Writing… it’s what I do…
Day 1
As usual, I woke up ridiculously early, about 4am, so caught up on a drama I had missed and then watched a scandalous documentary on air pollution that caused shocking deformities in babies, before I managed to drift away back to the land of nod. However, when I properly awoke, yesterday’s announcement was still buzzing round my head and, to be honest, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. My parents live in Scotland, my 88-year-old dad has dementia and my mum is his sole carer, I last saw them in December, but when am I going to get to see them again? One thing for sure is, it is unlikely I will be able to visit my mum in time to celebrate her 80th birthday in May.
So what does this new kind of normal look like? For me the biggest change is an empty diary. Those who know me, are very aware of how important my work is to me. It is my lifeblood and it has sustained me through the most difficult periods of my life, especially this last year through divorce and two house moves.
January, February, March, wow business was ‘booming’. Eleven years of hard work and dedication as a freeelance had paid off. I had five school newspapers booked in before summer, I was three-quarters of the way through producing the latest newsletter for a major employer and I had business awards coming up. Lots of ongoing news stories… and then the crash. Wallop! Overnight, literally, I went from a full book to a deserted calendar, my diary went from a packed list of jobs and interviews to a list of public holidays.
And then the worry set in, what am I going to do? Where is my salary for 2020-21 going to come from? How is my business going to recover from this? Am I going to be reinstated by the businesses and schools that I have served for many years once this ‘new normal’ ends? So many ifs… buts… maybes… As a single parent, where is the income going to come from to sustain my family.
Back to Day 1
I deliberately posted positive messages on social media with a photograph of cherry blossom that I took 11 years ago in Cumbria. I urged people to ‘look up not down’ and then continued with the pompom making that I had started the previous evening the moment BoJo came on my TV to tell me to everyone was being locked down.
I had seen people making rainbows for their front windows to bring a smile to passersby and to make them feel positive; it seemed the right thing to do. I decided mine should be made from pompoms, I love making pompoms. Three had already been completed on Monday night and the remaining four were finished by lunchtime. Now they hang in my window.
Tuesday, that is usually the day when I go to Haslingden High School, but no – I attended there last Friday to document the leavers’ assembly this year it was held in March not May. Such a sad occasion. Instead I perched on the last step of the stairs and used my camera to snap photographs of the birds enjoying the free food in my bird feeder.
By the afternoon, and with a banging headache, I felt as though I was going stir crazy, so I decided to take my permitted once a day exercise out of the house. I wanted to drop a book off for a friend, through her letterbox and not in person, and I continued on a two mile walk. I walked past the eerily silent schools, noted how the usually busy roads had just a handful of cars on them, saw the sign on the chippy ‘only one customer in the shop at any time’ and the ‘Closed because of coronavirus’ notices on shop after shop. Britannia seemed like a different place. A number of people were out walking and almost all were maintaining the minimum safe distance. I said ‘hello’ to each one and chatted to a mum with her daughters and moulting husky dog.
This is new normal for now but no one told the ducks and geese on New Line Reservoir that anything was different as they greedily begged for any food they could get; it was good to see that some things never change.
As I returned home, I took a photo of my colourful rainbow in the window of my home. And I smiled. Rainbows always make people think of hope (even if they never find that mysterious crock of gold). I hope it may make others smile too as we all settle into a new normal.
Stay safe and be good to each other.
Writing… it’s what I do…