Who would have thought it last October when I said yes to Chris’s Sunday morning surprise proposal and the weeks that followed heavily featuring date setting, Vicar meeting, dress shopping and just simple happiness, that the whole world not just ours would be brought to its knees by something so macabre as what we are all facing now.
Just when this country mouse made the decision to leave her lifelong dales home and become Mrs Town Mouse and live in the more civilised haunts of Smithy Brook for a happy ever after, the villain that is Covid 19 does its worst and the universe is at its mercy.
So here I am and there he is both in our own worlds taking a day at a time and comfort from having all we need at this moment apart from each other and that the best is yet to come.
I find Hope in many guises. Chris’s enthusiasm for the gift of time is one of them and this welcome symptom of the crisis, is time he is spending well working his magic on the garden, nurturing planting and sowing with the peaceful babbles of the brook for a soundtrack and even the occasional blue and orange flash of the resident Kingfisher, which has proved elusive to me. Chris thinks I’m too impatient or noisy probably for him to grace me with his majestic presence but Mr Kingfisher is probably just a bit shy like the otters of Orkney that failed to come to my party despite all that longing to catch a glimpse. I have to say that our success rate with red squirrels however has been top drawer!
Hope…Hope that this will all be over one day very soon and we’ll be eating the courgettes and onions he’s planting over the same dinner table and maybe even sharing the same name as well as county and home.
Here in my ‘hood’ I find Hope in the unfolding of Springtime, the Aconites yellow and green frilly burst and the lapwings call taking me back to my childhood with ‘peewit’ a backdrop to lambing time and the excitement of finding a nest of spreckled blue and brown eggs whilst looking around the sheep. We lambed all the sheep outside in those days and the lapwings were often not pleased with our presence and swooped and shrieked to warn us off.
Grandad used to say, “When it’s up it’s down and when it’s down it’s up, what is it?” He liked a good riddle to ‘fox’ us, the answer was the crest on a peewits head or ‘Teerfits’ as he used to call them.
The lapwings cry is so very reassuring to me even now, it says all is well and it is so very welcome as an indicator that winter is about to give way to spring. I remember on one occasion when out in the fields one lambing time when my children were small, a magical moment of at oneness with nature, that I was so privileged to encounter. We were moving twin lambs out of the lambing field into a bigger field with new grass aplenty to ensure the new mums would make plenty of milk for their lambs when all of a sudden the sky turned black and you could see a heavy April shower approaching. The boys huddled with their father at the top of the field under the shelter of the stone wall waiting for it to pass and I was stationed near the other gate where I took my shelter crouched, silent and alone behind the wall. Just in front of me a very distressed sounding lapwing purposefully shrieked and came in to land keeping her wings spread wide as she did so, when, just like magic from nowhere up popped her chicks from their grassy hiding places first one and then another and another, to seek shelter under their mothers wing. She had come to their rescue and they were willing occupants of the winged umbrella. There we were about our own business this little family and I sharing the moment waiting for the storm to pass and life to carry on.
Which is just like where we all are today and what we are waiting for. We must remember that Hope is all around in the most unexpected places the seed in its bed, the eggs in their nest and the caring wings of those we love to give shelter from the storm. Town or country it’s who you want to be with that’s important and not where and I’m looking forward to sharing the fruits of Smithy Brook thanks to Chris’s labours and Mr Kingfisher’s flash of colour as soon as Hope says it’s time.
