Stranded

Like the rest of you, I’m stuck, stranded amidst the same beautiful surroundings day in day out.

The sun is shining almost every day, the knees are coming out and the family are getting sprinkled by freckles and red cheeks. The rapeseed fields grow bolder and bolder and the purple tips of the bluebells are dancing from the green-carpeted forests, a welcome sight among wood anemones, buttercups and the unfolding new soft leaves of beech and birch.

Everyone is well and joyous as the days are filled with playing outside, eating healthily and being together. Essential travel is limited to visits to the local woodland, the allotment and once a week to the shops. For my family and I, these escapes are essential to maintain our sanity during these extraordinary times.

Each day is different and yet the same, weekends are a thing of the past along with aspects of entertainment that had become so normal. Now we are the entertainers and the entertained.

I often sneak out of the house for sunrise, to watch the daily display of colours flood the fields and hills. Empty roads and foggy forests, long shadows on the Downs.