Y Tywydd

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Y Tywydd - the weather, in Welsh: also the opening phrase of the multimedia show we built for National Grid/First Hydro at Llanberis back in 1994 [blog posts passim]. For the last several days the weather has been as unrelenting as the pandemic lockdown: a double-whammy, restricting activity to virtually bugger-all, unless one likes walking in torrential rain powered horizontally into one's face by gales.

It's been pretty bloody rough here, though we're experiencing nowhere near the kind of climatic travails that Texas and much else of the 'States is experiencing presently. What with everything else that's happening, life feels claustrophobic - in our case it's not that we don't have room to breathe: thank God we chose this place to live all those years ago - it's just one feels hemmed in by simply having nowhere else that we can legally or safely go.

As I've said before many times, we're lucky; and on the face of it, we're generally laid back about most things; with age comes patience and forbearance, but as we've all learned in the past through experience in the workplace, stress operates insidiously. Even the most Zen of us are affected in ways that we ourselves often don't realize: I've noticed that while my mental attitude has maintained its customary even keel throughout, the subtle undercurrent of stress - subconscious stress - is having a physiological effect. 

We all feel physically lower at this time of year, with the short days, crap weather and even worse TV that fails to distract; but top this up with the restricted movement we are all experiencing at the moment and frankly something's got to give. At least when I had to work, albeit reluctantly latterly, I was kept in physical motion despite Covid-19 and the weather: not always pleasant and not always without worry of infection, especially in the first lockdown; but at least physically active. 

Tomorrow promises a day without deluge, albeit windy: we'll take that as an opportunity to get out and stretch our legs for the first time in what seems an eternity - it isn't, but time at the moment is playing strange tricks on us all. Catch you later.

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