Rb’s CV diaries 9: The last entry

Now that the lockdown has been extended in the UK and I have spent a month under its strictures it seem a good point to bring these regular CV diary reports via my blog to an end. There is, in any event, a surfeit of news on the ongoing crisis so normal service will henceforth be resumed in the blog. Future entries will be about, well, whatever stimulates me to write one. In other words - business as usual.

Whitey (you can see guilt in her eye)

Looking back at my own experience during this period then, aside from a few frustrations, it’s been a breeze. The weather could not have been better, I have had plenty to do (most of which has been outdoors). My garage is reasonably well organised (I have even discovered a long forgotten lathe and am bringing that into use), plants are growing in the vegetable garden and pests are attacking them, the last bit of wilderness in the flower garden has been tamed and the pond is greening. Two of the chickens are now in lay and the other two are under investigation for egg eating (I suspect Whitey, but no confession extracted yet). Saturday night specials have become an institution at Iverley House, the most recent being an exciting game of shove ha’penny. And, thankfully, supplies of essentials like beer and bananas have been maintained.

Living here through the spring (we’re usually in Spain) has been a joy. Though we’ve had our hands dirty for most of our adult lives it’s still a revelation to watch established plants burst into life and little seedlings pushing up their tiny green tendrils to rapidly become plants themselves. I am keeping a daily watch on the beech hedge between us and our new neighbours that I planted last year. At first I thought the effort had been wasted as our other hedge, a well-established beech itself, burst into life with not a stir from the new one. But day by day in the last week I have spotted the odd bud swelling and turning green and at least one has now burst forth as an unfolding leaf.

I do feel fortunate to be on the very fringes of this epidemic, and also feel somewhat guilty for that. However, I can’t help but observe that some in the public eye are not helping at all. The Corona pandemic should not become some sort of blame game between politicians, the media and scientists. Nor should it be a platform on which to project worn out views on our nation’s future, the green agenda and the challenge of climate change, or the pursuit of egalitarianism. However, on a more positive front it has provided a vehicle to spotlight the selflessness of many who are usually off the media radar, both in the NHS and elsewhere.

There is, reputedly, an old Chinese curse which states ‘May you live in interesting times’. Well, we certainly are, and there is also little doubt that the current crisis originated in that country. But despite the loss of many innocent people I think that we are still in the ‘phony war’ phase of this battle, the truly ‘interesting’ times are still to come as the dangerous depths of the economic ramifications  caused by the lock down become clearer. Still, at least we are all right for eggs.

I wish you all well, wherever you are. Keep your distance if you can, but continue to associate through modern media which, I suppose, this blog is part of.