One of the great side benefits of lockdown is being able to enjoy spring at home. You do need a garden to fully benefit from this. There really is no place like the UK for spring. Ok I’m sure there are other places equally nice but the UK is very much at its best at this time of year. As I write the sun is shining and a light breeze carries birdsong through the open shed doors.
This is in marked contrast to the tedium of the work on the screen in front of me. Frame agreements, Statements of Work, invoice chasing and other technobusiness conversations.
The planting season has begun. The front runners of spring are plants that have overwintered in the soil. A hardy bunch indeed. Now is the time to add seeds to the mix.
…
Had a fairly productive day. Broke the back of the Frame Agreement, chased customer for money (no response), picked up a trunk with Anne – purchaysed from someone in town and written an article that will feature in a newsletter at the end of the week. Also got a booking for Anne’s Vans – they keep on rolling in yay.
The wind is on the rise. It is an ill wind that blows no good. No idea whether this one is ill or not although I know for a fact that the covid virus is airborne. If I were a fisherman or a sailor out of Newlyn and Polperro I’d be looking out at the storm tops or the scudding clouds and thinking I was glad to be shorebound while my ship the Eugenia or the Saucy Sue was being careened in dry dock.
Although technology suggests that it is 14 degrees Celsius, the coat hugging bent heads holding onto hats as they walk by reveal the cold. In the sanctuary of the shed I see and hear the wind but I am insulated from its effects. Leaves litter the lawn like autumn, dug from their dreamy compostable snugs in the base of a hedgerow to dance a final dance.
Tonight the Imps step out to battle Plymouth, once more. We are the top dogs and never the underdog. The target. We will be there, online
…
The darkness
No bread, no milk, no gas, no electricity, no telephones. This isn’t a planned test. They never are but I happen to have turned on the tv with a Lucy Worsley programme about London during the blitz. Meanwhile it is dark outside. All I can see is the reflection in the doors of the neon beer sign and the tv.
I raise my head.
Silence…
.