Happy Easter
It’s been a long time since I posted a blog. Despite enjoying acres of unusually unstructured time, currently I’m finding it hard to (a) find the level of privacy I usually enjoy and which allows me to work without the constant feeling that I’m excluding the rest of my family. Is this a common experience? I’m also finding it hard to (b) focus on writing about anything that is the usual subject matter for this blog, which frankly pales into stark insignificance in the face of our current health, social and economic dilemmas.
Unless I am writing in a strictly fictional context in which our previous “normal” life expectations can continue unchanged – as good a defence of fiction as I have yet come across – every word I write will be coloured by our current over-riding preoccupations.
Apart from having to live with a continual, low-grade anxiety about our future global prospects, I realise that my usual topics of conversation – editing, indie publishing, proof reading, how I read books, techniques that I have deployed to help me finish a book I’m writing – are likely to be met with the response, “Who cares? Don’t you know there is a pandemic on?” or “It hardly matters at the moment, does it? I’d count myself lucky, if I were you!” And I do, most sincerely.
So I read the news, while trying not to take it too much to heart, I fret about the future prospects of such unguarded continents as Africa, and I wonder where we will be in a year’s time. And I recommend reading cheerful, forgiving books that entertain while also being enlightening and heart-warming. Bill Bryson is my current re-read favourite, a joy which I’m delighted to say, my husband seems to have finally cottoned on to. Which makes a nice change from his usual preoccupation with books about the Great War, the Irish Wars of Independence or Edmund Burke’s Political Philosophy.
Happy Easter season. Stay well, and thanks for reading.
Please share:
April 30, 2020
A different world
Fran Macilvey cerebral palsy, Fran's School of Hard Knocks, Happiness Matters 4 Comments
A Different World
Lockdown has brought with it the realisation that, for all our privileged existence, there are aspects of the way we live that we must change, if we are to continue having any quality of life. Though they present major challenges, the current restrictions also offer un-looked for opportunities to consider that a different world is possible.
I don’t find that the lockdown restrictions so far imposed have yet changed my daily routines or expectations radically; except perhaps to bring with them the beneficial awareness that yes, I can go for walks, and so I should make the most of that. Because I am only allowed to venture out once a day – though again, that is not such a change from my usual limitations – I find myself rejoicing when I do: official restrictions have made me very grateful and appreciative of the freedoms I enjoy.
Perhaps we will all have to re-frame or curb our notions of what we have grown used to, but the end result is that we are usually more appreciative of what we have.
The season, and the weather, are especially lovely at the moment, the routes are calm and quiet, and I can hear loud birdsong in the bushes that, un-tended, have been left to flourish. They are that shade of almost painfully bright, light green that makes me breathless.
Robins chirping loudly, blackbirds flitting and warbling, song thrushes trilling, do remind me what an invasion our usual motor vehicle noise is. The fresh green grass and the bright and blue skies unmarked by vapour trails remind me, too, that we must find ways to share the world so as not to destroy it.
We can do this, and we must. So I’m grateful for what I have and look forward to a quieter, more equitable way of living when lockdown restrictions are eased.
Thanks for reading.
Please share: