I’ve stopped reading the news. At least I’ve stopped furiously reading the news. It was that I would scan the news at every opportunity. But in the last few days things don’t seem to be unfolding at the same ridiculous pace they have been and instead settled into a bit of a repetitive and depressing lumber. News told in tables and graphs and photographs of empty city centres. So I just don’t have the same feelings of urgency about keeping up to speed with events as I once did. Besides, it’s exhausting. Which is perhaps closer to the truth of things.
Until recently, I pictured different countries, and different people, being in different phases with their experience of Covid-19. I even imagined a kind of wave that was working its way towards me through the places I had been. In that way, New Zealand was at the very edge of things. Like Hurricane Kammuri that had forced the rain sideways in Siquijor but escaped the eye. Now I’m beginning to get the feeling that, perhaps since the whole world and not just parts of it have gone into lockdown, we’re all bobbing around in this thing together. And there’s a certain relief in surrendering.
I still have moments where I feel completely overwhelmed by the enormity of what’s happening but there are also times when I feel optimistic about getting to the other side of this. And that the kind of coordinated and inclusive strategies that have to be adopted so that we do, will be the silver lining. I can’t force myself to feel either way on any given day though. Hope or despair. I’m just riding the waves.
Although, yesterday was a particularly hopeful day and, after our successful first foray into video conference calling, my old pub quiz pals decided it was time to get together for a full-blown quiz night. Well, quiz night for them, quiz morning for us. It began with a few technical hitches, or perhaps it’s more accurate to call them user errors, but it proceeded with much hilarity and really was a lovely way to begin the day. It was so good to see so many friendly faces in Celebrity Square style boxes on my computer screen and it made me feel so much closer to home. Despite the obvious physical separation, we’re not so separate.
Afterwards, full of coffee and guffaws, Mrs ChO’C and I went for a walk. The weather was beautiful. Warm sunshine, blue skies, and as still as can be. It is so perfectly autumnal here right now. The leaves are on fire and the ground is scattered with seed pods of all kinds. I took my phone out with me because I wanted to take photographs of bears in windows. It’s a thing here so that when kids (and me) are out for their daily walks they can go on a bear hunt. It’s the sweetest thing and creates an incredibly strong feeling of solidarity. And we also took a shopping bag with a mind to go quince scrumping. A few days previously we’d picked some from a tree on a piece of land that must have once belonged to the big house. But now sits in a copse between some smaller houses and the hospital. There’s a river and a path that runs through so we easily convinced ourselves that it was on public rather than private land.
As we got closer to the tree we saw a couple standing by and another man up a ladder filling a big box full of the yellow fruit. We ambled closer, but not too close, and I pretended I was studying fallen conkers. And I suddenly felt hugely embarrassed about the shopping bag in my pocket. But the couple called us over and told us to help ourselves. They lived in the small house that was nearest to the tree and had put a step-ladder out especially so people would. So we did. Sausage, the youngest of the ChO’Cs, and I have already made a quince and apple crumble and now we’re thinking about jam or jelly.
The things I’m doing aren’t life changing. And neither are they doing much for the cause. They’re just small things that I’m doing to get me through the days. And I’m sticking with that for now. It’s a bit like Sunday every day and it may stay that way for the whole of the month. But I do expect a Saturday to arrive to any day now. I’m still not much interested in Mondays.
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