Mantras

Tuesday 23rd February, 2021

So Ms Sturgeon has spoken the day after the Prime Minister. Both are being cautious and speaking about data rather than dates. So we wait patiently although I am hearing the cost of the lockdown more and more of late. Friends with real mental stress, people with illnesses needing operations, such as a brother of mine, and the collapse of businesses. I hear also the arguments back and forth re those against lockdown and those who say it must continue.

Today I had a letter from a friend in her 70s who had been in hospital with Covid. She was in for a week and suffered from lack of oxygen and had infected lungs. She returned home over a month ago but is still suffering weakness and breathlessness and other effects. This is not an easy disease. All has to be put in the balance and I am pleased not to have to make the decisions, yet I have my own thoughts and opinions. I was moved by the speech made by President Biden as over half a million Americans had died. He was very personal and had suffered the loss of his first wife and daughter in a car accident, and then his son from cancer. He understands and is sincerely involved. Grief is such a personal experience, yet we share it also.

It has rained for most of the day so I have been indulgent and watched a ridiculous Jack Reacher film as well as done a little reading. I managed to meet a dear friend who keeps me sane. It is legal and involved also a brunch type meal of goose pate and the most alive cheese I have had for ages with Riveta biscuits. Her daughter had had the most terrifying fit recently. It seems, and this is horrible to contemplate, that she had her drink spiked with LSD. It is a long story and a frightening one. It is so good to talk, to talk with someone one admires and trusts. My meeting was that as was also a telephone call I made to another friend. Thank God for such generous people.

I must say though for anyone who reads this that it is essential that one cares for oneself first. You cannot help others unless you are fit yourself. It is one of the mantras of AA. You have to stop drinking before being able to help another. What is the saying: physician heal thyself.

I did manage one short dry walk. Sadly the boots I was wearing were too tight and my toes hurt badly at the end of the walk.

The Tay Road Bridge, which I can see, is closed. The wind is too strong for traffic. It is also raining again heavily so time to hunker down. Yet as with lockdown I do want to breathe and walk and be free again soon. I have read Isaiah today and that yearning for the Messianic age is so tangible. So too we yearn. We may not see it but we have faith. As an American pastor wrote recently his favourite saying is from St Paul : ' whether we live we live to the Lord, whether we die we die to the Lord ' or words to that end. Amen to that.