Well… we are only in week 1 of this ‘lockdown’ and I seem to have been busier than ever. Online teaching is exhausting but fruitful and even if it challenges me I am learning so much about the best way to teach under pressure of time and distance. Yes 1-1 online is not as good as face to face but it highlights different things when I rely so much on the sound as well as the visual. I also can see myself in a different if slightly disconcerting light, I do exaggerate my facial expressions because I am trying so hard to get through the barrier of a camera lens. We are human and we long for social contact that is physical and not just virtual. BUT we must save lives and social distancing for the foreseeable future may save many lives, and many families from great sorrow.

While the world outside is struggling to come to terms with a pandemic that is killing so many people, one’s own values and faith are really questioned and the purpose of life becomes more focussed. So I am a Christian and a licensed Reader/Lay Preacher in the Anglican Church, I am a mother and grandmother, an embroiderer and a gardener, a singer and an artist, a wife, a sister, an aunt, a cousin, a friend, a colleague, all these identities come tumbling around in life like in a stone polishing machine. The rough edges are made smooth or at least my prayer is that will happen.

In the meantime I work and think and meditate on the values of what and why I do and the value of HOW I do it.

Singing has come through this crisis as a release, first in China, then Italy and now here in the UK. The desperate need to sing is so clear amongst people of all ages, interests, creeds and colours. This gives me HOPE.