According to a BBC article on my phone recently, in this lockdown we are watching more television and taking less exercise than in the first lockdown. I wondered where we figured in this. I wouldn’t say we were taking less exercise, with two lively collies demanding we walk them at the agreed times, there’s no choice but to get out there twice a day.
Admittedly, were it not for their insistence, (they wave their contract of co-habitation at us) we also might be less inclined to ‘get out there’ into the kind of weather and conditions under foot – muddy or icy or even a combination of both – we’ve had in this lockdown. But dog-walking does combat cabin-fever, that’s for damned sure.
As for the TV, well we’d have to admit we have watched more. A small excuse being that we’ve been stuck in the one property that actually has a TV, if we were elsewhere then not so much TV. Well, none at all actually. But yes, we’ve watched more and I’ve described what that constitutes in previous retirement blogs.
I have to say that, with our insistence on watching a mixture of non-fiction (documentaries) and fiction (pure entertainment), at least with the first we’re learning things (although not how to write good English obviously). Picasso, Michelangelo, Canaletto, Monet, Hockney, Degas, Bosch, bring them all on. Vastly different styles and ages.
And then there’s the music side of things. Last week we watched a Sky Arts programme (entitled Culture Interrupted) about the suffering (I know suffering is relative but still) of professional musicians in this shutdown period. Not the top stars but the everyday musicians who make up the vast majority of our music scene or at least did before all this came along.
If a person had made donations to his local musicians (who used to earn money running our jazz classes), and had been described as ‘super generous’ you wouldn’t write about it would you. Lights under bushel and all that. But having seen the programme this same person was mighty glad that they have been generous.
The musicians in the programme consistently made the point that, at 20% of their original earnings, they felt under-compensated and under-valued in these times. Although many made the point that it was better than nothing but that their careers in music may never recover. They felt that their contribution to society was not recognised. And I have to say I agree.
In these difficult times we head for the metaphorical hills. We seek solace and comfort and without the arts, culture, music etc we wouldn’t find much of any of this would we? Where would we be without the arts in these stressful times? So many good causes in these difficult days but maybe spare a small thought and a bit of cash for our out-of-work musicians particularly.
So this programme moved me at what you might call an intellectual level. But what really moved me, to tears in fact, was a clip on the TV of 400 professional classical musicians performing in Parliament Square. All socially-distanced and masked wherever possible they performed the first 20%, to match their subsidy, (I think) of Holst’s Mars from the Planet Suite. And then, in the middle of a bar, at the 20% mark, they simply stopped. The silence was over-whelming and I’m tearing up a bit just writing about it. It symbolised what had happened to live music in the pandemic.
I don’t usually include video clips in this retirement blog but I’ll make an exception, if my technical skills allow. Apologies for the adverts and I don’t think this is a particularly good clip but it gives you the idea.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqCxB_njYqA
And a quick PS, nothing to do with watching TV or exercising. I seem to remember a few months ago writing in this retirement blog that one of the unexpected outcomes of the pandemic was (as a generally unneighbourly neighbour), writing that I had felt, surprisingl,y a part of my local community. The advent calendar was just one example of our contributing to local initiatives. Mrs Summerhouse has even been putting her paintings in one of our bedroom windows, donating to the foodbank. That’s how neighbourly we’ve been.
So felt quite good about this but then any feeling of togetherness took a bit of a hit when I found out from his son who was walking their cat (yes, I know a bit weird) that his father (the man who butchered my hedge with my own hedge cutter), had suffered a heart attack a couple of months ago, been taken into hospital and there caught Covid. And we knew nothing. We’re taking him a get well card and some chocolates (is this a good present for a man who recently had a heart attack?) this morning. So hope this makes up for our ignorance so far but we’re clearly not as much a part of the neighbourhood as we imagined..