IN THE YEAR OF COVID – 2020
Why a website? Why a Blog? What exactly for?
I have started this project because we are locked down and there is nothing to do except engage with reading, writing, streaming , distancing, queuing and zooming.
We are lucky. We can walk straight out of our front door across The Green, down the nettled path past the Edme Maltings, under the railway and into the field and woods. At present they are carpeted with buttercups and wildflowers; there are bullocks grazing, blissfully unaware of their intended destination; nervous, harmless creatures they definitely add to the bucolic perfection. The bluebells have blown; and the wild garlic. That fresh, haze of Spring is passing into a darker, denser green as mid summer approaches.
Yes, we are very lucky in this tragic year of the new plague. None of us know how it will end. We barely understand how it started, how long it will last, what our leaders will do next.
The most frightening thing is that our leaders appear not know either; they refuse to admit that they are not on top of the situation and they will not ally themselves with either the whole political spectrum in a Government of National revival or with other nations.
So. There we are. We have only to wait for events to unfold – like characters in search of an author or players in an unfinished play; Jean Anouilh and The Cavern.
What better time to immerse oneself in the digital technicalities of setting up a web site? For someone like myself who is digitally inept, it’s a serious challenge. I can barely cut and paste let alone create videos online, deal with widgets and platforms and blocks and the plethora of other instances!
I am building this site slowly with a lot of help from my gorgeous step-daughter Sarah who is in Canada. That alone has been a challenge though she has not yet had to take control, remotely, of my screen – a spooky process that I am sure you have all at one time or another endured? Your cursor flies about in an incomprehensible fashion encouraging high anxiety and much tension.
And here we are. It’s not nearly finished of course but each new achievement, each posting, each placement of a clip of film or a photograph is a victory of sorts and is useful sand in which to bury my head.
I see it, if it is nothing else, as a sort of consolidated diary; and if anyone else wants to read the stories that make up this journey, be my guest. Or not – as the case may be.
If you think of it, our lives are all hundreds of stories linked, like a rosary or a necklace of beads. The beads can be pretty or ugly or rough or smooth. The string holds them together and are the less interesting but equally important part; without it the beads would smash to the floor.
If only for myself, I am going to write some stories I think.
Perhaps when I am finished this plague will be over!
Come into my jewellery emporium, dear Friends, and look at the gems.