Came in from the garden where the sun shines in a sky that’s almost pure blue, now it is, though all day it’s been overcast. No wind, but it is cold so cold that I pulled my scarf over my nose while I sat on the bench in the sunshine, stayed out until the chill became too much. That was after Kat had jumped down from my lap – I’d warmed my hands on his fur, heated by the sun.
My neighbour goes silently, almost, over the slight rise in the ground from the back of his garden into the wasteland that will be forest once the tiny seedlings grow. Kat heard something, jumped over to investigate, to follow him, he is so curious about people, as if there is a lot he wants to learn from us. My neighbour is like a cat anyway, he relishes sunlight, cloud formations, stars too when he gets out his telescope, never ever got caught up in the work ethic, plays his guitar, carves wood, and laughs a lot. He’s gone to look at the sunlight falling on the fields and Kat wonders if he can go too.
Two people have knocked on my door today, and left things – first a loaf of bread, then fish. (Only now the significance of these two items occurs to me.) I forget who I have asked to get things for me, and sometimes these things are available, sometimes not, and these neighbours kindly get me what they can, as they go off shopping in their cars. Without a car, shopping is something that I am plotting to do myself, I have worked out a route and a way, that involves either walking or cycling, then taking a train, and I am working up to a foray to see the supermarkets for myself, in the isolated town, where the isolated people queue I hear, two metres apart, to get in.
Sometimes I think we are on the brink of something we do not yet realise, and all these years I have been studying world war two and how it was for people then, perhaps that has been a good preparation for what we are going into and do not yet know. I have so far, plenty of coffee, some dried beans and chickpeas, lentils and even some (rather old) pasta I found at the back of the cupboard, and fruit and vegetables should be delivered tomorrow. I have some lettuce seedlings which in time will grow (carefully bringing them in at night from the greenhouse as I don’t trust the weather) and I’ve planted potatoes, which always grow.
But someone I met out walking today, with two large black dogs, and I’m glad they were on leads, although their owner insisted they were very friendly, (and so they were) she said, it will be cold tonight, there is frost forecast, so I didn’t even put the mangetout beans in the greenhouse today, kept them inside, tomorrow, they’ll go back to the greenhouse, but you can’t be too careful, I look after all the seedlings, because I suspect we do not know what we are heading for, the future is as unknowable as the weather which changes abruptly from heated spring days, almost like summer, to this chill air with frost forecast for tonight.
The birds flip and sail and whistle past, as I sit in the garden reading, Kat on my lap who is very curious about these birds but seems to know that they are well out of his reach. The neighbour’s cat comes into the garden too and gazes fixedly at clumps of long grass, where very possibly, a family of mice are living. Tomorrow I think, I may try to walk or cycle to the train that will take me to the town, and I’ll do some shopping of my own. But I said that today and the day before, and something holds me back. Still, it is supposed to be sunny tomorrow, and who knows, tomorrow I might go.
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