Lockdown Diary – 2020 – 73 – A world elsewhere

An earlier RNA Goody Bag

We all have the things we really, really want to get back to. Whether it be outdoors like croquet or indoors like socialising with other writers in person, there will be something.

I was invited to join DH and his sailing friends for another Zooming slide-show last night. This time we were north and seeing stunning photographs from Finland, Norway and Sweden. The sailors are all a bit glum as sailing needs landing places and those don’t look to be opening up anytime soon.

Managed a little shopping although the bee sting is reaching, I hope, its climactic hours. There are downsides to being a redhead – didn’t you know?

Scottish country dancing friend circulated a wonderful Stanley Baxter u-tube short yesterday about how naughty it can be. (Or maybe that’s just Mr Baxter’s take on it.) Don’t see dancing with partners returning anytime soon either.

This is supposed to cheer you all up by focussing on the small positives so I’ll add that I met a neighbour I haven’t seen in the whole period. He and his all well and the reason we haven’t seen them is that the family have been doing all their shopping. So, many people looking out for others, is a real positive.

Anne

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Lockdown Diary – 2020 – 71 – Reminder of Mortality

I thought quite hard about making yesterday’s post the final one, but lockdown continues and if the trail of cars trying to access Livingston’s re-cycling centre yesterday is an indicator of how we’re doing, then lockdown may not yet be a past phenomenon. So here we are.

My sortie into post non-contact days was to rendezvous with a writing friend, Kate Blackadder – short story whizz, and have socially distanced, takeaway coffee sitting on plastic bags at either end of some steps in a local cemetery. Cheese and paprika scone – me; blueberry scone – she. Given the number of cemeteries and graveyards I’ve wandered in over the years you would think there might be a suitable photograph. Not in fact and I offer the couple above as an indication of our mortality.

Writing, jigsaw, cooking, bridge – him, croquet – him. Next up in the GH list is The Toll Gate. I do think she writes child characters well and in a believable manner. They speak like children and not as if they’ve wandered off the set of a Shirley Temple extravaganza.

Still Rocking Kate Blackadder, a collection of previously published short stories and one NEW. Here

The Birchwood Café, that cheese scone,  contact T: 0131 446 9873
E: hello@thebirchwood.co.uk
146 Marchmont Road
Edinburgh, EH9 1AQ

Fraser McLeod Greengrocer  contact 0131 452 9786

138 Marchmont Rd, Edinburgh EH9 1AQ

Hours:

Open ⋅ Closes 2PM

Anne