Lockdown - week 6: 28th April - 4th May

Rain! Argh. After so many dry weeks, this week started wet. The garden was getting dry, I was having to water the huge garden pots every day (as well as the seedlings in the greenhouse), and the water butts were empty, so we needed rain.








But it's dull - and of course, after a morning of it, I was looking for things to do, so I made rhubarb muffins and, yes, tackled the ironing pile (it's my default go to when I have too much energy)






It's been another week of exceptional streamed theatre and music ...

Wednesday - Gecko Theatre's dance/mime production Institute. I saw this at Nottingham Playhouse a couple of months ago, back in the days when we could go out to theatres, and think it had more impact on stage.

Thursday -  KT Tunstall performing live from Los Angeles as part of the Albert Hall Home series of shows which should have being taking place right now but cannot.

Over Thursday and Friday, I caught two performances of Frankenstein from National Theatre Live. In the first, Benedict Cumberbatch played the monster, and Jonny Lee Miller played Frankenstein; for Friday night's performance they swapped roles. Both versions were absolutely brilliant. Cumberbatch's portrayal of a 'new born' trying to find out how to work hands and feet, and move about was stunning - and more so, I think, because I wouldn't have imagined him as a very physical actor. Overall though, I preferred Miller's monster - more sympathetic and humane - and Cumberbatch's scientist - arrogant and proud.


Saturday - A Midsummer Night's Dream from The Globe Theatre. I'm not sure if this was part of the current 'lockdown' screening of shows or just something that was already on Youtube. A fun, riotous romp.



As hope is growing that the end of lockdown is in sight, I've heard people talking about their plans for when the virus has passed. I'm not entering down that route. Over the past years, unable to take holidays due to my parents' health, I learned patience, and found it didn't help to plan ahead - in part because the only way out of the situation was their death which obviously I didn't want to hurry - but thinking of where I would like to go made me fidgety, wanting to take the holiday right then, not in however many years time. Hunkering down, finding small pleasures at and around home, made things more bearable. And that's how I'm dealing with the situation now.

I have the garden to potter in, a wide variety of entertainment streamed to my TV (in between the special performances listed I'm catching up on several seasons' worth of Elementary and New Girl), social media where I can chat to anyone and everyone, and, although it's not the same as seeing them, I video chat with my family several times a week. My husband is spending most days trying to get the allotment back into order after the past few years of neglect, so I have a lot of time free from interruptions when I can pick up habits and hobbies I've dropped. Yes, a lot of time is spent in the garden, sometimes doing as little as watching the breeze blow through my bonsai trees, but I have several unfinished sewing projects lying around, and in these peaceful afternoons I've started working on them again. I feel I might even find the headspace to settle to something more artistically creative.

I can survive as I am for a while yet, but thinking about what I might do 'after' is likely to unsettle me. I'll keep my focus on the small everyday things, and not think too far ahead.

Lockdown - Week 4: 14th- 20th April

Week four of the lockdown was another glorious time weather-wise, and I'm starting to behave  as if this were just some odd sort of holiday. Yes, there's still housework to do, but that's less important when there's no one else to see how clean and tidy - or not - the house is. There's still gardening, but the mad dash to sow vegetables that always comes at the end of March has passed, and things are quieter. Nothing seems to have much urgency to it, and the sun's been shining most of the time, so there's a great temptation to just sit and watch the flowers open - and that's what I've done for much of the week.








After a few days of this though, rain arrived on Saturday, and I roamed the house looking for something to occupy myself with. I ended up tackling the ironing pile, and then making rhubarb muffins.


I've started to sort through and use up the weird odds and ends in the freezer, which resulted in some odd dinners - an intended pork goulash had to quickly change into moussaka when I discovered the de-frosted cubes of meat were actually lamb, and I've discovered that a small piece of kipper goes a long way flavour-wise in risotto.








Thanks to all the on-line streaming of shows, I've had a couple of 'nights out' - Treasure Island from National Theatre Live, The Phantom of the Opera, one of Andrew Lloyd Webber's productions on The Shows Must Go On YouTube channel , and Romeo and Juliet from The Globe Theatre. I'm really looking forward to these each week. I've had doubts in the past about 'filmed theatre' but I've really enjoyed these broadcasts from The Globe and National Theatre Live and after the first few minutes forgotten that I wasn't actually in the theatre. The Phantom didn't appeal to me as much, but musicals aren't really my 'thing'.



I've even been out in real life this week, to see the bluebells in our local wood. Even at seven on a Sunday evening some of the paths felt uncomfortably crowded, so there was a constant battle between enjoying being out and wanting to get home.

Having the lockdown extended for three more weeks came as no surprise, but by weekend rumours had started to spread that the corona virus exit strategy may involve advising the elderly and vulnerable to stay self-isolated for a year or 18 months! Now, I'm not in that group, and neither is my husband, although he does have health issues, but all along we've followed the health advice for it on the 'better safe than sorry' principle. If going forward into summer and autumn this were the advice what would we do? Tricky question, but one we'll need to think about over the coming weeks

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.