in not so splendid isolation

It's a surreal world we are living in. Social isolation, communication by internet, conversations across the width of a road. This pestilence has changed the way we live, possibly for ever.

We are lucky, living in a small village in the county.

We can walk for miles in our permitted exercise time without seeing a soul and yet the spring continues to burst out in the gardens and woods unaware of our human restrictions. Unthinking about our problems, the rest of the planet just gets on with what it has always done.

Violets bloom on a bank, a buzzard screams in the sky, the summer visitors arrive, the warblers and the swallows come back to their old haunts, the badgers seek new setts, oblivious of us.

"that breathes upon a bank of violets"

Viola odorata

Our ancient village has seen it all before

There is a plague stone near the edge of the village. Almost four hundred years ago, the inhabitants of Northfield, then a small hamlet, now a large farm, were struck by an outbreak of plague and quarantined. People didn't really understand the germ theory but they knew that contact spread the contagion so they filled the basin in the top of the stone with vinegar and the folk from Northfield would put their coins in the vinegar to buy food.

Today, the local butcher brought eggs, fresh vegetables and fruit to the doorstep and we left the money for him in an envelope. Plus ca change!

Yet people are risking their lives to minister to the sick, to care for the vulnerable, and to treat and save the seriously afflicted. We appreciate them now but will we continue to do so when the plague is defeated or will we go back to idolising vacuous "personalities", sports persons and commentators, game show hosts and all their associated trivia and lavishing vast sums upon them when their contribution is, as we have discovered, at best borderline and mostly unnecessary. 
 We shall see.

*Twelfth Night  W.S.