WE HAVE another furry visitor out the back. “Quick, come and look!” the others shout from their vantage point in the kitchen. But I am chained to the work computer upstairs, frightened to move from the monitor, lest somebody messages and it’s important.
They text me a photograph of our furry friend. It’s a large squirrel swinging like a circus acrobat from my bird feeder and helping himself with nimble claws to the small birds’ breakfast.
“Bas***d!” I text back.
Down in the kitchen they are bemused. Mum’s language has gone down the sewer in lockdown and now she’s turning savage on the squirrel. It’s just a squirrel, they text back. Varmint, I text back.
The one good thing about all this working from home, is the power of text. The cook texts from the kitchen to tell you your dinner will be ready in two minutes or texts to inquire what you might like with your cup of tea.
I could get used to this. I have got used to this. Now I want to lock the front door and stay safe inside, just the three of us, forever and ever.
About that squirrel. “Let’s be clear,” I tell them again. “That is a grey one, not the native red species and he has no place in our garden.”
“But,” says my son, “The squirrel doesn’t know he’s grey.”
My heart is cold as the cat’s. She clearly has an issue with said squirrel. This may well be the squirrel she chased up a lamp post and brought me outside to admire.
I was worried the cat wanted the baby birds. But the parent birds screech and twitter like teenage girls at a long ago Bay City Rollers concert, when they see the cat approach.
The cat sits under the feeder, stock still like a statue, back straight, stare full on – a Queen of the Nile of a cat.
“The cat may look at the queen,” says her haughty stare. She has been waiting that squirrel out.
The baby birds doing pirouettes out our back bring joy to my heart; the grey squirrel and the marauding cat... not so much.
“Nature Nazi,” the others text hiss.
But when the woodpigeon coo coos down our chimney at 4.30am, I’m not the one silently screaming into the pillow.
We should be feeling happy now that lockdown is easing. From last Monday, we were told it was safe to go out for a walk. But like a tortoise, all I want to do is pull my head back into the shell and make the world go away.
This virus hasn’t gone away you know. “It’s about living with risk and knowing what risk you can live with,” says my sister.
We’ve grown accustomed to just the three of us rubbing along in our house.
It’s no prison camp. We meet up for breakfast, dinner, tea; we have coffee in the garden, we live the life of the privileged who still get to keep pay packets and have not had to risk our lives to do our jobs. We’re lucky.
But now that life is opening up again, that world outside the window seems strange. After three months of not venturing beyond the gate, I can understand why some people never want to go beyond their front door. It’s scary.
“One baby step at a time,” says my other half.
We drive along familiar streets and marvel at socially distanced queues outside shops. We pick out women wearing their face masks, peer at the park and wonder when we’ll get to visit our favourite trees; the shrine, the big house in the middle of the trees. All is familiar, yet all has changed.
My brother and sister-in-law put Facetime on the iPad and suddenly for the first time in months, my mother’s face pops up on the screen. My heart catches – we’ve chatted often, but we haven’t seen each other.
“You’re looking well, even if your hair is long,” I tell her.
“I’d wear the full PPE, if I could get a cut,” she sighs.
“When will this be over?” she asks. There’s an old friend’s funeral and she’d like to have gone.
It’s like we’re living in a snow globe that has been shaken violently by a giant hand. It’s starting to settle now, but the world is not the same as before. Now we must pick up our courage and move outdoors.
