Lockdown Diary - Tuesday 5th January 2021

Back to work but without a working back!  I managed to dig out the lower back pain exercises I got from my GP quite a few years ago - long before I started yoga and back when there was an optimistic future - and I note with interest that several of the stretches are not dissimilar to some of the moves we do in yoga.  I need to do these exercises today, ideally three times, and also try not to sit at my desk all day, ideally getting up very 15 to 20 minutes.  Good luck with that!

When I log in there are a host of emails in both email accounts and a bunch of things I have to do. It's going to be a busy day!

After hitting a few brick walls (metaphorical, though it sometimes is a temptation) I decide to organise myself for the start of the next day and then shutdown my work laptop. 

After work I finally get around to doing the back exercises - once rather than three times - but once is better than nothing, I suppose. One thing is certain, I'll not be doing yoga at 7 a.m. tomorrow. 

Time to make dinner.  I get the meat ready and prepare the potatoes, having got them in the oven, I am joined by son #2 who takes over prepping the vegetables and the rest of the dinner process, with the odd bit of help from me.

In the evening we watch a couple of episodes of 'Raised By Wolves' then the usual process leading to the end of the day.

One of the habits of 2020 that I'm continuing into 2021 is reading a poem daily, switching to a new poem with each new week. At the moment I'm still reading from the same book as last year, but I've ordered a copy of Clive James' posthumous anthology, 'The Fire of Joy', which I will read from, once it arrives.  The first poem in 'A Year of Reading Aloud' is '"Hope" is a thing with feathers' by Emily Dickinson. There is something about it, though what, I know not:

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -

That perches in the soul -

And sings the tune without the words -

And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -

And sore must be the storm -

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm -

I’ve heard it in the chillest land -

And on the strangest Sea -

Yet - never - in Extremity,

It asked a crumb - of me.

'Roygbiv' by Boards of Canada is one of those tunes that leaves me wanting more: it just ends too soon and given the fade out which continues the tune until it becomes inaudible, you are always left with the feeling that they have a longer version recorded somewhere. Regardless, 'Roygbiv' is always playing somewhere in the deepest recesses of my brain; a group of neurons lighting up to the tune. It is from the seminal album 'Music Has The Right To Children'

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