A virus on the landscape 4 - isolamento

Where's the vodka?

Day 41

Charlie, the goat, and I made up over the gate this morning. I know he has forgiven me for hobnobbing with the ewes; he wagged his tail and ran across his field to greet me.

It is yet another beautiful spring morning, even warm at an early hour. The seedlings are struggling because it is so dry. Rain is forecast for three days time.

Last night I was in Paris in the spring sunshine, with Chief Inspector Maigret in Maigret’s Pickpocket. He spends a lot of time in bars. Like Inspector Montalbano he likes his food and drink. In this latest episode Madame Rose at the Vieux-Pressoir cooks him chaudrée fourassiene – a soup made of eels, baby soles and squid. After that Rose brings him a leg of lamb all washed down with two carafes of red. Phew! Then he went back to work in search of the murderer.

Day 42

Rain, rain, there’s glorious rain. We had all of two millimeters last night. This was just enough to wet the soil.

Headmaster Boris is back in school. He will be chasing up the monitors and checking what damage they have done in his absence.

Day 43

Today I am in Sanwi, a kingdom of the Ivory Coast. After the president of Belarus, whose panacea for dealing with the virus is to drink lots of vodka, the King of Sanwi has made his contribution to the list of global remedies. He will order a line of naked women to parade before him and his people to ward off the virus – allegedly he believes the girls will protect him from the bad spirits. Now, in the post-Harvey Weinstein world in which we live such an idea would best not be proposed in this country. However, in the completely unequal society that is Britain where the male sex is downtrodden, I am sure it won’t be long before a woman columnist of a British broadsheet will suggest the Chippendales perform in public to uplift spirits – and nobody, apart from a few balanced males like me (of course), will object.

Ah well, such are the complexities and contradictions of living in an advanced, liberal and civilized democracy, we shut this from our thoughts and decide on a long walk to Rougemont Castle.

The castle is an early medieval earth and timber ringwork fortress, founded by the de Lisles family in the fourteenth century. The manor of Rougement was abandoned in 1366, when Harewood House was built. The ruins rest on the north bank of the River Wharfe. Today the floor of the wood surrounding it looks like an illustration from a book of children’s nursery rhymes; it is carpeted with English bluebells. (Unlike our orchard that is carpeted with the Spanish variety.)

Rain is on its way.

Rougemont wood

Day 44

For the first time since incarceration commenced we are literally confined to quarters. It has rained most of the day. Yippee. The patch will be getting a good soaking and my King Edwards will be relieved of their thirst. The water butts will be replenished for the first time since March.

I turn to a new book that was featured in a newspaper today as one of the best books written about football. I have had a copy of The Football Man by Arthur Hopcraft in my library since 1970. I am only now enjoying lucid prose about George Best, Matt Busby, a young Ken Bates, referees and corruption in the game in the 1960s. I remember well the scandal brought on the game by three Sheffield Wednesday players.

Day 45

Today I write about my experience of visiting Zululand last year. This is part of preparing a longer piece on the Anglo-Zulu war, the futility of the battles, the arrogance and incompetence shown by Sir Bartle Frere and Lord Chelmsford in January 1879 and the pride of a living Zulu man. The flow of what I wish to say is not coming easily. I have in my head the substance of the piece – the story of men making war in an inhospitable landscape – but getting the balance right is not happening.

I break off to cut rhubarb and make another crumble.

Day 46

It is cool and damp this morning but we have had little rain. The veg seeds are thirsty. I decide they are very particular. They don’t like tap water, only rain.

A comic I play golf with liked my Ogden Nash poem and has sent me one that his family had about a bird:

Poor little thing

Had no feathers on his wing

Had no mummy, had no daddy

Chop his bloody head off.

This morning our garden has been visited by birds we see rarely, making bold with our bird feeder: a jay, a great spotted woodpecker and several thrushes. All have their heads intact.

Day 49

Charlie and I have come to the conclusion that sheep are dim-witted animals. They have all the grass in our paddock to eat yet they force their heads through netting to eat dead wood. On the plus side they like to play golf. My tub of golf balls has always been upended by them each morning.

The Tall Man in the village asks me to play tennis. This turns out to be a good work out for 35 minutes followed by a socially distanced beer on his terrace for an hour afterwards. Because he is in the at risk category of citizens he sought the permission to play with me from his haematologist. She gave him the thumbs up.

Day 50

Half a century of days incarcerated.

Headmaster Boris has named his sixth child Wilfred; that is a solidly English name.

Day 51

On the morning field walk I inform Charlie that we may have to stop being up close and personal from now on. He is not impressed as he enjoys the morning head scratch I give him. I tell him that President Magufuli of Tanzania claims that a goat and a sheep tested positive for Covid-19. Charlie’s owner works in the NHS so we’ll order a goat testing kit.

We have to feel sympathy for my sister and her husband in South Africa. They are down to their last slug of gin! Beer gone. Wine gone. Currently it is forbidden to buy alcohol in Durban. Booze is only sold in bottle shops, not in supermarkets, and they are all closed and her stocks are gone. She does have a cunning plan though. She knows that in the ladies’ lounge at the golf club there is a secret stash of wine, (well it was secret), that only she and the captain know about. I shan’t be surprised when she is sent to Robben Island to serve a 10-year sentence for breaking and entering.

Day 52

The days tick by but there is optimism in the golfing fraternity that two-ball games will be allowed and we can get playing again soon. So it is tennis again today.

Day 53

Poor Charlie is one confused goat. Two days ago I told him we had to keep two metres apart at all times. This morning, I not only gave him a hug but also offered him a tumbler of vodka. The problem is the politicians. It usually is. You listen to one and you feel compelled to listen to the next one. The presidents of Tanzania and Belarus are not singing from the same hymn sheet. Tanzania thinks goats should be SD’d as they can get the pesky virus; Belarus says I should hug them and swig vodka.

My vote goes to Belarus.

Day 54

The routine of incarceration is broken – I even forget to walk the bounds and talk with Charlie – by the arrival of a ‘man-with-digger’. We have a dozen tree stumps in out hedge line that are being removed. A stone wall will be constructed in place. It is most exciting.

The BBC is going in for some jingoism today by replaying the 2005 Ashes Test at Edgbaston on the wireless. It could almost be real summer with the voices of Jonathan Agnew and Glenn Maxwell bringing the drama of 15 years ago. Strewth, how time flies.

Day 55

More and more I come to detest the BBC TV news. The editors are wallowing in the story of the path the virus is taking us. Instead of just reporting the facts they must speculate on what the government will say or do next. I doubt the Headmaster even knows that! I also hate the word ‘lockdown’. I cannot get out of my head a sense of the British people being herded indoors and the key turned, and left in a state of submission. We are all to be good citizens; you cannot make your own mind up on Headmaster Boris or new man Starmer. We are going to lock you up and brainwash you. We shall repeat what we just told you until you scream.

I much prefer an Italian word – isolamento. Like all things Italian the word has style, musical rhythm and a sense of individualism that ‘lockdown’ just does not have. Besides, when push comes to shove, the English are not a submissive lot. The Scots maybe, but not the English.

Day 56

I maintain the air of excitement after the re-landscaping of the orchard – the digger has gone - by driving to Otley to deliver presents to Otley Grump and his wife: a book and a bottle of gin. For the evening Zoom drinks party OG makes a ‘Gin Mule’ cocktail that is supposed to have a slice of cucumber in it. Only he mistakes a courgette for a cucumber – ‘an administrative error’ he reports.

It is a hot day and the May blossom in the hedgerows is beautiful.

Day 57

The summer of yesterday has given way to the winter of today. The thermometer reads 7 degrees.

But no matter, the school population is abuzz with gossip and conjecture; Headmaster Boris has let it be known he wishes to give a lecture to the whole school tonight. We suspect it is because some naughty pupils have been caught outside the school boundaries and we are to receive a severe telling off. There are even rumours that we are all to be gated for another month. If that is the case I predict an outbreak of student disobedience and rioting. It could make Lindsay Anderson’s film from 1968, If, look tame by comparison. Who will be our Mick, aka Malcolm McDowell?

Day 58

Headmaster Boris’s lecture left me a bit confused. Can we drive to see our grandchildren or not? Can I play golf this week or not? I think it would have been better if he had joined up with Headmaster Kier, head of the rapidly improving comprehensive school across town. Together they would have reached out to all the miscreants breaking the regulations.

The local garden centre is open so Liza and I go to buy plants and compost. The manager says the police have given the green light to open last week.

Day 59

The Headmaster is showing his sporty side by telling us that we can put our games kit back on – but only if we are playing golf, tennis or fishing. That not only pleases me but my neighbour, the owner of the Mules, and the tall Man. If we don’t behave ourselves on the pitch – and keep 2 metres apart from our opponents – then games will be off again says Boris.

When the embargo is lifted at 5:00 p.m. the scramble to book a tee time on the golf course website is frenetic. Dozens of us must have been logged in, ready to pounce on the online diary when the clock struck 5, then we were in, fending off other members for the slot we want. I am fortunate to book three games this week; the maximum one member can play.

Just our luck it might snow tomorrow, it is cold enough.

Day 60

Am I dreaming, did I really play golf today – for the first time in 8 weeks – or was it real? It was real what a way to celebrate our diamond jubilee of isolamento.

The Man from Blythe and I strode the green, parched fairways – always 2 metres apart of course. Oh what joy, what release, what fun to hear that north-eastern wit again. We are definitely through the end of the beginning of this national incarceration. It could be we are now at the start of the endgame. (Note to self: better thank the Headmaster this evening on behalf of thousands who played tennis or golf today.)

When I return to the garden in the afternoon to share my joy with Charlie he is far from impressed. I failed for the first time in 60 days to walk the estate and give him his early morning greeting. He knows I preferred golf to him.

Charlie is miffed. Not good to have a miffed goat as a neighbour. I will have to make amends with an early walk in the morning.

Miffed goat

A virus on the landscape 3 - Easter lock-in

 

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.

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.

Moreporks in Queenstown prison

Day 26

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.

'We gated too?"

Day 37

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.

A virus on the landscape 2 – From China with Love

Day 11

The Prince of Wales has the blasted virus. He’s all right though because he is holed up in his Scottish pile with a small band of his staff. Some Scots are not best pleased at this news. He might have brought his illness from London and infected some of their citizens.

Headmaster Boris also has gone down with the bug. As has School Prefect Mr. Hancock – not the one in the lift with ‘eight persons’ but the prefect in charge of health and the NHS.

It was another backbreaking day in the patch. Creeping buttercup has long roots and every little sod (of earth) has to be pulled apart by hand. The long-tailed tits and red kites are keeping me company; the former are flitting from one tree to another uttering their cheerful tweet; the latter wheeling above issuing their mournful cry. Yesterday, high up and riding the thermals I saw a pack of over sixty kites, flying large circles and eventually moving off towards Harewood House where they are fed.

Day 12

I made my first break out for six days. It was an exciting two miles trip in the car to the local supermarket in Harrogate to buy a hard copy newspaper (we have the digital version on other days) and hunt for yeast, bread flour and carrots. Sadly none of these were on the shelves that are mostly stripped bare. My excitement of breaching the gate abated.

So it is back to the patch and by day’s end I have completed weeding the area where the first vegetable seeds will be sown. What do I think about during these long hours of toil in the patch? I suppose similar thoughts to those of Haruki Murakami in his book What I Talk About When I Talk About Running (2007). Murakami was training for the 2005 New York City marathon. I am training for the 2020 Covid-19 Summer Lock in. Except, I am not training, I’m actually in it. I am up and running.

I am often bemused by my awareness of location – my brain can suddenly transport me to somewhere in the world, it is not unusual for a place visited dozens of years ago to come to mind, quite randomly, when I remember whom I was with and where we were going. It is remarkable how often some places come to mind after so long a period. Today it was a walk in the snow-covered pine forests north of Vancouver, British Columbia, in the winter of 1967/8. With my cousin and a university friend we drove north to a First Nations village. Here I saw for the first time indigenous Canadians with no jobs, no prospects, nothing to look forward to except the next drink. There was old beer bottles strewn across the derelict land interspersed with the occasional wreck of a car without its wheels. This was hopelessness incarnate. I think some more about 1968. What a year that was! Moving up my reading list is An American Melodrama: The Presidential Campaign of 1968. I remember the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy, Negro riots, anti Vietnam War riots, the ‘abattoir’ of the Democratic Convention in Chicago. Oh yes, that was quite a year. There were even student protests and sit ins on the campus of Nottingham University. Students are so well behaved and law abiding nowadays.

A second trip to ‘outside’ is to the village pub to collect our supper. It is not only feels good to support the pub – which like every small business will be experiencing hardship – but it gives me a second night off from cooking this week.

Day 13

Like many other house prisoners we have installed Zoom on our computers. On Saturdays we have weekly virtual drinks parties with friends in Yorkshire. Today we also hold our first Zoom hookup with all three of our kids and their families. Wooded, Victoria, Australia; Market Harborough, Leicestershire; Leeds, West Yorkshire and Kirby Overblow, North Yorkshire are all looking in and describing their best bits of the week. The Aussies are toasting marshmallows on an open fire bathed in autumn sunshine. Mount Macedon and golden maple trees shine in their evening glow. In North Yorkshire it is snowing. It is the first day of spring!

Day 14

Charlie and I are most impressed by the president of Belarus. “The strongman leader of Belarus is promoting his own unique recipe for staying healthy: drink vodka, work hard in the countryside and visit the sauna.” Now as someone who gave up gin in favour of vodka four years ago this is welcome good news. I drink vodka, (not on Mondays to Thursdays), toil in the patch (every day except the Sabbath), and have a hot shower (several times a week).  So if I follow President Alexander Lukashenko’s dictum I will keep free of the virus. Belarus is not a country in which I have travelled but it sounds like an attractive landscape. There are 9.5 million souls living there and as of last week the shops, markets and theatres were all open doing brisk business. I reckon we should head off there immediately I have my vegetable seeds in.

Back in the patch I am digging again. I have a game that keeps my golf putting in trim. I have set up a bucket in one corner and each time I unearth a stone I lob it into the bucket, keeping in mind: ‘Keep your head still, breathe in…and don’t leave it short’. A golf professional has also come up with Chipping Snooker; I have set up a series of different sized containers at varying distances from a mat. I then have to chip a golf ball into each.

Today my wife remarked she had the first twinge of concern we are in this incarceration for a long time. I share her thoughts. The novelty of the new life is starting to wear off for both of us. We are only two weeks in. How many more to go?

Day 15

It takes a long time to get motivated to do anything today. The likely length of the lock in is sinking in to my mind. I dig. I daydream about walking the Lakeland Fells. I make a few telephone calls to friends.

Our afternoon walk up our middle lane provides us with respite. At the highest point there is a clear, uninterrupted view up Wharfedale. There is Ilkley Moor to our left and Nidderdale to our right. Oh, how I long to get up there and stride out – and call in for a pint at The Craven Arms in Appletreewick.

Day 16

There is more good news for vodka drinkers of the world. A firm in New York named Air Co is taking captured carbon dioxide and turning it into vodka. So every time I pour a shot, or two, I am helping save the planet. Two positive steps are achieved with one slug. However, this vodka retails at $65 a bottle and…I notice that today is 1^st April. So maybe Mr. Trump is having a joke with us.

I continue to dig for virus.

Day 17

The wind has veered to the west. It brings different sounds and smells to those from the north of the past few days. I am now reading Philip Pullman’s The Subtle Knife, the second volume of His Dark Materials Trilogy. If I cannot go out into my local landscape then there is nowhere better to be than with Pullman. The story in this book moves between three landscapes. Pullman calls them universes.

Having watched the disappointing 1979 film Zulu Dawn last night it has provided the inspiration to sketch out a bit more of the next landscape blog to be titled kwaZulu which is about the men caught up on the landscape where the battles of Isandlwhana and Rorke’s Drift were fought in 1879.

Day 18

I had a dream about Oxford last night. This is not surprising because it comes into Philip Pullman’s book. I dreamed about the people I worked with at Blackwell’s. Curiously I was firing a member of staff. The Ashmolean and the Bodleian Library featured in the dream.

Digging in the patch is getting difficult. The ground is hard and compacted. We have had no rain for over two weeks.

Are you talkin' to me?

Day 19

At this time of year, especially this year as I am out in the patch for many hours each day, I remember my father who every spring loved to recite this poem:

Spring is sprung

The grass is riz

I wonder where the birdies is

The birdie is on the wing

But that’s absurd

The wing is on the bird

My dad would without fail giggle his way through this as, en famille, we drove to our annual Easter walk in the Peak District. At the time I was ignorant of the author. It is Ogden Nash. My father was neither a great reader nor a bookish man despite manufacturing them. But he had an ear for music and absurdity in song and verse.

Day 20

I am covid out. My three weekend newspapers have little else to write about. I have had enough. It’s back to the patch. I decide that when ‘I stand and stare’ across my landscape I will record every species of bird I see in 24 hours. They are: coal tit, blue tit, great tit, long tailed tit, carrion crow, wood pigeon, pheasant (grrh, I hate them), great spotted woodpecker, blackbird, magpie, dunnock, bullfinch, chaffinch, red kite and goldfinch. We usually see robins and nuthatches but they are keeping away today. I also hear a tawny owl.

We both toil some more in the patch. I reckon one more day will see it dug all over. I sow seeds of leek and carrot, as the day is so warm. We just need some rain.

Day 1 before the dig 

Day 21 - after

Day 21
One aspect of this lock in is that we have all had to learn to reset our life’s objectives. With no end to the emergency identifiable I find it best to shorten plans and confine them to the day’s ambitions. (‘Setting the day’s ambitions’ is an activity my South African based sister and her family installed in their routines when the children were young. It is a good activity. Thus one avoids being disappointed by failing to complete a long list of chores or tasks.)

Today we completed the weeding of the veg patch. It has taken since Day 1. The hard graft is over. I sew some more veg seeds as the sun continues to shine. It is almost bliss here.

The robin and the nuthatch put in an overdue appearance. I suspect they did not want to be a statistic on yesterday’s list.

Day 22

Headmaster Boris is in hospital with the virus. This is sad and disturbing news. Also School Monitor Gove has it too. There is some good news from Westminster; we now have a believable leader of the opposition.

After sowing more veg seeds and onion sets we take off into the lower Wharfedale landscape for a 5-mile walk. Then I am back in my latest read; The Washing of the Spears; the rise and fall of the Zulu Nation by Donald R. Morris (1966).

with apologies to Richard Chopping

Day 23

The North Yorkshire landscape remains looking beautiful. There is no blight. There is no infection. As I talk to Charlie on the morning walk I reflect on the calamitous state of affairs in the United States. New York City is losing as many citizens in a day that the whole of the UK. In China it is announced that there are no new cases on the virus. In the province where the virus started people are allowed out. Life is getting back to normal. The 8-lane highways are full of traffic again and the airport is congested. Yet across the US hundreds are dying. The country’s president shows no national leadership. It is highly questionable that the US will ever be a global economic power again. The president and the citizens show little desire to be world shapers. This leaves the road open for the Chinese to move right in and become the single, global economic power. Their singular, Communist influence is about to be unleashed on us all – From China with Love!

A virus on the landscape

Day 1

We awake remembering the taxi for the airport is due at 8:10 a.m. The flight to Melbourne is at 1:10 pm. The bags are packed, time for a quick coffee. Then the 6-month long dream of a trip to Australia then turns into a nightmare, as yesterday’s cancellation is now a reality that stuns our waking brains.

In all fairness the trip has been off-on-off-on for days. Now we have to admit defeat. The pesky virus has won. That does not prevent a mood of depression that hits us full on.

Six hours later I begin to look at what positives could come from an enforced six weeks at home, possibly incarcerated within the limited landscape of house and garden. At least we have a garden, many others don’t. I come to the conclusion I had lost interest in our vegetable patch. Ah ha!  So maybe now I can launch myself into a project.

Walking out from the village in warm spring sunshine is unreal. It seems that there should be something wrong with the landscape that is preventing travel and closing workplaces as well as killing the vulnerable old. Where is this virus? Can I see it? Is it lurking in the clouds, black and threatening like a thunderstorm? It doesn’t feel right that we cannot see what is closing down our normal way of life.

Tilling the earth seems like a wholesome and natural activity, so I set to and started weeding the vegetable patch. I have a long way to go. I plant a new, young gooseberry bush and a redcurrant shrub. Untainted life will soon be offering fruits.

My wife Liza has had a sore throat 4 days; we hope it is just a cold!

Day 2

Having booked to play golf as usual on a Wednesday, discretion gets the better of me, as I defer to the thought that if Liza has got the virus I should not go to play golf with a bunch of upper 70’s blokes. It would not be prudent to kill off one’s buddies, especially when I have taken some money from them of late. Anyway, it is spotting with rain, that won’t make it much fun. So, with reluctance, I stay at home. I regard our house and garden as ‘inside’. Everywhere else is ‘outside’.

The outside news gets worse everyday. More institutions close yet schools stay open for now. Are we seventy-year-old people really going to have to stay on our properties for up to twelve weeks? This really is frightening. Once again I regard us as fortunate; we have a garden and some space.

I feel I must go out. Liza is feeling ill but we still believe it is not the virus but a cold. We shall know tomorrow. So I drive to the post office, (to dispatch the Aussie grandchildren’s gifts that were packed to go with us), and then to RHS Harlow Carr garden for a walk and to buy vegetable seeds. The garden is coming to life in the weak spring sunshine. Red rhododendrons, dwarf daffodils and dogwoods bring colour to what should be a normal view. But I still see a landscape that should have some danger sign across it: ‘THE END OF THE WORLD IS NIGH, BUT WASH YOUR HANDS FOR HALF A MINUTE, THEN YOU MIGHT LIVE ANOTHER DAY’.

Day 3

The outside news is bad. Stock markets continue to free-fall. The pound sterling is at its lowest level for 30 years. Even worse, the cricket season may not take place. All schools will close indefinitely from 20^th March.

The inside good news is that Liza is feeling better so it would appear she has nothing more than a cold.

There is some encouraging outside news. Joe Biden will almost certainly see off Bernie Sanders for the nomination for the Democrats’ candidate for the US presidency.

Having bought my vegetable seeds I must now get digging in the patch. But today it is too wet and cold to dig. I chop some firewood, prune some shrubs and retreat to the summerhouse. A first! A first sit in the summerhouse this year. Hurray!

Day 4

Our granddaughter in Australia has found the answer. Gwen says: “If I find a Conivarius I’m going to fart on it. That should do the trick.”

Her grandma in Wales has seen the positive extra benefits: “That’s the spirit Gwen. It should also help evacuate the surrounding area should people not be observing the correct social distancing.”

I search for normality with a first visit to the golf course in over a week. The sun in shining, there is no wind: ideal golfing conditions. Yet it is not normal. Dozens of others have had the same idea; the thought that you can’t catch corbyn 19, (or is it covid 19), if you are outdoors so long as you remain a club’s length away from everyone else. The flag poles have grey water pipe insulating foam attached to them so the ball won’t go all the way down to the bottom of the hole and we don’t have to touch the flag. The professional had an inspired idea.

The small bar in the clubhouse is closed but the lounge is open and chairs set a metre apart. It is reminiscent of “the few” waiting in armchairs by their Spitfires as they prepare for another sortie in The Battle of Britain. The young Tykes of our club believe the over 80s should not be anywhere near them.

 “If they catch it they’ll expect to be taken to hospital and take up key resources. We are all going to die sooner or later, them a bit sooner than they thought perhaps.” It is not a position I can argue with.

After golf I am back in the patch, ‘digging for victory’ – to borrow the Second World War phrase used by allotment holders in the 1940s. Or it should be ‘digging for virus’. There has been much comment in the media of late, comparing our predicament – both health wise and economic – with the experience of Londoners during the Blitz in 1940.

Day 5

From now on my first excursion each morning, now we are largely confined to quarters, is to walk around the estate. It sounds grand but it’s just less than one acre. The joy of this at such a time of the year includes the morning chirrups of blackbirds, robins and wrens. Having planted a few trees last year, and the replacement soft fruit bushes this year, I also look every morning to see how each has chitted a bit more since yesterday. At the top of our paddock is a gate into our neighbour’s. Their friendly goat, Charlie, is there to greet me each day. I stop to give his neck a scratch, which he enjoys with a grin.

Headmaster Boris has declared we are now all gated. (Having been gated as a punishment at school over fifty years ago I remember that there are ways of temporarily escaping this restriction.) Boris has declared that under 70s can visit food shops only (that’s me excluded); to which I add the golf course but not the clubhouse, now that pubs, churches and gyms are off limits. So it is another day in the patch – weeding amongst the strawberries, raspberries and last year’s parsnips. I am preparing for the long haul and will soon be sowing vegetable seeds that will yield crops to keep us sustained through the long summers, autumns and winters of the next three years. If the chief medical officer is correct we could be locked down for three years. Three years! I could be dead by then.

So for an indeterminate length of time the landscape for us two Yorkshire figures is an orchard, a veg patch and a paddock.

To keep the brain being ossified I have read three books in five days; Rounding the Mark by Andrea Camilleri (Inspector Montalbano deals with death, illegal immigrants, the chaotic Catarella and the delicious Livia in Sicily); Maigret’s Patience by Georges Simenon (the 64^th novel in this inimitable series); and The Looking Glass War by John le Carré (Penguin has just reissued this brilliant satire of the Cold War paranoia in Whitehall). Next up is The Making of the President 1964 by William Manchester. I am re-reading this in a year when we are critically short of candidates of the stature of Kennedy (Robert), Nixon, Johnson, Goldwater, Rockefeller, Scranton and Lodge – all flawed personalities but honourable leaders (with one exception). The similarities between Goldwater and Trump are uncanny.

Day 6

Mothers’ Day. Two bright sparks in the village have set up a Facebook account for the church and a camera in front of the altar. The Rev. Ralph Hudspeth holds a virtual service. What would my mother, (116 if she were still with us), have made of this fiasco we are in? No doubt she would have carried on phlegmatically as she did in the last war and through all subsequent crises in her life.

Another thirty square feet of impacted soil in the patch is dug over today. This is followed by completion of the fourth book of the week; the hilarious golf memoir, The Downhill Lie by US crime novelist Carl Hiaasen. In this book he addresses the insanity played out by millions of figures across the world every week when blasting a little white sphere around a park with eighteen holes.

Day 7

The sun is shining; it is a brilliant and bright spring morning. The golf course is open (most of the club buildings are closed) so where better to spend a few hours? The Times correspondent in Scotland writes today that many courses north of the border are fearful for the future. Club membership is falling throughout Great Britain. This crisis could put many out of business. As of today it is still not contravening advice to play. We don’t go nearer than two metres to our fellow players; we touch no course furniture - neither fixed nor loose. The five of us are of the same mind to get some exercise, doing what we like and in good company. We shall continue to play whilst the going is good.

Whilst my own rural landscape is tranquil and largely deserted the towns are full of shoppers rushing about like ants around their nest, hunting for food with which to stock their larder. It is a frightening world where many folk are obsessed with provisioning their cupboards to bursting point. There are books to be read, films to be watched and gardens to be dug; these are the simplest yet most rewarding life activities.

Across the world, parents are homeschooling their children, and in the process learning themselves; that teachers are unsung, and underpaid, heroes. Step up Mr. Gisborne – the other one.

Day 8

We are all now in ‘lockdown’ as the newspapers like to call it. Headmaster Boris has banned us all from going anywhere – we must stay at home. My golf club has e-mailed to report that the course is closed from today.

So the veg patch is the main project now plus the books. I realize my wife and I are fortunate to have a bit of space in which to breathe the country air and a large library.

The view of the landscape across the fields looks stunning this morning. It is bathed in bright sunshine and the blackbirds are definitely animated with the thought of nookie.

Day 9

On my walk around the paddock once again I am struck by the invisible destructiveness of this virus and the purity of the air and the landscape before me. I am reminded of the great twentieth century philosopher, Anthony Aloysius Hancock. Trapped in a stuck lift with ‘eight persons’ he muses about air and the shortage of it in their predicament and the likely demand for it as the world population grows so fast.

“Too many people breathing too little air.

“It’s a funny thing air, isn’t it Doc? You can’t see it. You can’t touch it. You can’t smell it. But its there.” He could be talking about the virus.

Day 10

On my morning perambulation around our plot – it would take under five minutes without the chat with Charlie – I am struck once again by the dichotomy between the inspiring North Yorkshire landscape, bathed in warm sunshine with the birds full of lusty song, and our country’s position on the brink of a precipice, about to tumble into a public health and economic depression. I do fear for our kids’ and their generation and our grandchildren too. The economic damage being perpetrated on this country will thrust uncertainty on all who expect to work and gain financial comfort before they in turn retire. We are the lucky ones who look not for work but leisure and peace. Is this ‘lockdown’ worth the effect it will have on the lives of our children’s children?

A virus on the landscape 

will be back

in....

Fom China with Love