Yesterday was ‘freedom day’ as it was billed here in England. It didn’t feel much different for me. I am choosing to live in much the same way as before I had the choice not to. I don’t quite understand the rationale behind lifting restrictions when our cases are rocketing so rapidly. The government have said that as restrictions are lifted, it will cause further increases in cases of covid. Apart from not wanting to catch it myself, I want to know that as far as possible I have not done anything to put anybody else at risk.
I know that we must each make our own choices, and I am not judging those who choose differently (to a point anyway, nothing will convince me that the films of crammed nightclubs with people squashed in like sardines is anything other than irresponsible) instead I am trying to remember that all of us have lived through extraordinary and often harrowing times.
You’d think the lifting of restrictions meant that it is all over…but it feels that it is very far from that. So what should be the beginning of the end doesn’t really feel like it to me.
Today was also the last day of term for Jessica…and not only the last day of term but her last day of infants; when she returns in September she will be in Year 3 and Juniors…how can this be?!
I always feel emotional at the end of term and even more so at the end of the school year. Every year we have been lucky enough to have a teacher we have been sad to leave behind. I keep reminding myself that it is the end of the school year but also the start of the summer holidays, and then that lovely New Year feeling awaits us in September.
I have been chain reading the Chief Inspector Gamache series by Louise Penny, and have just one more to read before I reach the end – although happily there is a new one being published in the autumn. They are set in a small Canadian village called Three Pines, and heavens I could just move there! It sounds so delightful and having read fifteen of the books almost back to back, I feel like the bistro and bookstore are just around the corner, and that I know Armand, Jean-Guy, Myrna, Clara, and Ruth.
It feels strange coming to the end of the series, although I am glad to know that there will be more to come.
Alice is turning there on Saturday which feels like the end of early childhood too…suddenly she is more of a preschooler than a toddler! I think she is close to being ready to learn to use a potty or toilet too, so the end of another era is on the horizon.
Now I sit and think about it it does all really feel like endings and beginnings. Thankfully the main fabric stays the same…family and friends, tea and books, writing letters, crochet, garden flowers, homemade cake in the cake tins, vintage cups and saucers….
Wherever you are I hope you are safe and well, and remain that way.
Love
Mini
Xxx