Repetition and routine. Gwyn joked that we were on blursday, the forty-tenth of Maypril, and it can feel a little like that. So after work, and dropping off some shopping for isolating family we took our daily exercise, this time away from the coast, a public footpath that leads towards the motorway and away from people.
This motorway is the main arterial route to Scotland from the North West, and here’s what it looked like on Friday at 4pm.
The only passing vehicles were delivery vans, and trucks, very few private vehicles.
I imagine there will be some challenges this weekend, the weather will be good and the temptation will be to go out and to mix with others. Distancing is easy of course if you live in the countryside or have the coast on your doorstep, but in the cities, with parks closed and space limited it will be profoundly challenging. Socially isolating when you need a lift to get to the street or have access via a communal hallway, when you have little green space and no garden, is tough. It will become harder as the weather improves and the desire to be outside gathers pace.
On our way back we saw a group of kids, probably late teens, maybe five or six of them walking awkwardly from woodland, smoking, laughing, seemingly at odds with their surroundings, expecting to be hidden but now moving in open space and self-consciously so. Teenage rebellion is now a walk in the countryside, un-distanced.
I’ve taken a lot of photographs of sheep, lambs specifically, but haven’t posted any as yet. I’m saving them all up.
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