Vaccinated Diamond Birthday

Six Months Later

So, six months after I was born in Wakefield, Sally Anne Allard was born on St Patrick’s Day in Bradford. March 2021 marked Sally’s Diamond Birthday. It wasn’t “normal” in that there was no meal out and no trip to the cinema or theatre…. But it was normal in keeping up the tradition of getting together with our daughters (even if we were walking two by two) and eating and drinking (a picnic in the open air, socially distanced.) Last March we began locking down before the government asked us to and this year we look forward to restrictions being lifted. So in the weeks and months to come I hope we’ll have a series of further birthday-style events….

St Patrick’s Day over the previous five years

• 2016 – Anomaleesa at The Everyman Cinema in Leeds
• 2017 – Gardening course and the live action Beauty and the Beast at The Everyman
• 2018 – Icy walk, wintry views and meal at home with (Sally’s choice of) Minority Report on the TV
• 2019 – The RSC touring production of Matilda at Bradford Alhambra and Green Book at Showcase
• 2020 – Almost UK-wide Lockdown, hikes (on different days) to the Druid’s Altar and Top Withins

No cinema, no theatre, but plenty still to enjoy

In the bullet-points above, I’ve mentioned cultural events that made 2016-19 distinctive, but all years have still included cards, a cake and presents revolving around themes of gardening, glamour, reading, flowers, food and drink. This year a parade of visitors passed by the garden gate to wish Many Happy Returns and delivery folk turned up at a steady pace…. Unusual gifts this year included a phone call from Australia, a home-knitted cardigan and a kit from Dishoom to make Naan-Bacon-Rolls. (After nearly 35 years of marriage we are learning to be cooperative in the kitchen!)

Birthday Talents

It’s easy to celebrate birthdays with Sally (or spend Christmas, or go on holiday, or do Bonfire Night, or do anything really….) All that’s needed are messages of love from family and friends and some time together making human connections. All the Lockdowns in the world can’t squash Sally’s talents for being generous and open-hearted to whatever can be achieved with whatever resources are at hand….

Spring in the air

The birds are nest-building, the daffodils are out, the buds are budding, the daylight hours are longer – these are all signifiers of Sally’s birthday every year – the Spring of the year. And in 2021, the Covid vaccine rollout continues apace…. A Spring-like birthday present from the scientific and medical community. What will St Patrick’s Day in March 2022 bring? We’ll be a year older. Will we still be socially distancing? Wearing masks? Time will tell.

A Birthday

by Christina Rossetti

My heart is like a singing bird

Whose nest is in a water’d shoot;

My heart is like an apple-tree

Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit;

My heart is like a rainbow shell

That paddles in a halcyon sea;

My heart is gladder than all these

Because my love is come to me. 

Raise me a dais of silk and down;

Hang it with vair and purple dyes;

Carve it in doves and pomegranates,

And peacocks with a hundred eyes;

Work it in gold and silver grapes,

In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys;

Because the birthday of my life

Is come, my love is come to me.

Hope Springs Eternal

Stuck like a dope with a thing called hope

This week I have mostly been walking, eating, drinking, talking, reading, doing jigsaws, sleeping, watching TV, Zooming…. You know how it goes. But we’ve made a return to Bolton Abbey for walks and picnics so that’s good. Ensign Nellie Forbush (knucklehead Nellie) sings insistently in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific:

When the sky is a bright canary yellow

I forget every cloud I've ever seen,

So they called me a cockeyed optimist

Immature and incurably green

I have heard people rant and rave and bellow

That we're done and we might as well be dead,

But I'm only a cockeyed optimist

And I can't get it into my head

I can be infuriatingly like Nellie. There will be a silver lining. The glass is half full. I do believe in fairies.

Hope Springs

I know from NHS workers that the past year has seen spirits lurch from shock to despair to elation to exhaustion to despondency to trauma to grief to relief to fortitude to numbness…. But the Covid crisis has also exposed wells of resilience and blankets of compassion. In his An Essay on Man, Alexander Pope urges us not to look to God for answers:

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;

The proper study of Mankind is Man….

….Alike in ignorance, his reason such,

Whether he thinks too little, or too much:

Chaos of Thought and Passion, all confus'd;

Still by himself, abus'd, or disabus'd;

Created half to rise, and half to fall;

Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all….

And yet…. And yet….

Hope springs eternal in the human breast

Man never is, but always to be, blest.

Time (and the vaccine programme) marches on. There are reasons to be hopeful. The detritus of the pandemic (including the lessons we could learn) will inevitably and ineffably flow under the bridge. And Spring will come again. Hope will spring eternal.

Water under the bridge....