Solace and Sorrow

Is there anyone who hasn't turned to the natural world for comfort during this awful pandemic? Even though the frigging virus is also a part of that same natural world. 

I was feeling really flat yesterday and forced myself to go do some polytunnel pottering to cheer myself up when I heard the pheasant squawk. 

Must go fetch the camera and see if I can capture it. Will be a change from my millions of pictures of finches and collared doves. But when I got back the pheasant had turned into...

...a hare! The first one I've ever spotted around here. I took a few quick shots then fetched Bert. He just managed to see it before it disappeared into the wood. He said it has been decades since there have been hares in these fields. 

It really cheered me up to have seen it and I spent a contented half-hour sowing nasturtiums and beans. 

No more sightings or squawks from the pheasant so I decided to take a dander towards the wood, camera at the ready. No pheasants here, just a quick glimpse of a red fox disappearing into the trees. No photograph to prove I saw it. No time. Now I was even more delighted. Until I considered that, although Fox is a beautiful animal, it will be hungry and pheasants and hares may need to take care.  

It is only a small sorrow that the fox might eat the foolish pheasant. It would be a rare thing if it killed an adult hare but foxes will kill and eat entire leveret populations. 

Bert and I were discussing this when he remarked,

Y'know, I haven't seen any buzzards around for a while. I wonder if some sheep farmer is poisoning them?

Last week we'd found a dead buzzard at the edge of the wood which Bert thought might have been poisoned.

My mood plunged. What if someone was systematically poisoning the buzzards? I felt hatred towards that someone. And couldn't stop dwelling on it. The country is full of sheep at the moment and some sheep farmers believe that buzzards kill newborn lambs. They don't, although are known to feed on dead or stillborn lambs. 

So there we are. Nature isn't all primroses and songbirds. It's horror and death and bastard farmers flailing hedges, cutting down trees and poisoning birds of prey.

 

I did eventually see that stupid pheasant. But not today. When I told Hannah about the fox she said,

Oh good! There will soon be some interesting bones in the wood.

I called her a ghoul.

Hannah's shrine of bones

 

The buzzard's feet

Red dot: dead buzzard

White dot: Hannah's bone shrine

Blue dot: Where the hare sat

Orange dot: The fox

 

New Year's Day

Martha asked me recently how long I might live. I answered, 

I'm planning to live until I'm 88 years old. I might live longer or I might die before that, but - that's the plan anyway. You'll be in your early thirties by then, you'll be a proper grown-up, on your way.

I think she liked that answer, Being thirty-three must seem like a lifetime away to her. When I was her age I thought my life would be hardly worth living at thirty. I expected to be married to some elderly boring professor who I wouldn't even particularly like and that I'd have about four not very interesting children, likely all boys. Obvious that I believed Jo March's fate to be a big disappointment.

Bert's Aunt Lizzie has gone two years over my ideal lifespan. I spent most of yesterday with her and she is not in good form. She won't eat, hardly drinks, cannot sleep and is in constant pain. She waited three months for a hospital appointment and has finally been given one for this day week. In ordinary times she would already be in the hospital if only to be rehydrated. This pandemic is dreadful for the ordinary sick and elderly whose care needs are not being met. One of Lizzie's carers told me that on a recent house visit she came upon an elderly man who had fallen and could not get up. Normally carers would be expected to call an ambulance and wait until it arrived. Two hours later, no ambulance had arrived so she sought the help of a neighbour who helped her get the old chap on his feet. He then declared that he would not go to hospital and the ambulance was cancelled. Incidentally, this carer waited on her own time and will never be paid for it. And didn't even resent it. A true Hero.

Lizzie in better days

Lockdown Christmas Dec 18

One of the more interesting things about social media is how it gives one an insight into how other people are coping in the run-up to Christmas. There are pictures of decorated trees on Instagram, family WhatsApp photos of adorable five-year-olds in nativity plays, videos of folk in their reindeer antlers and hideous Christmas jumpers and exciting blogs about London flat dwellers having been delivered fourteen-foot trees when they'd only ordered a four foot bush.

This year is a Christmas like no other with most of the world coping with a pandemic and some of our governments coping rather badly. And here, in the British Isles everyone intelligent one of us, no matter what size our island, has the added concern of what is going to happen after Brexit. 

Still. Christmas. I'd promised myself that this year I would not add to my anxieties by leaving everything to the last minute and that I would shop online. It was all going rather well. Except for one order, something Christmassy ordered from a company advertising on Facebook. There was nothing to indicate that the items were coming from Berlin and it was two weeks before I heard a peep. A few more anxious days followed then joy, I got a notification that my parcel had arrived at Princess Royal DC. I had no idea what or where Princess Royal DC was but I suspected it might be a boat. Turns out it is a distribution centre in London. Six days later my parcel is still there and it contains items meant for nine different family members.

This place is massive. It is also 17 mins by postman's van from London Sister and just under an hour from Ganching.

Now Bert has taken to watching the news and bounces in to tell me snippets he thinks might be of interest, like,

Stanley McConaghy* was on the news again, tonight!

And,

Looks like BT42 (our postcode) is the most coviddy** hole in Northern Ireland!

And,

You're never going to get that parcel before Christmas. Just seen a report of the distribution centres in London. Mountains of parcels. They can't cope.

*A dog.

**Stricken with coronavirus

Reasonably Happy

This evening, in the polytunnel, a glass of wine to hand, three books on the go, three kinds of nasturtium to sow and two sorts of chilli seedlings to pot on and I felt happy enough.

Almost as if I wasn't living through a global pandemic.

But know what's really annoying me right now? Television advertising that is riding on the back of stayingathome and beinglockeddown. Hey, peeps! This is all a bit shite, you can't go out, God knows how long it's all going to go on and hopefully we wontdie because we'reallinthistogether and theresnoflour or tinnedtomatoes and isnttheNHSwonderful? And carerstoo, letsclap and sellthemabadge. But..... buy our frozen chips, our pasta sauce, our toiletries and all will be well. For we really do care about you.

I have made up my mind to avoid all companies and institutions that are providing soothing, family orientated advertisements. Call me cynical all you like but I don't think they really give one fuck about us.

On a lighter note, I've told Martha and Evie that when all this has passed we'll be having a two-night sleepover. Their mother?

Two nights! You can have them for a fortnight! 

Can't wait.