“Hands Face Space” September – October 2020

Glen created this website to enable us to blog about our overseas ‘adventuring’ but it has, for now, become a diary of these unprecedented times of the Covid-19 pandemic that is keeping us in the UK. Therefore I am once again acknowledging the on-going government campaign message in the title which is reminding us all how to keep everyone safe and avoid a second peak.

This latest government campaign has been ‘run across TV, radio, out of home, social and digital adverting’. Boris, his Chief Medical Officer Professor Chris Whitty and his Chief Scientific Advisor Sir Patrick Vallance are endeavouring to encourage us all to follow the rules which they hope will reduce the transmission of Covid-19 as the winter approaches and we spend more time indoors.

For now though, Glen and I continue to spend a great deal of time outdoors, visiting Glen’s Mum and Dennis in their garden, talking to my Mum and Dad on the pavement or over the fence and enjoying walks with friends and family around The Marsh.

The children have finally gone (had to legally go) back to school and Miles started school for the very first time and is loving it. Other year groups at their, and other schools in Bristol, have had to quarantine for two weeks already, having only just gone back after five months. This is going to be a long winter.

We aren’t very sociable so it’s not been too difficult for us to follow the rules. Having said that, the village is so full of people to talk to as we walk around that we are actually being more sociable than we ever have been within the UK. We continue to love our stay here, which is just as well because we can’t see anything changing with the current situation that would give us the confidence to start our overseas ‘adventuring’ any time soon.

Autumn is here, the conkers are falling from the horse-chestnut trees and the sticky buds have appeared on the branches.

The farmers are working night and day harvesting their crops and what must surely be the last of the hay baling, providing all sorts of shapes and sizes of bales for us to photograph. We regularly hold our breath as the farmers slowly squeeze past the parked cars in the high street in their huge combine harvesters.

The trees and hedgerows are full of blackberries, rose hips, sloes, elderberries red ‘bird’ berries as Lauren calls them, for the sake of the children so they can distinguish between berries they can eat and berries that they need to leave for the birds.

Fields of maize grow higher with every walk and we are interested to see how they will harvest them it in future.

Karen delivered a bag of nuts from her hazelnut tree, so we are getting stocked up for Christmas! If only there could be a harvest festival or show in the village this year.

We are hoping that, in the same way summer gave us rainy cool days, autumn will give us sunny warm days. However, as I sit here typing this there is a sudden heavy hail storm outside. (And as I proof this at the end of October I can show you that there was flooding around the lanes).

Courtney is still in New Zealand, working on a farm looking after hundreds of newborn calves and sending us videos showing how friendly they are to her. They play with her like they are dogs, it’s lovely to see. Glen on the other hand has been attracting older cattle who fought for his attention as he photographed them on our walks the other day.

Lauren and her ‘pod’ invited us to join them on a walk on the Malvern Hills one weekend. It was an hour‘s drive from here and was the furthest we have driven since we arrived back in the UK in March. It was a beautiful sunny day but the wind was chilly, which made perfect walking weather. The views were lovely and I wondered why we have never been there before. That’s the problem with being in our own country, we don’t make the effort to explore – well, we haven’t done so in the past.

So, not exactly feeling the fear, life is actually anxiety-free for us.

Dad’s and then Glen’s birthday meant more social distancing. We managed to have Mum, Dad and Mark and his pod in ours for Dad’s birthday. Lauren and Jack and the children came up to ours for Glen’s birthday and we handed over drinks to Mum and Dad in their garden. We got a pair of step ladders for the children to stand on to be able to see and speak to their great-grandparents over the fence. These little pleasures aren’t going to be fun going forward in the cold winter months!

Eloise lost her first baby tooth on Glen’s birthday. I loved how she thought the fairy had delivered her new big tooth for her to put in herself when she felt the £1 coin in her tooth bag when she woke the next morning! 😆 Having discovered that a fairy delivers money to her each time a tooth falls out she now wants to wriggle her other loose tooth, 🤣 result!

We saw a squirrel in the garden for the first time. Eloise and Miles put a pile of conkers, apples, leaves (and random feathers!) for the squirrel to eat. It comes everyday now.

We lit the log fire for the children one evening and they got into their pjs, sat on the sofa in front of it, pulled Meryl and Dennis’s fleece blanket over them and it felt cosy…. just like in winter, Christmas even. They didn’t want to leave so they pretended to fall asleep so they didn’t have to get in to the car and go home bless them. If only we could have all sat on the sofa and cuddled up! When will that day come I wonder.

Sun setting over Castle Farm

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President Trump caught the virus and I’m sorry to say, that unlike Boris he did not become ill! Although he did go to hospital for sympathy votes, I mean to be monitored! I know it’s a horrid thing for me to think, let alone say, but he has been selfishly allowing the virus to spread, not least of all in a White House garden event recently where they were all hugging and openly breaking the rules that he had set! When he came out of hospital he became smug and told the American people not to be frightened of the virus and threw his mask to the side. He obviously has no compassion for the 220,000+ Americans who have died because of the virus!

Aunty Dar (Sue’s 100 year old Mum) sadly passed away in September and could not have the funeral gathering she deserved because of the virus restrictions. We all walked behind the hearse the length of the village and people lined the streets before close family members proceeded into the church for the service. There have been many such funeral processions through the village since March and it makes the loss even more real I think. It feels like we have gone back in time. I wonder if it‘s something that will be continued even once the virus restrictions are gone?

Government aviation restrictions couldn’t stop Karen from taking a short break away by plane. She flew off to the Scilly Isles, stating that even if there was a lockdown they couldn’t cancel her flight as it wasn’t abroad. So as she made her way to the beautiful islands off Cornwall, via Land‘s End Airport, Glen and I travelled the short distance down Tog Hill to stay with her cat, May.

Whilst we were there Lauren came to visit and left the children with us while she popped to the shops. That’s the first time this year! She wasn’t gone long but after a bit of socially distanced Lego building with them, Miles kept looking out the window. I asked him what he was looking at and he said “I’m looking for Mummy”. I said why do you want her to come back? He said “because I love my Mummy” ❤️ I asked him if he could remember when he used to hug us and other people, other than his Mummy and Daddy, and he said no 😢 He is only four bless him.

I tired myself out teaching them certain dances from my youth. It’s alarming how my body has gone down hill over the years! My ankles hurt when I do the twist these days and my hips don’t seem to sway when I’m doing the Tiger Feet dance quite like they once did! 🙄 

We enjoyed our stay with May (just around the corner from our house which is still being rented out) but we were happy to be returning to Marshfield. We went for a walk as soon as we got back.

We found to our surprise that in the five days we had been away we missed the harvesting of the maize! So I googled it up…. we watched a video but we are still none the wiser as to how they do it.

Newspapers are not only in effect yesterday’s news but you can read them on-line the day before anyway! I wonder how long before they stop cutting down trees to produce them? It has to be in our lifetime surely. Anyway October 12th’s headlines….

Nothing changes with the headlines that papers come up with. The “Locktober” headline in the Metro newspaper is wasted though – well it is on the Marshfield route. The bus that trundles through Marshfield High Street past our house is usually empty, unless it’s Leroy’s day to go down to Kingswood for essentials. 😉

Long shadows on an evening walk

And catching a beautiful autumn sunset before tea.

So as I type this last paragraph for the September/October entry I can confirm that the ‘Hands Face Space’ government initiative/message didn’t work and the UK is in fact dealing with a second spike of the pandemic. Fingers crossed that the latest three tier system of restrictions will bring that R number back down! I’m not holding my breath…. although there is another large farm vehicle squeezing past my little car out front.