Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the ....

Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party

I must have typed the sentence above thousands of times in 1979 as I learned to touch type. I never thought much about it. Apparently it, and ‘the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog’ exercised particular fingers to build up speed on a qwerty keyboard. No sentence resonates with me more in these scary times. I’d substitute country or world for party though.

I live in Swords, Fingal, North County Dublin. I have a feeling we may see a cluster of Covid19 cases in this area. Many of those living in Fingal work in Dublin Airport, through which the virus probably travelled over the last fortnight. If this occurs no administrative area is better to live in to practice social distancing whilst maintaining your sanity. We are blessed with an abundance of beautiful regional parks - Ardgillan Castle and Demesne in Balbriggan, Newbridge House and Demesne in Donabate  Malahide Castle and Demesne. We have fabulous beaches – Donabate, Rush, Skerries, Rush, Malahide, Loughshinney. Lots of places to go for a daily walk, where children can run free whilst staying away from older people.

Today I kitted out my writing shed as an isolation unit if any of us need to self isolate. It’s perfect, I bought an inflatable single mattress and a portable loo so any of us can cocoon ourselves away from others for the required period. Perhaps entering the house when no one else is there to shower and empty the portaloo. My shed is full of books, notebooks, cds, a radio. Internet connectivity can be intermittent but that’s no bad thing. I may even do some writing! I am so looking forward to reading all the wonderful books that will be written over the next few months. Literary agents and publishers are going to be swamped with new content next year.

My family have been lucky in some ways. Son*1 (25) SMASHED his left leg on January 3^rd and has been effectively quarantined at home since then. His gorgeous girlfriend has only left his side to go to work, they were due to go to Edinburgh in January to start their adult life together. It seemed like a disaster at the time and we were all dreading confinement together. We have two living type rooms in our house. They use one, we the other. My kitchen is tiny but we take turns at cooking. The Jemser and I are retired from admin jobs for years. We are two months further down the road of being in the company of family on a long term basis than others.

 And it's working

 The younger adults have started to bake – son’s brown bread with cheese and rosemary is to die for. His fruit soda is sinfully moreish. Her Mac n' Cheese is delicious.  They’ve started painting, writing, learning and creating new songs. We’re looking at turning part of our garage into a potters area as the girlfriend has pottery in her blood. Son*2 is in college and when he has been home he is mostly up in his room (nothing new!). He’ll miss his girlfriend but they are both being sensible -staying in contact via technology. As the weather gets warmer we can open up the windows and he can play piano for our neighbours. My lovely Clann Cunningham are so musical,  both in creating content and interpreting others' work. I think the next few months will see many people exploring their creative side, slow things they never thought they had time to do.

I’ll miss stepdaughters*1 and *2 of course. And our grandchildren. But I went for a virtual walk with  stepdaughter*2 in Maynooth the other day. With WhatsApp video we chatted as she pointed the camera at Caralicious cycling her bike WITHOUT STABILISERS (yay) up the quiet road of their estate in Maynooth. Later I played Hide and seek with the Corminator aged almost 3 in Seattle. I counted, he hid and jumped out with a ‘BOO’ as soon as I stopped counting. Then we played ‘don’t wake Nanny up’. He delights in roaring as I snore and I overreact and jump awake. Then he showed me all his trucks. We were supposed to visit them in May for his birthday. I doubt it’ll happen now. But this WILL end and we will get there later.

As long as the Internet doesn’t get Covid-19 and collapse EVERYTHING WILL BE OK!

I drove to Skerries for my walk today and observed excellent social distancing on the beach. I got a stick and wrote in the sand as large as I could -

Kids

Our SuperHeroes

WWWashYourHands

I badly-drew a big heart around it and asked any kids I passed on way back to car to go and decorate it with stick drawing or shells – and to please fix my heart! To the tune of ‘Baby Shark’ I sang and danced for them

‘Wash your hands

Do do deh do deh do

Wash your hands

Do do deh etc

Wash Your Hands

                                                             Glan do Laimh                                       (fada yerself!)

Do do deh do deh do

Glan do Laimh

Do do etc

Glan do Laimth

Lavos Manos

Do do deh do deh do’

Etc etc etc in whatever language you like

I made them smile, so did their parents.

I felt good.

Look after each other and be kind.