Monthly Archives: May 2020

Lockdown Diary: Week Ten

Posted on by
Reply

This has been a week of memorable walks. The easing of the restriction on the amount of exercise  we’re allowed to do, and how far we can travel to do it, has given us more opportunities to be outside in the continuing great weather.

We’ve been to Richmond Park a few times since the restrictions were eased but earlier this week we went for our first evening walk. The Park was much quieter than during our daytime visits and a little cooler too; quite welcome given the recent heat. We headed from Ham Gate to the lakes and back again, through the woods and open grassland. The deer were more visible than during the day time and were out enjoying the quietness in the last of the sun. All except one group of red deer which chased of a couple and their dog when they walked past too close to their one small calf. The Park had a much calmer atmosphere that evening, as the day was coming to a close and the light dipping behind the trees, we’ll have to go again and the evening might become our favoured time if the days become even busier than they presently are.

Last night (Friday), we went for a walk after our evening meal, in the last light of the day. The walk down to Kew Green, along the Thames and then back through the residential streets, was the quietest local stroll we’ve had since lockdown began but also one of the most memorable. The air had a bit of a nip as we left the flat but the air was still. The clear sky meant there was enough light to see and the glow from the west gave a sharpness to the scenes. At Kew Green, we walked around to the Elizabeth Gate entrance to the Botanic Gardens and saw a mother fox and her small cub running around the manicured grass and flower beds. Walking onto the river path, the enclosing trees brought darkness but it was just possible to see across the water and watch the strange flickering patterns the light breeze was making on the Thames’ surface. Back through the deserted streets we hoped to see more foxes out and about. At first a cat raised and dashed hopes but on the last street before the turn for the flat, a fox wandered across the road, stopped to look at us but soon disappeared into gardens as we approached.

Today, we left the city and headed a few miles west to Seer Green for a country walk. Only half an hour away from London but distant from any busy honeypot areas, within minutes of parking the car we were out in almost silent rolling Home Counties countryside. The first footpath we passed along was in the dip of a shallow valley of ripening wheat and the only sound was a calling skylark somewhere out of sight in the clear blue sky above our heads. As we continued our walk through the fields and woods, we came across a few people, but far fewer than we do on our daily walks in Kew, and there was so much more peacefulness in the countryside than the city. We crossed a couple of busy roads but there was little other activity and we spent much of the time listening to the birdlife as we walked. We stopped to watch a whitethroat claiming his territory from a high hedge perch and later stood as red kite circled and called above the fields sloping down into another valley. We eventually turned towards the car and passed through the village but even there it was quiet with very little activity going on.

Now back in the urban Kew, it is much less quiet with the passing traffic but also the more natural sound of the breeze passing through the London planes outside of the window. The chance of a wander around the countryside has fed my need for rural space and will hopefully dampen that yearning for a while.

I was going to finish with a point about easing lockdown too quickly but will leave that for now and stop here before I let the post end on a less relaxing tone. These walks have made a big difference to us, being able to be outside in nice places, both urban and rural, connecting with nature and bringing some peace and calmness to what still remain quite hectic weekday lives.

Lockdown Diary: Week Nine

Posted on by
Reply

As lockdown continues, so does the startling good weather and this week it turned properly warm with temperatures up to the high 20s. The forecasts predict this will go on for the whole of the next week and into the weekend, continuing what has been the longest spell of good weather I can remember since the heatwave of 2018. We had a very brief hail storm on Saturday and a short shower when we were out walking just before that but that was all the rainfall we’ve had for weeks. It’s hard to believe that we’re still only in May and that summer has yet to start. Back at home, the weather has been good, I believe, but the difference in temperature this bit further south in Kew is marked. I’m sure many will be thinking the same, that if lockdown had occurred in the late autumn or winter, with the accompanying poorer weather and shorter daylight hours, these few weeks would have seemed very much worse to cope with.

With restrictions lifted on how much outside exercise one can do and the distance that can be driven to take that exercise, we have been outside more frequently and for longer. Walking, running and cycling have enabled me to keep a lid on some of the stresses of the past few weeks and the lifting of some restrictions means it’s easier to take the exercise I need for good mental health.

The nature of Kew and Richmond is also continuing to give me a lift. We have now made ‘friends’ with a crow who comes to our balcony to feed on muesli and occasional bids of bread we put out for him. We are not alone in feeding him, at least two neighbours in our block of flats are doing the same and we’ve seen him flying towards his nest from other nearby buildings with food in his mouth. We have also had magpies, great tits and robins feeding on the balcony but it is crow we seen the most. He lands on the metal table with a clattering, fills his mouth as much and as quickly as he can and then flies off through the trees, across the road and into his nest.

We have also frequently seen foxes in the street below the flat, both at night and in daylight. It’s also not unusual to hear them calling in the small hours or smell their presence as we walk around the nearby roads. We’ve seen them in full day time, walking along the road or jumping a fence; they seem bold and confident much of the time but also timid when people are walking nearby. It is perhaps these foxes that make the connection with nature the strongest, seeing quite large wild animal walking the very urban, if tree-lined, streets of Kew draws some connections with some of the wildest places I’ve been.

The Government appears set to announce further changes to lockdown over the coming week, perhaps enabling some limited meeting of households or even enabling us to travel to spend some time at my house. I’ve got so used to living in the flat here in Kew and to wandering the local streets, cycling the Thames Path and now, as of last week, visiting Richmond Park, that it may seem quite odd to be living somewhere else.

Lockdown Diary: Week Eight

Posted on by
Reply

An eighth week of lockdown has nearly passed and in some ways I’m running out of things to say, or at least struggling to find the clarity of thought to put something meaningful on the page. Like many I expect, simply living with lockdown, all seems very tiring despite not having the daily commute and not having the added pressure of being a key worker. At the end of each day, I often feel shattered but we do go out and exercise as much as possible; to clear the head and to get some of those endorphins going.

There seems to be more uncertainty about the future than ever and as the UK Government seems intent on pushing out of lockdown, I think there may be reluctance amongst many to follow its chosen path. I’ve always loved driving but given the chance this week to drive a short distance to Richmond Park, there was some significant apprehension; I’m not sure why and it wasn’t just a passing feeling. Breaking out of lockdown is going to require people to get back to doing many of the things that they haven’t done for weeks and if I’m feeling nervous about something I usually love doing, I suspect many others will find some of their normal activities more challenging than they were.

I’m also finding it harder to separate work from home. I’ve tried to keep the two as separate as possible, clearing all work away at the end of each day, exercising straight afterwards to make an almost physical break between the two and I try not to think about work too much outside of work hours. I think working from home is great and I want to keep on doing so for more of the time when we return to more normal times. However, I need to do more to make the break between work and home. 

I think the lack of a holiday isn’t helping. We were meant to have been on the Isle of Harris this week but, clearly, we have known for some time that this wasn’t going to be possible. Without any significant time away from work and home in the short to medium term, the balance of work and home may be even more difficult to get right.

I think many of us will now be getting to the stage where we’re finding it more difficult to find new things to keep ourselves occupied. I listened to a programme on the radio several years ago which suggested that time appears to move more quickly when we do fewer new things. We may remember new activities more clearly than the routine and the more new activities we do, the more markers in time there are and thus, time seems to move more slowly. When we just do the routine activities, time seems to pass more quickly as we remember fewer activities. Maybe the routine of lockdown, when our ability to do new activities is very much reduced, is merging time, making it move more quickly and making work and home almost indistinguishable. I certainly feel that the past eight weeks have flown by.

I did work up the courage to drive to Richmond Park and I was so glad we made the visit. Having been limited to walking around Kew for weeks, it was a release to be somewhere new and in a place with wide open views across green space. We walked through the old oak woodlands and across the open grasslands, past the two lakes and along the currently deserted roads. We had some great views of nature as we walked including sand martins, house martins and swifts flying fast over the water, the herds of red and fallow deer, and even some of this years goose chicks wandering at the water’s edge.

Hopefully, with exercise restrictions lifted a little now, we can get out more and do some more new things to break up the time and help to make a greater divide between work and home time…and, maybe, I won’t find it do hard to write a blog post next week.

  • {

Lockdown Diary: Week Seven

Posted on by
Reply

This week has seemed harder than the past few in lockdown. I woke up with a feeling of melancholy on Sunday and it was still there on Monday morning as I started work. Up to then, I hadn’t been feeling too bad apart from the first week, which I found very difficult to settle into. Speaking to colleagues, it seems that many have found the past week harder than others; maybe there’s a seven week itch in these things where tolerance starts to fray a little or coping mechanisms begin to weaken. Maybe it was more about people, including myself, finally accepting that we’re in this for the long haul and not even the new normal will be here any time soon.

The overblown talk earlier in the week of relaxing lockdown has been replaced by more sombre tones of small changes. However, just a little easing of exercise restrictions would be welcomed by many. It gives all of us without gardens or countryside (even if temporarily like me) to get out into some green space and connect with nature. However, those connections can be made even through an open window. 

Sitting at my desk this week, I heard a familiar and very welcome summer sound. I looked up from my screen to see two swifts chasing each other over the Kew rooftops. The following day there were three and the calls have been heard intermittently ever since. They’re my favourite bird of all and their calls, as I must have written here before, lift my soul like very few other things can. In the winter, I yearn for that sound and I cherish every time I hear it. After all, the swifts won’t be here for long and in no time at all I will be left once more with many months of waiting to hear them again. 

This week I also noticed as the darkness had fallen on another day in lockdown, the number of insects attracted by the street lights and circling in bright rays shining down towards the pavement. I wouldn’t say it was a startling observation but it got me thinking about how long it was that I had seen so many insect doing the same. That then led me on to consider whether the reductions in air pollution resulting from the lower levels of traffic might be be causing an increase in the numbers of insects. I’m no scientist but on my next long car journey it will be interesting to see if the number of insects picked up the front of my car has noticeably increased. Anecdotally, it seems that ‘fly splatter’ on cars has decreased over the past few years and any change in these observations over the next few months might be telling.

We have continued to go for walks this week and yesterday was a particularly memorable one. We set off in the morning and stopped at Kew Bridge to wait for the Red Arrows to pass overhead on their route from the VE Day commemoration flypast. They duly did and we went on with our walk and stepped down onto the shore of the Thames. It was a very low tide yesterday and we could walk almost all the way between Kew and Chiswick Bridges. Down on the short was the usual mix of swans, geese, ducks, gulls and herons but this time we came across some of the first young of the year with a gaggle of Egyptian goslings.

Even in lockdown, even staying inside, there are ways to connect to nature. Writing this post has lifted some of the gloom and I’ll go out for a cycle in a while, which will hopefully lift it further. I’ll have to see how many insects I get splatted on my sunglasses!

Lockdown Diary: Week Six

Posted on by
Reply

The weather turned this week, away from the summer-like sunshine and temperatures and towards something more appropriate for the end of April. We’ve had a few heavy showers, some stronger winds and there’s definitely been a chilly edge to the air. Tuesday was almost a write-off with heavy rain for much of the day but it slackened off in time for a walk after work. The weather over the previous weeks has been almost surreal with so much consistency in the warmth and sun, and whilst I do want it to return, this week’s rain and wind was almost a welcome return to the norm. The change has also brought another marker to show the passing of time.

Those walks after work have been so important in keeping some semblance of sense and perspective in my head. I hadn’t really realised just how important they have been until late this week when I’d had to wait until later in the evening. We usually go out immediately after finishing work for the day and they have formed a demarkation in time between the worlds of work and home. It seems I’ve finally noticed that working from home really can blur those worlds too much and without something to separate them it’s much more difficult to shut off the thoughts of the working day from home life hours. It’s also quite noticeable that I find it easier to block out home from work time than work from home time. That is not a reflection of the relative value I attached to them but more to do with my usual working self-discipline, the merging of home and workplace, and my significantly reduced ability to keep my mind occupied with my usual range of outdoor activities.

Those walks, as I’ve written previously, have enabled us to keep in touch with the nature around us. Kew is pretty special with all the lovely gardens, street trees and open spaces, as well as the River Thames. However, there is one unassuming spot that has been particularly good at providing wildlife highlights. There’s a closed off road between a railway embankment and the National Archives which provides a link to the river.  The embankment is covered in trees and deep undergrowth and, on the opposite side of the road, the Archives have a hedge in front of its gardens. As we’ve walked there over the past few weeks we’ve seen a daytime fox and plenty of birds including a garden warbler and two very loud blackcaps. However, this week we got a special surprise as we made our way down the road. In the deep undergrowth came a call I’d heard before but didn’t quite recognise. At first I thought it was a thrush but that wasn’t right. I then realised, it was a nightingale! I’ve only heard one once before and that was in a nature reserve, so it was a startling find, particularly in such a spot on the edge of London.

Whilst there is still a long way to go to get anywhere near back to normal, or more likely forward to a new normal, there are now at least some signs of hope in the daily news. We’re past the peak, the sad daily toll of deaths is dropping, at least in the measure of those passing away in hospitals. There is talk of relaxing some aspects of lockdown, if not social distancing, and the country is looking at ways to live with this virus while going about more normal daily life. I still think my girlfriend and I haven’t had it too bad compared to many others. However, the realisation that I really do need to go for a walk straight after work has highlighted that this situation can take its toll even on those who aren’t on the front line.