Contentment Versus Complacency

          Now that I have managed to get out and about in the campervan at last, the change of scene has led to a reassessment of my attitude to lockdown. Could it be that what I took to be contentment with my situation was really complacency? Except for not being allowed to travel, I did not feel 'confined' at home. In fact, I convinced myself that I was freer, with more scope for the mind to follow its fancies, and the mundane obligations of life dropping away or put on ice. I also convinced myself that I was enjoying the quiet-time bonus, though now I see that the novelty was wearing thin: TV was becoming tedious, reading routine and exercise unexciting. One can get used to any situation being ‘normal’ if it persists for long enough. And as for those practical projects that I was going to nail once and for all, I did eventually get the hat-pegs fixed to the wall but have made barely a dent in scanning all those old photos on to the computer.

          How different one’s priorities appear through the windows of a campervan. We haven’t covered many miles, but enough to remind me that travel is a perennial eye-opener. For instance, stopping briefly in the Yorkshire town of Ilkley (one can’t help but think of the song), with its smart, prosperous-looking high street, a boutique cinema and a hall for the Ilkley Amateur Operatic Society, I was sharply disabused of the dowdy image lodged in my mind from who-knows-when And, having come to rest for a few days in Northumberland’s Derwent valley, I am pleased to be reminded of the regional differences that run deep in England, despite its compact geography. Who, for example, could not be charmed by the lilting Geordie accent? It is a bonus to the other attractions of the region: a long, sweeping coastline; a beautiful hinterland of moors and lush valleys; historical attractions, including Emperor Hadrian’s Wall and the more recent relics of the Industrial Revolution; and its sparse population, a disincentive to predatory developers. Despite all this, it seems there is a low concentration of tourists. I suspect this might have something to do with the weather, which is influenced by the North Sea. Yesterday, while the South East of England sweltered under 25 degrees Celsius and there was a serious hazard of sun burn, we wandered about under a cloudy sky at a more comfortable 15 degrees. It occurred to me that, before the climate crisis finally makes a desert of the South East, now would be a good time to cash in your London pad and buy a reasonably priced retreat here, in a county that might retain a recognisably English climate.

          For the first time, we have come equipped with bikes (a legacy of lockdown, acquired for the purpose of open-air exercise), the better to explore the area via the railway lines closed in the 1960s. We are fair-weather cyclists, averse to speeding, changing gears and lycra, which means that we are often in the way of the more serious types who, I suspect, are on a mission to get from A to B rather than bimble around looking for historical remains. Yesterday we cycled to Ebchester which, like any place with “chester” in its name, boasts the remains of a Roman fort – in this case with no trace remaining above ground. Still, I maintained, you could feel the history and try to imagine what it must have been like to be a soldier in the North African Legion that, for a time, was stationed here. They must have been well pleased when they were ordered back to the sunnier climes of Rome in AD 450.