This day, that day, Saturday

Have you lost track of time? Lots of people have but it doesn’t matter because time always behaves strangely. Think of all the things you didn’t do before; when you didn’t have time. I bet you still aren’t doing them now. Right now, you are hoping for things to go back to normal but as soon as they do, you will wonder where all that time went. You will kick yourself for not reading that book, or writing the novel, or decorating the front room but you shouldn’t because we all do what we need to.

Actually, maybe those people who think they need to troll journalists on Twitter don’t need to do that. Maybe the people writing angry notes or slashing doctors tyres because they believe they are breaking the ‘going out’ rules don’t need to do that. Maybe the police don’t need to look in people’s shopping bags to see if they have bought ‘unnecessary items.’ And maybe everyone doesn’t need to remember that they own a Karcher pressure washer.

BCV (before corona virus) I used to lie in bed on a Saturday morning and read my book. I would know it was time to get up when we heard my neighbour’s lawn mower start up. Every Saturday at 9.30 we would hear the familiar chug and splutter and the Long Suffering Husband would turn to me and say, “It’s Saturday morning,” as if I didn’t know. The It is too early at the moment to know if my neighbour’s BCV routine is going to be the same as his HCV (hoc Corona virus) routine. I suspect that when this is all over (ACV - ante corona virus) any changes will be reversed very quickly for everyone.

As we settle into our new, temporary, lives, with daily death tolls and threats from unseen forces we must remember to be kind. Not the fake hashtag that was trending from the angry keyboard warriors following a celebrity’s recent suicide but to be kind to yourself. It doesn’t matter if you don’t write a great work of fiction, read Hilary Mantel’s latest work (although as I’m 100 pages in I can thoroughly recommend it), do something creative, get fit, or clap for the NHS every Thursday. You are enough.

It is a very big book (I wonder what is in my exclusive edition?)

It’s going to be a beautiful Saturday. Give yourself some time off from what you ‘should’ do. Do what you want and if what you want is to continue with your routines and cut your grass at 9.30 then that’s fine too. I will be reading my book until then.

Bad Friday, Good Thursday

It’s a bank holiday. If things were normal then you would be waking to the glorious freedom of not having to go to work today, having hot cross buns for breakfast and the inevitable family arguments about what you are going to do today. For several years, I have called this day Bad Friday. I wasn’t the originator of this term but somehow it has stuck.

I run a youth orchestra and we meet every Friday except for those in August and as we meet in a church, religious festival days. This means that we don’t rehearse on Good Friday. A few years ago one of the kids sent me a message to explain how if he couldn’t come to orchestra then it was definitely a bad Friday.

Making music is a human response. In times of crisis it makes us feel better. Playing music together is one of the most sociable but insular things you can do. You keep yourself to yourself; no touching but you connect through the music. The clapping for the NHS is a primitive form of this musical connection. Smarter people noticed this and brought out pots, pans and vuvuzelas. Then a musician, in a music teacher’s forum I’m on, suggested that we join the clapping by playing Somewhere Over the Rainbow. There was some discussion over the key (because musicians couldn’t bear the idea that they might play in a different key to their neighbours) and concert G was settled on.
I wrote it out for my orchestra members and suggested that we have a remote rehearsal, every Thursday (sharing videos) until we are able to meet again.

I’ll be honest, even though I had suggested it to them I still felt awkward about actually doing it. Luckily, I wasn’t alone. I live with a violinist and there is an oboist opposite, so we went for it.
“This is weird,” the violinist said.
“Very,” I agreed, waving at the oboist.
We might have been in the same key but keeping in time at a distance was tricky and there were the usual problems of playing outside in the dark, of music blowing off stands and not being able to see the sharps. However, every musician should give it a go.
As Michael Ball said on Twitter after the first Thursday clapping session, “So proud of my street in London. Nearly everyone came out and clapped and cheered. A beautiful moment...mind you I’m so starved of applause I wanted to walk into the middle of the street, bow, wave and thank everyone for coming #needy.
“That was nice, actually,” I said.
“Lovely to be clapped all the way through a performance,” the violinist agreed.

For a while, we will have to put up with bad Fridays but at least we can have some good Thursdays.

Look after your feet

Over the last few blogs I’ve been talking about my routines. I told you that I start the day with a blog, followed by yoga. Before we were all asked to stay inside walking was part of my daily routine but was broken up into several sections. I would walk the dog after yoga then have breakfast, walk to school, have a lunchtime walk, walk home and then go for a long evening walk with the dog or walk to the swimming pool. This is a lot of walking and my feet (and the dog) are confused about having to do that much in one chunk.

The dog is particularly bothered. At first we tried to give him one long walk in the middle of the day but they say that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks and he was very confused. He has always walked, where he has his morning poo (by a dog waste bin) then he comes back and we feed him his breakfast. The same routine happens in the evening. When we first tried to do one walk a day, we forgot to feed him. Then we remembered but he wouldn’t eat. He kept nagging us for food and we would show him the bowl but he would flounce around the house saying, “But I haven’t had my walk yet. I’m full of poo, which I know you like to pick up. How can I possibly eat?” I tried to sneak out twice but I saw a neighbour also out with one of her dogs (she has 3 that can’t walk together) and she laughed that she wouldn’t report me. I worry a lot about things like that. The vigilante culture is one I find quite terrifying. The dog does love a long walk and especially liking the fact that he can walk down the middle of the road.

My feet have noticed the difference too, so I’ve added daily footcare to my routine. If you live alone I can highly recommend this. Every day (sometimes twice) I rub cream into my feet and massage all the hard knotty bits. Occasionally, I get one of those foot peeling treatments . Yes, it’s gross. No one likes touching feet.

But it is an act of supreme self love.

With Balance There is Movement

I worry.

You’ve worked that out by now if you’ve read my blogs before but specifically, I worry that writing blogs, in real time, about what is happening in the world could seem really stupid if you go back and read them later. In ten years, with the benefit of history doing its twisty thing anything I write now could date really badly. People could look back and accuse me of being capricious; of letting my opinions vacillate (I have loved that word since I read a book called The Vacillations of Poppy Carew). However, this is just something we are all going to have to live with because writing this is the first thing on my new Coronavirus daily routine.

The second thing is yoga. This again, isn’t a new thing for me. I’ve written before about how brilliant yoga is. After my Dad died it got me through the grief. I raved about a YouTube class called Yoga with Adrienne and started her 30 Days with Adrienne programme. I didn’t do it every day but did manage to do each of the 30 workouts. However, after Mum died and my brain broke, yoga wasn’t possible for a while.

30 Days of Yoga with Adrienne

One hundred and fifty days ago, it became possible again and I made a commitment to do the 30days of Yoga programme every single day. I did the first consecutive 30 days and noticed how much it helped. Profound changes happened. Not so much to my body, and there are still loads of shapes I can’t get into, but with my mind. It was quite a ride at first. Then I did her other 30 days series and intend to start them all over again when I’ve finished the most recent one (home). It became a routine that got me out of bed. You can write a blog in bed, or read a book but you can’t do yoga.

The other day was a balancing practice. I am always surprised at how much movement there is in any balancing posture. As you get more experienced, those movement are less noticeable but they are always still there. So, maybe I shouldn’t worry about the vacillations of Julia All Trades. It’s just balance.

Routine

By now, many of us are beginning to develop new routines. It’s the routines that can keep you feeling safe; tiny little things that you can control distracting you from those you can’t. Writing a blog became part of my routine a while ago. I wrote it during the night or the early hours when I couldn’t sleep. Bizarrely, when the whole world went crazy, I started to sleep better. It was if my brain relaxed and said, “See, the world is randomly unsafe. Now everyone knows it.”  I felt that I couldn’t stop writing, though. To not write through this part of History seemed negligent, so I made a commitment to a daily blog while this is happening. It’s the first thing I do when I wake up.

Today, I didn’t want to write. I was hoping to write something happy, or funny; to write about birds or      the pink super moon we are expecting but instead the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson has been moved to intensive care. This is a huge moment in history. This virus doesn’t have a good prognosis once it starts to attack the lungs and so the nation is collectively holding their breath, which is the last thing we should be doing. Breathe everyone! Even people who have an ideological hatred of his policies are having to admit that this is not what they wanted.  We are thinking about his family: his children, siblings, Dad and pregnant girlfriend. We put ourselves in their shoes because we understand what it feels like to be family. We fear for our country. We worry about the medical staff who, already under intense pressure, will be feeling that they mustn’t let this one die.

It makes us question our mortality.

“Stay safe,” we write on emails, knowing that that’s not possible. Then we get angry and look for someone to blame. Trust me, blame won’t help you in the long run. It’s not the fault of the man who sat in a park in the sunshine or whoever decided we needed 5G. Eventually, we will all have to accept that this novel virus is just some random piece of shit that is part of life’s rich shittiness.

So, I will be hoping, praying, practising my breathing (because it might help if I get it and does help to keep things in perspective. ) And will be standing outside to appreciate the clear sky, lack of pollution a super big pink moon.

I’m here for the birds

Wasn’t the Queen lovely? It was a particularly nice broach, I thought and whoever wrote her speech was a genius. It had the perfect tone: not preachy but with enough Churchillian World War Two, we’re  all in this together, we’ll meet again references to keep the angry mob happy. It was genius because any psychologist will tell you that the best way to get people to comply is to point out the people doing what they should, rather than those that aren’t. Thanking us all for doing the right thing was perfect. The Daily Mail pictures and angry people on Social Media are actually making some people say, “Well, if they’re not going to do it, I don’t see why I should.”  It’s the same reason for why they don’t want us to stop and sit. If we see people doing it then it is human nature to do the same thing and people will inevitably share a bench without realising.

This morning, however, the Queen has become a nasty meme. The angry people are still angry, which I understand but hate. Anger is just a response to fear. This response to fear doesn’t help my anxiety and so I’m finding Social Media a fairly uncomfortable place to be.

However, there is a corner of anxious Twitter, where people like me have gathered for a while. It is a place where we tweet about tweets. We are only there for the birds. We share pictures of our bird tables and recordings of the birdsong we are hearing. When you are traumatised (and what is happening right now will feel like a trauma for many) it can help to focus on the small things. Watch the birds, have a pocket full of stones, take your camera out and use the macro setting. Stay small; stay safe; watch the birds.

The blue tit visits the mirror daily to engage the pretty tit in the mirror 

The Japanese are brilliant at this. They have 72 seasons, which help them to focus on the minutiae of life. We know about Sakura (the first Cherry Blossom season) but did you know that Tsubame kitaru is between the 5th and 9th of April? This is the season of the swallows return. It turns out that they are perfectly correct. Last night, I saw my first swallow of the season and so did my corner of social media. We were thrilled. We trilled. The Queen is lovely and the swallows are back.

Next time you feel the fear overwhelm you and the anger rising, I can thoroughly recommend taking a breath and being here for the birds.

Not An Expert

Happy Weird Christmas.

Today, you can stay in, eat a roast dinner, go for a walk, feast on cheese and watch the Queen’s speech. You might like to crack open a jigsaw puzzle or have chocolate for breakfast. If you get really bored then you can get angry on social media.

I’m not an expert and there are lots of things I don’t understand about this virus. There are even more things I don’t understand about the government’s response to it, as I think a lot of the messaging has been confused. I’m sure that if I write some of the things I’m muddled by there will be plenty of people happy to angrily tell me the truth but I suspect that they are not experts either and that even the experts are not entirely sure.

Because I’m not an expert, I’m going to follow the advice I’ve been given. I will not be suggesting that the government do anything to make my life (as a rule follower) worse. I will try not to worry about everyone else or overthink everything.

https://twitter.com/essexpoliceuk/status/1246467566467514368?s=21

I think I’m in the majority and was really happy to see the local Police tweet pictures of empty parks and seafronts. If you looked at the three pictures in the Daily Mail then you might disagree with me but that’s fine because I’m not an expert.