New horizons

Had we but World enough and Time
In the past week, the Coronavirus Lockdown has begun easing in the UK. Will “normal life” return? What will “new normal” be like? I hope a kinder world emerges.
….at my back I always hear
Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
In Andrew Marvell’s poem To His Coy Mistress, the voice of the poem urges us to Sieze the Day before, in the words of Cleopatra’s attendant Iras, “The bright day is done/And we are for the dark.” The pandemic has caused a great Pause in the affairs of much of the human race. What are the future horizons?

Lockdown Puzzles

Putting the pieces together
The first jigsaw is thought to have been a Dissected Map of “Europe divided into its kingdoms” designed by John Spilsbury in 1776. They were seen as educational tools rather than leisure activities. I have vivid memories of doing jigsaws at St Austin’s primary school: absorbed, tongue out, transported, concentrating. I liked the feeling of creating one big picture with the oddly-shaped fragments. It was an activity that satisfied the Completer-Finisher in me…. Some things never change.

Testing hypotheses, trial and error
It doesn’t take a genius to understand the values of jigsaw puzzling. Apart from relaxation, concentration and learning to solve problems, researchers have revealed that Puzzlers can improve short-term memory, stave off dementia and train the pathways between the logical signals of the left brain and the creative intuition of the right brain. You develop resilience, tenacity and the ability to see through a task one bit at a time. One piece after another. Building a picture. Controlling the chaos. Perfect for lockdown.

Lockdown VE Day (Blog 300)

Two roads diverged
Some who know me might be surprised to find I wanted to mark VE Day in some way. Those who know me well know that I’m a keen supporter of the British Royal Legion (and all its works) and have posted about Remembrance Day in past blogs, for example:
Falling Leaves Like Snowflakes
In Flanders field the poppies blow
There but not there
Teenage me spent some time with the Territorial Army Cadets and I almost joined the navy as a radar operator before I was deflected onto an alternative course and the world of English and Drama. Oh, the decisions we make and how The Road Not Taken can give us reasons to reflect: WHAT IF...!?

Badby celebrations, Alex's bunting, Joyce's afternoon tea, Sally's scones, Tony's Victoria Sponge

Remembrance and Victory Over Evil
This year’s VE Day was the 75th anniversary and much of the celebrations were constrained by the country’s attempts to restrict the spread of Covid-19. But there were still plenty of scones to be baked, bunting (makeshift and otherwise) to be raised, and monarchs to behold the swelling scene. Numpties stupidly referred to the day as Victory Over Europe rather than what it was: Victory In Europe or, as some Germans wisely call it, Victory Over Evil. How will we “celebrate” in August on the 75th anniversary of Japan signing an unconditional surrender to the Allies following the dropping of two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? All in good time…. What was clear about VE Day in 1945 is that the mood of the country led to the Labour government that founded the NHS: populations across the world longed for unity and international cooperation; it was a time that promised the end of divisions, inequality and differences. It was a time of hope. It was going to be a brave new world….

Lockdown Spring

Two households, both Locked Down in dignity....

Seasons come and seasons go
One of the luckiest privileges of My Life In Lockdown is having a panoramic meadow and woods within walking distance of the house.  When Spring 2020 started bursting, as the reality of Lockdown began, it became an endless fascination on the same walk to see how colours, shapes and textures changed as Nature resurrected its glorious self, free for the most part from a significant volume of traffic fumes. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one to notice the ecstatic increase in the sounds of birds. Was that illusory? Could the insane variety and volume of chirruping have always been there?  I’ve always delberately walked down (and driven, I admit) roads where I knew blossom trees were exploding in colour; this year my eyes seemed to bathe in blossom more intensely.

Brighter traces of her steps….
Spring reminds me of my Mum (her birthday, her in the garden, her love of flowers – see Nothing is so beautiful as Spring) and every year I think of the ancient Greek proverb A society grows great when old people plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in – a proverb brought to life in 2020 by charity fundraiser, (Captain) Tom Moore. As usual, Chaucer, Shakespeare, the Brontës and Dickens are easy to mine for quotations about Spring but, this year, it feels to me that Charlotte Brontë in Jane Eyre wrote a sentence which is worth clinging onto as Covid-19 continues to spread its fatal droplets:

“Spring drew on…and a greenness grew over those brown beds, which, freshening daily, suggested the thought that Hope traversed them at night, and left each morning brighter traces of her steps.”

Time to stand and stare
I’ll finish this Lockdown Spring riff with a poem I’ve quoted before (here). The “SuperTramp” poet, WH Davies, has had a revival during Lockdown since his words require you to slow down the pace, step away from the rat race, and breathe calmly.

Leisure by W H Davies

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.

No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.