In The Garden

I'm not sure what the Home Secretary has done but social media is awash with spite directed at her. Maybe she's murdered an orphan or abandoned a puppy. For the time being at least I won't bother investigating the source of the moral outrage, mostly because of where it's coming from. Instead I'll satisfy myself by snoozing people on Facebook, something I've been doing with glee for the last couple of years. Safe in the knowledge they will never know.

I just discovered to my delight that you can now mute people on Instagram too. Though because it's permanent this is a more severe punishment than Facebook's snooze which is revoked automatically after thirty days. Not quite as harsh as the hide option or indeed the social media capital punishment that is to unfriend someone but still, in terms of passive aggression, it scores extra points because you have to remember that you froze them out if you ever want to see them again. It leaves me wondering if I should make a list so I don't forget whose baby pictures I'm missing. A missing persons list for people that haven't gone anywhere.

It's Easter Sunday today, the holiest day in the Christian calendar, so as usual, in celebration, we're eating chocolate and doing some jobs around the house. Chris has cleared out his bedside drawer and I have emptied the dishwasher. Today, along with Christmas day, is traditionally a day when all the shops and restaurants are shut but as that's been the case for a few weeks now there's not much difference really.

The garden is looking good. It's still coming to life after a few months of winter so everything isn't quite where it should be yet but, bit by bit, Chris is resurrecting it. With all the free time forced upon him, he now spends hours out there, planting and weeding, fixing and painting, lighting up the trees and moving planters around. One of his favourite pastimes is pruning and there is a constant battle between us to stop him from chopping everything down, his argument being that 'It will all grow back.'

I don't see the point of decimating a perfectly good specimen in order for it to grow back again but I choose my battles and this year, already, we have lost the top fifteen feet of an acacia in the hope that he will leave the acers alone and spare the life of the beautiful, blue California lilac that grows over the terrace closest to the house. He's right, they do grow back, it's just that with vital limbs removed they tend take on the form of a twisted hunchback or a pair of tights frozen on a January washing line in a winter storm. Symmetry and grace fly out the window when Chris comes a hacking with his scimitar.

Sometimes I suspect it's a contest of wills between him and mother nature. He loves nothing more than to torment tubs of flowers and plants by turning their beaming faces away from the sun after they've spent weeks positioning themselves for the best access to it. Yesterday, while sitting out in the blazing sunshine on the decking, I suggested that he might want to invest in a bunch of lazy Susans to make the process simpler; it was greeted with a snarl of derision and, as if to prove a point, he immediately stood up and turned his two newest planters a hundred and eighty degrees so the purple blooms faced us and away from the sun.

One of the things I love about our garden is all the odd little ornaments and decorations dotted around it. Admittedly it may have gone a little overboard, what with the mantelpiece propped up against a fence with two Staffordshire dogs perched on it, and my grandpa's goat skull hiding down amongst the roses, but who wouldn't delight in the Gnome Zone at the end of the garden, a place where our seven or eight gnomes hide out amongst the shrubs?

I've probably said this before but the garden is a godsend while we're all being asked to stay at home. We have friends who live in flats who have no outside space to speak of. One friend told me that he likes nothing more than to sit in the carpark on the main road which his flat is on shouting at people passing by or yelling into his phone on video calls. The one hour day release is obviously a bonus to these folks but there's talk that even this might be curtailed to stop people from abusing the so-called privilege.

I'm a natural worrier so I try to be lighthearted about what's happening, otherwise I'd go mad with sleepless nights and fretting, but the stark reality is that nearly ten thousand people have died as of today, with over nine hundred of those in the last twenty four hours. Granted as a proportion of the UK's population, that's small, and undoubtedly some of those people that died while they have COVID 19 would have died anyway, but that doesn't take away the fact that these are real people with families and friends and lives to live. It's dangerous and it could easily be one of our friends or family if we're not all careful.

Our elderly neighbour Mary continues to be oblivious. Twice last week she jumped on a bus, first to go to the hospital with a sore wrist, and then shopping later in the week. She's happy to trot out to the shops twice a day then come knocking on our front door for help to close her garage or to comment on having some daffodils stolen from outside her house in 1998. There's a touch of dementia there according to her family and she's either forgetting the warnings or simply not comprehending what's happening.

Mary's daughter in law came round one day last week but did nothing more than yell at her from the street. She refused to go near her, reprimanded her, then shook her head and drove back to Urmston leaving a confused and irritated old lady standing in her front porch.

Mary continues to post stuff through our letterbox, more often than not TV Soap magazine which she gets free with a tabloid and which we have never shown any interest in, let alone asked for. She also has a tendency to poke ice cream cones through the fence for Chris while he's out in the garden. We appear to be unwittingly taking on the risk of transmission that her sons aren't prepared to take.

I wrote a letter to Mary explaining in quite strong terms why she needs to stop going out and also stop coming to our house. I didn't go as far as to call her a super spreader but I did tell her that two thousand, three hundred people had died. That was on the 2nd April, it's now ten days later, the letter is still in our hallway because we didn't want to scare an old lady, and five times that many people are dead.

So anyway, on Easter Sunday, when Christians traditionally remember Christ coming back from the dead, while simultaneously, on the television, all we hear is news about more death, I try to think about the other significance of this time of year. The one that's tied up with Spring and pagan beliefs of new life and new beginnings.

It won't go on forever; surely at some time in the coming weeks or months, this too shall pass, and we can look forward to new lives, and new ways of living. Living without the fear of going near friends, or helping a neighbour, taking public transport or going to work. Nina Simone once said that freedom is living with no fear, so maybe when this is all over, we'll feel free again.

Easter Eggs

Quizzes, it seems, are the new thing. This week we have taken part in two in the space of three days, a general knowledge quiz and a music quiz, which turned out to be part general knowledge too for some reason. We signed up to a repeat of the first a week on Wednesday and I've managed to drunkenly volunteer to write and host one myself this coming Thursday. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with mine yet but I think I need to shake it up a bit.

As it's all done over Skype or Zoom or Hangouts I can make it visual so I'm toying with the idea of a round in which either the contestants have to guess which animal I'm pretending to be with kitchen utensils or alternatively I might challenge them to come up with the best animals they can with kitchen utensils and then everyone guesses. It's quite a responsibility.

I originally declined the Thursday quiz mastery because I like to start work at 8.00am during the week but then someone pointed out that this Friday is Good Friday and I won't be working anyway. This left me with nowhere to go and I conceded.

We had three Easter eggs delivered with yesterday's groceries. We've already eaten one and I can't see the other two surviving till next weekend so I'm going to have to order some more from Tesco and just demolish the remaining treats in the meantime.

I always loved Easter as a kid. Every year until I can't remember when, we went as a family to our grandparents, my mum's parents, over in Poulton. Invariably the extended family would gather there too with my mum's brother John & my auntie Elaine, and my cousins Sarah and Peter. My mum's sister Anna would join us too on a rare release from the Epilepsy Society in  Chalfont St Peter, along with her boyfriend Fred in his zip up cardigans and his roll up cigarettes.

Anna, but mostly Fred, loved nothing more than to spend the afternoons over the Easter break in the Thatched House or another of the village pubs, necking pints and getting pissed. In turn the alcohol would diminish the effect of both their medication and they'd come back to the house and proceed to have seizures. Anna's fits were something to behold and quite scary. Not because we were unaccustomed to them as children, we'd grown up knowing all about what happened when someone had an epileptic seizure, but because they were so loud and surprising.

Without any kind of warning Anna's body would completely stiffen, from head to toe, like rigor mortis just without the mort bit. This temporary petrification would often send Anna sliding or falling to the floor where, once made safe, she'd be left until the fit passed. Accompanying the stiffening was a monotonous, and deafening, deep wailing noise. Whether or not she was in pain I couldn't tell you but it was a sound I'll never forget. A haunting sound, and not a spooky haunting, a horrific, tremendous noise that could be heard throughout the house and went straight to your core.

Fred's fits on the other hand were an all together more romantic affair. From an observer's point of view it was like watching someone astrally project. His out of body, and as it happened, out of mind experiences would find him rocking to and fro, often hanging onto something like a door handle or the back of a chair, and gently whistling, unaware of the world around him. Like the wind blowing in through a window that hadn't quite been closed properly.

In both cases, and whether it was the seizure taking it out of them or the pints of beer they'd knocked back beforehand, they'd usually retire to their bedroom and sleep like the dead, not to be seen for hours.

As a child, Easter in Poulton meant chocolate of course, long warm days sitting in the sun as it blazed through the sash windows, and watching boring TV. One of my enduring memories of childhood is in fact, being bored all the time. I'd whine to my parents and be told in no uncertain terms that only boring people get bored, and to read a book.

Grandpa would be up early while Granny slept late when she wasn't working. It wasn't unheard of for her to emerge mid afternoon and then stay up to the small hours reading. The house felt vast, and calm, despite so many people being there at the same time. Clifton House had a way of slowing everyone down.

If we were lucky my grandparent's cleaner Mrs Gray would be there. She lived a few streets away, made marzipan animals, pronounced breakfast as if it was two words - break fast - as if to make a point about its meaning, and had a large round growth next to her nose, the size of a marble. I always wanted to ask about it but never did. I would do now but I was very polite as a child.

She'd occasionally bring her dog Tish round to wait while she was cleaning. Tish was a particularly mean Dalmatian. She'd sit there in her bed in the kitchen or the pantry and growl at anyone that came too close, baring teeth and generally being grumpy. We grew up with Dalmatians - Dylan, Skipper, Dougal and then after I'd left home, Jake - and all of them were delightful compared to Tish.

Dalmatians are known for being friendly, approachable and completely mad. In fact Granny once told me a story about a woman's Dalmatian that had got off its lead in Blackpool, trotted to the end of a pier, and launched itself into the Irish Sea at full tide for no apparent reason.

More exciting than Mrs Gray and her marble sized growth was her husband Mr Gray. Mr Gray had tunnel vision and wore a flat cap. That's all I really remember about him, other than his name being Larry, so why I thought he was more exciting to talk to than Mrs Gray remains a mystery. We would usually only see him if he was passing by along Victoria Road and we were in the garden. His whistle would give him away and we would rush to climb the fence in the corner near the big black gate behind the incinerator.

One Easter when I was maybe ten or eleven years old I asked Granny if she would take me to church because I was curious about it. She agreed and I think was quite pleased that I'd asked her rather than my parents. The fact of the matter is that she was the only person I knew that went to church. We were not a religious family, Granny was no exception, after all she was a woman of science. She loved the old language that was used and picked her churches based on which prayer book they used. St Chad's in the heart of the village used the King James Book of Common Prayer and this was right up Granny's street.

Grandpa was a lapsed Methodist and loved nothing more than poking fun at the pomposity of the church. His father, a mill owner, who was terribly disappointed when Grandpa decided to train as a doctor instead of going into the family business, would have been equally disappointed by his son's love of wine and his daily pre-dinner tipple - the gin mix, made up of one part gin, one part sweet vermouth and two parts dry vermouth, poured into a stemmed glass with no ice and served at room temperature. I learned at an early age that the gin mix wasn't for the feint of heart and would take a layer off the roof of your mouth. It was delicious all the same and the smell of it on a family member's breath is something I associate with my childhood.

Easter Sunday, 1986, Granny and I got up, got dressed and headed into the village, a five minute walk to St Chad's in the centre of Poulton. We walked through the grounds, resplendent in flowering crocuses, purple, yellow and white dotted across the lawns and between the headstones and tomb tables. We passed the door with the skull and cross-bones gravestone in front of it where, local legend has it, a pirate, on the run from the law, once made his way up from Skippool Creek to the church and died in that very doorway. My mother taught me that if you spit in both the eyes of the skull, spin round three times, then knock on the door, the ghost of the pirate would appear. Something she'd learned as a child and probably my Granny before her. Obviously I never tried this for fear of certain death.

(This photograph and another childhood story about the Pirate can be seen here.)

Granny and I got the entrance of the church and went into the cold stone building. We were evidently late as the place was full so we sneaked into a pew at the back, as quietly as possible in the echoing church, so as not to disturb anyone, and took our seats. I was quite disappointed to be so far from the action but still, I was there and I was about to find out what church was all about, and on a special day too - Easter Sunday. 

I was idly flicking through the pages of the prayer book on the shelf waiting for the service to start properly when the congregation rose to their feet and, expecting to sing a hymn or follow in a prayer, we followed suit. Then the strangest thing happened, one by one people started to drift out from the pews and walk towards the back of the church. We stood there watching, confused, as the good people of St Chad's left their seats, gathered up their belongings and filed out into the sunny churchyard.

It was when Granny spotted the vicar heading our way that she got suspicious and collared him. It took just a few words with him for her to work out what had happened and she realised that with Easter being a moveable feast, and this year it being early, Easter Sunday had coincided with British Summer Time starting and she'd forgotten to put the clocks forward the night before. We'd arrived for my special Easter service an hour late and missed the whole bloody thing.

Since then my only experience of church has been weddings, funerals and a tedious debate about fracking at Preston Minster a few years ago.

This year Easter will be spent, much like the previous three weeks, at home. The papers are saying that the lockdown might be lifted by the end of May if, and only if, we the British public stick to the emergency measure and stay at home like good citizens.

The Government, concurrently, are issuing pleas to stay in as the weather improves this week, and thinly veiled threats that the lockdown will become less of a 'we're all in it together so let's do the right thing' affair, and more of a 'you will stay at home or we will set the police on you' type thing.

I suspect, and this is after a brief chat with a police officer this week, that the powers that be have been easing us into what will become a more draconian state until this passes. Taking a society from total freedom to complete lockdown is far more difficult than introducing it in small steps as they have done. We're all used to staying at home now and less likely to balk at the idea of being told to rather than asked to. Anyway, time will tell and I'm not going anywhere any time soon.