Column: Wit & Wisdom

At one level that sounds a little crass given the potential psychological damage that social isolation can inflict, but I have to say that on balance, for many of us it has been good.

It’s so easy to get caught up in a mad social whirl, ‘life in the fast lane’ where I lived for years until a near meltdown brought me to my senses.

These days I’m a little slower to say yes, I appreciate stillness and I love solitude. I have become more contemplative and, whilst I was brought up to appreciate the beauty of nature, I hear birdsong as never before.

Often in the evenings when I should be settling in for the night I’ll put my jacket on and dander down to the sea to watch the sun go down.

And, wonder of wonders, I am rarely alone.

As I walk along the North Down Coastal Path, not five minutes from my front door I see fathers out jogging with their small children, I see mothers teaching their youngsters to ride a bike, others are learning to swim and there are groups of young people on kayaks and paddle boards, screaming with delight as they topple into the brine. And now we see that cycle riding is to be prescribed by GPs to counter obesity.

That can’t all be bad, they are the positive aspects of the lockdown and, while there is likely to be some backsliding to the way things were when the present madness ends, there is a hope that the change we are seeing is a change that will last.

But, one of the things that has humbled me is the level of care and compassion that has perhaps been lying dormant in our community.

When lockdown began, a call was put out to members of the organisation that I chair.

There are 1,500 of them, mostly over 70-years-old and many with underlying health conditions and we wanted to assess their level of need.

Only eight said they needed help, most of the others had already been contacted by family, friends and neighbours offering help and support.

People like to talk about the good old days, the wartime spirit, days that are gone, never to return, but maybe they have been there all along, a sleeping giant of altruism, springing into life when needed.

So maybe we should be thankful after all.

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