How to Survive COVID without Really Trying! By Liz Clark
What did you achieve during the lockdowns in 2020? Did you take up belly dancing, study Russian or Chinese, discover felting, paint a portrait, explore your family’s history or install a water feature in the garden? Maybe, like many other residents, you finally got round to painting the house, remodelling the garden, finished some craft projects that had been sitting around for a while, or you sorted out your pantry? Perhaps music consoled you, or a new hobby, or just time to stop for awhile was therapeutic. People will give you a funny little smile when they talk about how much sourdough bread they baked, how much chutney they manufactured or how many scarves they knitted to help them fill in time during the COVID lockdowns, but it is so interesting to hear how people managed those long
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and difficult days through the winter that never seemed to end. At my house, Simon used some of the many skills he has been honing at the Men’s Shed by renovating two very old and tired garden benches we had in the garden. He dismantled them, removed old paint and dirt and rust, sanded and scraped, then painted and varnished them until he produced something not only as good as new, but vastly improved models of their former glory. As COVID began, I was recovering from a knee replacement and happy to be less active than normal. I found
YouTube and subsequent new skills that showed me how to enhance my old hobby of card-making with some very interesting and innovative ideas – cards that twist and fold and move and surprise and become three dimensional and alive in their own way. I had such fun. I played the piano a lot. I exercised the knee. I also kept a daily diary to record not only the ongoing reports that kept us all in touch with daily events (or non events), but also allowed me to write down how I felt, my opinions about life, how I appreciated kindnesses from others, how I could still make a
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