As Janine has said in her blog, we have all had to learn new methods of communicating and living during lockdown. This has involved lots of zooming, phoning of friends, buying groceries online and more baking than usual with the corresponding increase of waistline!
However there are sometimes unexpected advantages. I have one friend in particular who lives on her own in a very small village in the midlands. She has spent the last few years devotedly visiting her Mother in a care home each day, reading to her and bringing her treats, chocolate buttons in the main. Obviously she was unable to visit as we went into lockdown and initially found this very hard. Sadly her Mother died three weeks ago, thankfully not of Covid-19. There were lots of phone calls between us and on the day after the funeral I rang to see how things had gone. She just said that it had been beautiful and she was so thankful that only she and the four immediate members of her family had been able to attend. ‘I don’t think I would have coped with a lot of people there.’ So there was a silver lining to this cloud.
There are also the amusing incidents. Our next door neighbour ordered a pile of turf to be delivered last week to re-turf his lawn. As always seems to happen, the minute you lay new turf, the weather turns scorching hot and the new lawn needs constant watering. When the lawn was laid there were three spare rolls which he gave to us, so my husband set to immediately to replace the worn patches of our lawn. He was lying under the magnolia tree in the front garden when I went out to ask if he would like a cup of tea. Two ladies walking down the road were giving me very strange looks and then as they got to the garden gate one of them said, ‘Oh I see now, we thought you were talking to the tree.’
I assured them that no, this was my garden gnome and I kept him under the tree whenever he misbehaved. They probably now think that I’m very odd and who knows, they may be right!
Hazel Jenkins