ALONE AT CHRISTMAS: Diary Day 6
Newbury resident Caroline ffrench Blake describes spending the festive period on her own for the first time
Monday, December 28
An entirely indoor virus-free day today – the freezing rain and general greyness has discouraged any attempts to go outside. It gave me a good opportunity to catch up with several projects – perhaps not addressing tax returns quite yet – it felt more like a good day for mulling over a plot for a story in mind. It being easier to mull over plots on rainy days than to write a novel.
Within the last year or so, I joined the West Berkshire Writers, led by Terence Brick. Before the pandemic we used to meet regularly in central Newbury. Everyone was very helpful in encouraging new and more experienced writers of all ages, reading work and giving cautious advice. Of course it’s all on email these days, another loss.
I was getting deeply absorbed in devising an unpleasant darkly themed story when an old friend Jocey video called from her bright kitchen in London, and a long conversation about art, Twitter and the books we are reading lifted me out of the mire I was creating.
It was a good two hours of conversation – it's like being a teenager again, when there was always so much to talk about with friends. There was a lot going on in the 1960s. We used to talk on the way back from school, and then pick up the conversation on the phone again as soon as we got home. Adult life and responsibilities later made this impossible of course, and I dread to think of my parent’s phone bills, every call had to be paid for in those days.
I sealed myself into the house, not even opening the windows. The news about the increase of the virus in our area as well as others is disturbing. I feel very reluctant to go shopping again until this virus wave has lost its strength, and I’m absolutely not going to be taking any chances until I’m vaccinated.
At least there is enough food in the house – there is rice, beans and pasta to last at least a year, vegetables and fruit in the freezer, and a huge sack of potatoes in the garden shed – and though they have not been very interested, I have been urging friends and neighbours to help themselves. It would be impossible for me to eat them all before they sprout.
But how will others manage who haven’t been stockpiling, as indeed we were asked not to?
How the period of isolation will be affecting me and others mentally in the long term remains to be seen. I wonder whether total lockdown is going to return for many months, and what sort of world we will emerge to?
