Unexpected Consequences...by Sheila Claydon

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In my last blog I talked about Shakespeare and the pandemic that affected him all of his life, starting with a fifth of the people of Stratford dying the year he was born. It was, of course, the bubonic plague, and it rampaged around the world for several hundred years, coming and going seemingly randomly until its cause, the fleas in rats, was discovered. Even that plague had its positives though, and in Shakespeare's case it gave him time, while he isolated himself and his family during the worst outbreaks, to write much of his best work.  

The Coronavirus that at the moment is affecting countries around the world also has some surprising upsides. I know businesses that are unexpectedly thriving because, with the closure of many shops, people are turning more and more to online shopping. The same with take-away meals and the many smaller restaurants that previously only offered table service are now barely able to keep up with requests for meals to be delivered.  And there are new local delivery services too where, for example, local farmers have seen a gap in the market and started delivering their fruit and vegetables directly, while family run butchers do the same with their meat.

Of course there are many, many people who are suffering, people who are wondering if their jobs are safe, people living in overcrowded conditions where the virus is more likely to run rife, people with barely enough to eat, but there are many, many more who are enjoying the unexpected freedom that has come with being paid to stay at home until the worst is over. This has led to family time, new hobbies, DIY house upgrades, healthier meals being cooked from scratch, more exercise, more fresh air...the list goes on. Although we live near a beach it is a bit off the beaten track, so we tend to recognise most of the people who park near us and set off through the woods and sand-hills to the sea. In the recent warm weather, however, we have seen so many new families visiting and enjoying themselves, and so many strangers exercising, that we doubt whether life here will ever be the same again. 

And that brings me to our own unexpected consequences. Three days ago we had coffee in Sydney. Yesterday we had lunch in Hong Kong. This evening we are having a drink with friends on the south coast of England and we will be meeting up with more friends in the Midlands on Tuesday. There are plans to see cousins in San Diego and we have already walked around a friend's garden in New Zealand and admired their burgeoning fruit trees and newly planted flower beds.

When I started writing I needed a strap line and at the time it was that my books were a 'ticket to romance' because many of them were set in places I've visited over the years. The fact that all that travelling is continuing virtually is the wonderful unexpected consequence of how Coronavirus is affecting us.  Where we used to exchange emails and maybe meet up once or twice a year, or only every few years if the distance was great, now we are very active Internet friends, talking weekly in many cases. With so many social platforms available it is so easy, and with practice has become almost as pleasurable as seeing one another face to face. We all have so much to say that we quickly forget about the screen between us as we lift our glasses to one another or excuse ourselves for a couple of minutes while we make another coffee. Why it has taken a pandemic to set up such an enjoyable online network of weekly contacts I can't fathom. We could have started doing this years ago instead of just limiting online calls to our granddaughter in Hong Kong. Everyone says the same and I think, when live gets back to whatever normal is going to, be this is an unexpected and very enjoyable consequence that will continue.

Cheers everyone!

SHAKESPEARE ON THE PATIO

1967--Wearing Aunt Juliet's 1950's Dress which she sewed for an Ohio State dance

My mother’s parents had a beautiful backyard in the small Ohio town of Yellow Springs. Their house and backyard are the very first I remember. I was a war-time baby, and because of the housing shortage, my mother lived with her folks for some years while my father was serving over-seas. 

Grandpa had made his yard special by that time, but when they first came to town, in 1927, the “yard” was barren. The only tree was a young sugar maple which provided afternoon shade.   Grandpa Liddle was an English Professor, but he’d been raised on a farm, so he knew how to grow things. By the time I’d reached consciousness—say, 1947—his backyard had become a lovely place, now hidden from the neighbors by a living wall of cedars.

Inside this, twenty years on, was a flower garden, where colorful Dutch bulbs bloomed in spring—daffodils, tulips, anemones, narcissus—followed by all kinds of lilies and roses in summer, as well as Canterbury bells, bachelor buttons and a host of other familiar plants. There was also a pear tree, a stand of raspberries, a grape arbor and rhubarb. All the surplus was either turned into jelly or canned for winter use. In summer fresh fruit was always on the menu—my cornflakes always had raspberries; our lunches were accompanied by pears or grapes.

Celandine, brought from the NY family farm to Grandpa's Ohio yard, to mine 

In the shadiest part of the yard, by a small stable which sheltered the ponies that belonged to his daughters, he had a wildwood area. This contained a variety of ferns, trillium, phlox, wild violets, and bleeding heart. Dutchman’s Breeches, Jack-in-the-Pulpit and Dutchman’s Pipe were two of the oddest denizens of this garden.

Dutchman's Breeches

Under the big maple, on the brick patio, in good spring weather, he’d occasionally host a small senior literature class in Milton, Chaucer, or Shakespeare. This was not a problem for the students generally, as the house was only two blocks from the college and bicycles, in those days, were part of campus life. If I arrived in the middle of one of these classes, I knew to quietly head into the house. Here, I’d find Grandma in the kitchen, getting a proper English tea ready to serve. Of course, there was always some for me.  

Professor A.W. Liddle, a.k.a. "Grandpa"

Grandpa also had a little pond for goldfish. Nearby, he planted two sweet cherry trees, one for me and one for my cousin, Michael. Pies made from the fruit are another happily remembered treat, fresh ones in summer, followed by winter’s, made with Grandpa’s canned cherries. The pond was my favorite spot to sit, where I waited to glimpse furtive tail-flicks of orange.

Aunt Juliet & me. Hula skirt courtesy of a Vet on Leave from Pacific Front

I fed the fish whenever I visited. As soon as they spied me, peering down at them from my dimension of air, they would obligingly rise to the surface to take whatever I’d brought. ( I suppose, however, that, ordinarily, the resident mosquito larva was sufficient.) In the autumn, Grandpa would dip out the pond and put the fish into a tank on a side table in the sunlit breakfast room. Mostly, the goldies survived to return to the pond again in the spring. Some of these wintered-over fish grew quite large.

There were two weddings held in this garden, first that of my parents, and later, post-Korean war,  of my Aunt Juliet. I was the flower girl and my Cousin Michael, still in diapers, was the ring bearer. Later on, I nursed my first son sitting in that same utterly private backyard, while my grandparents told my husband and me stories about their 1927 arrival in this small middle-western town. 

Antioch College, Yellow Springs, OH

~~Juliet Waldron

http://www.julietwaldron.com
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