Claustrophobia

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Untitled - © Kel Harvey


As yet another storm with a name tries to obliterate our house, gardens and outbuildings by force, I'm retreating from the conservatory as it's found a brand new place to leak; right over the table where I write. This only serves to emphasise the sense of claustrophobia that started with the pandemic and lockdown. On days like today, going out for fresh air would truly be doing a Captain Oates, although I still intend to open The Fridd Arms at 16:00 [our Garden Studio, AKA The Enormous Shed] for my customary couple of pints with Joe. I dread to think how many leaks have sprung in there today, with the wind pushing the rain up the valley towards us at a near horizontal angle and with [gale] force. The application of corrugated iron to the back wall earlier this year was timely and at least mitigates the worst of it as the wall faces directly into the teeth of most of the storms we get.


So, fingers crossed, this will hopefully have abated a little in a couple of hours and I can get behind the bar for a bit. The contrast with yesterday's day out in the sunshine couldn't be more marked; it was so nice to be able to sit outside a pub in the sun and have a pint and a packet of crisps in [near] normal circumstances, one-way-bar-system and two-metre-distancing notwithstanding. It did go some way to help lift the general cloud of claustrophobia and give us a reminder of that simple pleasure we always took for granted but have since lost to covid: the spontaneous pint en route from some place to some place else.

Comments

  1. Joe Stoner27 August 2020 at 09:52

    Shadow masking detail I wonder where James gets it from!!:)

    ReplyDelete

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