Hello from a beautifully Sunny England……..

I hope this finds you well and safe. The big news here is that the lockdown is being lifted cautiously….after all this time it feels wonderful, there is an air of happiness about the place!!! Today, those who are deemed to be the most vulnerable have been given the green light to leave their homes after 12 weeks and next week all stores will be opening, obviously with very strict guidelines as to how we move around the stores and in general…..all good news for us!!

And you, how is it for you? Your beaches have reopened I see, which makes a huge difference to how people feel, it’s a long road to recovery, but recover we will!!!

I am amazed at how children have adapted to the new behaviour of stopping suddenly and remembering that a hug is not allowed at the moment…I noticed this when at the VE Day celebrations in our street the two year old opposite us wanted to show me her doll and came towards me with it outstretched in her hand and then placed the doll on the road and stepped back so I could pick it up, amazing!!

So what else has been happening in our neighbourhood..I told you all about the scrubs that were being made at the community hub which are amazing, we started to slow down with orders which is good news and means we are getting somewhere with it all and most hospitals and care homes have seen PPE delivered, thank goodness. People have been blaming the government but hindsight is a wonderful thing, who could have predicted this dreadful situation??? And as usual, community won through….I love the stories that emerge during troubling times, of people who have gone that extra mile or given that extra bit of time….for me the 100 year old major army captain Tom who walked a marathon by using his walker to walk round and round his garden (very slowly) to raise £1,000 and ended up raising over £33,000,000!!!!!

People took him to their hearts, as they did a young cerebral Palsy sufferer aged 9, Tobias Welles, inspired by Captain Tom who walked down his road every day for 70 days, he also has a walker to help him walk very painstakingly. Every day his neighbours would come out and cheer him on, he completed a whole marathon!!!!

The restaurants who provided food for hospital workers, who set up groups of people to contact the most vulnerable, keep fitters who set up virtual gyms to keep people fit….Joe Wicks set up exercise classes every morning for children missing out on exercising at home and ended up with half the nation joining!!! Hundreds of stories and all selfless people helping others.

The lovely lady in this photograph who made these fabulously funky scrubs is an ex student whom I taught in my very first teaching post….she is as lovely now as she was all those years ago!!!

There have also been protests here after the death of George Floyd, it was a dreadful thing and people here feel badly….our protests were in London and respected the social distancing as everyone knelt in Trafalgar Square and then continued to the American Embassy to stand in silence……we are always with you in troubling times.

Now we need to start thinking about the future, what can we do about travelling??? I am pretty sure we will not make it to Lake Worth this year or in fact, anywhere that means a plane journey…instead it is an opportunity to explore England – all the places we keep hearing about but have never had the chance to visit, it would be fun to hire a mobile home for a couple of weeks and see where it takes us!!! Half the fun will be in the planning…

You know we were in Vietnam and Cambodia before our trip was curtailed and we were flown home by a very circuitous route which was exhausting but very interesting. We got to see all these airports and testing and masks and temperature taking but we got home eventually. I was going through my photographs and it reminded me of what fabulous places these countries are, so rich in heritage, beautiful buildings steeped in history, magnificent in the midst of traffic and poverty and families travelling on one moped, grandma holding on for dear life at the back! And of course, because of the pandemic just starting to spread there were very few people around which was very much to our advantage, places which would normally be so crowded allowed us to wander freely to gaze at the splendour, to take photos which didn’t contain strangers because you could actually see the sights without ducking around people, always a silver lining!

It always strikes me when in a country such as Vietnam that despite the obvious lack of money and decent homes, people are still happy and smiling and seemingly content and happy to do anything to make our trip even more memorable.

The floating villages were amazing, no problem with social distancing there….houses on stilts, boats instead of cars, their shops and market all floating on the river along with mobile coffee vendors, all amazing to experience.

I hope that everything we have experienced over the past 12 weeks will have taught us all something about life, not to be too concerned with our appearance, it really doesn’t matter that our nails are not perfect or hair is a little unruly, making do with what we can get from the supermarket, which at times was not very much or varied but we survived, and new clothes, do we really need to shop as often as we do???

Having just finished my daily yoga session with the usual teacher who has been teaching us every day instead of twice a week and has only asked for donations to go  our local hospital for which we have now raised £1,500, whoopee!!!!  I feel great and energised, that is definitely something that I am going to continue……

By next week I will have a long list of others things I am going to continue, get ready and we can compare them….until then, have fun and stay safe and happy….always happy.

                                                               X X X

May 19 was my last entree. Today is 28th of May and we are still in difficult times.  Everything fades and becomes just a monotonous movement over and over now.    The long awaited missive from England finally arrived.  Chris Gostling  (R) will again be the Monday blog contributor and give as the news from that side of the world.  They were caught in Cambodia when the lockdown became world wide, and just made it home to England on the last flight.  There after no more flights or travel for anyone.

I have new young ladies who expressed a wish to learn.. So the ciriculum is reading numbers for the little one via backgammon and of course art. School is out this week. Thank you BArbara Resch for the die. Using pennies and dimes.

May 22,  My birthday                                                                                                                             Got up super early as i’m redoing the #Littlefreelibrary hoped to have it done and recreate the opening party.  Did not happen. Soon!  My door is open and and these two little ones are standing in the doorway.  Taken aback, surprised at the early hour.  I ask of course.  Mothers gone to work, the rest of the household is still asleep and they went AWOL with plastic bags under their arms in case of rain.  I’m looking at grubby little faces and ask “have you washed your hands?” LOL of course not. OK first things first  breakfast next                                                           Wasn’t really ready for them i’m painting.  It’s ok they want to spend time here, cleaning? what!  I’m informed they have gone with their auntie to clean and know how to clean. Oh my god, i’m in chaos, books here papers there, I live in my studio.  Cleaning has never been part of my mantra.  All of a sudden it occures to me CLEANING (it’s my birthday! a Gift from heaven?  Recall a friend while teaching at the Bass Museum always was fascinated going thru my purse ART STUFF!

Hour later, saved by an emergency.  Flooding down the street. A picture is worth a thousand words.  Posted it to local FB page.  We saved the day and had have fun doing it.  Got immediate response from the City of Lake Worth Beach.  Who can resist splashing in the water.  They head home in the sunshine under my umbrellas just in case it rains again

It’s not even noon.  More rain expected plus morefor the next few days.                     Corona Virus upstages every life-event. Whats a Birthday like in quarentine?  Got lots of birday wishes on FB via Lake Worth Local, Lake Worth Beach Voice, and Lake Worth Life  and some awesome cards and long distant video chats.  All totally unanticipated or expected.  So once more to all who took the time to acknowledge me.

Thank You        Corona Virus Detainee