After doing so well with writing regularly at weekends since the lockdown began in the UK, I failed to write a post last Sunday because, for personal reasons, I was out and about, venturing far farther in a single day than I have been in the last three months combined.
Leaving the small town in which I live and boarding public transport for the first time since March proved an interesting experience.
Continue reading “travelling again”
For me, one of the positive things about the recent coronavirus lockdown has been that there were far fewer cars about and far fewer people in the street.
The decrease in traffic and the halt to normal activities meant that for a few brief weeks the birds were more audible, the green spaces were not quite so tended, and there seemed to be more wildlife around. (Although, to be honest, the only unusual wildlife I saw was a rat in the supermarket car park.)
It was almost as if the world had paused to take a breath.
Continue reading “liminal spaces”
I mentioned a couple of weeks ago the slightly strange fact that during this lockdown my muse seems to have been liberated and I am writing again. Admittedly, I’m not writing a huge amount of poetry, but then, I don’t think I ever did write that much, and I’ve always accepted that poems can take years to evolve, so the fact that I have some jottings may mean that more poems will come in time.
There’s also prose, both creative and associated with my business. As I said yesterday, social distancing actually seems to have encouraged conversations, and each conference call or webinar seems to produce at least one gem of an idea that could be worth working up into a full-length article or essay.
Continue reading “cracking the code”
One of the most notable things about the current crisis is how easy it has become to use words such as crisis, pandemic, unprecedented… And another is how easy it is to speak of thousands of deaths as if each one of those statistics didn’t refer to a unique and cherished individual.
For me, another of the most notable aspects of the last few months is how much contact I’ve had with people all through this “social distancing” time.
Continue reading “far and near”
During this coronavirus lockdown, times and dates have become less important than they sometimes are for many of us.
For those who have been furloughed, normal office hours are irrelevant, while for those who are working from home, even early morning meetings seem to start later – the breakfast meetings I attend are at 9 instead of 7am – and since there’s no commuting time, there’s no need to set an alarm clock.
Continue reading “frustrated plans”
don't confuse the narrator 