There are two dangers under Lockdown. Well, there are far more than two and I suppose number one danger is that you might catch the virus and that’s always a possibility with panting joggers and runners coming up behind you when you’re on a healthy brisk walk. But leave that to one side. The two dangers for me are being bored and being irritated. Saturday is a dangerous day for me for being irritable especially if I’ve forgotten its Saturday and one of the difficulties these days is remembering which day it is.
My routine on waking up in the morning is to turn on the radio. It’s already set on BBC Radio 3. The problem on Saturdays is that the presenter has a strong regional accent and I cannot understand much of what she’s saying. The other problem is she tells me, frequently, that the next piece of music is ‘gorgeous’. Well it may be, for her, but I would like to make up my own mind over the gorgeousness or not of the piece of music. I’m sure the presenter is a very nice person but if I forget its Saturday and turn on radio 3 when I first wake up I start the day irritated.
So today I started the day irritated. However my irritation was turned to absolute joy soon after I set out on my brisk walk. Down Braganza Street, left into Manor Place, right into Penrose Street and then back towards Lorrimer Square. Just through Pasley Park on the other side of the road I saw Rene, a fellow parishioner at St Agnes. I shouted and waved. She shouted and waved. Then keeping our distance we checked up on each other.
‘I think I’ll go mad before this is over,’ she said – very cheerfully, ‘Or I’ll kill everyone else in the house!’ I admitted that I had no one in the house to kill, other than the radio of course, but that I did miss everyone. And Rene said so did she and we each went on our way. Once on the Brandon Estate I went to pay my respects to the Henry Moore sculpture of two figures. I hadn’t really noticed before that it is mounted on something like a concrete altar. Two figures raised up. Almost as a sacrifice. I find it a very moving work.
Then as I came down from the mound there were three people looking as if they were going up to have a look as well. They weren’t. They told me they lived on the estate and knew the sculpture well. We chatted, at a distance, for quite a while and they too lifted my spirits. Once on the other side of the estate walking on a path through the playing fields I saw David, another parishioner.
David was looking, and, he told me, feeling, great. We had a good long talk and he said that he, along with other psychiatric outpatients who live alone, has been taken into a psychiatric unit during lockdown as it will be better for their health there.
I am sure there are those who manage very well on their own, who perhaps prefer being on their own. But many of us need other people. The telephone is great. Video links and streaming and zooming are fine too – especially for those who have lap tops and iPads and iPhones and know how to use them. There are a lot of us who don’t.
For me there’s nothing that beats being with. For those who are old and frail is length of days really more important than a hug from a grandchild? I am old and not so frail. I don’t want to give the virus to anyone and I don’t want to clog up the NHS but it looks as though the NHS is coping well. I don’t know how many are in these new hospitals but I get the impression they’re not full at all. May I not be allowed to take some risks in the cause of being with?
It can be dangerous crossing the road. Risk is part of living. At least now we can meet in the park and are allowed to sit on the benches – at a distance – or on the grass. But at what price do we preserve our physical health?
In my reading recently I came across something that may, or may not, be relevant. New Zealand’s Prime Minister from 1935 – 1940 was Joseph Savage. He travelled to Britain in 1937 for the coronation of King George VI and the Imperial Conference at which Savage criticised Britain’s appeasement policies, saying “Is your policy peace at any price; if it is so I cannot accept it”. Anthony Eden, then Britain’s Foreign Secretary, replied “No, not at any price, but peace at almost any price”, to which Savage replied: “You can pay too high a price even for peace”.
Simon
The Script of a broadcast from 2007
THE INDIVIDUAL
I was sitting with some friends at a restaurant in London overlooking the Thames. In the distance I could see the dome of St Paul’s cathedral, the setting sun was reflected in the water, the scene was idyllic. Well London idyllic. And it was the company too. Good friends, good conversation a wonderful view and the food was marvellous. The restaurant is in all the food guides and rated high. It’s not too expensive, menu not too long and just really great food.. Then I wondered whether the food would taste so good if the view and the company had not been there. If I’d been eating alone and facing the wall eating the same food would the food have tasted as good as it undoubtedly was.
I went to a concert at the London proms, with some friends and of course also with the 5,000 people who fill the Royal Albert Hall night after night for the season of the London Proms. The music included Beethoven’s violin concerto. You wouldn’t have believed it. In that vast hall there was such a listening silence as we heard the single violin playing as if in a drawing room. At then at the end of a musical line a single sigh from 5000 people. I’ve tried watching the proms on the television, quite a number of them are televised, and it just doesn’t work for me. The visual images are a distraction not a help. I can cope listening to a concert on the radio and feel part of it and I can identify with the applause. But it’s being there with all the others that helps me hear and feel the sounds.
I often do Sunday lunch when I’m at home in London. There are sometimes family passing through and a mixture of English friends, friends from Thailand, America wherever. Late lunch on Sunday is a time when quite a few people seem to be at a bit of a loose end in London and it’s easy to organise lunch so that it fits in with church. The food is ok if I say so myself and the conversation is usually ‘wide ranging’. Sunday lunch on my own isn’t the same.
Maybe we human beings are designed to be together. We hear so much about individual rights and the development of the individual. What about family rights and the development of the family and community rights and the development of the community? How about less of what affects me and more about what affects us.
I went to the gym and was talking to someone about all this and he said, ‘Well I wouldn’t have a clue about all that but what I do knows is that I have a list of all the exercises I must do and I could do every one of them all on my own at home. But I don’t. Then I come to the gym. I may talk to noone. But there are other people around and I do my exercises.’