In this strange new world, where an aeroplane is an event once again, I am learning fast.
One of the things that I am learning is that I am here until I am not, and that could be a very long time. So for the first time in my adult life I have stopped hurrying.
Early this morning, for example, I wrapped my fingers round a mug of builder’s tea, and I just stared at the bird table for half an hour. I saw that the jackdaws, who were single last week, are all paired up now, bringing their other halves to the bird table just as we might reinforce a new relationship in a trusted eatery. I saw that the three cock pheasants have a hierarchy, and that our favourite is the smallest and by far the most junior. And I noticed that the jumpy blue tits scarpered for the bigger great tits, but not for the sparrows. High up in the sky, I saw that the kestrel only turns up when the buzzard goes away, like actors in a scene change.
I am learning how privileged you are if your house is full of people, and that yoga isn’t as stupid as I have spent all my adult life thinking it is.
Years ago, I lived in a village where the local publican would regale you with a tirade of ‘cheers, take care, mind how you go and God blesses when you left at the end of the evening. Back then, I thought it artificial and rather irritating. Now, when someone asks me to ‘stay safe’ or to ‘mind how I go’, I feel blessed and happy. Someone is demonstrating that they care for my welfare, and I love that.
I am learning, after a life time of washing my hands infrequently and inadequately, how to do it right, and it brings with it the satisfaction of a new skill well-learned. I am now ‘good’ at it, and rather wish that there was an exam where I could prove to myself what level of hand washing I had arrived at, and how much better I could still get. Roger Morgan-Grenville, writer, specialist subject: hand washing.
And, after a lifetime of sniggering at men who use hand moisturiser, bingo!, I am now moisturiser’s biggest fan.
Counter-intuitively, I am learning how to think less. I made a decision right at the outset of all this that I would simply do what my government asked me to do, and not question it as I have done all my life. I try to ignore the ‘I want you to be as frightened as you humanly can be’ posts on social media, just as I ignore the ‘this is political correctness gone mad, it’s only bloody flu’ ones, too. If Boris asks me to lock myself down, I will not see it part of an illiberal plot; I will see it as my contribution to keeping someone- maybe me- alive.
I am learning to be cross, really cross, with the people who couldn’t care less, other than when they are filling trolleys with toilet paper, when they seem to care very much indeed. And I am noticing good deeds all along the way, and trying not to notice bad deeds.
And I’m not ashamed to say that I have had to learn after many years to be anxious again. I didn’t want to re-learn it, it just happened. These are anxious times, and they will be till they aren’t. That’s not a fault, it’s an embracing of reality.
And at some stage, we will all have to ask ourselves the ‘what did you do in the war, daddy?’ question from the 1940s posters, what we did, and how we were. And I just want to reply, ‘boring, obedient and well.’
This comes with all good wishes, as always. As that old publican used to say: ‘Mind how you go, and stay safe.!’
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