wink

It came down, the snow, yesterday when I was washing up dishes at the twice monthly Lunch Club, organised and devised by the best soup and pudding makers, surprises always a happening, like the profiteroles this time. Who on earth makes them? S’not me, not never, but there they were all perfect and breathily awaiting that chocolate rum sauce. The folks attending scraped their plates, begged for more, loved every mouthful. The snow fell on, warmed just a twist, slushed up into icepuddling and then kept its mouth shut as the next freeze blew in like a breath. We, the kitchen staff checked the window, the out of it, The snow and ice checkers. Our guests are tricky, need sticks. I’m washing and rinsing and watching the snowfall. The buzz in the kitchen is warm and laughing, alltalk, village, community, life, health, loves, all of it. My back is to the room, but I hear it all, the glorious buzz of friends, of community.

I rise, or my trusty mini does, up the twist hill to the gape of the road. I swing right and then take the slide right and down into the village. Down always works, no more hills, no matter the slide shift of snow and ice. I will get home, even if it is a sort of sledge thing. The snow falls on, and, later, I walk with a stick, just in case. I keep walking daily even if it has scant fun without the wee dog. I purpose myself, watch everything, notice each change, check footprints, see the chunnels of slewed freezing rain trying to find its way back to the sea, halted by fallen leaves, sticks, sludge. I cautious my boots along the slippy track, keeping middle ground where nobody walks and where the road fill has elevated like the ridge on a badger.

And on it snows. We don’t know this non stop snow thing, not here on the west. I watch the morning, the garden birds zing and slew around the feeders, as the snow lifts the ground into a new level. I crunch out in sand shoes and almost disappear, or they do, to check the mailbox. This takes me a wheech and a fight with the flip lid catch thingy, gloves on, to reveal nothing much. The sky is a wildscape. I see highrise winds luffing the faraway clouds, a reveal. There is argument up there, so far up there. Closer, the snow clouds fluff up like boys at a disco, all puff and promise. I walk out and stand to look up. Whatever is coming will come and I, me, small unimportant old woman, am here. I say this out, and just as I do, there’s a skedaddle in the clouds and the sun winks at me.

Ha! I smile, and crunch my way back home.

And so it is. The ferry will not carry anyone who cannot prove they live here; the shops are closed, as are the pubs, hotels and hostels. We are held in stasis, like the statues we see dotted around our cities. Whenever I walk past one, bronzed and frozen in some public place, I wonder what was happening to that notable person before that moment in time and after, if, indeed there was one of those. Did he or she live out a mostly ordinary life until he or she chose to perform something remarkable? Was that laudable moment his only laudable moment? Or was her life so very laudable that we, living out our own ordinary lives (that never epiphanied us into statue material) have to keep being reminded of our ordinariness every time we pass by? Did his feet ache in ill-fitting shoes or no shoes at all? Was she late for school/work/choir practice and did her teeth hurt eating ice cream? What does this laudable dude think of the pigeons that perch on their horizontals and shit them white and greasy grey? Do they notice the baggy coated homeless wanderer who slumps beneath their lofty limbs glugging poison from a bottle and staring out at the world through nearlydead eyes?

Who knows. Statement, not question. I would have to stop, obviously, and read the plaque, the blurb about this hero or heroine but I rarely do if I’m honest. I notice, more, the face, the expression, and I follow the trajectory of their gaze and even that cursorily because I am on my own trajectory from A to B, and this bronzed or marbled elevation of one human being (or been) will still be here should I come this way again with more time and with my specs on.

But now we are not marching from A to B, most of us. Those who aren’t directly servicing the good of our fellow men and women are at home behind window glass and doors with sterilised handles and knobs. The walks and talks and coffee meets and random encounters are now forbidden as we work together to prevent the unnecessary spread of a killer virus. Silent, deadly and very much alive. But we are enterprising, we ordinary people, and I am daily delighted as I hear more of this online idea or that distance contact. I laugh at the online videos created by minds with sparkle and am thankful when they are forwarded on to me. We are not statues. Most of us never will be anyway. But, in our ordinariness we are showing strong signs of the extraordinary. I knew we would. My granddaughter is doing a co-ordinated bake off with her school mates through WhatsApp or Skype. And what she is learning, what we are all learning, is that our ordinary brains are capable of so much more than we ever knew. The world will be forever changed once we come out on the other side of this war and although some won’t be with us, those who are left will walk into a new world and, although not many of us will warrant a statue in our name, there are those who would surely deserve to be remembered in such a way.

I remember a statue once, in Amsterdam. A rather splendid fellow in frock coat and tights with an ebullience of rakish hair and a fabulous face. He was holding out a painters palette in one hand, a paintbrush in the other. I was not on my way from A to B and he was worth a second look, so I did read the plaque. ‘Barent Fabritius – who lived till he went back to Amsterdam, whence he died’. Not a great ad for Amsterdam. It made me chuckle and look back up into his face. And then he moved.

He moved, he moved! I screeched at my friend who raised one eyebrow and shook her head. See that glass of white you had for lunch….? she said and walked away to check out some tulips. I risked another glance upwards. He smiled at me and winked and I laughed delightedly, upsetting the pigeons who burst into the sky, and the old homeless man on a nearby bench swore in technicolour, then slumped back down into the folds of his baggy old coat.

I knew then, as I know now, that nothing and no-one in this world is ordinary. Oh no, not at all.