Back at the end of January -- so long, yet not so long ago -- I was musing about how to make our travel less environmentally harmful. Flippantly, I speculated about whether "a rampant virus will turn out to be just what the environment needs".

Be careful what you write, even in jest...

By the end of February, the spectre was already stalking the land.

On into March, and while Spain continued delightfully purple, the shadow was starting to get bigger.






And now we're all very much confined to barracks. Our particular barracks are in Cromer, Norfolk, and as I've already noted, we are very comfortably off compared with so many others. As I write this, the sun is lighting up the sloping patch of garden at the back (in addition to the usual fauna -- wood pigeons, jays, squirrels, and pheasants -- we saw a deer there the other night). I can hear birdsong to my right and my left.


Here in the UK we're allowed out once a day for exercise or essential shopping. Our radius has shrunk right in. We don't have a car, fast or otherwise, so we're limited to the distance our feet will take us before other bits need a toilet...

But I can't get over our good fortune that we've been confined in such a beautiful area.




The emissions that I was fretting about back at the end of January have fallen, of course. But the jury is still out as to whether this will translate into a permanent trend.

The jury is still out about many things. I think most of us realize that we don't totally know what kind of world we will emerge into once this is over (whenever that is). Let's hope that it will be a world that still accommodates some sort of travel.

In the meantime, we have to make do. Fortunately, a lot of the things we enjoy doing are things that are done at home anyway. We're absolutely not people who find it hard to amuse ourselves.

But travel? OE? Life ticking by, and now this big hiatus?

Personally, I'm not an armchair traveller. I'm not interested in watching other people travel places on TV, or researching itineraries that are off-limits (ie, pretty much everywhere at the moment...).

For me, the way ahead is to

-- keep appreciating the travel we can do (criss-crossing the space defined by that radius I was talking about);
-- keep up the language study (there's such a wealth of overseas experience in every single language); and
-- escape into novels (in theory there should be lots of Velvet Cushion posts coming up soon...)

Breathe... Hold on... Hope...

This from Jane Hirshfield (via my usual source for such riches, Maria Popova):

... So few grains of happiness
measured against all the dark
and still the scales balance.

The world asks of us
only the strength we have and we give it.
Then it asks more, and we give it.