Life on the Coronacoaster

Here we are at the end of week seven in the UK Lockdown.

As always my routine during my COVID Blogs is to write my reflections on a Sunday Morning and despite the brilliant sunshine of our Bank Holiday Weekend it is at present, slightly overcast although the sun is beginning to peek through.

This week I continue to ride the highs and lows and the lyrics Ronan Keating once sang seem to be incredibly poignant and the inspiration for the title of this weeks blog. Not my words I hasten to add but some clever person with a penchant for puns.

Something else I also do every week when writing is listen to the radio, I always write with music in the background. My radio is on throughout the day when I am at home, from the moment I wake up until early evening and of late when I stop, like many to watch and listen to the Daily Briefing.

I am a BBC Radio 2 girl and Good Morning Sunday with the Reverend Kate Bottley (from the TV programme Gogglebox) and Jason Mohammed is something I love listening to. I like their guests, the stories and discussions and I love the fact that they compliment their different faiths.

The one thing I have noticed is that there has been a lack of religious hatred being reported in the media. Not that it isn’t happening but that the harbingers have been focused on promoting other avenues of hate. Now the media are fixated with images of those not following the social distancing rules and false alarmist headlines to increase our fear and anxiety.

Like most people when I see these photographs I am worried and scared, scared of a second peek, scared of folks seeming ignorance, scared to step into our new normal. I am fed up with the constant similarity of questions asked by the media at every briefing and it doesn’t matter how many synonyms they use, they are still asking the same questions. I know I am not the only one to think this, my family and friends are all echoing the same sentiment.

Until later today when we await the Prime Minster’s speech and the government’s plans, it is all supposition and even then I do not think we will have complete clarity. I believe it is a waiting game and my patience which I have always been told I have in abundance is wearing thin, in respect of others lack of this ability. We currently need this in abundance we have a long road ahead made even longer, if rules are not followed.

I think perhaps I should have entitled this blog ‘The Morning Rant’ but it always helps me to write my thoughts down. Sometimes I do this in a letter I do not send, although more often in poetry. I have mentioned this to several friends recently, that it doesn’t matter whether anyone reads it or not, the act of putting pen to paper or in my case the tip-tapping of laptop keys this morning can make you feel better. I also like to imagine people reading and nodding in agreement and that helps too, to think or hear that others are on the same page.

This week the coaster has been in full swing, disaster struck after my run on Monday and I developed ‘Jogger’s Knee.’ My running guru has advised me that this is due to not warming up and stretching correctly (I didn’t) and this has resulted in having to rest and and buy online a Knee Compression Sleeve I have to say this has really helped.

So apart from my Gilead shopping trip, I haven’t been out for a walk or exercising as my knee has been swollen and painful. I am so missing jogging, how did that happen?

It feels comfortable now I think, to go for a walk rather than a run which I will do later today and (after warming and stretching correctly) in a couple of days if the walk goes well, I will begin to try a gentle jog/run combination. I really have been missing watching the butterflies, the fields and my thinking solitude.

This Friday saw our little Island celebrating 75 Years of VE Day and on my social media sites I saw various celebrations; in back gardens, front gardens, union jack bunting and of course, our Queen gave us a thoughtful speech of memory and time.

I felt mixed emotions, my corner of the world was fairly quiet, living back in your childhood home due to circumstance brings strange feelings. The community I now live in is very different to the one I left. There are tiny remnants of that world, my immediate neighbours have the same spirit I grew up with and on a Thursday Evening when we pay our grateful respects, we both stand outside our gates to clap and bang tin pots and pans. Another neighbour on the corner has also been there from the outset but we seem to be the only constant. I do not know their names but we now wave and smile, connections of a bygone lifetime.

These celebrations reminded me of the Queen’s Silver Jubilee, I was fourteen years old. I remember my Mother paying into a club each week organised by a neighbour ‘Maureen’ for a street party she and others were orchestrating for the children in our street. My Father then worked for Fords in Dagenham at a time of strikes and lack of wages, money being tight not just for us, but almost everyone in our little cul de sac, the weekly clubs were a regular occurrence for various events in our neighbourhood.

We were the council estate kids, not many had bought their houses yet, in fact my Father was still a council tenant until fairly recently, when I had the need to move back. This celebration was full of trestle tables, paper tablecloths, flags, hats, paper plates, ham and cheese sandwiches, music and pop.

I remember being that awkward age, it all feeling very uncool yet pleased I was a part of it. I remember dancing with one of my childhood friends Laraine and our friend Karen had been invited to join our party too despite her living in another street and we kids were all dressed in red, white, and blue. We were also all given a commemorative coin and although we were not celebrating the end of a war in Europe and remembering their incredible, selfless, sacrifice, this, was the memory it conjured for me.

I have been beginning like all of us to appreciate different aspects of life so much more. I will be the first to admit I felt detached from my current surroundings, having left at nineteen and returning over thirty years later, life has very much changed.

The estate I currently live in was given various names regarding it’s appearance when first built. We moved in when it was still a building site, at the time it’s architecture was seen as the modern solution to the East End over spill, it is still is very much of it’s time. The real locals back then, seeing it as out of step with the village it surrounds.

This strange time has made me and others I’m sure see things in a different way. When I was a teenager I found the lack of amenities stifling, I also had quite a strict upbringing and I wasn’t allowed to go to some of the exciting places (to a teenager) that my friends were.

Our lives are all about perspective, my friend Julie who lived in the old part of the village thought our estate was posh as we had central heating and indoor toilets, one downstairs, one upstairs. Her then outside toilet meant that she would have wait until the Morning, being young and scared of the dark. The point of view being that to her, these modern houses were “amazing!”

I have begun too, to finally understand. Living with my Dad of course is something to be treasured. I really am a social butterfly, so flitting here and there means I have not had the reflection time perhaps I needed. Now that my wings like all of us have been clipped, I am discovering all sorts of things that I should have noticed before but didn’t.

The poem at the bottom of the page includes the adjectives the original villagers used to describe the ‘The New Estate’ the second stanza describes how I felt growing up and the last line my present feelings.

I hope you too have found a connection this week of unexpected beauty or poignant realisation that has made you stop, listen to your head and more importantly your heart.

Stay safe,

Joy xxx

(Goldfinger was an architect credited with designing modern concrete buildings in the 60’s and 70’s of note)

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