They paved paradise

 All day yesterday I was humming. Eventually, the words of the song started to appear. Randomly.

I put the phone down from speaking to a pupil and sang, “They put ‘em in a tree museum.”

I finished teaching a flute lesson via Zoom where we worked out how to play the incoming Skype call sound and I sang “I don’t care about spots on my apples.”  A scattered thought, even for me.

Maybe it was because I’d read the article about Brexit and the Bees.

Then I walked into the room where my daughter is storing the purchases she’s made for her house. I saw the beautiful pink kettle and toaster and sang, “With a pink hotel, a boutique and a swinging hot spot.”

What was going on?

The Long Suffering Husband went to the supermarket for the weekly shop and I sang, “A big yellow taxi took away my old man.” Obviously, he hadn’t gone out in a yellow taxi but the song was in my head and determined to pop out at any given opportunity.

By the evening, the song was playing, in full on repeat, in my head.

“And don’t it always seem to go, you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone,”

I saw this meme on Facebook.

Suddenly, I knew why. 

On my morning walk I had unexpectedly seen a friend and we had a good socially distanced chat. This is a friend I would normally see in person once a week. It’s a friend I miss. We would normally spend the Eves (Christmas and New Year) together, celebrating. The LSHs would discuss their purchases from the Screwfix direct catalogue, while we covered the important topics. We hadn’t spent any time as a four since a summer, rain soaked barbecue.  Several times, during Lockdown 3 I had thought about texting and saying I was going for a walk or turning up on the doorstep for a random chat in the cold but then I’d look at the Covid rates and decide it would be better if I did my bit. I pushed our friendship to the back of my mind. 

It’s not just that you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone. It’s more that you don’t know what you missed until it’s back.

“They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.”

Where is that minister for loneliness when you need her?