small One and I did have some breakthrough moments at Magpie Primary. The first time she remembered 8 x 6 was certainly cause for celebration. But it was also very hard work. The coffee breaks (me, not her) and periodic screeching (both of us) increased as time went on and I was very relieved when term ended. The call of Disney + and a bowl of popcorn was often too loud to be ignored.

There was also an awful lot of listlessness. I didn’t know I had access to such a bottomless pit of listlessness. But there were days and days of just not being able to achieve very much of anything at all. It was like being partially anaesthetised. I would think of a list of all the things I wanted to do but then would rule out all the things I couldn’t do because of lockdown restrictions and then would find mysterious reasons why I couldn’t do any of the others either and suddenly it was 8pm and no-one in the house had eaten since breakfast. 

Then, conversely, there were the bursts of unexpected productivity. I proudly fixed the two broken tiles on our front step that have been missing since we moved in. That was a big day. Against my better judgement I also cleaned the oven. I am pretty sure I’ve read somewhere that it’s actually better not to clean your oven. It makes it seasoned or something. Well, I’m only telling you what I’ve heard. Anyway. I did it. Like I said, I knew it was a bad idea. It is the worst job on the planet. Surely. It just seems wrong. It makes such a colossal mess of the kitchen. It’s more of a grime-moving operation. The oven is sparkling but the rest of the kitchen looks like you’ve been wrestling with a grease-flinging dervish. 

But I girded myself and I cleaned it. I was so determined. I took photos of myself cleaning it. I thought maybe the Mayor might want to call around to see the before and afters. Everything was going swimmingly. Admittedly the rest of the kitchen looked like a back street chippy after cleaning out the fryers. But I was about to get to that. 

Then disaster struck. I was carefully screwing the glass panel back into the oven door when there was a sharp crack. What was that? I wondered. There was a pause. No. It must have been my imagination. I reached for the screwdriver again but before I could apply it to the task in hand the panel spontaneously exploded into a shower of square shaped safety glass diamonds. In other circumstances they might have been considered beautiful. If it wasn’t for the fact that they were in the dog’s water bowl, in the sink, stuck to the oven grease on the worktops and spread in a sparkling arch on the floor 15 feet in every direction. 

Beloved rushed in at the sound of my anguished cry and the unmistakable sound of shattering glass and was met with the post-apocalyptic scene that had replaced our kitchen. He didn’t even raise an eyebrow but simply reached for the brush and pan with practised resignation. 

Sigh. Surely it was the universe speaking again. Never ever ever under any circumstances ever clean the oven ever again. Ever. And you can’t argue with the universe. 

A few clicks and a hole burnt in the debit card to the tune of £60 and a new panel was ordered. Problem solved. If it wasn’t for the fact that we’re still finding broken glass. Apparently it’s stuck somewhere inside the oven door so every time we open it another couple of pieces drop out. It’s exciting. Like a bit of danger spice being sprinkled on every meal.

 As the lockdown restrictions have eased coffee shops and restaurants have opened once more and my odyssey into being an aged Barista has resumed. The cat has been greatly bemused by my early morning starts. She knows I am not usually productive before 10.00am. She sits and watches me getting dressed. Bolt upright. Front paws together. Tail wrapped neatly around her, staring at me with narrowed incredulous eyes. 

“Are you sure you’re getting up?” she seems to say. “Really? Are you feeling ok?”

When I persist she stalks off with a tut to lie in the warm place I have left in the bed. “Well, I did try.”

I’ve had a bit more training now. There are often (albeit fleeting) moments when I actually feel that I might get through the shift without dying. The infant baristas on the other hand are learning their trade at the speed of knots. They are a jolly bunch. They switch between activities with dizzying speed whilst simultaneously talking about their weekend and music I’ve never heard of. They are the same colour at the end of their shift as they were at the start. I am generally a hint o’blotch with wisps of hair sticking to my forehead. My favoured phrase is, “Sorry, could you run that past me again?”

On the plus side, I have managed not to critically scald myself though it’s probably only a matter of time. I did fail to wrestle a cage full of empty boxes over the step that leads to the bin yard. It leapt back and ferociously stabbed me in the shin. My manager found me hopping in the corner muttering to myself and asked if I was okay. 

“Fine,” I said fake brightly through my gritted teeth whilst seeing stars. I definitely wasn’t crying. I think a stray coffee ground got in my eye.

Lockdown victory, however, was definitely achieved in Small One’s room. Everything she likes is tiny. Every surface becomes quickly swamped in battalions of small animals, small people, small things she has made out of tinfoil, things she has rescued out of crackers, things she has found in the street or got free in a Happy Meal. Lego, Playmobil, Sylvanians, Barbie accessories, landslides of magazines and books, art materials, hair clips, paper clips, cat toys. She lines her sanctuary like a squirrel’s drey until there is but one small path leading to her bed, barely visible through her TY cuddly toy collection and her knotted nest of tangled fleece blankets in various sizes. 

When she was little I would simply wait until she went to school and send unwanted items to the land of the disappeared while she was away. She never knew a thing about it. Now she is older I daren’t touch a thing. It looks like a magical unicorn vomited in Aladdin’s Cave to me, but she knows every single item and woe betide anyone who tries to clear anything in the name of neatness and order. 

But in typical conniving genius/mother fashion I came up with a wizard scheme. 

“If you agree to help me clear your room and agree to get rid of anything you don’t play with,” said I, surreptitiously rubbing my hands together behind my back. “I will sell anything you don’t want on eBay and you can have the money! To buy anything you want!”

She eyed me suspiciously. 

“Anything?” she asked, wisely testing the boundaries of the agreement before signing on the dotted line. 

“Anything,” I confirmed. 

“Even toys? Like any toys I want?” 

“Yes,” I said benevolently. “Any toys you want.” 

“Yes please!” quoth she full of vim for the idea. 

Outwardly, I seemed like a benign ruler conferring favour on my subjects from the comfort of my crystal fairy throne. Inwardly, I cackled an evil witch cackle and danced around my cauldron of parental deceit. For I knew the tat that we were about to dispose of. We would be lucky to make £25. The deal was very much going to work in my favour.

Or so I thought.

Blessed with nothing but time and 100% buy in from an enthusiastic Small One we began. We decided to leave no stone unturned in the search for items which would add another 99p to our forthcoming eBay fortune. It took five whole days. We emptied every drawer. Went through every box. Paired every tiny barbie shoe, carefully weighed the relative value of every dog-eared bookmark and dealt ruthlessly with everything that had not been played with in the preceding year. 

We made a bin pile, a charity pile and a things-to-be-sold-on-eBay pile. The eBay pile soon became a precarious tottering cliff face and had to be decanted to the spare room bed. 

We moved the furniture and gave everything a scrub. I even hoovered under the bed. It was a very thorough job. We could see the floor. We could see her desk. We could find her hair brush. Everything seemed highlighted by beams of sunlight. Angels sang the Hallelujah Chorus as I put the hoover away. 

That night, Small One lay in bed with her blankets pulled up to her chin, starry eyes glistening with excitement. 

“And now for the best bit Mum! We’re going to make sooooo much money on eBay! I’ve made a Pinterest board for the all the toys I’m going to buy!” 

“Yes dear,” I said soothingly. “That’s right. Sooooooo much money,” while thinking in my head she would be lucky if she had enough for a game of Top Trumps. 

(And yes. She did make a Pinterest board for the all the toys she was choosing between. I couldn’t be prouder).

The following evening I spent several migraine-inducing hours photographing and posting all the lots we wanted to sell. It was, for the most part, a mountain of tat of the highest order. I remained quietly confident. 

I forgot all about it for several days and then Small One asked me how our auctions were going and I thought I’d take a look. I was somewhat surprised to note that we had bids totalling £30 already. Small One whooped with joy and scuttled off to check her Pinterest board to see what wonderful options this new-found wealth opened up. 

Over the next few days I continued to check progress nervously.  The total crept steadily upwards. I felt like emailing some of the bidders to make sure they really knew what they were doing. Small One began to weigh the pros and cons of various Pinterest options she had previously not dared to hope for. 

When the total edged close to £100 I began to panic. Small One’s buying potential had now reached the point where she would easily fill every precious square inch of space we had cleared with a whole new generation of tat. I decided to introduce a late-in-the-game rule adjustment. Part of the money could be spent on toys and part would need to be saved. Small One reluctantly agreed. As far as she was concerned it was a fairly safe bet since she was already able to buy everything on pages 700-705 of the Argos catalogue. 

In the end we made £150. She bought a series of Sylvanian sets that Santa had never quite stumped up for, and still had money left over to save for a Nintendo Switch. It could have been so much worse. Her room is still tidy and we remained on speaking terms throughout. 

The whole experience has definitely unlocked something within her though. She has taken to poking through my jewellery and other personal effects and muttering ominous pronouncements about what may or may not make a pretty penny when “You and Dad are unfortunately deaded.” It’s probably how Warren Buffet got started.

It has been a strange time, Spring 2020, not without its frustrations of course, but there have been positives too. Beloved has always been a gifted compilation compiler (a compilator if you will). He wooed me of old with carefully curated mix CDs with homemade covers, presenting me with these gifts of his esteem at every important juncture in our relationship; birthdays, Christmases, road trips, the time we went on an epic trip to Ikea on our honeymoon to buy furniture for our very first flat (it involved a borrowed van and trip to Scotland on the ferry at dawn. It was Northern Ireland 2005 – in those days we had to travel to another country to buy flatpack.)

Though his compilations are compilations no more, rather playlists, the urge and talent is the same. It seemed only right that we should have pandemic one. He duly chose appropriate tracks and entitled it with a flourish: ‘Lockdown Rockdown’. It provided some very welcome therapy in some fairly downbeat moments. We frequently found ourselves dancing round the kitchen to it on a quiet Thursday evening. Normal life is not normally so forgiving. There are usually precious few opportunities to prance around in your pyjamas with wild witch hair to Hall & Oates. 

There was a point when I was actually fully terrified of a return to the outside world. I had become cocooned in the safety and predictability of Magpie Hill. But as time has gone on it has begun to seem more normal to be out and about again. 

Soon I will hopefully get used to be able to being able to get a decent coffee and will be able to stop drinking 15 litres of latte a day to make up for lost time. Beloved has given up asking what is in the parcels that arrive every few days: the results of many an evening of online shopping. Maybe now being able to get into real shops will satisfy me and I won’t need to rely on the postman’s arrival for an endorphin spike. I’m not going to lie. The day TK Maxx reopened was pretty emotional.

Then before we knew it, just as spring had turned into summer, summer started to slip into autumn. Before Covid (BC?) the start of term always seemed carved in stone. So immovable as to not require consideration. This year, like everything else, we have not taken it for granted, but waited for weekly updates until it seemed that yes (as far as anyone could tell that afternoon) it was indeed happening. 

So now Small One’s new uniform is neatly hanging in her (still pretty tidy) wardrobe and her school shoes are polished. Magpie Primary’s Headmistress is starting to make tentative progress into recovery from her nervous breakdown after their term spent together and is ready to hand her over once again to the professionals. Though once again, she is definitely not crying, but is, I would imagine, simply allergic to something.

Yes. It’s September but not as we know it. 

Who knows what lies ahead? Maybe winter 2020 will be even weirder still. 

I doubt we’ll ever have as much time to perfect our dance moves or clean the oven again. 

But perhaps that’s for the best.

“We thought we were running away from the grown-ups and now we are the grown-ups.” 

Margaret Atwood, Cat’s Eye

First there was the chaos, the disbelief, the no-time-to-think panic. The month during which everything changed in ways we could never have imagined changed so quickly that we could not keep up. Then there were the weeks and weeks in the house. Mourning the things we knew we loved. Mourning the things we hadn’t realised we loved. Feeling guilty for being okay.

Now we are in the most difficult phase of all. Going out. 

For the simple truth is, of course, that we cannot stay in the house forever. So we have to find a way to get back to life. Unfortunately we cannot return to “normal”. This is not a fixed thing that can be pinned safely in place on a road map that we can circle back to whenever we have had enough of exploring everywhere else. Time only moves in one direction. Just like characters in a Road Runner cartoon, we simply the paint the railroad in front of us as we go. Sometimes we are so many carriages back in the train that it seems that the path goes on forever. Carriage upon carriage stretches out before us. So many that they seem to touch the horizon. There is no chance of them running out anytime soon. Sometimes, however, we are balanced right on the front of the locomotive, desperately throwing out track, our arms a-blur, no time to think or plan. 

In either case someone is making decisions. Either us or someone else. Whether we are sweating at the front or enjoying a flat white whilst carefully spreading clotted cream on a fresh scone in first class, we have made a choice. The stock is rolling. The wheels are moving. The clock is ticking. There is no “do nothing” option. 

Stuck between four walls with those we chose (or did not, as the case may be) to share a carriage for months has been chastening. In the early days much of the track throwing was being done by someone else on our behalf. We gave them our consent to steer the train as best they could while we stood back because for the first time in several generations, there was no other choice. 

While we paced the living room, stared into space, tried to use our time well with varying degrees of success, the engine steadily trundled on through time and space. It could not stay still. That is not how life works. So now we are in a different place. We are not where we started out. The journey kept happening whether we were active participants or not. This is a very strange thought.

Not everyone has been reclining in their carriage of course. During these weeks and months when the word “unprecedented” has been uttered in every other sentence, some passengers have continued to help with the track throwing. Day and night they have hung on and kept us on the rails. Sometimes in the darkness. Sometimes through blood, sweat and tears. They are exhausted. 

Then there are the others. Those who did not make it all. Their journey is over. 

Now the train is stopping more frequently again and at every station we have to make decisions. Is it okay for us to nip out to stretch our legs? Do we have time? Or should we stay where we are? Is it the right time to take a risk?

It’s a very difficult call. And it’s made more difficult by our sheer numbers. There are simply too many of us. The conductor will not have time to visit every cabin and tell us what to do. We have to make up our own minds. This feels strange since we have lived more simply recently. But in reality nothing has really changed. Every single day when we swing our legs out of bed, whether we are in the midst of a pandemic or not, we decide whether we are going to throw down track today or whether we are going to let someone else do it on our behalf. Things are no different now. The decision is simply thrown into a sharper relief because of the bizarre set of circumstances in which we find ourselves.

Through accidents of birth or circumstance, or because of the exploitation of those stronger than themselves, some of us have no choice at all and are forced to lay track on someone else’s behalf. On the other hand, some of us have nothing but choice and still choose never to lay a finger tip on the door that leads out of the first class cabin, never mind coming within spitting distance of the engine room. Many of us are somewhere in between. 

If we are in a position to make a decision about how to spend our time, and make that choice, we immediately open ourselves up to criticism. The magnitude of criticism that is likely to be levelled at our door, perhaps rightly, is directly proportional to the degree to which we have chosen to speak for others or make decisions on their behalf. There is always someone else who would have made a different choice. There might even be a million people who might have made a different choice.

It is a characteristic of modern life that our air time has become consumed with dissecting the decisions that others have taken. It can be positive. It can lead to greater accountability. Bringing things to light that need to have the cleansing disinfectant of sunlight and exposure poured over them. But I suspect that for the most part, we enjoy it far too much. It is an inherently human trait to try to minimise our own insecurities and inadequacy by laying bare the faults of others. We can dress it up as whatever we like but it is too easy to be a back-seat driver these days. 

Throughout history there have always been whistleblowers, lone voices in the desert, prophets who rejected the status quo and asked the hard questions, who challenged the premise on which our liberty has been built. We are all the better for it. But they rarely did it without great personal cost. In fact they often lost absolutely everything in their quest. They certainly didn’t make a career out of it. No-one called them “influencers”. No-one gave them an advertising deal. They were much more likely to be hanged than to be given their own line of make-up to promote. 

The main problem with this endless round of dissection is that whilst it takes a lot of energy it does not result in a single piece of track being laid. In fact we can find that we have reached the next station, having spent the entire time since the last one, deciding whether or not the person in the next carriage should have gotten off or not, or whether indeed the train is going in the right direction, without ever having got down to the business of laying any track at all. It is all a massive distraction, the choice to make no choice, and it does not add one iota to the sum of human experience.

Laying down track on the other hand means productivity. Contribution. It is the choice of how we spend our time. Do we spend it being useful, being fruitful, trying to do something or do we spend it wastefully? Are we destructive? Are we wasteful or apathetic?

In the biblical story of the Prodigal Son, one son stays at home and tries to build on the inheritance that he knows will someday be his. The other cashes in his share and goes out into the world to live the high life until every penny has run out and he is forced to feed and live with the pigs to survive. He must decide whether to crawl home in disgrace or to continue to live in the consequences of his own misjudgement. In the end he returns to his family. He crawls home. His shame is so immense he can hardly bear it. He offers to work for his father as a servant, since his disgrace renders it impossible that he could ever be considered a son of the family once more. But his father is merciful. He offers him forgiveness and the chance to be called “son” once again. 

So far, so shocking, we might say. But there is more. The Prodigal Son is not simply welcomed quietly and with shame. Or forced to live humbly in order to pay the rightful price for his disgrace. No. His father kills the fatted calf and throws a lavish feast! 

The mercy we might begrudgingly admit is such that any decent father would give to their child in the same situation. But the party is thrown with grace. It is extra. It is undeserved. It is undignified. The truth is, it is hard to take. Where is the justice in grace such as this? The answer is, of course, none at all. Grace does not rely on justice. It operates outside of justice. “How can this be fair?” we cry. Until that very same grace is levelled at our shameful, undeserving door. And then, of course, we sing a different tune. 

We have been prodigal in the use of our time. Our money. Our resources and freedom. We have become distracted away from laying down track in such a way as to be giving and gracious, to be useful and loving, creative and caring. We have used our gifts and our advantages to cosy up our own luxurious carriage far far away from the engine room without much thought for those throwing down track at the front. 

But now for a short period in time we have been confronted with the consequences of our choice to make no choice. For the very briefest of moments, the veil between that which is temporal and that which is eternal has been lifted. We have been given the once in several generations opportunity to experience collective perspective. Perhaps too, in fact, we have even been granted a measure of grace in the midst of all this madness.

Like countless others, during lockdown my parents have been shielding in their home. They also live 40 miles away. There was a time, therefore, in the thick of things where 15 weeks passed without being able to see them. This was the longest period of my life that I have spent without sharing their company. Much like everyone else in the same circumstances or variations of them, I mourned them. Even though they were right there on the other end of the phone, I mourned them. There were still alive, healthy and well, but being prevented from seeing them against my will, and with no end in sight, it felt like I had lost them altogether. I knew there were so so many going through so much worse. But I could not help it. I fretted for them. I longed to see them. I thought about them every day. My heart ached.

Then finally came the longed-for day that I was able to go to see them again at last. I could not quite believe it. As I drove up the motorway that morning, the fields seemed more vividly green than I could ever remember. The sky more blue. The miles passed in a blur and before I knew it I was driving through my home town and then a few miles after that, along the country side road of my childhood. The familiarity of it all brought a lump to my throat. My hands shook as I held the steering wheel.

At last I rounded the final corner into their drive and there they were. Waiting. Alive and well and full of love and welcome. The very sight of them made me catch my breath in my chest. It was giddying. A bolt of something more full of life than anything I have ever experienced. Like being briefly dead and then being shocked into the land of the living once more. The paddle was pressed against my chest, an invisible finger pressed the reset button, and just like that, the sorrow was over. That which was lost – precious and mourned – was returned to me once more. 

In the last month I have thought about that moment often, trying to make sense of it. But I can’t. It seems almost unbelievable. Who gets that opportunity in life? How often do we get to try again at the things that are the most important? Never!

Since that fateful week, the “firsts” have continued, taking drives with the Beloved and Small One, buying an ice-cream or a coffee while we are out. Just this week we have been able to come to the North Coast to have a holiday. My eyes can hardly bear to look at the beauty of the views that I have missed so much. It is hard to take it in. 

It would be too too easy to put it all behind us. To forget that any of it ever happened at all. Certainly it has seemed stranger than fiction. An unsettling dream that we would rather put behind us. Even if this means that we forget the profound enormity of having lost something precious only to get it back again. Not to mention the sacrifices made by so many for the greater good. But the fact remains: some have lost, during this crisis, or another, that which they can never get back. The loss is permanent no matter how they might wish it were different. 

So while I am enjoying the taste of a really good latte again, the joy of being able to see friends and family, the simple pleasure of the smell of my favourite bookshop or the warm greenness of a nursery greenhouse full of trays of seedlings for sale, it would be my fervent prayer would be that I wouldn’t forget. That I will not sink into complacency. 

I hope that I will always be willing take my turn throwing out track. That I will remember to lend my shoulder to those who need it. That we as a society will take a break from dissecting each other and simply open our arms instead.

For there is no doubt that those of us who remain have been given a second chance. I have been given a second chance. This year I felt what it would be like to lose everything only to have it poured back into my arms in an embarrassment of riches.

The train never stops moving for anything. But this spring the clock jumped. Only for a beat. The very briefest of pauses. Just enough to try again. To learn something. To have the chance to do better next time. 

I hope I live it well. 

I hope we all do.

“What can I tell you about the next ten years? Odysseus sailed away to Troy. I stayed in Ithaca. The sun rose, traveled across the sky, set. Only sometimes did I think of it as the flaming chariot of Helios. The moon did the same, changing from phase to phase. Only sometimes did I think of it as the silver boat of Artemis. Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter followed one another in their appointed rounds. Quite often the wind blew. Telemachus grew from year to year, eating a lot of meat, indulged by all.” Margaret Atwood, The Penelopiad

“Uh-oh, Mummy.” 

A three-year-old Small One was out of sight on the patio but her bright little voice carried easily into the house. This pronouncement had been preceded by sounds of plastic hitting concrete and the unmistakeable tinkling of breaking glass so I already knew the news would not be good.

Sure enough, a short moment later she appeared at the back door holding the handle of the flask she had insisted on carrying outside where we were going to have a picnic on the lawn. Unfortunately the rest of the flask was not attached to it. Instead it was where she had left it, lying shattered on the yard outside. It was an inconsequential unintentional accident. She was not hurt. It didn’t matter a jot. Yet a little tear escaped from the side of my eye as I swept up the remains of the familiar blue plastic Thermos. 

Around twelve years previously, whilst still a student at University of Dundee, my aunt had come to visit. She had flown over from Belfast to Edinburgh for the weekend and I wanted to be the perfect host, so I had hired a little car and driven down to pick her up. We spent the day hitting the shops on Princes Street, visiting the Castle and generally seeing the sights of one of my favourite cities. Before we headed back to the car to drive back to Dundee we visited John Lewis Department Store (also one of my favourite haunts) and whilst in the homeware section my eye fell upon a very natty bright blue plastic flask – the kind that you take on picnics for coffee or soup. My aunt kindly offered to buy it for me and as a penniless student I readily and gratefully accepted. 

The rest of the weekend was spent roaring around the beautiful country roads of Perthshire and Angus, visiting gardens and castles and other beauty spots with periodic stops for sandwiches and scones, accompanied by cups of tea courtesy of my shiny new gift. 

The call of the open road and the freedom of – however briefly at that point – having my own car to explore it in, and the joy of knowing we could never be caught bereft of a cuppa regardless of what glen or lough we found ourselves lost around, was intoxicating. I am aware that these are not the pursuits that one is meant to aspire to at the ripe old age of 21 and 3/4.  But I had never had any delusions of being hip. In my teens, whilst everyone else was climbing the slippery ladder of underage admission to dodgy nightclubs, in ascending order of coolness, I was reading books whilst sitting on the rope swing in our back garden. Besides, The Spice Girls had already split up the previous year, so that had taken the heavy burden of a potential pop career off my shoulders. I was free to pootle my way round Scotland like a pensioner to my heart’s content. 

I realised then, quite a few years after the event, as is so often the case, that my parents, and their parents before them, had had the right idea when they went for all those drives all over the country, flask in tow. In the days before coffee shops on every corner, bringing lunch, and perhaps afternoon tea too, on a day trip was a necessity as well as a luxury. How well I was taught in those early days! To chase every meandering side road just to ‘see where it went’ as per my mother and her father before her. And in terms of packing a picnic, to make no compromises on the fare just because it had to fit in a basket. My mother stills fondly tells the tale of a road trip through Scotland with my Dad, and her parents-in-law. Granny had brought homemade scones and butter (because of course) and Mum had brought the teapot (because of course) but Mum recounts how, whilst clinging to a blustery verge on the edge of the long windswept road to Arbroath, the women struggling to serve the afternoon snack from the boot with a gale blowing in their faces, my Grandfather had piped up from the front, “Any jam to go with that?”   

A few short months after I became the proud owner of a flask of my very own, me and my bestie hired a 1 litre red Nissan Micra during the Easter holidays with the vague notion that we would see a bit more of the country. Being now 22 and 23 respectively, full of adventure, and with precious little grasp of how far a square of the map can take to drive when you’re in the middle of the Highlands on a single track road, off we set. Once we took into account the cost of hiring the car (from a very dodgy hire company off the ring road who didn’t even ask for ID when we went to pick it up), petrol and accommodation, our food and beverage budget was meagre. Undaunted and feeling excessively grown up and responsible, we packed the trusty flask. And, I do not jest, we actually brought a washing up bowl and fairy liquid too.

We covered around 250 miles per day. I drove. She followed our progress precisely on the map, announcing with jubilation and great excitement every time she finally got to turn the page. No Sat Nav required here. The little car valiantly gasped up hills, and triumphantly zoomed down valleys, all day long. When we were too exhausted to continue we simply stopped driving for the day and looked for a B&B closest to whatever carpark in which we had landed. 

For the most part, this system worked extremely well. Sometimes we cut it slightly fine with regards where our next tank of petrol might be procured. Or our evening meal. When we reached Durness we realised we were about to fall off the edge of the world. Beautiful it might be but finding a commodious place to lay our head was easier said than done. We eventually found a house in a tiny hamlet (by this time it was quite, quite dark). The taciturn lady of the house (she made the silent one from Penn and Teller seem verbose) agreed to at least affirming that she did indeed have “rooms” and showed us to a suite containing twin beds. It also had more competing floral patterns than I have seen in a single space before or since. Everything had a crochet cover and was edged with lace. The cushions. The lamps. The cushions on the lamps. We tried extremely hard to seem serious and responsible. Like finding somewhere to stay in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere was something we did every day of the week. But it was a mission fated to fail. We had giggled our way over 500 miles already and were not going to stop there. Unfortunately our joie de vivre left her completely unmoved. After pointing us to the ‘facilities’ she left us, giggling yet again, to settle in, and stomped off down the hall. Presumably to crochet more padded, lace-edged lamp covers. 

Earlier that evening we had had an amazing meal in an artist’s retreat whilst watching the sun set over the north-western tip of Scotland. The sky was apricot and purple, the clear spring air felt bewitched. Before getting back into the car, we stole down to the beach. We were the only ones there. It was a deserted ribbon of perfect ivory glowing in the moonlight. We were full of wonder that such beauty could have existed long before our eyes had beheld it. 

Another evening we had left eating rather late and, it has to be said, were getting decidedly hangry when we fell upon a little wayside pub. Inside it had a cosy lounge bar with a blazing fire. We both surveyed the menu with ravenous enthusiasm and ordered the Chicken Maryland, feeling ludicrously grown up and sophisticated. Not to mention hungry. Extremely hungry. When it came, we could not see the waitress over the food she was carrying. Puffing slightly, she deposited our plates in front of us. Our eyes lit up at the munros of meat and carbs tottering in front of us. At the very least a pack of crispy bacon each, assorted potatoes, including but not limited to, chips and roasties, and a selection of deep fried and battered fruits – bananas and pineapple mostly. And the pièce de la résistance, balanced balletically on the top of each mounded plate was half of a whole roasted chicken. I wish I could say that that meal had us beaten. But we practically licked our plates. And had sticky toffee pudding for dessert.

In the mornings our goal was to eat as much as we possibly could (you will note a developing theme here) from the cooked breakfast on offer in the various establishments in which we found ourselves. We had arrived at most of them after dark, so in the morning we would stagger downstairs to the breakfast room and behold the locale properly for the first time. On the Isle of Skye we stayed in the harbour town of Portree. That morning we ate our bacon and sausages and eggs and toast and porridge (and whatever else we were offered) and drank our orange juice and tea and looked with wonder and delight out of the window at the beautiful little horseshoe harbour clustered with cottages painted in every colour of the rainbow. Our B&B was high on the hill rising up out of the water and it was spread at our feet like the fishing village from a fairytale.

We usually managed to liberate a few bread rolls from the breakfast buffet and adding these to a carrier bag full of cuppa soups, pot noodles, tray bakes, and perhaps a single piece of fruit, if we were feeling virtuous, we were free to explore at will until it next got dark and it was time to find somewhere new to pass the night. 

Thus we found ourselves picnicking in some of the most beautiful and breathtaking scenery spots that Scotland has to offer. The Black Isle, Dornoch, John O’Groats, Durness, Kinlochbervie, Ullapool, Fort William, Kyle of Lochalsh, Glen Coe, Lough Ness, Fort Augustus. 

But what on earth did we use the washing up bowl for? I hear you ask. For washing our dishes of course! This task was completed in situ whenever we were finished our picnic and caused many passing car to slow down as its driver watched in openmouthed surprise as we calmly washed our spoons and forks in a lay-by. 

Through it all the blue flask was our talisman. It had two neat plastic cups that clipped on top of one another and then attached to the lid. How could anyone be unhappy with the open road ahead, a flask with two cups attached to it, tucked in beside, and some great company to share it with? 

When Beloved and I got together the flask accompanied us as we too drove around Scotland and Ireland, finding deserted beaches, drinking soup in carparks. Beloved was impressed by the low budget lunch it unlocked. I loved it for the fact that it untethered us completely. The day was ours to go wherever we wished. To stop whenever we liked. We were free! This was what it meant to be an adult at last! 

In time, Small One arrived, and she shared our joy of enjoying a cheese bap in the car, whilst looking over a nice view. When we filled the blue flask with a tin of Campbell’s Condensed Tomato Soup, diluted with milk and heated to volcanic temperatures to account for the inevitable cool-down period before reaching our destination, well, surely that was the repast of kings? 

She sat happily in her car seat in the back of the car, a spoon in one dimpled tiny hand, and a piece of cheese in the other, grinning from one tomatoey ear to the other, while the dog, sitting beside her, watched her every move with fixated concentration, awaiting the inevitable falling scrap of ham. It was a simple pleasure but a very great one indeed. Not to mention practical when a small serious voice would pipe up from the back seat, no matter where we were, “Food NOW, Daddee peese.”

So, twelve years later, when that precious flask fell to the ground and smashed into a million pieces, though it had no monetary value at all, I felt its loss keenly and the memories that went with it. 

Though the fractured remains of the plastic and its glass inner were immediately tipped into the bin following their unfortunate impact with the yard, sentimental as always, I couldn’t bear to throw out the two clippy cups. Even when we moved house a few years later, and I was being ruthless during the packing of the kitchen, I just couldn’t relinquish them and they followed us to our new abode wrapped in newspaper and nestled between cookbooks and tea towels.

In the intervening six years since Flaskgate we have made do with a nondescript and entirely unromantic stainless steel flask from Ikea, and then later a secondhand one that someone was about to throw away. It almost goes without saying that neither even remotely came close to the blue Thermos from John Lewis all those years ago.

This year we have watched spring unfold, not from a scenic lay-by, but from the safety and confinement of Magpie Hill. Each day it has seemed ridiculously incongruous to watch another bright new dawn, filled with birdsong in joyful celebration of life, while the pall of a worldwide pandemic hangs around us in terrible contrast. I have ached for the simple pleasures I love the most. Apart from seeing family and friends, the three that seem to consume my thoughts most often are coffee, plants and scenery. The taste of a steaming hot latte from my favourite coffee shop, the warm green smell of trays upon trays of bedding plants steaming gently under glass at my favourite nursery, the sight of my favourite views seen by foot or by car. These are the things I mourn, inconsequential as they might be.

Indeed it feels as though, as a nation, we are holding our breath, hiding under the bed, waiting. We might try to keep plodding on but it isn’t real. We’re only going through the motions. We have one foot in the moment and one foot straining to step back into life again. “I’ll be back soon. Don’t wait up,” she said as she unexpectedly headed out the door. And we try, but while we’re pretending to carry on, there isn’t much sleeping going on. We’re waiting for her key in the lock. To be able to breathe a sigh of relief. The worst is over. The storm has passed.

Last week we decided to have a picnic once again. We couldn’t take it in the car to one of our favourite spots so we decided to have it in our back garden instead. We ate our simple meal in the fresh air and were thankful to do so, even if it caused us to remember all the places we might have been in other circumstances.

When washing up afterwards, I stupidly poured cold water into the hot flask too quickly, and with a surprising and plosive “pomph”, the internal glass exploded. I tipped it into the bin without too much regret. It was the secondhand one. No great loss. Later that night though, I thought once again about the long lost Thermos, and decided to idly checked t’internet for a replacement. 

And within a few clicks, there it was. I couldn’t believe it. Blue. Resplendent. Complete with two clippy cups attached to the lid. Essential or not, into my basket it went. I was powerless to resist. 

I am now awaiting its arrival with anticipation. I hardly dare hope, but perhaps in some wonderful moment of serendipity, the two existing clippy cups might fit on top! Then six years of biding my time, incomplete without the perfect flask, will be over. Nothing will be able to hold us back. One cup each for soup and an extra one for my tea afterwards. I can think of nothing in this moment that would please me more. 

Because, make no mistake, there will be an afterwards. 

When we won’t be living in a vacuum anymore. When we will have the open road ahead of us once again, full of promise. A picnic basket with a blue flask full of Campbell’s Condensed in the boot. And nowhere we need to be except that deserted beach we’ve always wanted to see.

And when we round that final bend, and see that deserted ribbon of perfect ivory glowing in the sunlight, we will once again be knocked for six. Full of wonder that such beauty could have existed long before our eyes had beheld it. 

For, of course, there was no need to worry. It was there all along.

It was simply waiting too.

Sometimes I feel so low-down and disgusted. Can’t help but wonder what’s happenin’ to my companions. Are they lost or are they found? Have they counted the cost it’ll take to bring down, all their earthly principles they’re going to have to abandon? There’s a slow, slow train comin’ up around the bend.

“Slow Train Coming” Bob Dylan

At time of writing the world has been caught in the grip of the strangest, most frightening events in recent history. Events that seem so far-fetched as to be the stuff of celluloid. Stranger, in fact, than in fiction. As far as the UK goes it would be no exaggeration to suggest that this is the most disruptive – in the truest, life-changing definition of that word – event to have happened for several generations. Its effects are wide-ranging, reaching every element of society and its scale and repercussions are on a par with World War. Except, of course, that every nation is fighting the same enemy. An insidious, indiscriminate and invisible microscopic parasite searching for as many hosts as possible in order to guarantee its own survival. A novel contagion with no known cure which has simultaneously filled our hospitals and emptied our streets within a matter of weeks.

And here the nation finds itself hanging in the balance. One half leaving the house each day in very fear of their life and that of their family. Dealing with circumstances beyond imagining. Emptying our bins, ensuring our food supply, treating our dying. The other half staring at four walls on the longest half-term holiday in history and wondering which boxset to watch next. 

It’s madness. Nonsense. Incredible. Beyond belief. But it’s happening. Right now. In real time. Before our disbelieving eyes. 

On the 12 March 2020, Boris Johnson, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, stood up before the nation, flanked by the chief medical officer Chris Whitty and chief scientific adviser Patrick Vallance, and said, “I must level with you and level with the British public: many more families will lose loved ones before their time.” 

Those words chilled my spine. I couldn’t believe what I had just heard. I could not think of any circumstances, outside those of war, when a sitting Prime Minister would openly and knowingly suggest that a threat to society was so great that it was certain to cause widespread loss of life. I knew then that the threat was real. A tsunami was coming. 

Precisely four weeks later and his words have proved to be hauntingly accurate: the death toll is now in the thousands and he, himself, is in intensive care fighting for his own life. Both Winston Churchill and Anthony Eden were seriously ill while in office but neither of them victim of a pandemic flu that they had been forced to inform the nation about a mere 4 weeks before. It is all beyond belief. Quite literally. The situation has progressed to a point at which the brain cannot fully compute it.

In the space of one short month every single element of our way of life has been turned on its head. There is no escape. Citizens are under house arrest. And not voluntarily. Laws have been passed that ensure the curtailment of our freedom within our own communities. Let’s pause for a moment to think about the enormity of that statement. The nation whose constitution began with the Magna Carta (as Lord Denning put it, “The foundation of the freedom of the individual against the arbitrary authority of the despot”) finds itself in the position where the freedoms of the ordinary citizen have been curtailed to an extent never before seen in peacetime. And our elected representatives waved these laws through, perhaps with a heavy heart, but with hardly any protest. 

Why? In short, they were given no real choice. Car parks and trails leading to Snowdonia National Park in Wales had to be closed because a scant nine days after hearing Boris’s announcement, by which point there had already been 3983 recorded cases of CoVid19 in the UK,  Mount Snowdon had it’s busiest day since records began. It was sunny and it was Mother’s Day weekend and the nation seemed to decided that given such a grave situation, it might be best to have a nice day out before the apocalypse occurred. 

But things are very different now. Reality has sunk in. Phrases which had no meaning four weeks ago are bandied about on a daily basis: “shielding”, “self-isolation”, “social distancing”, “flattening the curve.” Rarely does any conversation, news broadcast, tweet or even a breath of wind, fail to carry the phrase “Wash your hands.” Non-essential workers are being paid by the government to stay at home “on furlough.” The schools are closed with no reopening date on the horizon. Groceries are bought as irregularly as possible, whilst wearing a mask, maintaining a distance of 2m from all other human beings and (both shopper and shopping) are subject to a full decontamination process when they re-enter the home. Items that were banal to the point of completely escaping our notice 4 weeks ago have reach mythic proportions – “Sainsbury’s actually had pasta today!” “So-and-so’s neighbour found a shop selling yeast!” “My aunt gave me a great DIY hand sanitiser recipe!” Don’t get me started on the loo rolls…

We cannot visit one another. We are only allowed one outdoor form of (socially distanced) exercise per day. Indeed the elderly and vulnerable must not leave their house at all for a period 12 weeks. The number of recorded cases has now risen to 60,733 with 7097 deaths. It is a nightmare from which we cannot wake. 

While of this happens just beyond the end of our street, like many people, Beloved, Small One and myself are holed up at Magpie Hill. We had several weeks of schooling Small One from home and now we are having the Easter Holidays – whatever that means. In reality, the only change in our daily routine has been leaving out the part of the day where we argue about how many spellings and how much writing is required to be produced by lunchtime. 

Over the period of this last 4 weeks I have swung wildly from one emotion to the next. In week one I felt numbed and frozen by dread. Overwhelmed with the enormity of it. Unable to sleep at night. Instead staring at the ceiling in the wee small hours imagining what would happen if one or all of us died. Imagining what it must be like to have to work in a hospital at the moment. Imagining what it must be like to sit around the table with other officials at Cobra and hear these things being calmly discussed. Imagining how on earth any or us to hope to survive any of this physically or emotionally at all. 

Then came the days of action in week two, smartly organising our hand-washing regime. Ritually cleansing everything. Coming up with detailed schedules of how we could productively use our time. The sense that everything was actually alright – if only we could come up with a nice plan of how to deal with it all.

Then just as swiftly came days of not being able to get anything done at all. We began to hear of local people being ill. The death toll began to climb. Week three was spent forgetting to feed everyone in the house at normal times. Lying in the bath and feeling myself crying and not knowing why. 

Then I fell ill myself. A mysterious mild flu accompanied by very sore irritated eyes, a sore chest and shortness of breath, a sore head and extreme fatigue. Week four was spent having to isolate from even the others in the house, for their own safety. Lying in bed, with half-closed, red, itchy eyes, feeling my breath fluttering in my chest, watching white fluffy clouds scudding by in a cast cornflower blue sky, just outside my bedroom window. Trying not to think the worst. Wondering if I would ever get to hug my parents again. Trying and failing to make sense of any of it at all. 

And now here we are about to begin week five. Despite everything, the statistics, the news, the deaths, the masks, the sorrow, the dread, the craziness, flying in the face of every single bit of it, we are fine. It feels wrong. I feel guilty even writing it down. But it’s true. I pray daily and often for key workers, for the government, for Boris, for my family, my neighbours, for those stacking shelves and filling prescriptions. I thank God every single morning for another day that I have been given. I ask for His will to be done. I praise Him that His plan is still in place. That despite all evidence to the contrary, that His message of Love and Hope, which we will celebrate this coming weekend in earnest, is as real and as relevant as anything I might I hear in the headlines.

Every single night somewhere between 4 and 5 am I wake in something like terror. As my eyes become accustomed to the gloom, I see a dark smudge of fog hovering in our bedroom on the wall beside our window. It is a living, malevolent thing. I can hardly bear to look at it but I can’t tear my eyes away. Its darkness seems to suck all life and air from the room. In my fear I can’t remember to be calm but I try to cling to everything I know. That God is in charge. That he has won. But it is no good. I am too weak to be brave. I curl up tight and, shaking, cry out in my heart, “Dear God, save us from this evil!” 

I lie without breathing until I at last feel I can open my eyes and when I do, it has gone. I sleep almost immediately. Because it seems that the Angel of Death hovers over us in the early hours of every single morning. The strain of daily meeting him face to face is exhausting.

And yet. And yet. And yet. I am fine. In fact, I am not just fine, I am happy. How can this be? I wake up every morning and I pray and stretch and get up and realise I am happy. The empty calendar makes me happy. The lack of any external agenda for our days makes me happy. I ignore my phone and the incessant deluge of breaking news interspersed with people from every element of my life giving me tips on how to spend my day, ideas for how Small One should spend her day, ways to keep fit during lockdown, celebrities singing during lockdown, video conferencing during lockdown, memes about lockdown, ways to deliver the curriculum during lockdown. 

Instead I sit on my garden bench and listen to the birds. I take little videos of them and listen to them again later. I bake and plan meals around exactly what I would like to eat with absolutely no regard for how long it will take to prepare nor the calorific content therein. I eat no junk food. There is simply no need for it when what I have is limitless time. So we eat all our favourite feasts. All the dishes we only usually cook at Christmas or for someone’s birthday. All the recipes we’ve always wanted to try. 

I show Small One how to hang clothes on the line. None of us are sleeping at normal times and we have given up worrying about this. At midnight one evening we listened to an hour of classic hits from the 60s, 70s and 80s and I danced with abandon in my oldest jumper with my untrimmed hair flying. I spun the delighted Small One round the kitchen and taught her dance moves. She had tiny braids in her hair that took us an hour to do because she wanted it to look crimped. 

I chat to my neighbours over the hedge. I phone my parents. I knit. I read the books I panic-borrowed from the library the day before it shut. I stand in my greenhouse for hours in my pyjamas with the sun on my back and plant little self-seeded baby plants I have found all over the garden, each nested in their own tiny pot. I water them every day. I sit in Beloved’s study as he works or plays video games and chat to him about things we remember. Things we’re going to do when IT is all over. I stroke the cat. I cuddle the dog. 

Inside myself, as each day passes, and despite the guilt and the conflict and the feelings of uselessness and dread and fear, despite it all, I feel my heart open and stretch. My brain reaches first to the things I want to do that day, not the things I must. Every day feels endless and full of such promise. I cannot remember feeling this happy and content, this grateful and unencumbered, at any other time in my adult life.

The idea that all of this is in any way comparable to the sacrifices and stress our key workers are facing is ridiculous in the extreme. We are told we are doing an excellent service to our country, that we are “helping” by staying at home. This is the same kind of “helping” that you might give a bothersome child who is getting in the way of you getting on with the real job at hand. For the sad truth is, despite what my inflated ego might tell me, in the face of this crisis, I am useless. I have very little to give. The very best I can do is get out of the way of the people who are doing the real work. 

In this way I know perfectly well that I am living on grace. I am blessed with my family around me, a garden to spend time in, a roof over my head. Many don’t have any of these things. The weight of this knowledge causes me to pray even more – in thanks. And as a way to somehow lighten the load of my own uselessness and guilt. There but by the grace of God go I. My freedom is literally being bought on a daily basis by the sacrifice of others. How on earth could any sane person be happy while knowing that others are not? But I am. It is wrong. It makes no sense. How than these two conflicting ideas coexist?

I wrestle with this question every day and am no closer to an answer.

I started biting my nails when I went to school at age 4. It seems that I have been on a stress roller-coaster ever since, because usually I can only resist biting them if I carefully manicure and paint them on a weekly basis. Sometimes not even then. Now, of all times, they are mysteriously long and pink and healthy, with white half moons at the top. They keep catching my eye. I admire their reflection in the mirror. I cannot stop looking at them. Because I have never seen them before. This is the longest period in my adult life that I have not bitten them. I don’t even think of biting them. It’s not even an issue.

Today as I watered my tiny plants yet again, Small One used her new washing-hanging skills to hang some tea towels she had pretended to wash on a washing line made of string I rigged up outside her playhouse. 

And this time I didn’t feel the need to video any of the garden birds. Because although they were singing fit to burst, as they have been every other day this spring, her song rivalled any of them. I couldn’t catch the words but I certainly heard the joy. Loud and clear, as her piping voice floated across the lawn. 

And I wondered where did we all go wrong, that it had to come to this? That everything had to come to a point so terrible and so undeniable and so unyielding, and at such an enormous irrevocable cost for others, for us to have a chance to have this moment of peace in our own back yard? And how do we find it again, when our exhausted, traumatised nurses come home to us, and the memorial services take place and the graves stop being dug and the temporary hospitals pack up and the masks come off and traffic mounts and the calendar fills and the whole merry-go-round of life splutters back into being again? Is it possible? Should we try? 

And, though there is much from our former life worthy of being missed, I worry that I will never hear my daughter this happy again, that I will never be this happy again, that our family never spend this amount of time around the table together again, unless we make some changes. Changes based on decisions that we must make using our own wisdom and our own determination, not those enforced on us against our will nor, more importantly, bought for us by the pain of others.

And I find myself having to ask the inevitable question:

Which is worse? If things never go back to “normal” again or if they do? 

A bowl full of spaghetti with home-grown sauce. Remembered summer in a bowl.

Bottling

This memory means nothing to you now.
You have a glut.
They are hanging all around you in gaudy clusters.
Bursting at the seams.
Sickeningly ripe.
There are so many
you neglect the glasshouse
some days,
for fear of coming face-to-face
with that which you have not yet done.

But in January
There will be a dreary day that never quite wakes up.
Feeling restless and unsatisfied,
and mistaking it for hunger,
you fill a pot of steaming water
with golden strands,
seasoned with salt,
and pooling oil.
You will tip a tide of 
blood-red summer 
over the top and eat.

And though your heart 
is hidden in the silt 
at the bottom of winter. 
Waiting.
Beating time.
It will stir, and turn, and dream again
of your August toil.
Dripping hands 
peeling fruit upon fruit.
Despising it all the while.
Putting it by for a day you think will never come.

And you will taste 
yearning, 
for that kitchen where the 
sky outside turns 
navy blue, so slowly.
The long, 
pregnant dusk.
The remembrance 
bittersweet, 
with vinegar 
and spice.

And you will be glad.

For my Father on the occasion of his 70th birthday. Who strides before me, always. Brave and full of love.

Step by step,
foot in front of foot.
Everything begins this way.
A few scrawled sums, 
pencil sharpened to a quill.
The balletic, balanced sway.

He shows me how
the world is big.
But that we only know it to be so,
because we use ourselves
to span its size,
toe in front of heel in front of toe.

A yard - the spread of arms
that hold me tight.
A foot - each mark a measure.
An inch - the thumb
that grips my hand as we search
rock pools for sunken treasure.

He digs deep narrow holes,
and fits a row of posts,
plumb along the boundary line,
and says, “Don’t forget,
our hearts are our own.
That is where our freedom lies.”

He goes before me,
deliberate and keen.
And always will. Striding on his own,
brave and full of love. 
There is nowhere I can go
where he has not already gone.

And there he pauses,
leaning in repose.
Wiping his brow.
Catching his breath,
while he waits for me to tally
the steps behind him now.

He already knows.
He is singing inward,
“I have the answer.
I could have told you so.”
But he lets me count them on my own,
and never lets it show.

Don’t follow in my footsteps. I run into walls.

Anon.

Apologies if the title has led you to believe that you are about to read an article about America’s celebrated architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s most famous project.

You are not.

You’re about to read a story about how accident-prone I am. And I’m afraid if you’re going to follow this blog with any kind of regularity, you might as well get to used to it.

For I, dear reader, am clumsy. Not every single minute of every single day. But frequently and without mercy. I fall down things. I fall over things. I drop things. I accidentally bash one thing off another thing and end up breaking them both. I slip. I trip. I spill. At school I laid claim to the dubious honour of having most entries in the accident book. Not just for my year group. But from the beginning of time. 

If I am carrying something precious from A to B, I say a prayer. If I am carrying something precious that belongs to someone else from A to B, I say two. 

When I was around 13 I bought my mum two china mugs for her birthday. I didn’t want to carry them through the house in case she saw me with the bundle. Why, I’m not quite sure, though it seemed important at the time. I can only imagine that I thought she would use x-ray vision to see through the bag, thereby spoiling the surprise. So I set them on the outside windowsill of my ground-floor bedroom, headed round the house and through the front door, meaning to open the window and collect them from inside my room. Far away from my mother and her startling solid-defying vision obviously. Unfortunately (though not in the least surprisingly) I forgot that my bedroom window opened outwards. As I threw it open, it immediately and with one swift motion, swept the mugs onto the concrete path below with an ominous and sickening crash. The mugs were smashed into eleventy-gazillion pieces. I had owned them for a total of an hour an half. 

I thought this was all quite normal until I met The Beloved. He has a step with all the surety of a mountain goat and was amused and alarmed in turn at early examples of my affliction. How he laughed the first time I accidentally walked into a plate-glass window! After the third time he began to mutter about permanent brain damage. 

The clumsiness gets worse if I am tired or distracted. If I am under pressure I try to do too many things at once and my limbs turn into a circular blur, like Tom after Jerry has left a puddle of oil for him to slip on. This often bodes disaster for the household chores. If I try to do too many things in too much of a rush everything just ends up in a mangled heap at the bottom of the stairs. Usually with me lying on top. With two broken toes (true story). 

So one day I was looking at my to-do list and I thought “You know what would really spice things up today? Cleaning out the fish tank!”. (To be fair, I think it was the fish writing ‘Mayday!’ on the gunk inside the glass that really forced my hand). But the very idea was a mistake. There were already too many things on the list for that day. It was not the right time to squeeze in one more. But I never learn. I should also say that the fish tank is not mine. It’s the Small One’s. But she’s nine. And I am weak. And of a nervous disposition. 

Having lugged the clean de-chlorinated water up the stairs and lifted all the faux plant life and plastic ornaments out, and cleaned them, it was time to begin syphoning out the dirty water in preparation for the water change.

It’s a tricky job. I have to make sure that one end of the hose remains in the plastic bucket catching the old water (because who would want dirty fish-poo water all over the carpet? More on that later) and the other end remains in the tank hoovering up all the detritus in the water, and in the substrate, whilst simultaneously not vacuuming up any of the fish. It takes a lot of concentration. But I was in the zone. Mindful of the to-do list, I hoovering at top speed. All the fish were accounted for. All was well.

Once the water level in the tank had drained to the requisite point, however, I began to be aware of a curious anomaly. Whilst the water level in the tank had steadily lowered, the water level in the plastic bucket catching it had not risen in a commensurate fashion. This really bamboozled me. What a mystery! Where could it have gone? Evaporated? Slipped into an invisible wormhole? 

It was then that I noticed the unusual trickling sound. This was alarming as I could not recall that a trickling sound had ever before accompanied fish tank cleaning sessions. I looked closer at the bucket to ascertain from whence it came and suddenly noticed the water. Not safely contained within the bucket as it should have been. But running. Freely. In a beautiful fast-moving stream across Small One’s bedroom carpet. 

On closer inspection it became clear that the bucket had not one, but two, long splits in the plastic from which all the water was joyfully pouring. The river was, by this time, already well on its way to creating a delta, having already formed several tributaries, which were drawing the smelly fish-poo and other detritus-filled water under the bed, desk and wardrobe respectively. How long exactly the water had been pouring everywhere I couldn’t tell. I had been too busy not murdering the fish to notice. 

“EEP” came the strangled scream of shock from my throat. Some very complicated mathematical equations in my head quickly led me to the conclusion that there was now approximately 40-50 litres of water sloshing across my daughter’s (new) bedroom carpet. 

I did, at least, have the presence of mind to drop the syphon, thereby preventing any further water being filtered through the now useless bucket. I rushed to the airing cupboard and began ferrying every single towel in the house to the scene of devastation. Soon Small One’s floor resembled a locker room after PE, having a mismatched jumble of very wet towels covering its entire surface. It also smelled like a hot day at the docks after the tide has gone out. 

Plus, there was still so much water. So so much flipping water. It was still moving, pooling on top of the towels and escaping into every nook and cranny. The Build-A-Bears must have soaked up 10 litres alone.

Remembering the only thing I ever learned from geography, namely that wet things are more absorbent than dry things, I began lifting the towels, with the aim of wringing them out before placing them back on the carpet in order to absorb more water. As it turns out however, wringing water out of an enormous soaking-wet freezing-cold chenille beach towel with “Fun in the Sun!” written on it, is much harder than one might have imagined. It would have been easier to wring out the Build-A-Bears and mop up the spillage with them.

At this point I stopped wringing the towels and started wringing my hands. What to do? What to do? If only there was such a thing as a ‘carpet syphon’ I thought. Why had no-one thought of such a thing before? For the 110th time I thought about how I really should keep a list of all the amazing inventions I think of mid-catastrophe. And then it came to me. Such a thing had been invented before! Surely carpet cleaners could suck water out of carpets?

One phone call and an hour and a half later and two men in a van turned up. They were very cheerful and regaled me with tales of having seen it all before. They had initially worried me by suggesting that the carpet might need to be lifted, industrially cleaned, then dried and re-fitted (quelle horreur). But when they surveyed the damage, much to my profound relief, they pronounced this to be unnecessary. They lugged a giant sucky machine and some smaller blowy machines and various other brushy and swooshy things up the stairs. Within half an hour Small One’s bedroom carpet was once again smelling sweetly (possibly even more sweetly than before) and gently steaming as the blowy machines finished drying it. 

Then, disaster averted at last, exhausted, following the longest fish-tank-cleaning-related episode in history, it was time to collect Small One from school. Upon return she looked with some surprise at the industrial fans now filling her room. 

“Oh don’t worry about those” I said airily. “I decided to get your carpet cleaned.” 

Small One computed this for a second and then said, 

“Did you use the water from the fish tank to clean the carpet mum?”

I followed the line of her gaze and realised that I had forgotten to actually put the fresh water back in the tank. The fish were still confusedly swimming around in about 5 inches of water. They had to keep easing past each other like polite British tourists at the breakfast bar. 

Obviously I immediately rectified this mistake and soon they were once more easily gliding around in their sparkling (ish) aquatic paradise. For her part, Small One, who was lying on the bed keeping one eye on me and one eye on her tablet during this performance, languidly remarked (with the air of someone else who has also seen it all before), 

“I just can’t help feeling there’s something you aren’t telling me mum”. 

Oh, if the walls (and the fish) could talk.