Day 24
In the misnamed Land of the Free (people are anything but), or Land of the Blond Cuckoo, the toll of deaths in New York is horrifying. So much for the country being open again by Easter - which is what their delusional, mendacious and bad president promised a few weeks ago. Bernie Sanders has realized he cannot gain enough delegates to win the Democrat nomination for president. He has ‘suspended’ his campaign. In other words he wants to spoil Mr. Biden’s party at the convention.
In the misnamed Land of the Free (people are anything but), or Land of the Blond Cuckoo, the toll of deaths in New York is horrifying. So much for the country being open again by Easter - which is what their delusional, mendacious and bad president promised a few weeks ago. Bernie Sanders has realized he cannot gain enough delegates to win the Democrat nomination for president. He has ‘suspended’ his campaign. In other words he wants to spoil Mr. Biden’s party at the convention.
I plant some chard seeds.
Day 25
Today is Good Friday. In normal circumstances millions of people would be driving to the country’s national parks to explore the British landscape. In Wales the police report they will arrest people trying to do what comes as instinctive in this season. It is a sad time when town dwellers cannot go and get some pure oxygen into their lungs. Having always had space around me, even when I lived in a city, I am heartbroken for urban people confined to quarters in this beautiful spring weather.
I remember an old wives’ tale relates that whoever in the household sows parsley on Good Friday, wears the trousers; and, it is alleged, Good Friday is the only day that Satan has no jurisdiction over my veg patch. Neither of us sows parsley.
I plant lettuce seeds. I think neither Satan nor God are watching.
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| Moreporks in Queenstown prison |
I am starting to feel how a caged bird must feel when confined to an aviary. I remember the Kiwi Birdlife Park near Bob’s Peak in Queenstown, New Zealand. Seeing moreporks^ looking down at us with glazed eyes from high up in their boxes was saddening. They had a small area in which to fly but what was the point? There was nowhere to go. There was no way they could spend time with others, go for a nice long fly or visit the golf course. It makes me think that in this age, when computer imagery can provide all experiences in education about natural history a child can need, we should free every bird held in captivity.
Anyway, lots of citizens will be feeling like moreporks.
Day 27
I am in Australia today. Not literally, but we were supposed to be coming to the end of our fourth week in Woodend, Victoria. As a bit of relief from the intensity of reading about the history of the Zulu nation in The Washing of the Spears, I have sought Australian contemporary drama and crime with Truth by Peter Temple. A newspaper columnist this week places this book in his top ten best crime novels published. Temple wrote two other crime novels set in Melbourne. They are good reads once you fathom the Aussie cop lingo.
I am also in Australia in my head, enjoying being with our Matthew, his wife and the grandchildren. And going for walks along the tracks into the forest, listening to my favourite Aussie bird, the Magpie, issuing its ‘bottom of the bottle’ warble.
Day 28
We walk for two hours across the silent fields and parched earth. The crops that broke through the earth two weeks ago are stuck. It is cold today. Spring is suspended.
A friend who lives in rural, southern France wrote to me this week: “Enforced isolation has prompted an increased awareness of my surroundings - the blue skies are empty of vapour trails - we are 33,800 feet below the Madrid-Mahon and the Lisbon- Berlin flight paths and so many others that crisscross the sky above us. Our rural solitude is enhanced by the Jackhammer drill sound of the woodpeckers, the cry of the circling buzzards and since last weekend the call of the cuckoo.” It sounds wonderful. We were booked to go and stay with him and his wife in June en route to Lago di Bolsena. C’est la vie.
Day 29
School prefect Raab, (Headmaster Boris is released from hospital and recuperating in the sanatorium), says today we have at least three more weeks confined to quarters. Despite not being able to play golf I think we can manage that. There is still much to be done in the veg patch, the kitchen and the reading room. My shelf of new books is still crammed. There are histories on: (OIiver) Cromwell’s England, Vietnam, Arnhem, Dresden, the Silk Roads, the wars for the American West, the wars at the Democratic party’s convention in 1968, the East India Company, the last of the Tsars and Brian Clough. There is fiction about or by (Thomas) Cromwell’s England, Maigret’s Paris, Anthony Trollope, Robert Harris, Dorothy Sayers and Brian Clough.
We just need some rain for the patch.
Day 30
Spring is reactivated, as the wind swings round to the southwest. It is time to plant more potatoes and the remainder of the veg seeds.
Day 31
Despite dawn until dusk sunshine and warm temperatures the mood is darker today. We have at least three more weeks of this incarceration. I avoid the newspapers’ obsessive reporting of the virus. I leave the radio silent. But then DB sends a copy of a report from the Henry Jackson Society entitled, Coronavirus Compensation? Assessing China’s Culpability and Avenues of Legal Response. Nobody locked in at home can ignore the economic cost of this experience. It is true that China does not play by the same rules of international law that we, in the so-called West, expect other nations to play by. China appears to have no regard for a rules-based international system. So it is all too easy to think that China IS culpable and this year it is kick-starting its march towards global supremacy.
Some commentators on the current position are getting itchy feet. They want a lifting of the barricade. They want to start re-building lives and economies. It might also be time to examine the case against China.
To soften the mood I plant seeds of French bean and Sweet Pea.
Day 32
Every morning on my walk around the ‘estate’ since the first seed sowing I stop to look for the first signs of chitting. I am dubious that the leeks are showing, also the carrots. It is so cold at nights I am not surprised. I just hope the seeds did not get frosted this week.
Day 33
I find it difficult to believe we are up to Day 33 since our cancelled flight to Melbourne and subsequent incarceration at home. I make my first visit to a supermarket. This is hardly an exciting excursion. We have to queue to enter the building. I walk around shying away from other shoppers. They shy away from me. One of them could poison me with the virus. They probably think the same about me. I want to escape.
Day 34
One newspaper headline this morning reads seventy year olds could have to be locked in for twelve months. I don’t think I could stand that. I would have to break out. On the morning Zoom call with the family we learn that Australia could prevent incoming flights for the remainder of this year. That is too awful to contemplate.
I feel a lack of making plans. Part of the joy of life is having something to look forward to. Seeing the grandchildren – in Leeds, Leicestershire and Australia – and doing things with them has become a large part of our lives. Not knowing when we can resume this ‘essential activity’ - I hope you read this Headmaster - has created a void, for them and us.
Day 35
Today I am transported to the garden at Trelissick at Feock in Cornwall. In 1974, during our first stay at Crantock after our marriage, we visited National Trust gardens in May. (My dear wife had just given me a life membership of the NT at a cost of £75!) Trelissick’s aspect is south over the estuary called Carrick Roads. This is the dreamily romantic landscape of a pirate in Frenchman’s Creek by Daphne du Maurier, the King Harry ferry and our lazy cream teas in St Mawes. Azaleas and rhododendrons thrive here and there is one yellow variety, rhododendron luteum, which has a fragrant and exotic smell. Years later I bought a shrub of the same genus, planted in half a beer barrel on our terrace. It has just come into bloom. I stop to sniff it each morning; thus am I back in Trelissick.
The gloom concerning the unknowing when this lock in will be relieved is lifted by our holding an illicit tea party for six in our garden. Today is our neighbour’s birthday. She lives alone, is a very sociable person under normal circumstances and someone who prefers the company of others to her own. Cakes had been baked and we sit two metres apart in our summerhouse and orchard, buttoned up against the cold East wind.
Day 36
It is five weeks ago today that we were due to fly to Australia. We are still sad at the missed trip. The pattern of life is now becoming a trifle tedious for the first time. However, we have some welcome visitors to our landscape. Our neighbouring farmer has half his flock of sheep in his field next to ours. So, we open the gate and I now have twenty-five Mules* to talk to as I work in the patch.
The peas, onions and leeks are showing above the ground. At long last there is some daily growth in the produce to spot. Yet, as we have had no rain in April I have to water all the seedbeds every evening. The first harvested produce of the year is the rhubarb. A crumble is in the oven cooking.
We have another illicit tea party with friends the other side of the village. Being model citizens we sit two metres apart as we look out across the stunningly beautiful Wharfedale valley.
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| 'We gated too?" |
On the early morning walk around the paddock I am followed by the twenty-five Mules. It’s a bit like Grandmother’s Footsteps; I walk, they walk. I stop and look around and they stop. I start, they start. Charlie the goat gives me the cold shoulder as if to say: “get you and your new women friends”. He turns away and does not greet me.
I am now reading Trollope – Anthony, not Joanna. My mother was a keen reader of his novels. I am slightly ashamed to admit that nearly twenty years after her death I am only now getting round to reading such delicious prose. The Warden is full of satirical references to the Church of England, Fleet Street and the Bar. What obnoxious men are the Archdeacon and John Bold. Yet it reminds me that the Church of England is being very quiet in the current state of affairs. I am so heartily tired of the television news coverage of CV I long for some juicy bits of distracting news. News such as Kim Jong-un having gone missing in North Korea, which is fascinating. I would welcome some sage words from the Archbishop of Canterbury. As Trollope might have written: the church is full of aristocratic souls, men and women not in want of wisdom, but able to share with the common man some advice on how to make life a little more rewarding.
Day 38
Today I am in the Hebrides. I am grasping with forlorn anticipation thoughts of whatever new landscape I can. Our good friends are organizing a trip for the six participants in the current Saturday virtual drinks party. To look forward to a journey to the Western Isles, albeit in 12 months time, is a wonderful idea. We shall need to dust down our copy of Compton Mackenzie’s Whisky Galore, a book I have read twice and shall enjoy again in 2021. As OTM says, my wife may be tempted to take up scuba diving to search for the remaining bottles of whisky lying at the bottom of the sea.
Day 39
I am off in Barsetshire again today. The warden is about to resign and the odious Archdeacon cannot stop him. Hurrah for the warden. Yah boo sucks to Mr Bold. On the other hand perhaps a modicum of reform was needed in the Church. On further thought, a bit more is still required today.
Headmaster Boris still has a sick note from matron. He has brought in an inspector from the Department of Science – which trumps everything Education and the Foreign Office have to offer – and Inspector Witty says I may have to be locked in for another 12 months. Bugger that I say.
Day 40
It’s day 40 already. I can’t say it has flown by. I am not a particularly religious soul – I like the Communion service using the 1662 Book of Common Prayer because of the words and implicit wisdom – yet I consider these forty days. Scholars of the Bible write “40 appears so often in contexts dealing with judgment or testing”. Yes, we are all being tested. In Genesis, God destroyed the earth with water, bringing rain for 40 days and 40 nights. Could we have just a couple of day’s worth now please? In Exodus Moses spent 40 days and 40 nights on Mount Sinai. It was all right for him; we may have to spend 80, 120 or 240 days and nights in our private abode.
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^ Morepork, ninox novaeseelandiae, is the only surviving native owl in New Zealand. The Maori name for the owl is ‘ruru’ comes from the sad song that is repeated at regular intervals.
* A mule is a cross between a Bluefaced Leicester ram and a Swaledale ewe.
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