We have new neighbours. Well, newish. But although they’re new neighbours, they’re also old friends. When they moved in, things were a bit tight at their place, so some of their house-plants temporarily moved in with us, mostly orchids with a few cacti too. With the advent of lockdown, the arrangement has perhaps lasted longer than was originally intended. To my surprise, it was Little S who first voiced the question, one evening when we were washing-up, which I had been mulling over for a while:
“Do we have to give these orchids back?”
So, when this is all…well, not ‘over’, but when some sort of normality has returned and we give back the orchids, it’s fair to say that Little S, and I, would like to replace them with something similar.
It feels like these unusual circumstances have prompted lots of people to pause for thought and consider what they might do differently. In the first instance, during the lockdown. And more recently, what changes we might retain after the lockdown, whenever or whatever that means.
I’m not often a list maker, but, thinking back, I have, at various times, idly wondered what I might have time for during the lockdown, which I wouldn’t normally manage.
I thought I might jot them down, in no particular order, and then, perhaps over the next few posts, assess how I’ve got on. A bit like appraisal, but with less b……..
…..feel free to add a colourful noun of your choice.
So…
- Tidy the garden.
- Play cards and board games with the kids.
- Read ‘War and Peace’.
- Lose loads of weight.
- Bake bread more often.
- Read more poetry.
- Do more walking.
- Catch-up with my blog posts.
- Listen to more music.
- Get to grips with birdsong.
- Practice my trumpet playing.
- Stretch.
To be clear, this is the first time I’ve go as far as putting them down and so it’s also the first time that I’ve seen them all together.
It also crossed my mind that we might have to enter an even stricter lockdown and not be allowed to leave our own property at all, in which case:
- Walk around the garden and up and down the stairs.
- Take photos of flower in the house. And photos of flowers, birds and bugs in the garden.
I experimented with the latter, as you can see! I also tried the former, whilst waiting for TBH to join me for a walk. I discovered that 20 laps of the front and back amounted to a mile, but I’m pleased I haven’t had to repeat the experiment.
And the first twelve? What do you reckon? It’s not a very ambitious list is it? I hasn’t occurred to me to raise millions for the NHS, or climb the equivalent of Mount Everest on the stairs, or even to bake cakes every week for the local food-bank, which A has been doing.
Anyway, I’ve run out of photos; an assessment will have to wait for a subsequent post. Or posts.
How about you? What have you done, or failed to do, whilst the lockdown has continued?
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Today’s tune is prompted by one of THO’s comments on a post from a couple of days ago. ‘Different versions of familiar songs’, he said; ‘hip-hop’, he said. So, Method Man and Mary J. Blige:
I’ll warn you that this should probably carry one of those ‘Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics’ stickers. Not that I’m aware of any minors reading these posts, but…just in case…(Little S always tells me off when I play rap. He complains that I’m a bad influence on his vocabulary.)
And, the first, perhaps, in an occasional quiz series. This is ‘Sliced Tomatoes’ by the Just Brothers:
And it probably sounds familiar. Who sampled it and for which hit?
In the light of the optimistic list above, I can’t resist this:
Which I’m pretty sure has appeared here before, but I shan’t apologise for that.