Lockdown - Week 3: 7th - 13th April

Well, to be honest, this third week feels like it was almost indistinguishable from the second. Days and weeks are certainly starting to blur into each other, despite my best effort to recreate normal life.


I went 'out' to the theatre twice - first to The Globe to see Hamlet; a very interesting, compelling 'gender blind' production with various male characters played by women (including Michelle Terry as Hamlet himself), and Ophelia played by a man (Shubham Saraf). It's hard to make such a well-known script come over as new and fresh but this production did - and James Garnon almost made me feel sorry for Claudius. I wish I'd been able to see it live.
 A couple of nights later was a National Theatre Live recording of Jane Eyre, a co-production with Bristol Old Vic, starring Madeleine Worrall as the diminutive, feisty heroine, Felix Hayes as brooding Mr Rochester, and directed by Sally Cookson. I'm not generally a fan of books turned into plays, but this worked brilliantly - not trying to cram every bit of dialogue from the original in, but aiming more for mood and character development. Oh, and I loved Pilot the dog - the actor playing him almost stole the show.

In between these two, I went to an Isolate Live gig to see one of my long-live favorite singer/songwriters Sean McGowan performing live from his 'gaff' (well, his mum's front room), and on Easter Monday I went to a festival - not out in a tent in the back garden as I know some people did, but a sensible Front Room Festival organised by Folk On Foot presenter Matthew Bannister, featuring a mix of familiar and new (to me at least) folk singers. As at any festival I dropped in and out of the music tent, and I have to admit I left before the end but really enjoyed watching Beth Porter from the Bookshop Band, Nancy Kerr and James Fagan, Kris Drever, Rachel Newton playing the harp, and Jackie Morris paintings otters.

Apart from these 'evenings out' day to day life doesn't feel like it's changed that much. I finished knitting a scarf made with some fabulous rainbow yarn brought back from a trip to Riga by my youngest daughter.




I went out for a short walk one evening to see the sunset - but this time I encountered cyclists riding too close to the pavement, so there's another worry for when I'm out and about.










The weather has returned to glorious sunshine, and most of my days are spent pottering about the garden doing something or other.


Sowing seeds, watering tiny plants, tucking them up under bubblewrap at night, all with the intent of producing home-grown vegetables, makes me feel I'm clawing back a certain level of control over my life. I feel fresh fruit and veg may be hard to come by as spring progresses, and I'm targeting my sowing at producing crops as soon as possible. I already have rocket and mizuna for salad, and rhubarb for desserts; there'll be more to follow.



Obviously I haven't seen my family but we're keeping in touch with an almost daily video chat, often involving a lot of running around from my grandson, and a quieter pictionary style online game at weekends. There still seems to be as much traffic as ever out on the nearby main through-estate road, so at times it's hard to believe in the virus and that the world has changed.

I never expected three weeks to be the end of lockdown, and I've braced myself to follow the twelve week isolation period recommended to 'shielded' vulnerable people; I've no need to be as restricted as them but 'better safe than sorry' is my motto for now.