Heightened Anticipation

          Some people shun it, regarding it as a sinister spying device, but I like the Google Timeline app – the one that tracks and records where you go – because it’s a useful aide memoire for journal-writing. And I like that it sends me nostalgia-inducing illustrated resumés in the form of photo albums of the cities and countries I have visited (although that particular function has been redundant of late). However, the app has developed a diverting new feature: it now records me apparently walking on water. Yes, I live on the shoreline and yes, I walk every day along or near it, but Timeline too often erroneously records me crossing it – on foot. I guess it needs recalibrating – although it maintains near faultless accuracy when it comes to the shops I enter.

          Like yesterday, when I went to the city centre mall to replenish my stock of 100 per cent chocolate from Hotel Chocolat, only to find it closed on account of not being classified as “essential” retail. Adding insult to injury was the fact that, to get there, I had to pass the Krispy Kreme donut kiosk, which was doing a thriving trade in essentially unessential sugary, deep-fried doughballs. I know, I could have consulted Google as to opening-info before I went there, but I happened to be passing the mall anyway and wanted to get a fix before it disappears, along with most of our cities’ retail infrastructure. Nobody knows what will become of it, but I have heard various ideas for repurposing soon-to-be-redundant retail buildings, the most imaginative of which is Stockton-on-Tees’ proposal to demolish its high street shopping centre and replace it with a riverside park, a library and a space for outdoor events. Were it to happen, it would certainly be more beneficial to the population’s health than the retail-therapy-and-donuts prescription has proven over the past few decades.

          If there have been beneficial side effects of the pandemic, one has been the lesson that the front-line defence against becoming ill is rude health, which is aided by the adoption of more walking and cycling into daily routines. But routines can get boring and, fortunately for me, just as it was becoming a little tiresome tramping around the same neighbourhood for the sake of exercise, I acquired two new companions between whom I now alternate to pep up the plodding. We all share similar demographics, social values and general interests, so our walks are comforting and constitutional rather than confrontational and competitive. For me, there is the bonus that both my companions know the area better than I do, so I can learn stuff – factual or legendary – about the social history and built environment. For example, there is a stretch of coastal path in the city that is terminated abruptly and for no obvious reason by a high fence. My companion, Pete, enlightened me thus: the path was blocked off in the 70s at a time when the IRA was active and, because it runs close to the Royal Marines’ Barracks, was considered to be a risk to their security. Nobody has thought to reinstate public access until it was mooted earlier this year, which is another lesson for us: be vigilant and protect our civil liberties from gradual erosion.

          But other factors have brightened up the daily walks: daffodils and crocuses have made their appearance and, as if it were planned, their colourful, floral fanfare, coincides with the announcement by the government of the proposed pathway out of lockdown. Get ready: the glories of spring are about to be super-charged by the sweet taste of freedoms regained. I expect Google’s servers will have their work cut out tracking my movements then – especially as I’ll be floating on air.

Have You Had Yours?

           I’m getting tired of listening to other peoples’ detailed accounts of their vaccination experience: the ins and outs of a person’s jab sustain neither conversation nor entertainment – unless, of course, something out-of-the-ordinary happened, like the needle broke off or the nurse told ribald jokes to enliven the proceedings. But then, in this lockdown eternity, people will talk about it, since not much is happening and, I suppose, it makes a change from commenting on the weather. But then there will be the booster shots.

          There are events of note: I took delivery yesterday of 20 litres of Slack Ma Girdle – dry, still Devon cider. The question of where to stash it elicited fond memories of those home-bars that were fashionable in the corners of mid-century lounges, mini versions of Manhattan cocktail bars, all glass, veneers and fluorescent lights, designed to accommodate the trend for home entertaining among the aspiring middle classes. If I could get my hands on one, it would have to be in the shape of a ship’s prow, given the view from our window. But that’s a fantasy, dependent on being allowed to drink in company and, in the interest of one’s sanity, it’s best to keep mind and body occupied productively. So, I put up some shelving in a cupboard instead.

          As to stimulating the mind, one of the best methods is travelling but, with wings temporarily clipped, this has to be a vicarious experience. For example, I am reading David Gange’s The Frayed Atlantic Edge, an erudite account of his solo kayaking voyage around the Atlantic coast of Britain and Ireland. The book has two elements of particular interest for me: the coast, most of which I have visited, albeit on foot: and the kayak, a vessel of which I have no experience but do intend to try. Yet, reading his account, my having ‘been’ to places such as Shetland and Orkney merely emphasises his point: that their deep history and culture is best understood from that “frayed Atlantic edge”, where traces of the Danes, Norsemen, Vikings and the Gaelic-speaking peoples who travelled the region are embedded in the landscapes, archaeology, traditions, myths and language. All you have to do is be observant and join the dots. Oh, and be a fearless and expert kayaker. Pinning down historical facts is tricky when there is no written record, yet the archaeological clues are supplemented by the work of indigenous poets who kept their peoples’ history and mythology alive and, in so doing, elevated the relevance of poetry within the culture. And it has been said that “A grain of poetry suffices to season a century” *.

          Poetry can elicit powerful images, but it doesn’t have to be conscious or deliberately professional. Sometimes it just turns up in vernacular speech, as I noticed the other day. I was picking up some litter in the park, watched approvingly by a couple so old that they were surely the first people to get vaccinated. They spoke to me as I passed, thanking me, then imploring me to keep an eye on the contractors who mow the grass later in the year. The woman said, “I had to stop them last August, as they were about to cut all the Autumn Lady’s Tresses.” After a while, I learned that the poetically described tresses are the common name for a rare orchid and that my new-found acquaintances were amateur botanists who had successfully lobbied the Council to designate this stretch of park as a Site of Special Scientific Interest. They are currently lobbying the Council to let the mowing contractor know about it.

          So, I now have something to look forward to – the appearance in August of a bank of Spiranthes Spiralis (which don’t look at all like tresses) – and a possible confrontation with a bloke with a mower, for whom, I hope, vaccination will by then be a long-forgotten event.

* José Martí, poet, journalist, and freedom fighter (1853-1895)

Hypothetical Companionship

 

          That casual invitation to a mate, “Let’s go for a pint”, has morphed into “Let’s go for a walk”. Such a pity. Or is it? The dynamics of the interaction are different in each case, even to the point that some friends of mine will relish the one but shy away from the other. Does that say something about the basis of our relationship, or just the preference of the individual concerned? Either way, lockdown has enforced the change and it seems we must adapt or die (in some cases, literally). But I don’t mean to be morbid even though, having recently settled in Plymouth, far away from my trusty Manchester mates, I have not had anyone to go with, either for a pint or a walk.

           So, my walks are either solo or shared with my Other Half – although the latter tend to fall into the category of “hike”, which is quite a different prospect, tinged with sportiness and imbued with the rugged ethos of the Duke of Edinburgh Awards. My solo walks may lack companionship, but they do confer the leisurely freedom to stop at will and contemplate life’s peculiarities. For example, last week I wandered a part of Devonport in search of the restored Guildhall, which now houses, among other social amenities, a sourdough bakery, recently established by refugees from covid-stricken Hackney – living proof of the benefits of immigration. The Guildhall, though currently locked down, like everything else, is a fine example of a Grade 1 listed building in the Regency style, but it was a bonus to find, in the same street and by the same architect, a house in the so-called “Egyptian” style (a short lived fad akin to that of Chinoiserie) that had once been the home of the Odd Fellows society. Whether any of this might have been of interest to a hypothetical companion is a moot point but, supposing it were, we could have taken pleasure in sharing our enthusiasm. As it was, however, I was limited to geekishly googling the facts to satisfy my curiosity and in hope of sharing them later. Such audiences as I found, however, yielded only tepid responses.

          The ways in which we are affected by lockdown depend on our circumstances – and for some, I know, they are desperately difficult. But even for the fortunate ones – like me – with a life neither complicated by responsibilities nor burdened with hardships, lockdown threatens bouts of ennui at best, mental despair at worst. And somewhere in between there is the risk of life-shrinkage, by which I mean that small things can be inflated to compensate for the absence of one’s usual busy-ness. Before you know it, the delivery of that thingy you ordered on eBay becomes the highlight of your day. Then there is the danger of slipping into the spiral of introspection, easily avoided when displacement activities abound, not so in their absence. I like to think that it’s a problem I have outgrown yet I have spotted a warning flag on the horizon. The Heatons Jazz Appreciation Society, intent as it is to soldier on, despite the failure of its application for a government arts subsidy, has come up with a format to replace physical meetings – a plagiarised version of Desert Island Discs, the only differences being the subjects are not celebrities and the discs are never rubbish. It’s been fun so far, but next week it’s my turn to be stranded and the classic dilemma of how to choose looms large. However, here is an unexpected benefit of lockdown: I’ve had plenty of time to go over old ground, reflect on the soundtrack of my life and refine it to my limited choice and – I hope – appreciative audience.

(If you want to hear the tracks, search Spotify for ‘rachelmwlspot’, where you will find the playlist ‘HJAS Desert Island Discs’.)

Escape to Mars?

           Every now and then I make a point of diving into a sci-fi novel because I find it thought-provoking to read stories about how the world might be, rather than as it is or was. My choice of author is random, since I am not a devotee of the genre, but I reckon this is a sound counter-complacency strategy – expecting the unexpected. Not all sci-fi is tech-based: the last one I read (Shikasta) involved not space-travel, but an imagining of future politics on Earth, whereas the current read (Red Mars) is a classic, let’s-settle-on-Mars-because-Earth-is-becoming-uninhabitable trope.

          Of course, there are more down-to-Earth ways of being jolted out of complacent thinking. Last week, I was cajoled into joining an online seminar hosted by Flatpack 21, a movement devoted to encouraging the election of politically independent candidates to local councils. Its argument is that local government is often not best served by party loyalties that cloud the issues. The evidence put forward was pretty convincing, but there is only so much that can be controlled locally. The litter-picking excursions that have lately become my lockdown exercise regime, have focused my mind on the causes of the problem rather than demonisation of the culprits. Ultimately, no matter how many bins the council provides, litter is a symptom of social distress caused by the socio-economic policies of national government. And, on a global scale, it is an early warning sign of the overall eco-ruination of Earth. If it goes unabated, we may be scrambling to buy tickets to Mars from the likes of Richard Branson, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos sooner than we imagined. Nevertheless, to those who sneer that litter-picking does little to save the planet, I would quote Edmund Burke’s rebuke, “Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little”.

          But while billionaires are building the escape ships (at our expense), salvation may yet come in the form of renewable energy. According to BP’s own projections, use of fossil fuels will decrease and renewables will increase in all the scenarios it studied. And the International Energy Agency reports that, Covid notwithstanding, clean energy was the only part of the energy sector that grew in 2020. The pace and scale of the transition to renewables have already exceeded the most optimistic projections. When fossil fuels are no longer burned to create power for our machinery, carbon levels can be brought under control and one of the planet’s problems – climate change – might be mitigated. If so, there would be a consequential effect on geopolitics, since many modern international conflicts, when stripped of their camouflage of nationalistic nonsense, are about control of oil fields. For example, the devaluation of oil may one day obviate strategically motivated sales of arms to Saudi Arabia. But it’s not going to be that simple. Electrical power may be cleaner, but it requires an infrastructure of batteries and wires, which means increased demand for materials like copper and cobalt, shifting the focus to countries that have them.

          Some of this is the story of Red Mars, where the colonists’ dream of establishing an egalitarian society around a sustainable economy is soon wrecked by a “gold rush” from Earth as soon as it becomes feasible to mine Mars for the desired resources. Utopia, it seems, is not so much a place as an ideal. And yet, there are reasons to be hopeful: when the protagonists set off to colonise Mars, they do so because Earth’s population is rising at a Malthusian rate, whereas today’s mathematical projections show it reaching a peak in 2064 and declining thereafter. If that turns out to be true, we have some time to sort things out. Let’s hope that some of our glorious leaders are sci-fi fans: the stories contain many useful dos and don’t’s.