When my parents got to the age I am now, they did the usual thing of make a bucket list. You get to about fifty and friends start to die. It makes you question your mortality and you think about all the things you haven’t done. They started to travel to see the places they’d always wanted to go. They took one trip a month for a year and eventually got fed up of it. All they wanted to do was stay at home and not have to pack or unpack anything. I think it probably all started from my Mum’s childhood wish to be able to fly.
I expect that with the lockdown in place, many people are dreaming where they’d like to go and developing their lists. When we walk, the Long Suffering Husband, not wishing to talk about virus maths or death any more, asks me to name five things.
“So, your five favourite breakfast cereals?” he will ask.
“What about the five top children’s TV shows?”
“Best five places you’ve been.”
Before he asks the question he really wants to focus on, “What five places would you wish you’d been to if you died tomorrow?”
Unfortunately for him, I’m quite content. It keeps striking me that if I did die tomorrow then I would have no regrets. It’s been a pretty good life, so far. I’m not saying that I don’t want to go anywhere but many of my happiest times have been right here at home. In fact, this lockdown is quite blissful for me. I have my family around me but we have enough space to be apart. It is the best time of year for walking. I live in a beautiful area with many country footpaths. Lockdown means that you can hear and see the birds, the streams are running clearer and the skies are bluer. There is no pressure to be anything more and there are plenty of things to keep me entertained.
Like the geese, I will go if I have to but I’m more than happy to stay on my daily back-and-forth flight path. One of the things, closer to home Mum always wanted to do was see the geese fly overhead. She watched them fly over her garden every evening and had heard that in certain places you could have them almost buzz the top of your head. I was always confused about this because if you stand on the sea wall then this happens frequently.
At the moment, the sea wall is too busy for me. It used to be my favourite place for social distancing but since the government has suggested that daily exercise is better for your brain that sitting in your underpants, eating chocolate, drinking gin and watching Netflix, people have flocked to the edge of the world. This has forced me to explore some of the footpaths and bridleways that the dog has been eyeing up for a while but I’ve refused to take because they seem to be heading out into the middle of nowhere.
We took a path and turned a corner and there was a huge goose staring at us.
“Did you know it’s the Japanese micro season of Wild Geese Fly North?” I asked the LSH. “He doesn’t look like he’s going to fly anywhere.”
“Is he wild?”
“Looks pretty cross to me.”
You see, with comedy like that, who needs to fly anywhere?
No comments:
Post a Comment