May 4

~ coronet22 ~ 5 Comments

Today, my Mother’s rose tree bloomed for the first time. My Mother died on September 12 last year, at the age of 106, and her devoted friend, Izzi, gave me the rose tree in her memory. It stands outside my study window and I have watched the buds hourly for signs of colour. Towards the end of her long life, the only things that gave Mum real pleasure were visits from me and Izzi and the flowers she’d always loved. We’d bring her roses, tulips, daffodils. (I could never find her favourite violets, and I’m not sure she would have remembered they were her favourite in her last few years of life).

Mum had her own taxonomy of flowers. Carnations were “garage flowers”, lilies reminded her of death (I think she forgot she had them in her wedding bouquet – or maybe she remembered, since the marriage died), she disliked chrysanthemums because they were autumnal, she wouldn’t have anemones in the house (Death again) or red and white flowers in the same vase (blood and bandages). Trish would bring armfuls of glorious lilac from her garden and I would hear Mum muttering “Unlucky”as she threw them in the bin. In fact, though I’ve never thought about it ’til now, florists must have been places of extreme danger for my Mother.

There were pink roses on her dressing table as she lay dying, an echo of the vases that had filled the room at her 106th birthday party only two months before.

The memorial rose is called Emily Bronte and has been chosen with such care, it even boasts” a strong tea fragrance”. Nothing in the world could remind me more of my Mother than “a strong tea fragrance”. She drank at least six cups a day – milk in first – in her favourite bone china mug with a picture of herself drinking tea on the front. She loved that mug and showed it proudly to everyone who visited. I think the idea of a picture of herself drinking tea on something out of which she was drinking tea, delighted her.

I drink as many cups as she did and today, I stood in front of the tree drinking from her cup and convincing myself I could smell an answering scent of tea from the roses.

As Izzi said when he gave it to me, I don’t need anything to remind me of my Mother. She was with me so long, I fancied she would be with me for ever. But I am SO glad to have it. As I read the latest lockdown news or listen to the day’s horrific death toll, I look up from my computer screen and the roses give me pause to remember her beauty and her love.

May 2

~ coronet22 ~ 2 Comments

We were in Jaipur, not many weeks before lockdown. As we sat, eating dinner in a marquee the size of Terminal Five, all sparkling in our various International versions of evening dress, an elegant, serious-looking Indian women glided towards us from across the lawn. Positioning herself beside”The Writer’s” gilt chair, she bent down, gracefully, to his ear and whispered, “I hope you don’t mind if I say something personal?”.

“The Writer” gazing up into her intense face, close enough to his for him to feel the warmth of her skin, clearly didn’t mind what she said, as long as she didn’t move from his side. She bent closer still, her voluptuous lips nearly touching his face, and breathed into his ear, “You know, if God were a lion, he’d look like you”. Then she straightened, fixed him with an intense stare and vanished into the night in a rustle of silken sari.

I mention this today because, “The Writer’s” hair is the topic of discussion at breakfast. (Surprisingly, most of the men I speak to and few of the women, seem concerned about the lack of hairdressers).

Me: “Would you like me to cut it?”

“The Writer”, rearing back in his chair, “What? Are you mad?”

Me: “Well, I could have a go or are you going to let it grow down to your shoulders?”

(I wonder, fleetingly, whether it’s only that he doesn’t trust my technique or is his virility at stake here. Has he developed a Samson complex during Lockdown?)

” She said I looked like God AND like a lion”.

“Who did?”

He gives me a half-piteous, half furious look that says, “If you loved me, you couldn’t possibly have forgotten”

So powerful is the look, I immediately remember. I remember the tent, the smell of a thousand Biryanis, Jalfrezis and Vindaloos on the already fragrant air, the men lounging with embroidered pashminas flung across their shoulders – and, of course, the woman.

“I think the longer it gets, the more leonine I look and, besides, I like looking feral”

“Disinfecting the shopping doesn’t seem very feral,” I remark.

He looks at me with scorn and shakes his head. His hair falls about his shoulders – almost.

It’s not as though I look upon the return of his hairdresser with any pleasure. He’s a beautiful young man who comes to the house and talks incessantly about cricket: World cricket, Test Cricket, One day cricket, Limited Overs, Twenty20, his own team, his batting averages, bowling averages, catches taken. Thinking about the ending of Lockdown and his return, I decide my husband does, indeed, look God-like and give up. I know when I’m beaten.

Besides, how can I compete with the prophet in the silken sari?

April 30

~ coronet22 ~ Leave a comment

You’re still writing in about what symbolises Lockdown for you and I’m struck by the fact that no-one has yet listed anything bad. All the things you’ve mentioned so far, will be a pleasure to look back on.

Poppy writes:

1) Shifting all my work into Zoom. Those dratted headphones that are brilliant but hurt my ears after 8 hours. 
2) My new puppy. An impulse purchase at the beginning of lock down that has been a godsend distraction for all of us.
3) Wild garlic. Foraging and making things from scratch. A return to my childhood where my father would produce a whole meal from a hedgerow.
4) My 3 children. We haven’t spent so much time together in 10 years and it has been amazing to have a stable rhythm with them 

Billy

As we began our 6th week of total isolation, the first person to enter our apartment in all this time, is due today. There is both excitement and trepidation in the air. I have written about Mark, our terrace designer and gardener, before, and now we are so utterly dependent on our terrace for fresh air and beauty, we can’t risk anything on it coming to grief, or we will follow.. The arrangements for Mark to enter our Soho fortress are complex: He is to phone when on his way, phone on arrival downstairs and phone again when he reaches our floor of the block. I will put the front door on the latch in advance, open the terrace door so he doesn’t have to touch it, then close myself in my study. I admit to having misgivings about making Mark feel like a Pariah but, the way he enthusiastically joins in the planning of the mad rituals, reassures me.

Safety ensconced in my study, I shout to him to push open the front door and come in. Through my study door and the heavy steel front door, there is little prospect of his hearing me – and he doesn’t. I rush out of my study, shout the instruction once again from behind the front door, rush back into my study and close the door again, at which moment, Mark enters. It is the oddest feeling to have someone else in the apartment after so long on our own. I have to admit, we’ve both enjoyed not having to entertain the numbers of people who used to troop through and, mysteriously, always head for our lavatory before undertaking any actual work.. But that’s only because, so far, and only by chance, we haven’t needed the services of a plumber, washing machine engineer or electrician. Our solution to a recently bleeping smoke alarm was to rip it out of the ceiling.

“The writer” is so nonplussed, he has retired to his eerie under the roof and and will not emerge ’til the invasion is over. I enjoy a shouted conversation through the terrace door with Mark, as he plants tomatoes and looks approvingly at the gooseberries I’m looking after so assiduously. Until we had them, I never realised gooseberry bushes had such sharp spikes and I wonder whether that’s why they were “chosen” for babies to be found under, to deter the older children from looking for their impending brother or sister? Having concocted this sentimental explanation I discover, on looking it up, that “Gooseberry bush” was 19th-century slang for pubic hair- so much for sentiment.

Mark finishes his tasks, walks gingerly back through the apartment to the front door and leaves us a considerate list of what he’s touched: the hose, outdoor broom and hose tap. I rush out to sanitise them with disinfectant wipes.

“The writer” refuses to re-appear and join me for a celebratory cup of tea until the air has had time to clear.

April 30th

~ coronet22 ~ 1 Comment

The aim of this Blog has always been to record the effects of Lockdown on me and my life and hope it might find an echo or a contradiction in yours. It’s solipsistic but that’s in the nature of diaries, so forgive me if I talk about sleep – my sleep. I have always slept badly, unable to drift off at the beginning of the night, with mostly quite trivial anxieties – tasks unfinished, tasks to come, plans for the next day, even what to wear for an event, swarming in my head. I would wake at about 2am, beset by more free-floating anxiety, and snap instantly wide- awake at about 5am, relieved – thrilled – to begin the day, finally released from thought into action.

Beside me,”The Writer” slept solidly and deeply, waking me from my fragile sleep with snoring, visits to the loo and the occasional leap out of bed to walk up and down the bedroom moaning with cramp.

I needed blackout curtains under heavy velvet ones, the red light on the TV had to be blocked with a statuette (It didn’t have to be a statuette, of course, but it was a good excuse to invest in the glorious Art Deco figure I’d lusted after for years), the green light on the telephone cradle was hidden by a carefully -positioned hand-cream tube and in every hotel we visited, I would block out the various standby lights with a rolled towels or plumped cushion.

‘Durga’ by Demetre Chiparus

I knew all about “sleep hygiene”. I’d read every article warning “No TV before bed”, “Warm bath before bed”, “Hot drink before bed” (Goodness knows how you were ever supposed to get to bed if you had to do all that beforehand.) Then there were the proscriptions: “No mobiles in the bedroom “and, of course, “No checking emails or social media in the night”

“No radio” was one of the many strictures I would ignore, trying all manner of speakers before giving up specialised equipment in favour of sleeping with a small radio under my pillow. “The writer” wouldn’t have wakened if I’d played it at full volume on “Rock Radio” or clog-danced round the room but the under -the- pillow method suited me anyway. It would be on as I went to sleep and again immediately I woke up, always on a speech channel. Listening to voices seemed to drive out the voices in my head. (Not literal ones, you understand).

The odd thing was that I didn’t dream. I know everyone dreams and it’s just that I didn’t remember mine, but that feels like not dreaming. Every morning,”The Writer” would regale me with ever more fantastical stories of where he’s been and what he’d done in the night. I was so envious. Compared to my tedious sleeplessness, his nights were packed with excitement. The only other person I have even known like me is Tod. He regularly has barely five hours sleep and spends his mornings listening to Trisha’s dreamtime escapades. Maybe each couple needs one dreamer and one for an audience.

Maybe you’re wondering by now where all this self-confession is going – or maybe you’ve guessed.

Well, Lockdown is the cure!: I go to bed earlier, sleep as soon as I hit the pillow, never wake in the night – and dream– not about Covid -19. Our early mornings have turned into a battle as to which of us tells our dream tale first. The light from windows,TV and ‘phone are invisible to me now, I’m out cold for seven hours and the presenter of my favourite 4am chat-show is chatting to the empty air – or at least to his other thousands of listeners.

As someone interested in human psychology, of course I wonder why this odd thing has happened. Then I realise: I’m no longer worrying – about the minutiae of life, or anything else. I’m just doing the day’s few basic tasks, not thinking about tomorrow’s and enjoying the sunshine. Can it be that what there is to worry about – out there – is so enormous, that my mind can’t cope with it and shuts down in sleep?

That’s my diagnosis, anyway. How are you sleeping?

April 29

~ coronet22 ~ Leave a comment

Quite a shock to see this yesterday after so much glorious weather.

I’m surprised how much difference it made to my mood but it’s good thing for the country. Few people would have been be tempted to visit beauty spots.

In my post of April 26, I mentioned my “To Do” list that I haven’t looked at for the whole of Lockdown. It inspired Amy to send this:

“I have always made lists. As a child, lists of favourite colours, girls names , boys names etc. My brother asked me if I had a list of my lists. Listing is with me to this day. I  have notebooks full of them. I can find lists of what I took to Bruges,Tenerife, Florida etc. I have lists of Christmas and Birthday gifts I have sent for the last 10 years .I have unearthed lists from 1972 when we were doing up our house in Canterbury.
I am now compiling a mental list of what I will do after Lockdown. I have a beautiful new notebook but am hesitant to put pen to paper lest my writing sullies those pristine  pages.”

And here are a few of Amy’s store of lists:

I’m so impressed that Amy keeps actual notebooks of her lists. It’s just the sort of thing one longs to see in history books. A centuries-old list has about it romance and intrigue that a current one can’t hope to emulate.

I realised last night ,that, although I haven’t looked at my “To Do” list, I am still making shopping lists but I doubt they would find their way into any history book. For one thing, even I can’t read them. (There appears to be “prostate” on this one, though I can’t say I remember ordering that).

I also have a permanent travel list on my computer that I call up whenever we go away- one for hot climates, one for cold. The only thing that seems to change every year is the amount of tech. I take with me. It’s gone from a simple iPhone, to iPad, Laptop, portable charger, Kindle.

Any guesses as to when Amy, I, or anyone else will be needing our travel lists again?

April 28

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Readers have been telling me what symbolises Lockdown for them and they’re such differing things and so fascinating, today’s post is a report from three special friends about what they will will look back on from this weirdest period in our lives:

First is from Trisha, who you may remember, is still away from her city home, marooned ,comfortably, in the Highlands of Scotland and getting used to country life.

“There are two things (or perhaps three) that will always remind me of Lockdown. The first is queuing outside the Co oP. The next is opening and closing farm gates for us to drive through each day and the last is being forced to re introduce lentils to my diet – and remember that I love them!”

Next is from a couple, let’s call them Peter and Amy, who are in their home in the heart of London, locked down as severely as we are. As far as I know, they have only been out to water their window-boxes in the past five weeks and collect food delivered to their doorstep. Amy sends this:

“What will symbolise Lockdown for us? Here’s ‘our’ blackbird. He is a champion 
and we are eager to gain his trust.  He has a wife and they have raised a handsome chick in a nest on top of our outside privy, in the thicket of plants we have been reluctant to prune. They love the meal worms we bought for them, and we now hear Dad. chirping to ask for them at the door. He rewards us by singing each morning from 3.30.”

Which leaves me with a question. Where on earth did you get meal worms during lockdown?

And this from Warwick, in Australia:

“For me, it will be Anzac Day last Saturday. It’s the day we remember all those brave, or foolish, men who waded ashore at Gallipoli, many of whom never got to see home again.

Usually on this day we tune in to the dawn service held at Lone Pine on Gallipoli and are always moved by the young people who are there to remember and to witness the sheer impossibility of the land the troops had to try and scale. Because of Covid -19 none of the normal services performed by hundreds of RSL clubs around Australia could be performed.

Instead they asked if anyone had a trumpet and could play Last Post at 6.03am, the time the first troops went ashore, in their street, would they do so.

This morning we woke to the sound of a lone trumpeter in our street doing just that and it was a sound I will never ever forget but a sound I cannot put in any museum. To say it was spine- tingling would be an understatement and to say it brought tears to the eyes would also be true. Our trumpeter wasn’t alone as others could be heard all over the suburbs. It didn’t matter that maybe not all watches read 6.03am at exactly the same moment it was the action and the paying of respect that counted”.

April 27

~ coronet22 ~ 1 Comment

I asked you all to tell me what will symbolise Lockdown for you. A musician friend sent this wonderful picture of his electronic drum kit. He’s had to move it closer to his computer in order to record drum tracks so the rest of the band can play their parts. To me – a non-musician – it looks like the inside of the head of someone grappling with a very difficult decision! Boris on lifting lockdown perhaps?

The picture made me think about the sound of Lockdown. Perhaps the sound of Lockdown is actually the lack of the sounds we normally hear. There are so few ‘planes the sky is quiet, except for the occasional helicopter. One building-site of the five or six around us has kept going throughout, but, in the spaces between their drilling, we can hear birdsong and we listen for it now in the way that parched desert travellers search for water.

We have a trendy club only metres from our terrace. It boasts two outside drinking areas from which we normally endure the constant sounds of guffawing, chortling, screeching and lots of people having lots of fun after lots of booze. Funny, that something so convivial when you’re part of it, can have us behaving like Victor Meldrew when we’re trying to sip a quiet glass of Malbec on our terrace. Long Live Club Lockdown.

On Thursday nights, when we stand on our rooftop to clap the carers, we hear an echo of ghostly applause bouncing off nearby buildings but never see another soul.

The distant traffic hum is still a constant in the day . (Though where the traffic actually is these days, I can’t imagine) but, now, we hear, laid on top of it, the occasional roar of a single bike or car at night, speeding recklessly round the empty city streets.

The sound that is our accompaniment to waking, meals, tea breaks, and dinner is LBC radio. Masochistically, we can’t get enough of Covid-19 discussion and my beloved Radio Four doesn’t provide the incessant stream we both seem to crave. LBC delivers news every 15 minutes, Andrew Castle, Nick Ferrari, Shelagh Fogarty, , Ian Dale, Nigel Farrage – we’re anything but picky. Left, Right – we shout at the radio either way. Oddly, it seems to be harder to shout at the TV- perhaps there’s a feeling they can see us. So we’re quieter during BBC News At 10 followed by Newsnight. You’d think such overload would be depressing- and of course the daily death toll is just that- but the endless discussion and argument seems to produce in us an odd sort of unholy elation.

It was the same with Brexit. We listened for hour after hour and I distinctly remember wondering aloud what we would do when Brexit was “Done”.

Well, now we know.

April 26

~ coronet22 ~ 3 Comments 
This morning I remembered my "To Do" list. I've looked at my "To Do" list every day of my life for as long as I can remember.It gives me the greatest satisfaction to cross off tasks accomplished - so much so that, on occasion,I've added one 
already completed, simply for the pleasure of crossing it out. This morning, I 
realised that, not only hadn't I looked at it for over a month, but that there would be absolutely no point in my doing so. It's remarkable that, overnight, 
everything that seemed vitally important in life can become completely 
irrelevant. 

I remember when I stopped doing the job I loved and had been engrossed in for over twenty years, I couldn't believe that the work I had always had to do, no 
matter that I had 'flu or was missing a close friend's wedding, or an aunt's 
funeral, simply stopped being. All those birthday parties, dinners, plays, 
hospital visits I had given up because I had to work. Surely it couldn't have 
stopped mattering.I couldn't have stopped mattering? In an instant? Surely they couldn't just carry on without me? Why hadn't I known? Why did I think I had 
to be there? 

And now my "To Do" list no longer matters. Nothing much does, except not 
getting Covid-19. I thought I'd take a look at it and am shocked at how trivial the things on it now seem. (Apart, that is, from "Book Dentist", which I can't do anyway). Similarly, our diaries, which ruled our every waking moment, no longer 
have any use. Did you ever in your life imagine saying to someone "Oh I can 
make it any day, I've got nothing on 'til December”?

We have so much of what was once so hard to come by - spare time.
And what are we to do with it? All those things we promised ourselves we'd do “if only” we had the time?  It’s hard to remember what they were:

Ah yes: 

1.Learn Spanish.
2.Re-organise my filing.
3.Have a big wardrobe clear-out and give a load of clothes to the charity shop.
4.Go the full Marie Kondo on my underwear drawer.
5.Read all the books I'm ashamed of not having read.

That's plenty to be going on with. So why haven't I done even one of them?

1. I hate learning languages.
2. I hate reorganising filing.
3. I can't remember which clothes I can wear and which don't work any more.
4. I don't care whether my underwear brings me joy.
5. No excuse for this one whatsoever.

The awful truth is that I"m enjoying not having to hurtle from one job to 
another and not having the next one buzzing guilt in my head while I'm doing 
the first. For the first time in my life,this Lockdown seems to have legitimised my doing nothing in particular.I expect I'll regret it when I emerge without 
having written a symphony or tried my hand at creating an app - I've always 
wanted to invent a Shazam for birdsong - but, of course there's no money in it 
because users can't buy the track- therefore, no one will ever produce it.
 So, I guess the only thing I'll have achieved when we finally emerge from 
Lockdown, is this Blog  - and a lot of soup.


 

April 24

~ coronet22 ~ 1 Comment

The Museum of London is looking for people to suggest and donate items that symbolise Lockdown, to help future generations understand this extraordinary period. 

It made me think and it would be interesting exercise to look around and see what, for me, epitomises this weirdest period in our lives.

The most obvious ones are the items to which I never gave a thought before Lockdown and now see as a normal part of life – disposable gloves, sanitising wipes, hand sanitizer bottles, some even with little clips so you can attach them to your belt to be certain of keeping them close. Cardboard boxes are emblematic of innumerable food deliveries and I would definitely include the page you find on line when looking for a Waitrose delivery slot.

Sweaty Betty Yoga pants. This is the most comfortable garment known to woman. I have lived in these for the five weeks of lockdown so far (Not the same pair!) and don’t ever want to put on anything else again – which is just as well, as I’m eating so much chocolate, I won’t be able to.

Kitchen scales. I only started cooking about 10 years ago , having been too tired after work to bother and, living in the middle of London, only too delighted to eat out.

When I did start, I decided that, if I were to do it properly, I needed the best equipment. Really, I didn’t. It was like smoking or going ski-ing, accumulating the paraphernalia was half the fun. My cooking friends thought I was mad, buying such old-fashioned scales when there are so many streamlined, digital ones on the market. They could not have imagined – and neither could I – how much pleasure I would get from using them. The weights are satisfying to hold and sit cooly in the hand, there is the thrill of watching the balance equalise – pouring in just the tiniest bit more of something to see it shudder and come to rest in a straight line. It brings back hours of playing shop as a child, tipping conkers or rose petals onto plastic scales to see which was heavier and they somehow help me understand weight by seeing a substance literally “tip the balance”. I’m cooking so much more during Lockdown, I use them almost every day and, since I’m still not a good enough cook to depart from a recipe, I actually enjoy the act of being able to stick, slavishly, to the exact number of grams required.

This is My husband’s favourite mug, which has become his substitute comfort blanket during Lockdown. I like china mugs. I like their lightness in the hand and coolness on the tongue. He likes earthenware. Says the weight and slight roughness is more masculine. He’ll drink tea from a china one but coffee has to be in this.

His “Geezer” hat. “The Writer’s” pride and joy during Lockdown is this hat. He calls it his “Geezer” hat because he reckons anyone wearing such an accessory has given in to becoming an old boy, the sort of man who doesn’t care what anyone thinks, does his own thing and lets the rest of the world go hang. He also loves it because it reminds him of Australian friends who, he says, were content to become geezers when they were only half his age. He tramps up and down the terrace in it, doing his 10,000 steps and on the day he couldn’t find it last week, he got sunstroke!

What things symbolise Lockdown for you?.

April 23

~ coronet22 ~ 2 Comments

What is it with men and hoses?

Stupid question, Freud would explain in an instant what it is with men and hoses. Trouble is, Freud would also maintain that I, too, am desperate to grip this thing and spray it around everything in sight. He would be wrong.

We have a mediteranean garden on our terrace. Most of the plants and flowers were wedding presents and we can still remember which Olive tree came from which couple and who gave us the pots in which they stand. The garden was designed by Mark Helston, who specialises in making a small terrace feel like acres of land and Mark visits every so often to maintain it. At least, he did.

We are hopeless gardeners. Although he would be happy to instruct us, we know the names of nothing, nor how to care for the plants we love so much. Mark has spoiled us by keeping it in shape. But Lockdown has changed all that. The garden is our lifeline. We walk in it,10,000 steps up and down, and up and down again, past the white daisies with the deep, blue centres, which probably aren’t daisies at all, past the olive trees and the sturdy green plants that look like a cross between a pineapple and a palm tree. There are Lilly-of-the-valley hidden in the shade and tulips pressed up against the kitchen window. Mark delivers tomato plants each year, which I water, diligently, with a watering can and have seriously competitive conversations with friends, whose terrace he also tends, about whose tomatoes are doing better and whose chutney recipe is tastier.The year my tomatoes got blight gave rise to the most unseemly delight in their house and the texting to me of many photos of their thriving, bursting fruit.

Still competitive, I need to tell you these are not theirs but mine from a good year.

Without Mark, our garden is beginning to look “leggy” as he calls it and, although I water the tomatoes, I’m not sure I can manage all of it by can. Enter”The Writer”, who loves the garden as much as I do but has, hitherto, declined to have anything to do with its upkeep.

Anxious about its welfare, I have an inspiration. I suggest he tries out the hose I hate and never use because I can’t ever manage to regulate it properly. I either have the water pressure so high it blasts the earth out of the pots or so low, it trickles away to nothing and wouldn’t give a dousing to a violet.

Reluctantly, he agrees and half an hour later, I wonder where he is, only to find him, waving the hose about masterfully, directing it in a powerful stream at the thirstiest plants, holding it out, rigidly, in front of him with pride and coiling it up back in its place with what seems to me like reluctance. Did I catch him stroking it?

This is a picture of “The writer watering but the only thing it shows clearly, is how dirty our windows are!

I have a great deal of sympathy with men of certain age, who need to dash for toilets while out walking or have their prostates prodded by gung-ho doctors. Where once they were a source of joy, their appendages have a tendency to turn troublesome.Watching how much fun”The Writer’s” having with this green plastic substitute , I wonder whether I’ll ever get back the garden that has always been my my territory .
Could this be a twinge of envy I’m feeling?