while you're ahead…

Ok, day 4 of the lockdown. Isolation is weird, especially because I was more isolated before when everybody went to school and the office and I had the house for myself for hours on end during the day. As a matter of fact I crave isolation at the moment! We’re lucky we live in a big house and we can choose not to see each other but there’s music playing from every room, and people walking about and people demanding food/eating/watching tv… It’s noisy. And I like silence.

I went for a walk yesterday afternoon – Boris said we can leave the house once a day for exercise, so I downloaded a couple of podcasts and off I went.

Bliss.

The weather was perfect, not a cloud in the sky, mild temperatures and nobody about. The odd walker like me, a nod to each other from a distance, polite road crossing in order not pass too close to one another. The city seemed in a state of suspended animation, like an empty movie set in between takes.

And it’s amazing what you notice when you start slowing down and ‘seeing’…

Maybe, at the end of this, the lesson will be to slow down, to look up and look down and notice the beauty that surrounds us, or the ugliness so we can fix it, and appreciate the minutiae and the serendipitous. Maybe we’ll remember to walk down the little lanes at the back of houses, to take the long walk home for the simple pleasure of enjoying the fresh air and the sun on our face.

I refuse to believe it is all happening in vain.