Just a Note
Just a little note from my home here on the island telling you that I love you. There are long hours alone now in which to think of you. Everything here is going pretty well, and as for now we have no disease on the island, though Scotland has now suffered thirty-three deaths.
I feel very fortunate as I am not one who is struggling considering all things. Against the odds the weather is a constant friend, otherwise I feel sure people from the mainland would seek isolation, but hearing the news and what is likely to happen over the next couple of months, there is only one thing to do, hide, and love you very much and all the time.
I shall have to keep wondering how you are and thinking of you constantly as I’ve done all along. But it will be good to see you when this virus thing is through with us.
I read what is going on in New York daily, it is a losing fight, for now anyway. I cannot imagine a worse situation to be in for those people, to live six-feet apart in New York is something I have never seen, and never likely will again. It would ordinarily have been an impossible ask.
The news today is full of the Prime Minister’s positive result, and is in isolation at 10 Downing, working from the flat above. The consensus seems to be, he was late in bringing the understanding of how to prevent spread of the disease. I don’t have enough knowledge to have an opinion.
People everywhere are suffering. It will be a different world once this disease is conquered with new vaccines for the future.
Steve called, he is free of illness. I don’t know how he does it, so many times I’ve wished a plague upon the man. He said he’d been in a desolated Hyde Park, walking for fresh air. Before he enquired as to my health he enthused about his ride from Shepherd’s Bush in a completely electric black cab. The driver was isolated in his driving partition. You know in your heart I think him one of the dearest men in the world.
I heard Alistair Mackinlay died a week ago from other issues than the virus. I haven’t seen him but once in the last decade. In fact, as I recall that meeting, it was at Cyril Whyte’s, funeral. Alistair had done several brandy’s that morning. After the funeral, at the wake, Alistair lifted his glass, and then dropped it, before falling backwards on the settee, which saved him any real hurt. The two were real close, he was heartbroken. I cannot attend his funeral, and not sure that anyone can just now.
Sometimes I wonder if the older we get, higher tasks are not required in life. The task right now seems to be how to co-endure our existence. Above all, not to feel embittered by our circumstances. We now live with this grim condition, at worst trying to keep friends with ourselves, with the weakness of human destiny, and never again, through self-deception, believe we are superior to what nature demands.
Maybe we will all learn to spend a little less, to be kind, honest, concentrating on family. Our hopes and dreams lie in microscopic fineness. The heroes are no longer soldiers, but people working their everyday jobs, people carrying out their occupations, people staying apart, speaking with their hearts, doing life for others.
We are observing the nobel architecture of people coming together, staying apart.
