THE LAST WEEKEND OF LOCKDOWN

Another photograph that might as well be a painting. 

This one really captures the moment. It was taken yesterday, at a place I was at, just less than a year ago - Durdle Door.

The air ambulances have landed there because some fatheads had been jumping off the top of the 'door', and had seriously injured themselves. The crowds of onlookers, kettled into that tight mass on the beach are just a handful of the thousands of people who, despite us still being in lockdown, trekked their way down that stony path yesterday, ignoring any spirit of the social distancing rules left, if not the letter.

The blue sky, the perfect sea, the glorious weather, the paramedics in PPE and the the lone police officer - everything about this tells the story of the last weekend of lockdown.

Scientists say we're easing too early. I think I agree. Today, the police have closed the roads to Durdle Door and Lulworth Cove - presumably with the number one goal of stopping us from killing ourselves, either by 'tombstoning' a 70ft drop into jagged rocks, or by spreading this still infectious virus in the sun.

Those people took a risk by going there, and it backfired, didn't it? They're squished together, as socially distant as sardines are in a tin. It isn't the fault of the cliff-jumpers either; they were risk-takers too, although their miscalculation was a lot more costly. The truth is that they were all there, every person in this photograph, on a day that they really shouldn't have been.

THE STARS ARE TOO GOOD FOR US

It says something about humanity, doesn't it, that in the course of the same week, we can launch men into space with a reusable rocket for the very first time, and then also watch a racist cop committing a real murder on live TV.

Gil Scott-Heron called it in the 60s:

"Her face and arms began to swell. And whitey's on the moon."

I felt sick to my stomach. Desperate human need and cruelty stretched out before me on the sidewalk, while one white man knelt on the neck of one black man, painting the entire metaphor for us in that one awful pastiche - the criminal suspect choking against the cold concrete, the casual white hand in the pocket, the flashing sirens, the protesters, the struggle, the power, the clamour, and then the silence.

"He's not moving," shouted someone, "He's not moving."

How dare we do this. How dare we sit back and let it happen. How dare we clap and cheer as our toy rocket launches in a plume of excitement and exploration. How dare we imagine we can explore the stars, when this ancient evil still swirls unseen in our hearts! How dare we imagine we can live together on other planets, when we can't even look after this one or each other on it. How dare we.

I'm a white person, and this is a complex issue. Gold was stolen from the Incas that we Europeans exterminated; Africa is the most mineral-rich continent in the world, yet our Union-Jack-waving Empire ravaged it purely for ourselves, enslaving its stewards for generations, and encasing our monuments with the glittering spoils. The British Museum, one of my favourites, even today, shimmers quietly with looted treasures we won't ever return. Those slaves we created, we exported like cattle. This is my culture. This, my heritage. I am the problem. 

I can get livid, and I am, but I know I can't feel the pain and the fear of it; I appreciate I might never really know what it feels like. But I recognise that we've all got to change.

Perhaps it starts with examining ourselves for that swirling evil? Perhaps it's about understanding what goes on in our own hearts - or perhaps it's about education that goes much deeper, burying down to the roots of this pernicious disease. Perhaps it's about challenging the micro-reactions we see all the time... but we know all this - we've been taught this for thirty years and more. There's a tiresome inevitability about it.

All I see now is that we must do something. Because we mustn't explore the stars, or spread this contagion without changing ourselves first.

We may live in a world where these two things can happen in a week, and where we blink for a while in the mirror of our own reflection. But Gil Scott-Heron had a point, I think. The stars are too good for us.

IN WHICH I SORT OF REVIEW A BOND MOVIE

"I expect you'll all need a drink after that," said the weary-faced manager. I won't name him.

Well quite. It's been a rough couple of weeks. As Friday drew to a close and the whole horrid 'reduction in force' process ended, I closed down my laptop and poured myself a good sized glass of apple and elderflower squash.

I know, but it's Friday and it was after 12.

What I did do tonight, for a bit of escapism with my apple and elderflower squash, was watch Skyfall - the Bond movie from 2012. Bond, that most unlikeable of heroes strode into the gun-sight, turned and fired his Walther PPK at the screen, like he always does. Then he spent two hours racing about, saving the world for the... what was it, 23rd time? Plus, he did it all while wounded and, as usual, three-sheets to the wind. Bond.

"Waste of a good scotch," he said, shortly after the baddie killed a woman that James had just promised to help ( who for convoluted reasons, had just been balancing a shot glass of whisky on her head). That kind of thing has always jarred me against 007. Callous. 

"What took you?" asked M at the big finale. Bond had been strangling a man to death in a frozen lake, having just blown his own house up.

"Got into deep water," he jollied for no-one's benefit (I mean what was M supposed to do there?) There's something very British about covering up the very serious with the lightly humorous, but that, Mr Bond is just cold.

Having said that, I do actually like a Bond movie. Something child-like stirs when I hear the 60s electric guitar play that theme, or the tuxedoed Bond jumps into his 1964 Aston Martin DB5. It's a sort of nostalgia for an old version of me, an older version of him, an an older version of Britain too. I get that it's not everyone's cup of tea though.

I forgot that the National Gallery was in Skyfall. That was a nice little treat.

Because that's a real-world place I love, it got me thinking too, what role I would play if I were in Bond's world of MI6 and international espionage? What would I be?

Well I couldn't be out there fighting bad guys on top of trains and flirting my  around casino tables - that's not me, so the role of smug, womanising super-spy is out.

I couldn't be M either - too much responsibility - and as I've proven, I thrive when those types of people are making the tough calls and keeping calm about it. M is a boss. I'm not a boss.

I don't think I'd want to be a villain. They seem intent on over-elaborate plans like blowing up Tajikistan with a sun laser, or stealing nukes that they can launch from their private islands for no particularly good reason. I'm not that clever, or that devious, or that bored.

I don't even know if I could be Q! In this iteration of Bond, he comes across as a high-tech cyber nerd (played expertly by Ben Whishaw I might add) who has a brain like a computer and a drole sense of humour. Q if anything, is a software developer, the type I've worked with for many a year. And I'm not clever enough for that.

No, I think I'd be one of the operatives in the background - not a Moneypenny or a random-admin. I'd be more of a language decoder who feeds information up to the stress-heads in the situation room, or perhaps a science guy who analyses shrapnel from bullet wounds and can tell you where it came from. I might decode a message that's being beamed from some satellite, or click the zoom button when the big cheeses want to see what's going on in Severnaya. 

You wouldn't see me unless I walk into shot like an extra with coffee - and I'd be a little scared of M actually - but I'd be there, an essential cog in the well-oiled machine of the British Civil Service. While Bond is out "defusing bombs" I'd be packing up my laptop after another week of incredibly important research, ready for Monday, and I'd be feeling good about doing my bit for Queen and Country, even if I have to take the tube and pack my own sandwiches.

Well. I'm not in a Bond film. I'm a technical writer who's grateful to have a job, and also sad that a few of his colleagues no longer do today.

I poured another glass of the hard stuff and swilled it round in the tumbler. It was late. Next time, I thought, I'll have my apple and elderflower squash with a slice of lemon. Yeah that's it. And of course, shaken and not stirred. 

 

POLLEN DIARIES: PART 18

Here he goes again, old snotty nose, delving into his yearly vocabulary of mucus and saliva to tell us how bad his hay fever is...

“I’ve heard,” said someone on a zoom chat last night, “That local honey builds up your immunity...”

Everyone’s quick with a solution aren’t they? If I were a different kind of person I’d have demolished that fix before he’d hit the end of the sentence. I’m not though, so I didn’t; I just said thanks, without going into the detail of the year I tried it and almost lost a small fortune to the farm shop.

Well it’s back, anyway. The grass is blooming, the sun is shining, and ‘old snotty nose’ here woke up with his eyes stuck together and his face streaming.

Matcha doesn’t work. Local honey didn’t do it. Chamomile tea is not my favourite, and cetirizine hydrochloride is leaving my mouth dry, my lips sticky, and my nose blocked.

Someone else suggested switching medication each year between ceterizine and loratadine (the other one). The idea is that your body doesn’t get chance to build immunity to either. I don’t know what the science is there, and it’s been a while since I knew any pharmacology students to ask. My guess is that you switch side effects too, and get alternate summers of either drowsy afternoons or ‘runny tummies’.

And as President Business is fond of saying, the “cure can’t be worse than the problem”. Though, to be fair, his reasons are very different.

Well anyway, the next few weeks might be interesting, stuck indoors next to a parkful of grass. There are worse things out there though to suffer from, especially at the moment, and so, as I say every year (before going on about it in far too much detail) I won’t go on about it. At least, I’ll try.

ISOLATION DIARIES PART 38: END OF APPLAUSE

We gave the last clap for the NHS and key worker heroes tonight. I remembered what I'd written back in March about how this one simple thing had brought a frightened nation together in an act of unity.

I know there are some people who find it politically charged. I know there are people out there who refuse to do it, and sit indoors behind their keyboards demanding a world in which those workers are paid better. I get it, and I agree - if we applaud them as heroes, we should pay them as heroes too. But it does seem a little hard-hearted not to do either.

The organiser of (I think it's called Clap for Carers) suggested that after 10 weeks, and the country now on the fading edges of the lockdown, it's enough to call this thing at 8pm every Thursday to a halt. So for one final time, we gathered on our doorsteps and clapped loudly into the air with the nation behind us.

It was dark back in March. There were fireworks and warm doorways that leaked light and warmth into the cold. We stood with our breath condensing into the night air while the sound of applause rippled around the houses.

Tonight though it was bright, warm, and sunny - winter has become spring, and spring is turning to summer. So out there in the Close, my neighbours and I stood in the golden sunset under a pale blue sky. I was in shirt-sleeves; some were in shorts. One elderly neighbour was in trousers and a string vest, throwing his hands together by his wheelie bin. We cheered one last time and went back into our houses.

I don't know whether I was right about a powerful wave of hope sweeping over us. We made it through the peak, and indeed, we did flatten the curve. Our heroes in scrubs did that; we did it too by socially distancing, and the surge of cases they feared having to deal with never really materialised. There were no stories of hospitals having to decide who gets a ventilator and who gets the corridor - well, none as far as I know, anyway. There was no real need for the thousands of extra provisions in the Nightingale hospitals as well there might have been had we not done this. In one sense, it worked well.

But thousands of people, perhaps as many as 60,000 are gone. And so many families are missing loved ones at this side of the peak - and many of those from political decisions. It's a very real thing for them tonight, and we should never lose sight of that. Never.

But if we do want to keep this warm national appreciation of our heroes going, then I hope we do in some way. The truth is that they were risking their lives long before we were bothered about it - a quick trip to A&E on any given Friday night should be enough to tell you that. They're not just heroes who stepped up to a challenge (though undoubtedly they are that); they're heroes regardless - they always were - and they ought to be recognised and rewarded and remunerated much more than they have been in this new, kinder world we're entering.

And as I wondered ten weeks ago, we may look back on this time and think about whether this country changed on Thursday nights - whether it was a moment of golden unity after three and a half years of wintry division.

I don't know that. I just don't know. I can only hope so. 

ISOLATION DIARIES PART 37: GHOSTS

This is week 11 of isolation. It’s wearing a little thin. My colleagues appear like ghosts on the screen now, some of them weary from the rigours of the redundancy process, which, while awful, at least has the good sense to conclude itself this week. Others look nervously around the chat, wondering which of us will still be here next time, post-axe. Still others have been walking on eggshells, not daring to ask the question.

Last week I Iet morbid curiosity log me in to the virtual beer fridge. It’s normally every Friday, 4:30pm, and when in ufficio, it features a real fridge with real beer in it. It’s long been a staple of the week; cracking open some cans around the pool table and the ever noisy foosball. And in lockdown we’ve carried on the tradition, often throwing in one of Mr Pub Quiz’s kahoot specials, with our own beers (obviously) on screen. I went a few weeks ago and sat in the background while they chatted and laughed about everything. 

So last Friday, in the wake of the ‘Reduction in Force’ announcement, I thought I’d log in again to see who was brave enough to turn up.

Two other people. Not the regulars like Steve, or Tim, or Mr PQ. Not the big cheese (awks) or indeed any of the medium sized cheeses. In fact, not even any of the fun size variety pack cheeses either; just me and two others, desperately making egg shell conversations work from our separate houses. I stayed, out of politeness and sympathy, and so, I imagined, did they, despite none of us really having talked to each other directly before.

So week 11 then. There will probably be a week 18, so still some way to go, I reckon - despite the government’s attempts at undermining its own message. I was worried about surviving just a few days at the beginning, without going zany; now it’s the norm - quiet solitude: hours of it, with the occasional ghosts of people I once knew and worked alongside, popping up with a cheery electronic ping every now and then. I hope I’ll see all of them again but I know I won’t, due to the way companies quietly and ruthlessly process redundancies. And it feels dreadful that I can’t ask.

PAPILLONS

It might not have been wise to have had an early evening nap. However, it felt like the only thing to do with hot, heavy eyes at 4:30pm. Work was, at best, disconnected at that time, and I’d been sitting there at my desk for eight hours. I figured I’d earned 40 winks.

On went the audio version of the Psalms, off went the laptop, and down went my head to the pillow. I was asleep before the reader had got to the ‘tree planted by streams of water’.

Anyway, this, and then waking up an hour later, has resulted in a state of alertness I don’t normally associate with the hour between one and two o’clock in the morning. I’m normally a lot less lucid and a lot more snorey.

A moth flutters in the lamplight. It would be the kindest thing to switch it out and spare that little creature the torment of dangerous attraction. Or perhaps there’s something for me to learn about myself, or about human nature; designed to yearn for daylight yet perverted into preferring the artificial for the real, the night over the day. We’re all a bit blind and a bit mothy.

Meanwhile the butterflies, the papillons (as a friend reminded me today they’re called in France - pah-pee-on) get to flutter in the real sun, like Instagram influencers blessed with perfect skin and calculated travel plans. Their beautiful colours flash with silky wing beats, persuading us night-flyers that the world is all lily pads and sunshine.

Well. I’m switching off now. If learned anything from the subliminal Psalms in my sleep-state earlier, it’s that you can choose how you’re planted, whether to walk in the counsel of the wicked, to stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers, or just be planted in the river. I don’t have to be a moth, flapping and failing in this artificial plasma glow. Tomorrow is daylight. We can all be papillons.

POST-TRUTH SOFT-FEET FOOTBALL

The tribes are out again.

Fifteen years ago, my friend and I ran a youth club where the boys would come to play soft-football inside the church, just after school. It was sweaty work, racing around the carpet in socks (no shoes allowed), chasing a sponge ball between goals - but the lads we were working with loved it.

There was always controversy at those indoor footy afternoons. Every week there was at least one eruption of unfairness when a boy would complain about something that either had or hadn't happened. We had to be fair referees (while still playing, ourselves) who had to see it all and know how to deal with it within a second of it happening. Often it blew over within moments of the howl of despair, the flailing arms and the outcry against us. Occasionally, it would lead to the beginnings of a fist-fight between them.

I remember marvelling at how brazen the lies were. Kids would 'swear down' that a thing didn't happen, just after I'd seen happen with my own eyes. Then they'd cleverly switch the parameters of it to make themselves right - it was all about being rewarded for being in the right, for being convincing, even when they knew they were in the wrong. Other times, they'd say we were dry as biscuits for not spotting a thing that had happened - even though we could never be sure ourselves.

"Penalty! Oh come on, how's that not a (expletive) penalty? Are you (expletive) blind, man? Ah, you're so bad at this."

Count 1,2,3 and it's then too late to change your mind. The other team will go krakatoa if you dither now, even if you're standing there doubting yourself in your socks. But are they right? Or are they angling for a ridiculous advantage?

What I didn't expect, what I never expected, was grown ups who behave in exactly the same way. Yet here we are - stuck between the tribes while they shout in the street about who's right and who's wrong. And they are vociferous about it today!

I've also found myself falling in to the trap - you read an opinion on Twitter, and the first question you ask yourself is 'Which team are they on?' rather than, 'Are they right?' I feel as though I'm constantly questioning people's allegiance, their history, their leanings, so that I can then knowingly say: "Well of course they'd think that! They're on the red team, or they're in the blue corner." When did tribalism start trumping the truth? When did we start justifying behaviour based on allegiance, rather than actual truth?

This is where we land in the tribal economy - because everyone needs to have a tribe and a label, so we can process their thoughts and judge them without doing too much of the heavy listening. Isn't that dreadful? It's post-truth soft-feet football, but it's everywhere. The entirety of debate is black or white, and there is no grey any more. A misspoken error is always a 'lie' (or at best, an incompetent understanding of the truth) and a cheater can worm their way out of it with enough cunning and connections. There is no nuanced view - no middle ground available, you're required to pick a side in every tiresome way, and the competition for being a powerful voice on your side of the fence is feirce.

These days, those same boys push their young children to Lidl in prams and pushchairs. I see them sometimes - not always to say hello to - but I do see them, looking for all the world like real grown-up men with 13-year-old faces. I wonder whether they have to somehow arbitrate with their own children while they squabble about what happened. I wonder whether they ever think back to how they themselves were all those years ago.

And I wonder too, whether we'll figure it out as a society. It'll be tough while we have leaders who proclaim 'fake news' at every story they don't like, and news outlets that keep printing stories with a certain bias against them. That dichotomy makes all of us, all the voting grown-ups in the equation, try to figure it out. We're in a perplexing position! We're standing in our socks, trying to work out what's right and what's fair, knowing full well that we probably can't win, either way.

EVERYTHING'S IN MOTION

Another long walk today. This time I walked out beyond The Roebuck, along the river to Mapledurham Lock, where, just past the churning weir, I sat in the long grass on the bank and laid out beneath the blue sky.

It was bright and warm and windy today - in every sense the rough winds Shakespeare mentioned that 'do shake the darling buds of May' - rippling the trees and forming patterns in the grass. When the trees get blown by the wind, they ripple and roar like the sea.

It occurred to me today that you don't often see motion in a photograph. The shutter flicks open for just a fraction of a second and in that tiny exposure of light onto silicon, a whole world is captured in time - frozen and unnatural. Today was just such a day: a photograph couldn't have told the story of the leaves billowing or the blue water of the river racing by. It couldn't have measured the speed of the white clouds or the flickering evening sunlight through the grass.

I imagine a similar thing happens with portraits. You don't get to see the way Abraham Lincoln smiled, or the sparkle of Oscar Wilde's eyes. You don't know the bashfulness, the defiance, the dimples, the mannerisms of real people who lived and breathed the same air as we do, in full and vibrant technicolour.

Obviously you can capture some of that. Really good photographers are able to describe motion and emotion, just as any skilled artist can. But for most of us, a click of the camera only tells a microsecond of a much greater story.

I stayed there for a while, arms folded behind my head, feet crossed at the river's edge. The grass tickled my elbows and the sun warmed my face.

Everything's in motion. The whole planet moves, and even the thing it moves around is moving. You can't freeze it or capture it in time - all that's left for us is to live it, knowing the power of the moment and knowing the power of the motion.

The thing the thing that revolves, revolves around, sank behind the wavering treeline, and long shadows fell across the golden field. The grass waved, the river hurried by, the leaves fluttered and the branches swept the leaves from side to side. I was glad I'd been there to see it.

LIKED

This is a poetry one. I get some moments when I feel like crafting a poem, others when I’m not so fussed. I’ll understand if this is not your cup of tea.

This one came out of thinking about social media and how it all makes me feel. I thought about posting it, but as you’ll see, it might be really quite ironic to do so - both for me and anyone who genuinely hovers over the reactions button. I don’t mind irony, but I think it might undermine itself if it appeared on fizzlebook...

Liked

Funny or witty

Or clever or right

Or handsome or

Blessed or just

Beautifully bright:

With a little pink

Love heart or

Thumbs up in blue...

Seems whether I’m

‘Liked’ is now all

Down to you.

As you trade 

Your reactions for

Dopamine clicks

And my confidence

Soars in the

Chemical mix

Like a stamp of

Approval I

Didn’t require;

Now burns in my

Skin like a

Digital fire!

So I scramble for

Loves, or a retweet

Or two

And I post something

Poignant, or stolen,

Or true

But I wonder deep down

In the heart I once knew

Is whether I’m ‘liked’

Really all down to you?

POP GOES THE WEASEL

So every afternoon now, an ice cream van, Mr Lucky Clover Leaf Ices, comes hurtling down the road playing his chimes. He doesn't stop. He gets to the roundabout, whizzes around like a high-speed music box and then drives off back up the road again.

What's his game? Any children who happen to hear that magical jingle would be left in a cloud of tire-smoke as he speeds away, and that's if they should they be fast enough to even get out there. Mr Lucky Clover Leaf Ices never stops - they'll never catch him.

The only thing I can think is that perhaps it's the closest edge of the park. So maybe it's a strategic blast of the chimes for all the kids and mums lounging on the grass just behind my house? Perhaps his melodious rendition of Pop Goes the Weasel can't be heard from the park entrance, so he circles the park first giving it a surround-sound rendition of his cantata, then eventually goes and parks up near the entrance, where he hopes a queue of kids will have naturally dragged their parents, notes in hand.

You know, Pop Goes the Weasel used to have two more verses - it's all Cockney Rhyming Slang for things your dad spends money on. I looked up the words:

Half a pound of tuppeny rice,

(food)

Half a pound of treacle.

(treacle tart = sweetheart)

That's the way money goes,

Pop! goes the weasel

(weasel and stoat = coat)

Every night when I go out,

The monkey's on the table,

(£500)

Take a stick and knock it off,

Pop! goes the weasel

(flushed down the cat and dog)

Up and down the City road,

In and out the Eagle,

(a real establishment in a real London Street)

That's the way the money goes,

Pop goes the weasel.

(Dad's in the boozer)

It's a neat little social commentary. Money goes on fripperies at the end of the day.

Mr Lucky Clover Leaf's taking the mick isn't he - playing that tune at the end of my road - what could be more frippery than ice cream?

Still, on days like today, I'm sure he does a roaring trade selling 99s and magnums to the picnic families out there on the buttercup grass. Or perhaps he doesn't? Perhaps in this age of caution and social distance, he's not selling enough Calippos at all? Perhaps he has to roam all the streets, all the cul-de-sacs, all the avenues, gardens and closes, just to remind us he's still here, that ice cream is still a beautiful thing, or is the promise of a beautiful thing, a sweet taste, a sweet aroma, a sweet sound, from the side of the road? Well good luck to you, Mr Luck Clover Leaf Ices with your mobile marketing-mobile. Though maybe slow down a bit, eh?

ISOLATION DIARIES PART 36: RUSTIC

I went further afield today. For the last two months I've stayed pretty much within a 1-mile radius of my home - a couple of long walks not counted; I certainly haven't driven far since March 14th, when I drove to a gig in Hampshire.

Hampshire feels like another country now. And that barn dance was almost part of another world! The little jokes the caller made about 'socially distancing' while dancing (it was a brand new term back then) and the worry about whether enough people would make it for the raffle. We had ploughman's supper - ripping the bread with our fingers, squeezing the grapes and pickled onions, and stuffing the great wedges of cheese into tough loaf-ends - no thought to who may have arranged it on the paper plate, or where that food had been! These were the last few days of the pre-lockdown world.

So today, now that restrictions have been loosened a bit, I drove out to see my friend Mike for a walk in the countryside. It was a golden evening. Long shadows fell across the fields and the brilliant setting sun painted the trees in their finest colours. Birds chased each other across the warm, blue sky as tractors rolled hay below them.

"It's a bit like holidays, this," I said at one point, while Mike twisted his camera lens in front of the sunset. "Evening walks in the countryside - especially as I don't really know where I am."

He found that amusing. I've lived in this part of the world a long time - to not know where I was was probably a strange thing to admit. But this particular slice of countryside really was all new to me. At one point we found a view of our town from such a curious angle, I just couldn't work out which bit was north, which was west or south or anything! Everything was there - the hospital chimney, the water tower, the wind turbine - but they were all somehow in all the wrong places.

"It's funny to think in the old days," said Mike, "...a mile's walk would have been a long way. The next village would have seemed like a foreign land, even with different accents and dialects."

True enough. The world would certainly have seemed enormous when the only way to get out of your bubble was by a lot of walking or an expensive horse and carriage ride. These days, and topically so, we all live a whole lot closer together; you can be in Los Angeles faster than it would take to ride a horse to London.

Well, not at the moment you can't. Right now, we're all restricted to a much more old-fashioned way of doing things - such as an hour's amble through the countryside, watching a lady round up her horses, or a mother and daughter collecting flowers from the roadside. It's all very... rustic. Rustic and delightful.

I asked Mike what he'd like to preserve from this time; how it'll be, when the great buzz begins again and we're tempted to get back to driving about everywhere in a fluster. We talked about some of the things we need to lay down, and some of the lessons we need to pick up. We talked about stopping once in a while to listen to the birds and the trees, and watching which plants grow at which times of the year. There's so much beauty in these natural rhythms - it would be a shame to miss it while we're out chasing life and significance. I really don't want to go back to that kind of thing, as I keep saying. It's worth being intentional about it making a difference.

There were some lovely cottages on the walk today - the kind with thatched roofs and roses growing around the door. We passed an old chapel that had been converted into a stunningly modern apartment: angled wooden beam roof and wide, airy rooms; plush staircases and modern art were visible through what would have been the chancel window. It was all quite idyllic, very quaint and still, made even lovelier by the evening light, falling as it was through those large windows. As I always do, I allowed myself a second or two of dreaming and then shook my head back into reality.

I hope we can create a slower pace. There's something ever so luxurious about it. I don't really know how to do it, but still I hope I'll get a little closer. Sure, I probably won't wind up in a chocolate box cottage in the Berkshire countryside, or a minimalist barn conversion with mod-cons and velux windows. I probably won't have Audis and BMWs glimmering in the drive, or colourful hanging baskets exploding from the porch. But I can live a little slower, a little more rustic, a little more local - for sure?

After all, in this age of lockdown and old-fashioned travel within a radius, we're all a little more local than ever we were, aren't we? 

ISOLATION DIARIES PART 35: PYRAMIDS

So my role's not at risk. I'm not sure that makes things any easier though, as there'll be quite a few people out there whose are.

The big question left on everyone's mind is whether this will be it. Will there be another round of this? And let's be honest, nobody knows. They've told us they've done what they can to make it (what the Americans call) a "One and Done", but truthfully? No-one's making promises.

It's quite remarkable how quickly we've all got here - just 63 days after isolation began. It's a flimsy world sometimes, the business world. That was all it took for sales to slow down and for our reserves to fail to the point where we're axing our most valuable resource: 63 days. Our pyramid is built on sand.

I do wonder sometimes whether the world went haywire trying to make as much money as possible. Something's happened to us since the Industrial Revolution - a kind of long, slow descent into high-speed inequality, where the very few pharaohs get grapes and fans and statues - and the rest of us get sun-baked, while plucking and crushing and sculpting.

I'm not proposing any sort of thesis on socialism versus capitalism (though I appreciate it might sound like it): I'm just wondering whether we've been given this hiatus for a reason, and whether the shining ones at the top of the pyramids will allow us to change things, or whether we're an expendable resource, so long as they get to stay there.

Don't let me grow cynical though. Hard hearts go that way, and I am genuinely thankful for what I have - including the opportunity to grow, make more of my time, help the world be a nicer place, and loan any strength I have to others.  

I checked my calendar for 63 days' time and made a note of it. I hope it really is a 'one and done' - not just because I don't like this awkward anxiety, but also because it's a pretty horrible thing for all of us to have to go through. It's horrid for those forced into making that decision. It's horrid for those halfway up to have to cascade it down. It's horrid for those of us facing a possible lean time. It's horrid for those who have to go through it regardless of whether they keep their jobs or not, and it's horrid for those of us left too, who have a little more toil to do, a residual sense of survivors' guilt, and the anxious thought that there might be a next time.

But in me at least, the brook still babbles and the beck still bubbles. "There is a river whose streams make a city glad," as it says in Psalm 46. So even if the system is pyramids and palms and we can't change it, I guess we can bring peace into the bit of Egypt where our own feet have landed. 

 

ISOLATION DIARIES PART 34: BROOK

Okay so there's no explaining why I thought it was Tuesday this morning. Sure, isolation days are a little screwy, as they mostly feel like Saturdays you're forced to work through, but the one day that doesn't ever really feel like that is Sunday, and yesterday was most definitely a Sunday. I should have woken up to a Monday morning, not a Tuesday.

Regardless of which day it is, I feel a little softer today. There's a real danger isn't there, of letting fear and injustice harden your heart? I've seen it on social media - political opinions have turned what were nice, kind people into snarling protesters, who now justify their angular consonants and their Anglo Saxon vernacular with their 'righteous' fury. I don't want to be like that. Actually, I don't think they do either. 

So it's not Tuesday; it's Monday. I don't have to rush to make a quiz and I didn't oversleep the prayer meeting. Everything's okay.

-

"Unfortunately, after exploring all other opportunities, we need to enact a Reduction In Force (RIF) and Furloughs, impacting ~8.5% of our worldwide employees."

Don't you just love an email? This one dropped in at about 11am with the added promise that everyone affected would be notified by the end of the day. There was no gasp around the office like there was last time. There was no rattling of a hundred keyboards or hushed chatter about what it means and who might be leaving. There are no water coolers to gather around to help each other feel better about it. This time there are just the silent words on a screen, popping up in our living rooms and spare rooms, while our hearts quietly thump in our throats.

It shouldn't really be much of a surprise - a similar tale of layoff and redundancy must be unfolding in lots of places. It was still a shock though. 8.5% equates to around 80 people around the globe, some of whom are bound to be friends and colleagues, and maybe me.

I was once again hearing the Still Small Voice ask me what I would like to happen, and once again I felt peace inside me like a tiny brook. I love that that happens - I know it'll work out either way, whichever adventure I discover. I could say a lot more about that, but until the end of the day when the uncertainty clears a bit, I'm in the stream, listening to the water babbling and bubbling over the rough stones. And then, whatever today holds, tomorrow will definitely be Tuesday.   

ISOLATION DIARIES PART 33: A SMALL, UNNOTICEABLE CHANGE

I don't know whether I can explain it. I can only say, I feel a bit different today.

This might not make sense to anyone at all; to be honest, I'm not even sure why I'm going there, but today I feel just a little bit changed - a small, unnoticeable change, that's also somehow enormous. See? Makes no sense. Maybe if I figure out how to say it, I'll return to it specifically.

-

A friend of mine asked me today why it would be that we continue to do things in an old way, when everything around us has changed. I thought that was such a pertinent question. This is a season so different to what's gone before, and yet many of us are adapting ourselves to fit our expectations - expectations not of this season, not of the next even, but actually, the familiar, the comfortable, the old.

I suppose it's timescales. Right now we don't know how this ends. The lockdown was indefinite, the pandemic has no cure, the fallout could be decades long - like the wartime generation in September 1939, we have no idea whether the war will be over by Christmas, by 1940, or sometime beyond - we're in the middle of it: how we adapt to it depends entirely on how we think it transitions into whatever might be next. And we may differ about that; we may differ vastly about that.

It's a bit like those peculiar Spring days when you don't know whether or not you need a coat. You take one with you one day, and it's baking hot and you've got to carry your coat around with you. Then the next day when you've learned your lesson, you leave that coat at home - and the sun goes in and it chucks it down as though the clouds are deliberately giving it their all. The only way to change behaviour is to do your best to predict the forecast - and without an idea of what's going to happen, it's really hard to adapt.

That really does feel like where we are. None of us know for sure; the only certainty we have is how things used to be, and subconsciously we find ourselves aiming towards it, precisely because it's the only certainty we know.

So, we do things online in exactly the same way we do them in the room - even though it doesn't make a lot of sense any more. But it would make sense if we knew for sure we were going back to doing things live soon - so if you believe we're eventually going back to that, it doesn't make sense to change our ways at all.

But what if we're not? What if we're moving into a hybrid world where we mix the two? How do we handle that weird, uncharted situation? How do we prepare? How do we pick the right coat?

Take preaching for example. I grew up happily sitting through 30-40 minute messages. Some were well done, engaging and inspiring. You got to the end feeling as though you'd learned something, been inspired by something, and needed to change something. Others were tougher to stay awake through.

But there are generations younger than me now who just can't sit through a 6-minute YouTube clip without flicking to the next one. As soon as they've got the idea of a thing, they're distracted and off to the next exciting shiny video, recommended to them by an algorithm. Even I get sent songs every day on WhatsApp and I rarely ever get through a single one without scrubbing forwards or abandoning it halfway through. I'd apologise for that, but I have a sneaking suspicion that we all do it.

So what chance then for 40 minutes of talking?

You could argue that it's the distraction that's the problem; that we should all have the discipline to do less channel-hopping in our busy minds, and that if we can fix that for our young disciples, we can expect them to make it through the 3-point sermon.

I'm not convinced though. I personally think this is an area that it's up to us to adapt and repackage, somehow without losing the power of that informative, inspiring, life-changing Word. And I think there are creative ways to do it. Crumbs, we even call it 'preaching' - a word that's become so corrupted that it carries the idea of being talked down to in its very core! Why?

Worship's another, super-personal to me. I'm fascinated by how people have been engaging at home, and whether that corporate experience needs to change now, given what we've learned. In lots of ways, it is the thing I go to church to do more than any other thing - I bring an offering, I place it at the altar; we all do, and together those offerings rise up to God in a way that is all the more beautiful. We all really miss it. But what if large elements of that process (the music, the songs, the chord progressions, the lights, the stages) are actually us inventing proscribed ways for others to have an encounter? It seems to me that we've invented a whole bunch of rules about how it should be done, what it should sound like, who gets to hold a guitar and a microphone and why - and if I'm reading my Bible properly, Jesus had quite a lot to say to people who made up their own rules about how others should encounter Father.

It's contentious I know. Don't read too much into it. I'm just wondering whether there might be things it would be wise to lay down in this season, even though many of us don't really want to. True, we don't know how long it will last, but we do know that the world definitely won't look the same on the other side of it. We can't go back to church. And, as I've said before, I'm not entirely sure I want to. So how will we change?

Work too - a colleague of mine, who basically works in a cupboard of developers in Peterborough, is convinced that he's never going back to the office. In his world, social distancing is physically impossible. And even in our open-plan office, it's very difficult. What if the way we work needs to change permanently? What things do we need to let go of, for us to adapt to the new season? What things do we need to pick up? And we're lucky enough to work in offices! What about the people who can't do that?

That question has been on my mind today, as it has been since the first week. What should we lay down? What should we pick up? And what does 'should' mean? What's defining the should? What's our goal? What's the one thing we want to achieve?

I sometimes think we should ask that question more often: what's our goal here? What's the objective? Because I feel like focusing that goal might help us cut out all the things - and I do mean all the things - we currently do that just don't contribute to it.

A small, unnoticeable change. Perhaps this is part of it. Perhaps that's why I feel different today. There's definitely a bit of a sharp logic to my thinking at the moment. I'm absolutely tired of the fuzzy clutter. I want to be very clear in my own mind about what I'm supposed to do, what things I need to leave behind on this adventure, and what new things are there for me to take on the journey. And it feels like this season brings that into focus.

  

   

THE ROEBUCK

I went walking today, along the river. This time, instead of heading east into town, I went west - out into the country. The dappled shade fell along the tow path and the pleasant river ambled by. My feet crunched the gravel and my juice sloshed in its bottle in my rucksack.

Before long I came to a rusty old pub sign: The Roebuck. It swung in the breeze, set back a little from the rippling river. There was a tree stump underneath, into which someone had hammered some nails, and next to the stump was a small abandoned metal barbecue set. A fresh-looking empty beer can rolled about on the floor, telling a story all of its own.

It looked... familiar, all that. I sat down and closed my eyes. A train thundered by, perhaps in my imagination, perhaps on the tracks behind the railings, rattling me through the years as though every carriage might have been a different memory. Chatter, natter, catter, clatter, batter-splat and more; shatter goes the matter... into 1994...

“Ooh, go on Stubbsy,” says Sarah sipping a bottle of Hooch. It’s an alcopop, sticky and sweet, and it smells of lemons. Chris laughs and throws a pebble into the water. The stone plops and ripples as he turns his back.

“I wanna see what you’re like when you’re hammered,” she smiles flirtatiously. I’m too young and too naive still to calculate her real agenda, but I do know my resolve, and I do know God. I smile.

“Not gonna happen,” I say, shifting my gaze. Chris picks up another stone and twirls it in his hand.

“Aw you’re no fun,” she giggles. She places the bottle next to the tree stump and fishes out her cigarettes from a pocket. Chris skims the stone across the flat river water. It bounces twice, then disappears. It makes me think of trajectories and maths - and all the other things the three of us should probably be revising. I contemplate saying that, but then I think again.

For some reason (and maybe it’s one that causes me a little twinge of guilt I don’t understand yet) we’re sitting, the three of us, at the bottom steps of The Roebuck, by the river, convinced by Sarah to try what she calls ‘living a little’ instead of being ‘boffins’ who ‘spend all your time in the (expletive) library.’

Chris was a Seventh Day Adventist. I was a determined Christian; she wasn’t going to succeed in getting either of us to get “rat-faced”, but she sure was spunky enough to try - and this would not be the last time.

I liked Sarah a lot - she was fiery and funny, like a ball of energy who took hold of life and knew the power of the moment. That tendency made her ever so slightly dangerous yet exhilarating to be around, and a part of me has always loved that trait. She was fun. And Chris and I, though both studious and both religious - we probably need a bit more fun than we realise.

A train rattles behind us. Sarah puffs white cigarette smoke into the air while I turn to count the carriages. They spin past, a flashing jumble of windows and wheels, shattering and scattering the light at a speed that must be faster than my sixteen year old eyes can flicker. The trees bend in its wake as though caught by the breeze and then, just as suddenly as the train of memories arrived, those trees spring right back, and return me to the green leafy silence of a summery day. My eyes flick open.

I picked up my rucksack and swung it on to my back. The pub’s gone now, even though the rusty sign and the tree stump remain. The building, just the other side of the clattering metal bridge that spans the railway line, is now a block of flats, still named The Roebuck, presumably for posterity, or after the bus stop that bears the name. They’ve done an okay conversion; they even built a new building next to it in the same architectural style. But there would be no trio of nervous school kids going in to that ropey, smoky bar, ordering a bottle of Hooch and two packets of crisps.

Funny how time goes. I took a sip of juice from my bottle, smiled, and then began the walk home.

ISOLATION DIARIES PART 32: SOME ADVICE FROM ZOOM

Zoom have just sent me an email with the subject line:

"Don't Zoom Alone"

I'm not sure they know how their own product works. First of all, I don't have a choice - I am alone, and it's a world in which I can't be anything other than alone, which is the entire reason for me using Zoom in the first place. So what do they recommend I do? Line up my spice rack with me, this side of my laptop and pretend I'm having a chat with Cumin on mute?

(I don't think Cumin would make a useful contribution actually. Not that that's anything new - five years in and he's still unopened. Cajun or Crushed-Chillis would add a little flavour to my online conversations, definitely, but I'd also be sneezing and spluttering like there's no tomorrow. Plus they'd have to be arranged alphabetically if they were on-screen with me. That's how I roll.)

So then, maybe Zoom assume that I live with other people because after all, most people do, and that therefore I should rope in my family, significant others, or housemates into to my chats, to protect myself from the 'terrible danger' of lone-zooming. Well maybe. But I can't do that. And probably neither would most people, given what I've seen so far.

Or perhaps Zoom don't mean alone in a physical location, but they're cleverly alluding to the togetherness their platform brings by connecting people miles apart? Get everyone involved. Clever eh?

Well no. Not really. That's literally the whole purpose of Zoom isn't it? So to Zoom alone would be completely pointless, like making a telephone call to your own number, or Skyping your mobile from your laptop and getting excited every time one of the devices pings. Who's in the Zoom room? Oh it's me. Big old me, filling the screen again, reminding me of my own lonely old face. It's been up to the satellite and back, you know, why yes I do, Matt, and jolly good it looks too the wrong way round, why thank you sir... Why do you think I'm on Zoom in the first place?

So anyway, thanks for that, marketing people at Zoom. I'll bear that oxymoronic advice in mind, along with, "Please visit the branch to complete your online banking request", "We'll call you to find out your telephone number", and "We're sorry we're closed due to the coronavirus pandemic but please remember, our door is always open to our customers."

And if you see me and my pals on Zoom, feel free to remind me that I need to arrange my spices into alphabetical order.

TECHNICAL LUNCH

I'm on a 'technical lunch' - that's where one of the clever people deliver a talk about something clever. I rarely go.

In the office, they provide pizza as an incentive to migrate into the meeting room and listen to the latest coding practice. While we're all online though, we're logging in to a presentation - and so, 90% for company/connection, I'm currently tuned in to (and on mute with): "An Introduction to the Rust Programming Language"

I understand nothing. All the words are English, all the information is well presented, and I sort of get the flow, but honestly, this is way beyond me.

I often wonder why I didn't get deeper into coding. I did a little a bit at university with Monsieur Nogaret (I think that was his name) who started with digital bits and bytes and why memory expands in 2^n, and ended with an in-depth look at how to work out missile trajectories using Fortran 77. I tried to understand, but it was a tough gig. And Monsieur Nogaret was basically speaking French in every other sentence.

And it still is a tough gig, it seems. I know a little java script (if you equate it to a spoken language, I can probably order a beer or ask someone where the train station is) but anything deep and intense and I'm in a roomful of foreigners with little more than an inadequate phrasebook.

Listen in with me a moment:

"So... dangling pointers. Again this a fun one that happens in C++ but fundamentally we're talking stack and heap references here... if you didn't have the ampersand it would be returning 32 bit integer... there are distinctions between the primitive types and non-primitive types... the value 1 here is the value in the stack... as soon as we leave the scope, that value disappears..."

"An Introduction to Better Writing: Grammar 101" - maybe I'll suggest it for my own technical lunch and see how they like it! Although, they won't come along to it, will they? And I'm never courageous enough to tell extremely clever people how to do a thing they last learned in school. 

It's not for me, this - it might be the "most loved language on stack overflow" but I'm glad there are brilliant people out there managing the behind-the-scenes stuff with it. I think my lane might be different, as I possibly should have learned in 1998.

Thanks a lot, Monsieur Nogaret.

STATISTIC

Statistic

I'm not a pixel

On a government graph

I'm a person who knew

How to love and to laugh

Not a stat to be twisted

For somebody's gain;

I'm a father, a mother,

A lover, a name.

I'm a life that was filled

With a heart and a soul

Not a throwaway number

Not fraction, but whole.

I'm a photograph smile

On a sitting room wall

And a front door that's shut

To an emptier hall

I'm a memory lived

And a grief that is new

No I'm not a pixel

I am us,

I am you.

ISOLATION DIARIES PART 31: VIRTUAL COFFEE BREAK

This week in imaginary backgrounds...

Who can find the cleverest sitcom set? 

In the red corner, we have the bar from Fawlty Towers. Looks empty: no Major, no offended Germans - just my colleague, who's hovering at the front like some sort of giant, floating Basil Fawlty.

Meanwhile in the blue corner, we're in Royston Vasey, the home of The League of Gentlemen. I've never seen it (not that you'd catch me admitting that on the chat today) but from the chatter, I've found out that the 'taxi' is now in Beaulieu motor museum. Dave did a weird impression and then told us his wife doesn't get it either.

Over in the yellow corner, we're in the dilapidated student flat of The Young Ones - a show from the early 80s that I barely remember, and would absolutely not have been allowed to watch anyway. These old sitcoms are producing a fair bit of nostalgia for the 40-somethings in the chat.

And finally in the other corner, Scott from the USA is brilliantly perplexed. He looks like he's just discovered Morris Dancing is a real thing.

"You guys sure are going crazy with the backgrounds," said he, shaking his head from his bunker in Iowa. It's hard to tell from his tone exactly what he means.

Meanwhile, Mr Pub Quiz is back, complete with some Doctor Who nonsense and a super-imposed Iron Man mask. And someone else has turned themselves into a jelly. Good job this is only a 'virtual coffee break' and not some professional meeting.

Scott is baffled. As it happens, so am I.

ISOLATION DIARIES PART 30: EASING OUT OF THE LOCKDOWN

It's hard to talk about what's going on in the world today without getting super-political. The decisions we all currently face are rooted in the decisions made by politicians, and right now it feels as though it's left to us to figure out what the right thing to do is.

Here's the problem. We need structured guidance about whether or not we can go out, who we can see, how we can travel, whether or not we can work. For seven weeks, the government have been operating in various degrees of strict about the basic message: stay at home. We've largely done that. But starting to ease out of lockdown and save our economy is much trickier, and has to be less stringent, because right now, all the parameters are moving fast, and perhaps understandably, the leaders of our nation don't quite know how it'll all work out.

I say 'perhaps' because there is a drumbeat that's resounding now about whether or not they should know that, should have been be more prepared or compassionate, and could have been less chaotic. But to comment on that becomes a political choice. I'll leave that for you to decide.

I'm saying that it's difficult to know, while everything is moving. It's also difficult to give specific instructions to 65 million people. Last night the Prime Minister tried from behind his desk. But as a result of that, what we have today is confusion about whom we're allowed out with, whom we can see and whom we can't, whether or not we're okay to go to work. I get that - and yes, more clarity would help. I hope that gets provided. But if doesn't then it seems to be up to us.

What has been clear from the beginning is that governments of nations have had to choose between their economy and their citizens. I've said it before, I know, but it's hard to see beyond that difficult question. CEOs face the same thing all the time - do they keep people employed in jobs and lose a whole lot of money on a failing business, or do they make some of the tree-branches redundant so that the tree recovers quickly and produces good fruit again? We've all seen it; one minute the big cheese is telling you you're all family, the next HR are telling you that for the family to survive, you've been specifically selected to go out into the street and look for another one to belong to. And may your P45 keep you warm. It wouldn't surprise me if leaders of countries are making the same tough decisions in hard times.

You can see the choice flashing by President Business every day. It's in his eyes. And it's not a choice that any leader wants to make - citizens or economy. People will die. It'll be much worse for them if they survive and have no jobs, not to mention those of us who wish to be re-elected. The cure can't be worse than the problem. But thousands of people will be dead.

Our own Prime Minister, rightly or wrongly (and now thankfully recovered from the virus, himself) must have also been internally swinging between the terrible horns of this dilemma.

I'm not justifying either view by the way; just saying that the parameters are huge and moving, and it's so difficult to plot a course through it all. Part of me admires them all for trying - in much the way you'd admire the ship captain who heroically wrenches the ship's wheel out of the path of the iceberg; part of me wishes beyond belief that they'd done a lot better. They should have known what icebergs can do to ships, and how not to encounter them.

Regardless of all of that though, we still have the choice of the right thing to do as individuals. We can ease out of our own lockdown, after all. I'm choosing to socially distance until I'm confident I won't be a danger to people - not because I'm told to, or informed that I don't have to, or whatever the latest thing is from the men in the mahogany room, but because it just makes sense at the moment. I believe we should all do that. The second wave of the Spanish flu caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in 1918, way more than the first. Easing lockdown might be sensible for economic reasons, but opening the floodgates, or even the possibility of the floodgates seems like letting the bull romp at will through the spectators. Or perhaps allowing the ice-water to pour through the ballast walls.

I get it though. It's hard to talk about such things.

WHAT THE BLUEBELLS TAUGHT ME

I’ve gone on my long walk today, and I’ve found myself in the bluebell woods. The bluebells though, are past their best. They look withered and faded - their brief and glorious lives dwindling in the evening light.

I’m not disappointed by that. I saw them in their glory a few weeks ago, and now it feels weirdly comfortable to be settled in their patch while they gently shrivel and dim. It would be all too easy to take a depressing view of life from this, but somehow, I don’t feel the metaphor; instead I’m just thankful.

I’m propped up against a log. My rucksack is serving as a sort of a back rest. In the green canopy above, the birds are singing: I can hear high pitched bubbly songs and squeaks and, though it’s not a thing I know about, I’m pretty sure there are blackbirds and robins up there, not to mention the delicious warbles of other birds I can’t identify.

What would this wood be like without those birds? Quiet, still, creepy? It would be noticeable I think - their chorus is like a soundtrack.

A bee buzzes past, in that gentle way that bees do. Somewhere, a way off, a child shouts and a dog barks. The undergrowth rustles. Everything else is still.

There’ll be more bluebells next year of course. Perhaps by then, the world will be more stable, better defined in the aftermath of this weird little season. What the bluebells did, what they taught me to do, is to shine regardless of whichever season we’re in. When your time comes to lap up the golden sunlight and be your best, beam away like there’s no tomorrow.

I’m a reactor to what people think of me, but I shouldn’t be. Our job is just to be, I reckon, especially in the dark times.

That may be why I feel thankful in the bluebell woods today; thankful that they were here, that they shone until they could burst with life no more, and it was beautiful to behold. It’s a lovely thought that I can do the same. That’s what the bluebells taught me.

VICTORIA SPONGE

A quick look through social media today shows that anybody who's anybody made a victoria sponge cake today and put a picture of it up.

It's a light fluffy cake of caster sugar, butter, eggs and cream, split into two sandwich tins and baked, then brought together with a filling of cream and jam in the middle. Apparently, Queen Victoria was mad for them with her afternoon tea - though, to be fair to Her Majesty, she enjoyed the little ones - presumably small enough to pop in all at once, and not, as has been filling my flimpbook feed, the large cakes we're so patriotic about.

I listened to an old wax cylinder recording of Queen Victoria once, at a museum. It was probably made in the 1880s or 1890s when she was in her latter years, and it carried her voice very faintly in an ocean of gramaphonic noise and interference. What I distinctly heard the Queen say though was:

"We all had a wonderful festival"

... in a rather German accent. I raised an eyebrow at that, but of course Victoria grew up speaking German; she courted Albert in German, her grandfather (George III) and her father (William IV) were to all intents and purposes, Germans. It made sense that she would say 'vunderful' and flatten her vowels, even though the crisp sound of English aristocracy was there in her voice too. It was really interesting.

As she sat in Buckingham Palace, eating sponge cakes and recording her voice onto Edison's new-fangled device, her descendants across Europe were already on course to light the touch paper. It wouldn't be long after she died that the old remnants of Empire disintegrated into war, and the Twentieth Century kicked into a desperate and terrible gear.

That first dreadful conflict left Germany, the land of her fathers, bereft of hope and on the brink of collapse. It needed pulling from the ashes, a restoration of national pride and hope; into the dreadful vacuum stepped a man who offered all of that - a strong and powerful leader whose heart beat the language of the land. The drum of invasion and the burning torch of fascism followed him through the bleak night and into war once again.

It's that war in Europe that came to an end 75 years ago today, and it's that day we're marking with bunting and victoria sponge cakes.

For the first time in a long time, I looked at it today and really wished I could have done something. There are no street parties - we're all locked down still of course - but there were folk on doorsteps with china cups of tea and fairy cakes. There were gazebos, and even the water tower was illuminated in glorious red, white and blue. I wished I'd been able to make a sponge, or a coronation chicken, or even rice-krispie cakes with a little union-jack flag or something. I wished I could have taken tea with my parents and remembered my Grandpa, who drove troops and equipment across North Africa. Or countless other heroes who did so much for so many, but never came home to have grandsons like me.

Victoria sponge. Two halves of peace, sandwiched together over a layer of blood-red filling; the coming together of nations, the friendship that followed the middle of the Twentieth Century, in ways that Victoria could not have imagined. The sweet taste of freedom.

I hope we never take it for granted.

ISOLATION DIARIES PART 29: DELIVERY GUY

A Tesco delivery van pulls up in the Close. "Quality food, delivered fresh to your door" say the white letters, over strawberries and blackberries. The picture on the side seems to be a sort of yoghurt and fruity breakfast: more strawberries, a scattering of blueberries, and granola.

A man in a high-vis yellow jacket gets out. He's smoking and texting, presumably on a break before his next few morning deliveries.

I've not done it yet, the online food shop. I don't know why - always seemed like quite a faff, even though I did download the app! A faff eh? There's no logic to that thought now: nipping in to Sainsbury's every night after work used to steal my evenings away and was costing more than I probably realised - that's way more than a faff. Perhaps the time has come to be a bit more organised.

At the moment of course, the online food shop's more difficult because it's harder to get a slot. Three weeks in advance seems like the norm while everyone prefers not to be out catching the virus. But perhaps when things settle down, when we're given our freedom again, there'll be a better rhythm to it? Maybe rushing out to the shops will be a novelty? Or perhaps we'll all be more used to "Quality food, delivered fresh to your door"? It's hard to predict, like it's hard to tell anything else about the next season.

My guess is (and the newspaper headlines today back me up) that pubs will be packed, shops in town will be rushed off their feet, parks will be full, and the public spaces we've been banned from will all be singing with the joyous melodies of freedom. At least to begin with. The terrifying thought is that we'll be free from lockdown, yes, but not from the virus; a scourge that's already claimed 30,000 people in our country. There's little to celebrate, despite what the newspapers are pushing.

It occurred to me yesterday that 'flattening the curve' was all about protecting the National Health Service (which we've probably done) but the reality is that the area under the flattened curve is just the same as the area under the peaked one - and every data point is an infection, and perhaps a life lost. Whether the curve is long and smooth, or sharp and tall, roughly the same number of people are infected. All we've done is given the hospitals more capacity to save people's lives by extending the time.

So I won't be rushing out to splash around in fountains any time soon. I think I will probably start the online food shop when the pressure eases on the delivery slots. It just seems like a much easier, safer way to do it, and it'll save me time. I absolutely have to start coming straight home in the evenings rather than dawdling around Sainsbury's every day too - especially if those places are packed with people.

There might be a few things I need to start doing to replace the old ways - things to lay down, things to pick up. I hope I'm not being over-cautious - and I hope I'm wrong about the easing of lockdown restrictions too. I guess we'll find out.

The Tesco guy breathed out a cloud of wispy smoke, flicked out his cigarette and then climbed back into the cab. He started the ignition and pulled away. "Every little helps" said the logo on the back of the van. Well, quite.