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Day 101 - Room 101 - as I woke this morning I was facing Day 101. The temperatures had dropped. My walk was shouting to me . 100 walks . 300 miles or maybe more . I really do need that Fitbit . I grabbed that cup of tea , cleaned my teeth and headed out . Up the hill . For some strange reason there was no-one about. Tuesday there should be people walking. It was not raining so where were they? . 101 days not a special number of days . Just one more than yesterday
I thought about what to throw into Room 101. Covid 19 for sure . That would be the first thing I would relegate to that room . Step after step I headed down the lane with a plan to head across the field to Stubbing Pond . I could see if I were able to find the coots or go the opposite way. I had not made my mind up. But as I walked things were being dumped into my imaginary Room 101.
I began to think about what to write in the diary of Covid 19. A friend once told
me that she only wrote at Christmas . Her reasons that if you wrote too often you wrote about tat. By writing once a year she could concentrate on what was memorable and what was important to her . I always looked forward to the Christmas card with the letter tucked in . It would be read over a cup of coffee .
We met when the children were small . Our kids were at swimming classes . We enrolled them at the same time and each and every week we sat waiting for them to complete their lessons and we talked . We talked politics . We had similar tastes in politics and would put the world to rights. We still do even though we have drifted in different directions and back again when it comes to politics . We talked holidays . We still do it in our letter at Christmas . I wondered what our letter would look like this year . Dominated by Covid and how we had coped with it .. I probably will still be able to tell her about Christmas in France and our short weekend in Northumberland . She usually goes
to Europe to practice her German and French and would travel on trains across Canada . I wonder whether she would go anywhere this year . Both our lives had changed so much . Our friendship had been one of many years despite now living miles apart .
Would I put employers in Room 101 I wondered as I climbed the gate into the field? Employers who furloughed and now sacked their workers . Perhaps I would .
No cows today but I had to pick my way between mole hills and cow pats . Still not a soul about . No footsteps of those walking before me. Mole hills are fine . Cow pats - more room required in Room 101. I reached Salem Chapel - right or left . Toss a coin . Left - that will do for today . My thoughts went to a new lockdown in Leicester . The shops had only just opened up. The churches opened their doors . The campsites at the weekend would open . But would they?
Councils I thought - would I put those in Room 101? Perhaps I would. As I walked past derelict houses
all ready to be pulled down and a housing estate spring up. All those councillors who neglect to think of the impact of their decision making . No school spaces . No room at the inn. No room at the doctors . So it is room 101 for the planners . I can make room in my imaginary room for them .
Long grasses grow in the fields. Tussocks that show it is muddy and damp . Meadowsweet and then there is the heady smell of Mock Orange which takes me back years . An old house falling down . We bought it with a view to doing it up. It had a long history of building going back to the early 1800's . The garden a tangled mass of bramble and nettles . Marigolds growing in places . A pigsty covered in a green shrub . By Spring I had no idea what the shrub was . By summer the smell let me into the secret - a mock orange . I was taken back years this morning when I smelt the mock orange on my walk . And yes it has been the sunniest Spring since 1929.
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