SET ME FREE!

I do not want to die this month. April is a month for the return of warm days and flowering hope, not for dying alone in some forsaken hospital ward or nursing home. Amongst the fragrant flowers and cherry blossoms it is hard to remember how confined we are. But other countries are faring even worse, and perhaps Robert Browning would still plead his desire for home from his confinement in northern Italy.

Home-Thoughts From Abroad

Oh, to be in England
Now that April's there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England - now!

As the lockdown continues, the economic cost of the devastation grows ever more huge. Thousands of shops and businesses may never reopen; many hundreds of thousands of people may be permanently unemployed; airlines are going under and even some universities may be forced to close through loss of fees. Surely it is time to reopen some shops and factories with shoppers and workers isolated by distance as they are now in supermarkets, rather than break ourselves completely on this catastrophic economic iceberg?

We are all being watched now…

ssh
ssh,
curtains
curtains twitching,
watch and tell
someone's not isolating
at least not very well,
phone
phone
the police
someone's cheating
in our very street.
Someone laughed-
I distinctly heard-
call the paper
spread the word
better still,
social media needs to know
shame your evil neighbour
to Facebook friend and foe.

Annie Elliott

I do not wish to die, and Ann and I would remain self-isolating as would most sensitive, vulnerable people, yet I yearn to leave home. People sitting alone in parks or walking the lonely moors should be granted that freedom. Surely it could do no harm to allow limited travel? To drive in the car to a remote place, for a quiet sandwich or flask of coffee with a change of view? To buy fuel from a self-service automated filling station? It is frightening how rapidly the English have become subservient, obeying arbitrary rules without question. Even worse, it is scary how we are being encouraged to become narks, spying on each other, reporting our neighbours to the thought police who are only too eager to attack basic liberties. How easily the Gestapo must have found it to impose control; how the Stasi would rejoice at the way we roll over at the slightest intimidation of a fine. No need for torture or reprisals here; at this hour, I think even Robert Browning might have second thoughts about returning to England, ex-land of the free.