BACK IN THE COVID - The Lockdown 2 Diary, Day 17

 DAY 17

For an actual Sunday today feels unusually Sundayish. With our quiet morning coffee I thought about why this should be the predominant feeling, today in particular, and I write this listening to the music of Eric Coates deliberately to enhance the mood. I have two excellent Coates CD’s on the Chandos label recorded by John Wilson.



The obvious starting point then is the question, “why Eric Coates in particular?”. Coates is not well   known generally and amongst those of us more seriously interested in music is placed under the “Light Music” heading and largely ignored. Notwithstanding this unfair (in my opinion) treatment of Coates he is however very important in the psyche of persons of a certain age, my age in fact and the generation before me.

Why? Well if I tell you that the introductory music to Desert Island Discs is a tune called ‘By the Sleepy Lagoon’ it might give you a clue. He also wrote another well known tune called ‘Calling All Workers’ which was used as the opening theme to the radio programme Music While You Work from mid 1940 up until 1967, a program of popular music played twice daily mid morning and afternoon on the BBC Home Service.

With very little other entertainment the radio featured in most households in the 1940’s and 50’s, my family for example acquired its first television in about 1951. The internet was a very long way off and X Boxes not even dreamt of. So on Sundays, to the odorous delights of roasting beef and spuds and already in a state of satisfaction brought on by early sandwiches made with Mr. Nicholl’s thick cut Wiltshire bacon from a pig farm just north of Devizes we would play card games or do jigsaw puzzles or simply read. These leisure activities were not regarded as fill-ins or time wasters or cures for boredom. There was intent behind them, they were purposeful, as purposeful as any other common household activity and an integral part of surviving the still quite difficult post war years.

And we were family. Dad would be at rest from his 50 plus hours working week and Mum would be similarly relaxed and away from sewing heavy forces uniforms at Comptons. There would be no rushing about, maybe a walk out in the sunshine, rarely a walk to a local pub and a bag of Smiths Crisps outside. Rest was taken seriously as it should be but was taken with significantly less background anxiety. Work for most people was secure and long term, ambitions and desires existed but did not drive most lives with great force and importance because second by second access to our lives through advertising and sales promotions did not then exist. Sunday professional sport was banned.

Although we were a mainly non-religious family our parents sent us to early morning Sunday School after we were grown enough to ask questions just to get some private time together. This no doubt worked in our favour to improve the atmosphere at home by the time we arrived there for bacon sandwiches after chapel invigorated by terrorising our teachers with ‘alternative’ views.

I suppose you would call this nostalgia. Often this word is used in a pejorative sense comparable to maudlin but I embrace it whole heartedly. 

I think of it as opening a door. A portal accessed by a key consisting of trigger events that in the right combination invoke feelings or memories of feelings which can sometimes lead to maudlin but at other times warm and comfortable like old slippers. I embrace both. Living in the present moment is all very well and fashionable but no-one can prevent their best (or indeed their worst) experiences that happened in the past from framing every present moment with whatever feelings those memories engender without descending into the purely hedonistic.

This morning was quiet and calm. Calm and without undue cares or difficulties or deadlines or plans. An autumn mist lingered over the playing field opposite and amongst the trees and shrubs around the garden. A promising sunlight peeped over the top and small birds were about everywhere. We had both, my wife and I, a better night’s sleep after a poor week in that department. Possibly this was due to a busy but satisfying day yesterday on the garden’s winter clear up and a couple of strong pain killers each to retire on later. For some reason neither of us felt any need, pressure or urgency to do anything and even locked down in The Covid (and therefore more or less continuously restricted) this is a rare state of affairs to allow ourselves to luxuriate in. 

I had descended the stairs whistling ‘By the Sleepy Lagoon’  to the smell of fresh coffee. Silent levers must have tumbled into place to unlock this Sundayish feeling which we have indeed been luxuriating in all day and we have so enjoyed it.