It’s the finest Easter weekend we’ve had in years.
In my largely neglected garden the big willow is bristling with yellow-pollened catkins the size of toilet brushes. The six white cherry trees, heavy with pristine blossom have linked arms and the breeze sets them curtseying like a row of debutantes. In the totally untended wilderness at the back, the whins are already golden, the broom burgeoning, the bracken unfurling and there’ll be bluebells and foxgloves later. Only a thorny network of briars holding it all back is preventing my being engulfed by nature’s bounty.
Nor do I need an alarm clock. Crows in the beech trees, magpies in the cypresses and a multiplicity of others unnameable by me, are bawling their heads off from stupid o’clock. There’s one indistinguishable feathered fiend, its song a single note, “cheat! cheat! cheat!, whose neck I’d like to wring and the bloomin’ starlings, despite two previous eviction orders, are nesting again in the bathroom downspout. Then there’s the Kamikaze sparrow who spends its time frenziedly attacking itself in both wing mirrors of my car. Out of pure pity, (misplaced I’m sure,) I had to put a plastic sandwich bag over each mirror, then drove off to the supermarket forgetting to remove them, causing some odd comments in the car park. “They’re self-isolating,” I explained.
Back at home, I’m transfixed like a rabbit in the headlights by the compelling awfulness of the news. That and binge-watching endless editions of antiques pogrammes. What is people’s fascination with broken telescopes, battered leather suitcases, vintage agricultural implements and ugly clocks? Mind you, I do have a Victorian cast-iron man-trap in the conservatory as a statement piece – but that’s a story for another day. Cookery series I find deeply satisfying. I see no contradiction in watching two hours of Jamie, Nigel, Nigella or Rick Stein, then rescuing a shop-bought quiche from the freezer for dinner.
Like the rest of us, my head was full of virtuous ideas about addressing tasks long put on the long finger. Suffice to say, none of them have been tackled so far. I see myself more as a spontaneous type. For example – looking for the lost fellow of a left shoe, on the spur of the moment I dragged out all my footwear with a view to putting away winter boots and shoes and neatly pairing spring and summer ones. That was the theory.
In practice it merely led to a marathon trying-on session, wondering (a) why I bought them in the first place; (b) how I managed to walk in half of them; (c) discovering I had duplicates of some and (d) others I had no recollection of buying at all. The spare room floor’s like a cobbler’s shop for the past five days and likely to remain so until the spirit moves me or shame overtakes me – neither of them racing for the finishing line at the moment. Like the kitchen cupboards, two of which I’ve cleaned out, (there are 13) ten drawers (only cutlery and utensils done so far,) we’re in this for the long haul. I’m persuaded that it’s wiser to pace myself.
Naturally I remain close contact with a circle of friends. Our phone bills will be astronomical this quarter. Whatever the comfort of another human voice, it can be a depressingly counterproductive exercise. It’s difficult to put an interesting spin on uneventful domesticity and pedestrian tasks. Also it can smack a bit of ‘virtue signalling’ as friends relate how they improve the shining hour. I swear I can almost detect down the line the eye-watering whiff of their freshly bleached surfaces and the aroma of something savoury and homemade emanating from their ovens.
In this odd limbo-like period with life on ‘hold’, it’s hard to shake off a feeling of purposelessness. Everybody’s dealing with it in their own way. Mine is the path of least resistance. Domestically and in every other aspect, I’m fulfilling my early lack of promise by never quite finishing anything. Oh look! It’s the bottom of the page, so I’m stopping now….
