Remember Christmas?

This afternoon I stayed in and lazily watched a Christmas episode of Agatha Christie’s Poirot. It was too cold to do much outside. I scattered salt in case we get ice on our steps and sorted some recycling tubs out there but came back in to the house pretty quickly.

It seems an age ago, as witnessed in today’s episode of 1930s Poirot, since I’d seen a Salvation Army playing their brass trombones and collecting funds and rattling tins in front of Christmas shoppers. 

Children wrapped in scarves, hats and knitted woollens singing carols while their feet went blue with cold - not a common sight these days.

It also seems a long time since we could go into a fine chocolate emporium, sample tasty toffees, caramels and soft centres from a silver tray and leave by shaking the shopkeeper’s hand and wishing him or her a merry Christmas. When did we last use a sharing plate and shake hands?

When was the last time we sat in a train carriage and chat to a fellow traveller without any social distancing? And can you imagine being squashed in a taxi cab - three to the back seat - swapping comments and stories with strangers but without wearing a mask or visor?

What did you do on Christmas Eve? Have friends and neighbours in for a merry mince pie? Or did you lean in close to each other in the billiard room to get the cue tip pointing exactly where you wanted it? Or were you kissing under the mistletoe next to a ten foot Christmas Tree? Such customs seem to be things of the past. 

This Christmas we were told by our Secretary of State for Health that on Christmas day we were not allowed to argue nor to kiss. What a state of affairs we are living through!

Christmas in our household meant getting tested, waiting for covid results then, upon finding we were negative, staying away from people from the 20th December onwards. When you live with someone who is ill you have to make sure that anyone entering the house is covid-free. On top of that I had help to do a deep clean of the sitting room and kitchen - making it ready for our Christmas guests. On the day I served mulled wine and nibbles ( on non-sharing plates) outside. Then, back inside, we sat in socially distant fashion and Richard and I served turkey, all the trimmings, my own cranberry sauce and gravy, creamed sprouts and roast vegetables. Richard didn’t try to roast the spuds. The timing was out. But the pudding, trifle, cheeses and choccie log went down a treat after another spell outdoors - which - as advised by gov.uk - allowed fresh air through.

Shopping this Christmas has meant a lot of waiting in for deliveries. Quite different in Poirot’s day. He wandered in to a store at will, spoke to the sales assistant, and left in his own time with no queuing nor fear of catching the virus. A lot of things have changed. Who could have imagined a festive period being so constrained as this year?

Do you remember Christmas? Not the way it was this time. But the way it used to be. 

I hope so. Christmas should be jovial, relaxing, social and fun. Roll on the next one!

And let’s hope for a much better 2021.

Meanwhile tomorrow it becomes law in the UK that we stay indoors for lockdown#3. I doubt I’m the only one feeling weary but I try to remember to be thankful that we are well.

KBO ( Keep Buggering On)

Three bubbles

When our two bubbles were setting off to join us we knew there were covid risks on meeting indoors but we’d taken precautions. 

All my ‘bubbles’ had had negative covid tests in the few days before Christmas. When bubble two arrived they had mulled wine and nibbles on non-sharing plates outside. Afterwards they went off to bubble one’s bonfire where he made the real thing:-red wine, orange juice, star anise and cinnamon sticks heating on a cauldron.

Meanwhile I basted the turkey every thirty minutes and became disappointed that the honey-glazed parsnips didn’t roast properly but they did cook...

And - when we reflected - we lit a candle for our mums who are no longer with us and thought of the truckers holed up in Dover. We thought of refugees and the homeless. We said thanks that we had escaped the worst of covid and that during 2020 had merely only had to put up with civil restrictions. We wore Santa masks and hats indoors and ate at a social distance. Then went outside to let the air in and any possible virus out. From thereon we left the back door open for the rest of the evening.

We hope we took enough precautions. I think we did but we knew Xmas Day was a risk simply by meeting indoors. And in reality we aren’t starving, nor in a war-torn country and we have enough money to be comfortable. We enjoy the warmth from an effective heating system and have had lots of support from friends and neighbours from the beginning of lockdown one onwards.

Best of all we have good friends who wanted to be with us. And we did what Matt Hancock said: on Christmas Day no kissing and no arguing.

Enough said. Happy Boxing Day and thank your lucky stars! 

Exploitation of the poor verges on evil

I am glad this week’s The Observer chose to include a feature about the shocking and shaming scenes of abject neediness in Burnley. This was a follow up to street Pastor Fleming’s short film Poverty and the Pandemic: Burnley which has been showing on BBC News Channel.

In Harriet Sherwood’s Observer piece -  Exploitation of poor verges on evil - she went further than describing how desperately poor some areas of Burnley are. She referenced the increase in the work of The Trussell Trust and its food banks and the evil of loan sharks. But it continued to shine a spotlight on the very poor today.

I taught needy children for over thirty years but even that didn’t prepare me for Fleming’s film.It was harrowing in its depiction of devastated lives. It left me weeping and as troubled as I was after seeing Ken Loach’s Cathy Come Home when I was a mere ten-year-old. No one can forget the scenes of Cathy living in a condemned house, being torched in a caravan nor being forced to give up her children to the authorities as she was homeless and could no longer care for them.

After seeing Poverty and the Pandemic and emailing family and friends I managed to get some of us to immediately send donations to Fleming’s Church on the Street fund. More will come. I felt impelled to act.

It was impossible to ignore the Dickensian plight of Burnley’s desperately poor. ‘Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?’ asked Dickens’ Scrooge upon hearing that it was at Christmas, especially, that need was felt. Yes. Lock ‘em up. That was Scrooge’s solution. But how are things any better now than in 1840s London? 

After years of austerity Britain, chronic low pay, a lack of council housing, erosion of the welfare state and benefits plus increased financial insecurity for many how can our poorest be anything but desperate? Especially when they can’t work owing to lockdown. Their story needed to be told and The Observer helped.

Lockdown,shut down, shut out.

‘But they would rather die than face the work house’ said one charity worker to Scrooge.

‘Let them be quick about it and reduce the surplus population,’ Scrooge replies. 

As we enter the last month of the year

As we enter the last month of the year I am more keen than usual to mark Advent. Not with a sticky, chocolately calendar but with holly, flowers and colour.

This is the last month of an extremely difficult year. 58,000 UK dead since March, in a mere eight months. To put that in perspective 70,000 UK civilians died in the whole six years of WW2. 

In that war people could still go out and enjoy a film or newsreel at The Regal or The Odeon. They could go to work, travel on buses, visit friends, go to dances. Yes they had to endure the blackout and bombs but thankfully life, as they knew it, was still there for the taking. They didn’t have to stay home-save lives.

But for us, two generations after WW2,  the last week of March began badly. I remember queuing for groceries, watching empty buses sail by and, hearing from others, that supermarkets were stripped of nutritious foods. Who could fail to be moved by the tv interview of the absolutely knackered nurse crying into the camera as her supermarket had no food left and she had nothing to eat. 

By April I couldn’t get a delivery slot with Sainsburys and relied on a farm shop, local butcher and great friends and neighbours to provide me with groceries. 

Come May we were all used to face masks, zoom, home baking, hand sanitiser, leaving goodies on each others’ doorsteps and hot weather. It was a beautiful spring with very little traffic. And there had been a debate about whether face mask wearing would help stop the spread of coronavirus. It seems astonishing now.

In May we had our regular grocery deliveries back again and I began to venture out much more. I also spent a lot of time in the garden, improving it, along with a friend. But by July I began to get tired. I’d done charity sales and grown a lot of vegetables. I needed to do so much cutting back in the garden and I felt in great need of a holiday. But travel was verboten.

And, in September, to add to the weariness, our breakfast room ceiling fell in. That created even more toil. It had been a hard  year and once that was finished off and painted Richard and I finally went on holiday.

After that I began to pick up. There was far less to do in the garden and the trip to Devon revived us. In October we travelled there again. But we had to rush home ahead of lockdown#2.

This last month has been a duller than usual November. Grey skies have made an uninspiring backdrop to leafless trees. But we are still here. We haven’t had covid_19. We haven’t been laid off and we aren’t looking at a lonely Christmas nor a cold, hungry one.

In a couple of weeks I shall start making my Christmas charity donations. This year the need seems greater than ever. We can only pray that the vaccine roll out will be earlier rather than later. 

We all need more colour in our lives. 

‘The Crown’ ain’t fun anymore

 

This time last year I took it upon myself to do something everyone else seems to glory in: binge watch. In the dull, dark mornings of November 2019 I clicked on Netflix. I enjoyed the physically and authoritatively big screen characters of ‘The Crown’ on the substantially larger and smarter tv than we were used to. 

It seemed the need for protocol and putting on an act far outweighed their fusty but glamorous palaces in the royals’ lives. But I was fascinated by the concerns these wealthy, regal, real-life people had. I was even moved to pity when I watched the episodes of deep unhappiness suffered by Prince Charles at school and beyond. I bought it.

But this time around I feel like not pursuing the latest series at all. At best tv is much-needed escapism at this time of lockdown. But ‘The Crown’ is not providing that. I find the depiction of Princess Margaret, especially, to be snarling, pompous and cruel. Whether she was really like that hardly matters, now. Entertainment it ain’t.

I was astonished that in 1979 the Queen or one of her staff would not alert her guest, the newly appointed Margaret Thatcher, to the correct dress codes for pre-dinner drinks and hiking in soggy fields around Balmoral. In this series the royals appear hell bent on laughing at their guests. How rude and unkind. I didn’t buy it.

In a later episode the newly introduced Diana is made to face all the royals who stand in a ring around her while she has  to be told off - in front of everyone - about her lack of understanding of whom she should curtsey to and in what order. This smacked of abusive rudeness. I could not believe the royals would, again, openly laugh at their guests. But what do I know, actually?

I am a very unlikely reader of ‘The Daily Mail’ but on the BBC’s ‘The Papers’ I spotted the Mail’s headline ‘How The Crown lost the plot.’

I read on and could only concur with Richard Kay that the plot is indeed lost. This new series is so far removed from the truth that it’s hardly worth watching. If it’s untruthful it can’t be insightful.

And this morning Simon Jenkins, writing in The Guardian, my usual read, made the following points, inter alia, which are, according to the historian Hugo Vickers, fabrications:

1. Lord Mountbatten wrote to Prince Charles the day before his death.

2. The royals laid traps to humiliate Mrs Thatcher on a visit to Balmoral.

3. Princess Margaret ridiculed Diana for not being able to curtsey.

4. Prince Charles daily called Camilla Parker Bowles in the first five years of his marriage to Diana.

Jenkins says the current storyline ‘...caricatures the royals in the worst possible light.’  Entertainment should be fun and yield a sense of escapism. But this November I and many others have a greater need than usual to enjoy tv output. Not to be disappointed by it.

I don’t need to see constant unpleasantness on the tv. Life in lockdown in a dull, damp November is difficult enough. Back to binge watching comfortable episodes of Jeremy Brett as ‘Sherlock Holmes’ or his nephew Martin Clunes in ‘Doc Martin’. At least there’s intrigue in the former and beauty and humour in the latter. That’s escapism. That’s entertainment. Not vicarious humiliation. 

‘The Crown’ ain’t fun anymore. 

Bring on the women!

 After lockdown#2 was announced, and we rushed back from our shortened holiday in Devon, I’ve tried to stay fit by going for walks. However my preferred fitness fun is swimming - if the water’s warm. But, as in the words of Basil Fawlty, that avenue has been closed off to me, and I’ll settle for walks around the outskirts of the city of Bath.

I’ve come to appreciate what a gender split there appears to be on our streets. Something in my sixty years I’d never much noticed. The walkers were, in the main, middle-aged women like me, or others of various ages and stages of motherhood, or even young couples. But everywhere I went I could not escape white-van-man.

I was using the walks as an opportunity to take photographs of our city in lockdown. But everywhere I went - it seemed - there was a parked white van populated by one or two men reading their papers or checking their phones. And there were others:- it appeared that every few yards a workman would jump out of his van carrying something heavy or another might merely pull up and park all the while blocking the pavement. If I tried to take a photograph of Prior Park or Bath Abbey from my preferred spot another white van would pull up and hamper my view.

All the evidence from my sojourns into the city make me feel there is plenty of work out there, for some. Whether it’s telecommunications, building repairs, house movings and exchanges or deliveries the work of the man-and-his van seems plentiful. But I felt surrounded by men in vans! 

I mention this as it’s so unlike lockdown#1 when the streets were empty. In those hot early days of April lockdown the tarmac was noticeable for its grey crumbliness or perfect smooth blackness - depending on how worn it was - and all the more noticeable as it was suddenly so underused by cars, vans and trucks.

This time the roads still seem busy. Not everyone can work from home. A builder can hardly fix a roof remotely from his MacBook. 

My next walks will be on quieter streets, I think, so that I can enjoy taking photographs without feeling surrounded by busy men or white-van-man reading the sports pages. And I won’t have to dance around these vans that necessarily, in our narrow streets, have to park on pavements.

But where are the women? Bring them on! It feels a bit one-sided out there. 

A Tale of Two Sheds

It all began in an energetic spring. Lockdown was a mere six weeks old and after a lovely April spent outdoors painting anything made of wood my attention drifted to seed sowing and hardening off.

I only have two window sills and two indoor cupboard tops on which to start off my seedlings. No, I have no greenhouse nor a conservatory. And this year, on top of all the extra chores such as sanitising frequently-touched surfaces, washing all groceries under the tap, sorting my husband’s meds and arranging workmen to do whatever workmen do, I got tired of taking my trays of seedlings in and out of the house twice a day, uncovering them for slightly longer periods, and I decided I needed a greenhouse. But, better than that, a new shed with a greenhouse front. 

Hey presto! Such a thing as a potting shed seemed the ideal solution. My aunt was quite adamant in her specifications for such a new potting shed. Was it cladded? Was it lined? How many windows opened? 

And where would I purchase it? I sorted out all the fine details she’d itemised. Then got on to a-man-who-constructs-sheds.

He came to look at the site I’d chosen for the new potting shed. The sun was at the right angle and should bring on my beans and tomatoes a treat.

‘No, no, no. That won’t do. There’s no room,’ he said.

( No room? There was a huge gravelled area at the top of our garden doing nothing).

‘And look at that slope.’

I couldn’t see a slope.

‘What about the cherry tree?’ I ventured expecting the answer “We can dig it up and replant it”.

‘I’ll get my chain saw to it, leave a small stump. Burn the rest.’ 

I almost passed out in horror.

These were not the responses I was expecting.

‘But I can do you a small shed in that space over there. On a gravel floor.’

He pointed to a dark corner I hadn’t even considered. 

‘I want a solid base.’ I said. (What was the point of a wet gravel floor? Everything would get wet! And what had happened to my idea of a potting shed?)

‘Difficult,’ he muttered.

I would not be put off.

‘There’s another place we could put a potting shed. A second shed,’ I said, showing the less-than-enthusiastic workman a paved, flat area. He looked and measured and kicked a few slabs. And eventually he agreed that would work. Except there is already a shed there. 

‘What if we move the old shed up to the gravelled area?’ said I, still foolishly optimistic.

‘Nah. Only good for firewood. It’ll fall apart if we move it. It’s rotten through. Not a bit of good.’ Great!

I felt rather more deflated after this last exchange. And the question of moving our water butt created such problems that I wondered if I’d actually ever taken ‘A’ level physics. Maybe I had absolutely no comprehension of how water travels. Was it me?  

We left it that a small shed could be erected on the gravelled area with a new concrete base and I would order the shed myself and get back to him. I felt somewhat dismayed. I’d wanted a potting shed - in the sun!

Suddenly it was the end of August. And it was a filthy, cold, wet day.  I put the same questions, queries, plans for my shed(s) and my preferred solutions to a friend of ours. He could see no issue with what I suggested and within days the site of shed number one was ready. He had carefully dug up the cherry tree and moved it to a pre-fertilised plot for me. No chain saw nor burning required. He also shifted my water butt and rerouted the guttering. My idea worked perfectly. Yes. I did do ‘A’ level physics after all. My raised beds were also shifted and that made space for a 1.83x1.83m shed. (6ft x 6 ft in old money).Thank you my friend. If you are reading this you know who you are. 

And no-one had to burn a perfectly healthy, pretty cherry tree or worry about a wet gravel shed floor nor uproot precious rose shrubs or worry about a sloping shed roof to allow the guttering to meet the water butt at the right point.

Stage one was over. 

After a beautiful April when the year was young and the sun was shining who would have imagined how hard it would be to even get the garden site ready for just the one shed? It was the devil that in August the weather had turned against us. Friend number one had shovelled so much soil in damp, drizzly, murky conditions he looked like he’d been in a rugby scrum. Friend number two (DFL - down from London ) trimmed an enormous rambling rose and cut it up into little pieces for the green waste bin and changed her rain hat at least twice. I changed my outdoor coat three times. And I was merely transporting garden waste. Not digging nor hacking back.The bloody rain did not let up. But we finally managed to organise the garden such that at least one shed could be sited and be used effectively. April, May, June, July and now August. Back in the spring I’d had such plans...

And what had happened to my dream of a potting shed? I wanted storage, windows, staging and a side door. When had my idea - from last April - been derailed? 

It seems I needed two sheds. One for boring things ie a dry shelter for garden tools, tarpaulins, vegetable fleece, a riddle, the cat basket, a wheelbarrow etc And the other - a potting shed - for fun creativity: for sowing my seeds, for potting on, for hardening off, for ripening. In short to cut out the work of transporting seedlings and young plants from inadequate window ledges to the outdoors and back again morning and night for six weeks during April and May. 

Today, dear reader, it is October 19th. And I’ve managed to order one shed. Friend number one collected sand, cement and concrete blocks to make the base. Way hay. We were in business. Or so I thought.

Can you deliver the shed? Yes. Can you bring the shed sections through the back gate to the gravelled area? Yes, madam, we can. Can I have a double door on my shed? Yes. And when can you deliver? The website says 2-4 weeks.

‘You’re looking at 10-12 weeks, madam.’

‘January?’ I asked, my heart sinking.

‘About then.Yes.’

‘If I also want a potting shed ready for next April when should I put the order in?’

‘I’d say the end of November.’

‘Thank you. I’ll do that.’

                                            *

By the time I get my two sheds a covid-19 vaccine will have been found. And I’ll feel about a hundred. But I’ll be two-sheds-better off.

Marvellous! Excitement over. We’ll be in a new decade by the time these garden constructions are in situ. And I haven’t even mentioned what the workman said about coming over to make the concrete base nor my husband’s reaction to all this change. That’s, as they say, a whole other story. Friend number one is taking over and starting footings and preliminary painting work this week, while the weather is still open. In March 2021 I may have a potting shed delivered. Better not get my hopes up though! 

Perhaps I could rewrite ‘War and Peace’ while I’m waiting.

(Is it me? Is it?)