Good news, bad news and hide and seek

June 2020 crawled to a close with some good news. The best of this was that, on 24 June, Kim was well enough to go for a short walk with me. It was a slow meander through Lord’s Wood, with far more chat than walk, but the weather was beautiful, the company was good and the scenery not too shabby at all. There was also a little touch of mystery to make me think.

Lord’s Wood is not an area I know well, although I did explore it back in 2016 when I was hunting for Boundary Stones. The history of the place is annoyingly hazy. The wood probably dates from just after the last ice age. Given the name, there must have been a Lord who owned it but no one seems to know who he was. The Doomsday book mentions woodland in both Chillworth and Nursling and Lord’s Wood is right on the boundaries of Southampton, Chilworth, Nurlsing and Rownhams, which clarifies nothing at all. There was also a Manor House at one time, built by the Barker Mill family who once owned much of Nursling, Swaythling, Millbrook and Lordshill .

The lord wasn’t the only mystery on this walk. The boundary stone I’d found in 2016, was so well hidden I couldn’t find it again to show Kim. Then, as we ambled our way slowly back through Bassett Wood, we stumbled upon a strange little house that posed another curious conundrum. Everything about it seemed to be a paradox. Although it was on a lonely lane, surrounded by woodland, there are some rather nice houses nearby. It seemed too distant and too rundown to belong to any of them. It was dilapidated, with no doors, but the brickwork and roof tiles looked relatively modern. It looked too small to be a house and too big to be a shed. There were two rooms. One had what looked like a fireplace and two windows but was so tiny it was hard to see what it would have been used for. The other was larger and also had a window. No one I have spoken to seems to know what it is and Google doesn’t appear to know either.

Mysteries aside, it had been a week of good news and bad. On the plus side, the government had lowered the COVID-19 Alert Level from Level 4 (severe risk, high transmission) to Level 3 (substantial risk, general circulation). The number of new COVID cases and deaths in the UK was the lowest since the beginning of the lockdown. Southampton was also in the forefront of new developments in the fight against COVID19. A new ‘no swab’ saliva test for COVID was going to be piloted in Southampton. There were also whisperings that a vaccine might be on the horizon and Southampton University Hospitals were involved in the proposed human trials.

The non essential shops had opened but, tipping the scales in the other direction, hairdressers had not. My lovely hairdresser Lisa, will be the first to admit that I am not a woman who worries too much about her hair. I don’t use lotions and potions. I don’t spend hours styling it. I wash it, I rub it with a towel, if I have to go out when it’s still wet, I might point a hairdryer in its general direction. For many years I have kept it short, in a style that requires minimum attention. Every six weeks, Lisa comes and cuts it, usually, right at the point when it is beginning to get in my eyes and therefore on my nerves. My last appointment was the day after we were all locked down. Obviously, it didn’t happen. Natural blondes have more hair per square inch than anyone else (Google it if you don’t believe me). Their hair is also much finer. This means it generally gets very wayward, very quickly. Mine was now at the stage where I was seriously considering shaving it off with Commando’s clippers. The only thing stopping me was Boris’s announcement that hairdressers would be allowed to open on 4 July.

Another thing I’d begun to notice was a very unpleasant trend, often encouraged by the media, to stir up division. The finger pointing and spiteful comments were beginning to get on my nerves almost as much as my hair. For someone fairly apolitical like me, it seemed that the government were doing the best they could in an unprecedented situation. They could only act on the advice they were given but now the very people who’d advised them when they should lock down the country, were saying that they should have done it sooner. None of the advisers seemed to be able to agree on what was best but every little thing the government did was being criticised. The PM was even getting flack for his messy hair! I hadn’t voted for him, but he had my sympathy. Mine was looking startlingly similar. I had the feeling that, had he sported a beautifully coiffed new haircut, he’d have been vilified for that too.

In the beginning, the lockdown brought out the best in people. Now it seemed to be bringing out the worst. The streets were littered with abandoned masks and plastic gloves. The new cycle lanes, aimed at helping people to stay fit when all the gyms and sports facilities were closed, were causing long and nasty online anti-cyclist rants. People were moaning that the lockdown had been relaxed too early. Other people were moaning that it had gone on too long. Masks were another bone of contention. As a glasses wearer, they made my life a misery. As soon as I put one on my glasses steamed up and I couldn’t see. If I took my glasses off, I couldn’t see. Shopping blind was producing some interesting mistakes. Even so, I wore my mask. Sadly, some people who, for health reasons, were exempt, were being attacked both verbally and physically in shops. The most worrying piece of bad news was the rumbling from the BMJ that there might be a second wave. It was something I’d been worrying about too.

Still, after a lovely morning walk, I was trying not to think about the negative things too much. As it was Wednesday, I had a second walk to keep my mind occupied too. It was the second post lockdown training night for the running club and, as it was such a beautiful day, I thought I’d go along and have a wander around the Common.

The groups met as before. One run leader, five runners. They all scattered off to different parts of the Common before I had a chance to find out where each of them would be going. I thought it would be fairly simple to find them all and take a few photographs. The first group, led by Luis, were easy enough to track down. They were running laps of the boating lake.

The other groups were more illusive. None of them were on the show ground, where I’d expected at least one of them to be. Puzzled, I headed up the hill in a kind of reverse parkrun loop, expecting to bump into one of the other groups at any moment. I got as far as the Ornamental Lake without seeing another soul.

At this point I got a little distracted. The lake was built in 1888, as part of a job creation scheme. It’s a little off the beaten track and not a place I visit often, so I couldn’t resist a little stroll along the path. With the blue, cloudless sky and the still air, it proved to be a good choice. There was still no sign of the runners but, right at the end of the path I spotted a squirrel. He was slightly less illusive than the runners but, to give you an idea of how hard it is to find a group of five runners on the wide expanse of the Common, I’ll let you work out where he was for yourself.

By this time I was in danger of ending up back where I started and I thought Luis’s group might think I was stalking them so I turned around and strolled back. It wasn’t exactly a hardship. A warm summer evening meander on a path beside a beautiful lake was just what I needed to stop me thinking about the pandemic and all the negative things that had been swirling around my head.

I never did find all the groups. In fact, the only other ones I bumped into were Commando’s ladies and, by this time, they’d finished their training session. Still, it was a nice evening for a game of hide and seek.