Tag: Daniel Defoe

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Tending seedlings & taking comfort from ‘wee granny’

I hope you’re well in body and spirit. If you’re anything like me you’re trying not to overdose on news and focus instead on Spring!

Last week’s Hastings Stanza poetry workshop via Zoom went very well, in fact I was convinced enough to then sign up for a Zoom-hosted writing session with the Sansoms next week. Something in the diary! This last week I’ve been reading rather than writing. A couple of hundred pages through The Mirror and the Light, I’m not as gripped as I was by Wolf Hall. But I’m into it. Meanwhile, Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year is compelling in a macabre sort of way – many, many parallels with today, both in how people are reacting to it and in how authorities are trying to deal with it. There’s also some unexpected humour.

A happy distraction at the moment is vegetable growing. I’m going to have more seedlings ready to plant out than we can accommodate, so I’m hoping the neighbours will be happy to have a courgette or two in the communal garden. Failing that I could offer them to other houses in the street, although I know many of them have communal gardens managed by agents. Maybe I should put them on a ‘help yourself’ table on the pavement outside. Although people aren’t out for strolls that much at the moment of course.

courgette and nasturtium seedlings

I’ve been keeping a ‘lockdown’ journal, just for my own interest and to remind myself (hopefully in years to come!) how we (hopefully!) got through it. Reading other people’s blogs I get the feeling the initial euphoria of it all has flattened out to more a sense of restlessness or powerlessness, even sadness. I know ‘euphoria’ sounds wrong, but I mean that initial excitement in terms of ‘it’s really happening’ and ‘no-one in the world knows how this is going to go’ and ‘we’re all (kind of) in it together’, plus getting used to all the changes and rising to the occasion. As Mat Riches says in his recent post, “apparently, we’re meant to be using this time to learn Sumerian or how to perform brain surgery and recreate Citizen Kane in stop motion using only Lego minifigs or repurposed Barbie Dolls” – but for many people it’s enough to get through the day and not worry about the family they’re not seeing or the business they’re losing.

Although I’m also fighting a creeping sense of sadness, I’ve so much to feel grateful for. Last Thursday was our youngest granddaughter’s 2nd birthday. I had fun making a card telling a story in which we all played parts, and with WhatsApp we were able to share the candle-blowing-out/cake cutting. Regular runs out with Nick make me feel that my body isn’t atrophying. The sun’s been shining and there’s beautiful scenery where I live. I watched the Queen’s message on TV last night and was strangely moved. What she’s been through. I’ve never considered myself a raging royalist but I have the upmost respect for her and I found her words comforting. In the same vein, the little video of a Scottish ‘wee granny’ that popped into my Twitter stream midweek was (and still is) a highlight for me. Do watch it if you haven’t already, you will feel better afterwards.

For once I’m actually grateful to be subscribed to so many newsletters, as companies and organisations are making great efforts to reach out to customers with new services, suggestions or just moral support. I’m not saying I’ve taken them all up, but sometimes just reading them helps. Here are some I’ve been impressed by:

On my desk I have a list of people I want to keep in touch with and am thinking along the lines of something in the post. Not that I want to overload our valuable posties. But I just feel there can be something very warm about a letter or a card, perhaps hand-made, with a person in mind. More personal than an email, less stressful than a phone call. For many of these people I only have postal addresses anyway. Another project!

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As the world moves online

Wow, things are changing so quickly it’s hard to believe – for example, how people are getting themselves online – to teach, to meet, to try new things, but mostly I think to keep relationships going with family, friends, customers… when the going gets tough, the tough get tooled-up on tech. This coming week our esteemed Hastings Stanza rep Antony Mair has arranged for us to hold our monthly workshop via Zoom, which is clearly the conferencing app du jour. And last week my dear husband actually started a blog, to keep in touch with all his choirs, and had 92 followers within hours. Whaaaa?! He’ll be writing poetry next.

And so to the lockdown. I’ve begun reading Hilary Mantel’s The Mirror and the Light which is highly absorbing, and another book which I was tempted into buying, called Timeless Simplicity – Creative living in a consumer society by John Lane, a book which I thought would suit current circumstances. But unfortunately it’s nearly twenty years old and as such rather dated in its information about mass leisure, work and consumption. There’s some food for thought though. I’ve started recalling books about plagues and sieges. I remember being much moved by Helen Dunmore’s The Siege. Years ago in school I read Albert Camus’s La Peste (aka The Plague – although we had to read it in French for A level – pah!). It’s clearly enjoying a renaissance at the moment – The Guardian reports that Penguin Classics are struggling to keep up with orders. And then there’s Daniel Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year. I had a feeling I still had a copy, and lo – there it was on the bookshelf…

Daniel Defoe a Journal of the Plague Year

I can’t wait to get stuck into this, in fact I may to read it in parallel with the Mantel, something I never do with novels.

On the poetry front I am loving Sharon Olds’ Arias. It’s firing up my writing too. I’ve no idea what the effect is of the pandemic on poetry magazines, whether editors have too much on their plates dealing with the exigencies of life under lockdown to be thinking about the publishing schedule, or reading submissions or what have you. No doubt they’ll be inundated with poems now that we all have more time to write. And plenty on the subject of you-know-what. I wonder how much ‘pestilence poetry’ we can all take for the next few years as the theme filters through to publication?

I can report there was a mad rash of cleaning in our house last week. The kitchen was scrubbed so well I had a sore shoulder for days. I’ve also been cleaning old garden pots and potting on seedlings. We’re taking our exercise in the form of walks or runs, and last week had a lovely walk up to Beachy Head where sat well away from the path and ate a picnic. Very few people about. We’re so fortunate to have this sort of countryside on our doorstep and I do hope we won’t be prevented in the future from walking though it. Fresh air, access to nature and the ability to be outside are certainly crucial to my own mental health and I’m sure I’m not alone. Wherever we walk about here it’s very quiet. I was more worried on my one visit to Sainsbury’s, even though they are limiting the numbers in the shop. (I’d like to say how good the staff were at our local store in Hamden Park, Eastbourne – friendly, upbeat, entertaining the queue – shop staff are doing difficult jobs and I’ve no doubt they take a lot of flak.) And Katya in our local shop is doing a marvellous job of keeping open, with fresh produce available every day.

Eastbourne from beachy head
Looking back to Eastbourne from the Beachy Head peninsula

I’ve loved reading other people’s blogs and seeing photos of Spring. Last week I was thrilled to discover Jean Tubridy was back blogging. Jean’s blog Social Bridge was one of the first I used to follow. Warmly recommended. Another lovely post that caught my eye last week was Ann Perrin’s tribute to her mother – what an extraordinary life she had, and Ann tells her story with such generosity and ease. Do take a look.

PS I’m 6-4 ahead in the Scrabble Challenge…