Today was one of those days when we seemed to be chatting all morning. Firstly, we encountered some of our oldest friends from church, who were out busy gardening. As a plant was being removed only to be thrown away, I begged it in order to fill up some vacant pots which would normally have bedding plants within them but we haven’t been able to procure any during the lockdown. Then we popped a card into another set of neigbours who had promised us a lilac tree so we made final arrangements for collecting the tree this evening. In the park we had a few casual chats with passers-by – we normally ask them about the breed of their dog or mention how well-behaved it is which generally functions as a conversation opener. On our way home, we encountered sets of friends No. 2 who were busy still in their garden and managed to get some delivery of both bedding plants and supplies such as compost. Finally, we saw our Italian friend and ensured that all was well with her. One way or another, we seemed to spend the whole of the morning chatting which cannot be a bad thing. In the afternoon, I pressed on with doing my ‘gully maintenance’ and planted the shrubs that I acquired in the morning. It was a beautiful afternoon and I made reasonable progress with just about 1.5 hours of work left to do tomorrow before the weather breaks again. In the late afternoon, my daughter-in-law and I went to collect the lilac tree which I would estimate was 8-9 ft in height. Getting it home meant dropping the back seats of the car and having the top of the tree jammed up against the windscreen which meant that driving home was like navigating a forest – but it was only 1km home so we managed that all right. Tomorrow I am going to prepare my planting hole for the tree but I will wait for Friday to do the actual planting as I have ordered some of the specialist preparation that enables trees to grow away quickly ( I quote from the manufacturer’s blurb – and certainly the Amazon reviews were almost universally favourable)
There is quite a lot of speculation in tomorrow’s newspapers concerning the announcement that Boris Johnson will make on Sunday next on the ways in which the lockdown might be eased. It looks as though the most likely candidates involve ‘fresh air’ i.e. people may be allowed to exercise more than once a day, some open-air activities such as a meeting of a few friends in a park may be allowed and there is the possibility of garden centres being allowed to open. The trouble is that too much speculation at this point can only lead to disappointment if the measures proposed turn out to fall short of peoples’ expectations – we always knew that lessening the tightness of the screw was always going to be a lot more difficult that proposing the lockdown in the first place. One can only speculate what the typical high street is going to look like in a few week’s time. Most high streets were moribund anyway – Bromsgrove, for example, has about 7-8 charity shops in a 3 hundred yard stretch. What is not fully appreciated at this point is that the income of the typical working family will have received a massive hit so how much actual money will be free to be spent is an interesting question. Even more interesting is the ‘fear’ factor with many people, according to the survey evidence, fearful of entering places where their fellow citizens might congregate.
© Mike Hart [2020]