The First Day of Spring

 

Tomorrow is the first day of spring, and already the skies are blue, the sun warm, and wild flowers in the local copse are greeting the world, eager to escape their winter imprisonment. In the garden, crocuses are well out and the tulips are bursting through winter's old crust. With lockdown's end in sight,  the countdown has begun.

Suddenly Boris is in everyone's good books, just because he will allow us to give our children a hug and see our grandchildren once more. I will actually be allowed to sit on a park bench without prosecution, should I tire on my short walks with the dogs. It is hard to believe how quickly and for how long these basic human rights were removed, rendering the whole country under virtual house arrest. How easily is freedom stripped away. How powerful are the police now, with drones and CCTV to monitor the whole population. The gestapo would have had a field day with such technology, and any underground resistance would have been snipped off at the bud. Saving the torture, one feels that living under a dictatorship could not be much harsher than the last year has been. Yet even a dictatorship would probably have provoked more rebellion and protest marches than our enfeebled state has mustered; it has been  incredible and frightening how quickly compliant the whole nation has been to arbitrary government diktat. 

Yesterday was our wedding anniversary. Edwin and Andre called by (suitably distanced) to bring a card and gift - a n Apple Mini iPod. It came smartly wrapped in a cubic box, which I held carefully to open, gently and slowly sliding the lid upward till it came clear of the box underneath. Unfortunately, the box beneath was very shallow, and the iPod was a perfect sphere balanced carefully on a plinth to show it to good effect. Inevitably, the sphere rolled off its plinth, bounced along the tiled floor, and rolled under the table, leaving me holding a shallow box, the lid, and a deep red face. I said, "we'll have to say it didn't work when we opened it," but the boys said, "the guarantee doesn't include bouncing it on the floor!" However they must build them very strong, for happily nothing rattled inside and it still worked. Unlike my pride, it wasn't even dented.