Easter Monday, and the near-by hills are veiled in mist, low cloud and swirling hail-stones. Yesterday their sky-line was dense with silhouettes of walkers, cyclists, runners, and the sky above them swirled with multicoloured parachutes and their dangling navigators.
We live with unpredictability, all of us, and sometimes see safety being sacrificed to opportunity - the chance of a crowded get-together in the sunshine versus the risk of infection, the chance of airing the parachute versus the chance of a freak gust of wind. Sometimes it feels quite like the Good/Bad/Dangerous Old Days; a bit of 'let's grab the opportunity', 'let's do it before Someone stops us again', 'it's going to snow tomorrow - let's do it today'.
In my younger days (a long time ago) I valued opportunity and generally went for it at full-tilt and occasionally at some risk to myself. I had a few somewhat alarming experiences and never mentioned them to anyone, knowing I might be prevented from having such adventures again. Health-and-Safety and Mental-Health were not on anyone's agenda in those days. No one knew such things existed, let alone tiptoed around the mine-fields that they have become. Risk assessment? What was that? Looking back I'm quite surprised that I'm still here but I have no regrets about any of my past adventures. Well, hardly any. I still haven't told anyone though.
What I didn't see coming was caution, concern, a low-level anxiety, even a small measure of what can only be called timidity. How truly awful; how cramping of the life-style. And now I have to think, 'what life-style?'
I'm so fortunate, so appreciative of having had two doses of Pfizer. Genuinely fortunate, genuinely appreciative, and still the kind, caring, sheets of information come, signed by Matt (Hancock) who is fast becoming my most faithful and regular correspondent. I feel cared about, protected, thought about - and fearful. Still hugely appreciative, but also aware that I am no longer able to be true to myself.
This is a time like no other. I have very vague memories of War Time. I was born shortly after The War started - the Second World War, that is. But my memory tells me that shops were open, cinemas too. I went to see Snow White and Lassie Come Home and had to be removed from both in floods of noisy tears by my embarrassed mother, making vivid memories of an afternoon in 1945. There was rationing, there were no bananas, no new clothes, the only toys were homemade. But we, my small gang of girls and I were free agents when out of school, and never once was there a term-time weekday when school wasn't open. Bombs fell, people died, bad things happened but life went on for some of us in the most unbridled and adventurous way.
It was never on my horizon to become an anxious old woman but that's what seems to be happening. As the external situation seems to be improving my internal one splutters and fails. My anxieties are all for others, a category now constantly referred to as 'loved ones'. I've been vaccinated but I know that I could still infect others, unknowingly, stealthily dangerous.
I have been informed many times that I'm in a position of extreme vulnerability and now I'm afraid that I feel it, and I don't know how to escape from it. The Shielding Category officially ended on the first of April, but not for the shielded who are advised to continue as far as possible.
I really didn't intend to become old and anxious.
Sorry, Loved Ones!
P.S. The cure for timidity seems to be driving on three motorways twice each (for completely valid and essential reasons). Encountering hurtling lorries seems surprisingly good for Mental Health.
