“Missing Ben’s Blog” said a text from our lovely neighbour Christine, this weekend. And I promised that I’d finally write one! There’s been something about this wintery lockdown – partly the doing nothing, partly the fact that keeping on top of work is curiously hard and exhausting, that I get to the end of each week, and on a Sunday or Monday evening, when it has been my habit to write a blog of the weeks’ events, I suddenly feel too tired, and roll into an early bed. Do you know the feeling, I wonder?
But it has been a beautiful month, or even month-and-a-half; days and weeks given structure by nothing other than our once or twice daily walks, and then weeks of working from down here followed by weeks when I will try and compress site visits and London meetings together. I’ve been the only person on the train some days. It’s a bizarre time; we are, I imagine, simultaneously longing for it to be over and yet, and yet will find it curiously strange – like coming out of the cinema on a bright sunny afternoon, eyes blinking.
The last six weeks have seen beautiful clear cold days and then what feels like weeks of grey rain too. It’s been rather lovely looking back at photos from these last few weeks. The funny thing is, you forget individual days. But strangely a photograph brings something ordinary, essentially unmemorable, sharply into focus again…. and that is very nice as I sit here, by the fire, dogs fast asleep on the sofa, Sunday evening….
One day we waked up to the Kingston Russell Stone circle….
Happy times had by all. 
Some astonishing mornings….
Remarkable starry nights…
Hard, bitter frosts, the earth blue-grey….
Signs of spring…
Charlie’s huge new show flower patch….
There was a week of snow, but it never got closer than this – we are so near the sea, that it’s snowed just twice since I’ve lived here. 
Dreamy vistas from the high ground looking along Chesil Beach to Portland Bill.
Some very early starts, before taking the train to London…. the ground hard and cold.
Giving way to damp fog….
And grey, brown and green. Thank god a decision was taken all those decades ago to paint post boxes red!
Some morning the sun was transcendent, turning even power lines to cobwebs…
One morning, we walked over to Compton Valence to look at the famous snowdrops. No snowdrop festival this year, but the hedgerows were full, and beautiful. 
The beautiful little church still and peaceful, sun streaming in. 
And then we made a quick visit to East Lambrook Manor, formerly the garden of Margery Fish, to collect one of Charlie’s rare snowdrop orders….
Back to a lowering sun in Dorset. 
bright skies the next day overlooking Chesil beach – the vast hulks of anchored cruise liners omnipresent on the shore. 
But largely, these last few days, it’s just been brown and green and grey. It will be so startling to see this lane in May, in vivid new green. Not yet – we’ve still got March to go through…
Today I put a small bunch of flowers on Mum’s grave. It was on this equivalent Sunday evening, at exactly this moment, ten past nine in the evening, that I got that call from Dad that she’d fallen over at home. I was with Dad within ten minutes and soon afterwards the ambulance arrived, but it was clear, really, from the moment I got there that she had gone – taken, thankfully one must admit, by an instant heart attack. 
How we miss our mothers, and all our loved ones no longer with us, but we can celebrate life too, and a long life, beautifully lived – and that bright and cheerful little bunch of flowers, picked straight from the garden this morning, is full of that sense of hope and optimism too. I can’t help but be grateful that both of my parents – whose principle happiness in life was spending long hours with all their family – have been spared the long imprisonments of lockdown. So many have suffered so much these last few months, nearly a year – but tonight I look to the happy moments too, and to the sense of bursting optimism contained in that small container of flowers, and to remember now that spring is knocking on the door.
43 comments
Thank you Ben for writing your blog post despite being tired. It is odd how being locked down has slowed everything down, Our lives are so less hectic and yet we are exhausted by bedtime. I so appreciate anytime I can see your magnificent photos and read your stories. My mother passed away last year in February right before we knew the severity of what was to come. We are so grateful to have been with her and that she did not have to suffer through covid. She was in a nursing home and we lost so may (including my mother in law) from this terrible virus. We are grateful for her peaceful passing. I love the stories of your parents and family. Thank you.
Why oh why do some of your posts have me in floods of tears? They just touch a nerve: poignant, sad and at the same time, joyous.There’s a gravestone engraved with my parents names in Wimborne but my mother always said not to grieve there as her soul would be elsewhere, with those she loved.
Last visit to Dorset with my daughter, we stood just where you took the photo in the beautiful little church in your village. The sun was also shining through the windows that day. Who could have imagined the sadness that engulfed the world just a few months later.
So, thank you, once again, for your heartrending yet optimistic post.
PS—My Mother, too, has passed (in 2013). I was holding her hand when she departed. The quiet dignity of her passing will be with me all my days, and will ease my own when the time comes You will see your parents again.
XO
Scrolling through email, everything seemed dire, news stories about Covid or Texas disaster, pleas for donations from political and animal rights groups, a reminder for an online event that happened last night, which of course I missed. Then…a new post from Ben!! Begone, ye shades of fear, anger and frustration! I’m off to Dorset to rekindle and refresh! Thank the gods for you, Ben, and Charlie and the fur babies. With love and gratitude from Diane 💕
Ben , I too feel sadness that my parents are no longer here but also grateful they do not have to endure this pandemic.
Thank you for putting your thoughts into words.
Judy