So we come to the last days of the first stage of the battle against Covid 19 which I have called the Great Diminishment.

That’s a Dickens family thing.  My Mum used to talk about the Great Diminishment.  She used to say you start in a big family home, with a big family, and a big circle of friends and then slowly the children leave home, the houses get smaller, the friends begin to die, and bit by bit you make your boundaries shrink until you’re left in the room and the bed you die in.

My Mum had a brutal sense of humour but, of course, she’s not completely wrong. I always used to say that she’s surrounded by grandchildren now. Not the same, she said.

So The Great Diminishment.  Once upon a time we lived in our great cities and towns and countrysides, and lived our busy, hectic lives, and journeyed hither and thither.  And then it stopped.

Now we are trapped in our homes.  Limited to a shopping expedition once a week.  We venture out for a constitutional wander once a day.  Sometimes twice, if the family are irritating.

Some of us are working from home. Some are being stretched by extended exposure to their rambunctious children. But there’s still a slower pitch to the tune of the day. Life has become smaller

But it’s also the end of time of the Great Dislocation.  Because while we’ve been coasting along often finding pleasure it what seems like an extended long weekend, there is still the underlying fear of what lies ahead for your job and your money and your prospects. If you still have them.

So the Diminishment and the Dislocation could combine to make us feel negative.  So today I’m trying to find the positives. How my life has not been diminished, but enriched.

So first of all, I’m fitter from walking and cycling.  I’m discovering new places and buildings and parks and features of my suburb that before I whizzed past in a car. 

But it is socially where I’m finding enrichment and growth. I have phoned so many people that I had lost contact with. If the hard times are coming one of the most effective tools to counter it is a healthy social network. Start a phone tree.  You might just shake out a new job or calling

I have never spoken with neighbours more than I have over this past month. I’m engaging more with the issues and the people that are in my neighbourhood than in my city.

Yesterday I picked up a copy of our local paper.  A paper that fought to publish because it’s weekly.  They argued that they were better at informing their readers than bigger national papers and media.  In it I learned that Covid 19 figures for individual suburbs are not available from the Ministry of Health.  Presumably to prevent hysteria and paranoia.  I also learnt that testing stations have not been approved for my suburb as no medical centre came up to standard.  There’s a work on.

And at the end of the paper was an obituary of a man who died in lockdown.  He was born in the former maternity hospital that’s just a block away from my house. He died in a historic house that’s just 200 metres from the place he was born in.  He saved the local cinema.  He supported the local sea scouts. He stood in the borough Council.  He was a good man who lived and died,  close and local his whole life. It was inspiring

Let’s not look at our new life as a diminishment but an opportunity to find the meaning that’s been right under our noses all along.